For the purpose of compiling the memoirs, or parish accounts, that accompanied the Ordnance Survey maps of the 1830s, the counties of Cavan, Leitrim, Louth, Monaghan and Sligo are described as the "Counties of South Ulster" in Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Volume 40, edited by Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (Institute of Irish Studies/Royal Irish Academy, £8.75).
Expediency, not politics, dictated that this final volume in the series (publication of which started in 1990) would contain memoir material for thirty-four parishes in five counties that "lie in and along the southern reaches of the province of Ulster", a description that may puzzle irredentists of both North and South but hardly bothers the compilers or editors of this valuable and detailed source of local history.
Expediency also entered into the initial recommendation by a House of Commons committee in 1824 that a townland survey of Ireland, with six-inch maps, be undertaken to facilitate a uniform valuation for the purpose of local taxation. The maps were completed but the memoirs scheme was stopped in 1839 (because of lack of money) when only the northern half of the country had been covered. The manuscripts remained unpublished until now.
The memoirs are probably the most detailed accounts we have of the northern half of Ireland before the Famine; they document the landscape, buildings, antiquities, population, livelihoods, religions, emigration and amusements of the people and provide a unique picture of a part of Ireland as it was 150 years ago. There is something to grab the attention on almost every one of its 200 pages - poverty was widespread; houses were little more than hovels ("poor and unclean"); there are many references, however, to "the peasants" living to a great age, a hundred, frequently; amusements included hurling and wrestling; among the "gentlemen's seats" in Co Monaghan was "a cottage" at Lough Fea which had twenty-seven bedrooms. Some cottage!
There are only a few maps and drawings, however, which disappoints in an otherwise fascinating compilation.
Monaghan, which is well-documented in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs, is also particularly well-served by archival material in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, mainly because of the remarkable survival rate of the county's "big house" papers.
Extensive evidence of this is now available in "County Monaghan Sources in PRONI", by Peter Collins (PRONI; no price given). In a lavishly produced, colourfully illustrated book of more than 200 pages, Dr Collins draws on the plentiful and detailed papers of "landed gentry" such as the Shirleys (who owned that 27-bedroomed "cottage"), the Wes tenras, the Leslies, the Maddens, the Barrett Lennards, the Blayneys and other estate-owners in the county. In addition, Dr Collins interweaves extracts from other works on these families and some interesting (or eccentric) members thereof, making the whole a most readable and valuable contribution to Monaghan history.
If the "Ordnance Survey Memoirs" hinted at the great divide between rich and poor in Co Monaghan and elsewhere, then this book, of its nature, clearly emphasises the glaring disparity between the lives of the gentry and of their tenantry. Add to that disparity a profound misunderstanding and ignorance of indigenous culture on the part of some of the 17th-and 18th-century progenitors of the landed gentry and one can, possibly, excuse the comment of Rev. J. Burrows, tutor to a son of Lord Dartrey, in his diary in 1773: "The nastiness of the Irish of all ranks is inconceivable . . ."
But there was comparable disdain of London society among some, at least, of the Monaghan gentry. Writing in 1880, Lady Dartrey commented on an unusual marriage between "the monstrous" 66-year-old Lady Burdett Coutts and 28-year-old Mr Ashmead Bartlett: "He received £350,000 in cash on the wedding day . . . Lady B. Coutts says his is the only perfectly disinterested affection she has ever met with."
The Leslie archive, for one, reflects some of the dichotomies of life in the Monaghan "Big House". Dr Collins writes: "They derived during the Penal era a significant proportion of their income from the fees and dues paid by the 4,000-5,000 Roman Catholic pilgrims who annually visited the prohibited place of pilgrimage on the Leslies' Pettigo estate, St. Patrick's Purgatory, Lough Derg. In the 19th century they were closely connected with, and possibly descended from, Mrs Fitzherbert, that staunch English Catholic, who defended the faith in spite of the importunities of George IV. And they produced in this century the highly colourful Sir Shane Leslie, 3rd. Bt., Catholic convert, Irish nationalist and Irish speaker, who ran the future first Governor of Northern Ireland close at a parliamentary election for Derry City in 1910."
This reviewer can vouch for the accuracy of Dr Collins's description of Sir Shane, having interviewed him and enjoyed his hospitality at Castle Leslie in the early 1950s.
Meath, a county bounded on the north by Monaghan and Cavan, has maintained a certain independence since ancient times, an independence reflected in the title of Meath Archaeological and Historical Society's journal, Riocht na Midhe. The current edition, Volume IX, No. 4, ably edited by Seamus Mac Gabhan, lives up to its usual high standard.
The contributions range from George Eogan's and Helen Roche's "Further Evidence for Neolithic Habitation at Knowth", through the editor's own essay on the great songs of Meath and Oriel, to Eamonn Clarke's study of the impact of the Famine on Kells Poor Law Union, fourteen well-written and scholarly pieces which will be of interest to Meath people everywhere.