He was the author of the poem Eileen Aroon and the play The Colleen Bawn was based on his novel The Collegians. There was a time when his poetry figured prominently in Irish schoolbooks but that day has long passed, writes Brian Maye.
Although only 36 when he died, the Irish novelist, dramatist and poet Gerald Griffin, packed an amazing amount into his short life. As well as writing prolifically, he spent much time travelling. For his final two years, the period of his life when he seems to have been most content, he was a Christian Brother. Writing to an old friend, he said he felt "a great deal happier in the practice of this daily routine than I ever did while roving about the great city, absorbed in the modest project of rivalling Shakespeare and throwing Scott in the shade".
Gerald Griffin was born on December 12th, 1803, just over 200 years ago, into a middle-class family in Limerick, where his father was a brewer. He had, by all accounts, a happy childhood. When he was seven, the family moved to Fairy Lawn, near Adare. He had a number of teachers but the main influence on him was his mother, who imbued him with her well developed literary tastes and probably inspired in him the desire to become a writer.
When not reading or studying, he loved to roam the countryside, becoming familiar with the customs of the people and learning the popular legends and folk tales which he later wrote about and worked into his stories.
In 1820 the family was broken up when his parents emigrated to Pennsylvania because of the failure of the father's business. Gerald, his brother and two sisters were left behind in the care of an older brother, who was a doctor in Adare.
For a time, Gerald edited the Limerick Advertiser with the help of the established historical novelist John Banim, who encouraged the younger man's desire to become a writer. Griffin didn't lack ambition and set out to revolutionise the contemporary stage, which he saw as decadent. So he wrote some plays, expecting to have them staged in London and, at the young age of 19, set out on his quixotic journey. "A laughable delusion," he called this venture some years later, with the wisdom acquired through hard experience, "a young gentleman totally unknown coming into town with a few pounds in one pocket and a brace of tragedies in the other".
His time in London was not easy. After a weary search he found Banim, who had preceded him to the city. In 1824 he wrote: "What would I have done if I had not found Banim? I should never be tired of talking and thinking of Banim. Mark me, he is a man - the only one I have met since I left Ireland." His Tragedy of Aguire was rejected and he next wrote Gissipus in the classical style. It was approved but thought unproducible by the great actor Edmund Kean. Sadly, its author did not live to see it produced on the London stage in 1842. Disappointed in his dramatic aspirations, he had to resort to all kinds of literary hack work to eke out a living. Though often hungry, he refused to seek any sort of patronage because he was determined to rely on his own efforts.
Wishing to make known the people and places he knew most about, he wrote a series of short stories, Anecdotes of Munster (later called Holland Tide), which came out in 1826, established his reputation and enabled him to escape from the drudgery.
No longer haunted by failure, he returned to Limerick where, in only four months, he wrote Tales of the Munster Festivals. These also sold well in London but it was his next work, The Collegians, published in 1829, that assured him of fame and fortune. It was based on real events that happened 10 years before.
The body of a young girl, Ellen Hamley (Eily of the novel), was washed up on the bank of the Shannon estuary. She was only 16, the daughter of a small farmer, and already noted for her beauty. She had been linked with John Scanlon (Hardress of the novel), of Ballycahane Castle, near Croom, who fled when her body was discovered. He was found hiding in a hay barn at his family home and was arrested. Daniel O'Connell was hired to defend him at his trial in Limerick and it was generally thought that a member of the gentry would not be convicted for the murder of a peasant girl. But Scanlon was found guilty and hanged, as was later his boatman, Sullivan, who killed the girl on his employer's instructions.
Thirty years later, Dion Boucicault dramatised the novel in his popular play The Colleen Bawn, which he dedicated to Griffin's memory. The play is still often revived. In the year The Collegians was published, Griffin met Mrs Lydia Fisher, a Quaker and daughter of Mary Leadbeater, a champion of the rural poor. She became a close friend (there seems little doubt he was in love with her) and "the secret patron of his minstrelsy".
Although Griffin produced a number of other successful works, the best known of which is probably The Rivals, he began to feel that he had overrated the value of fiction and his thoughts turned to entering the church. Having spent some time teaching poor children, he decided to enter the Christian Brothers in September 1838, having burnt most of his unpublished manuscripts. First based in North Richmond Street in Dublin, he moved to North Monastery in Cork, where he died from typhus fever.
His drama and fiction show that he knew the Irish character and portrayed its idiosyncrasies well. His lyric poetry shows tenderness, delicacy and a controlled passion, but is little known nowadays. Still, the beautiful Eileen Aroon has endured, and other of his lyrics, such as My Mary of the Curling Hair, were turned into successful songs.