Mapping City, town and country since 1824: the Ordnance Survey in Ireland - RIA Library/IHTA Lunchtime Lectures Herity focusses on the period 1830-61 and O'Donovan's involvement with the OS 6" mapping project and the centrality of his role. His expertise in the Irish language and grasp of etymology, as well as his intimate knowledge of the history and antiquities of Ireland, resulted in the connection of 'placenames with history... raising them above mere words'. The importance of O'Donovan's fieldwork, keen ear, in-depth knowledge and forensic research are described, as are the treks he engaged in on a daily basis throughout the country. His connection with Petrie's work on Tara is adverted to. Betham's vituperative criticisms and the consequent scrutiny of the Memoir scheme and the OS work is discussed. Examples are provided of O'Donovan's linguistic prowess and his acerbic wit.

1.  School in Slieverue and Waterford
 city (1821)
 and in Dublin 1823-27
 Work for James Hardiman 1828-30
 for Myles John O’Reilly 1827-36
 The Ordnance Survey 1830-42
 First publications in DPJournal,1834
 Major works after 1842: Irish Grammar
and Annals of the Four Masters
JOHN O’DONOVAN’S WORK FOR THE ORDNANCE
SURVEY 1830-61

2. THOMAS LARCOM, LESSONS IN IRISH
August 16th 1828
John O’Donovan, having called to “Irish Society, 16 Sackville Street,”
was desired to call to Lt Lacrow, Royal Engineers, in order to give him
instructions in the Irish language.
He enquired for Lt Lacrow, at the Castle, but did not learn, where he
could see him:-- now the object of this note is: to beg of Lt Lacraw (if
he wish to receive any instructions in the Irish language) to write to J.
O'Donovan, 28 Ransford Street, Dublin, informing him of his place of
Residence – the time he could attend – &c.
He hopes to be excused for the present trouble as he deemed it a duty
to diffuse a more Philosophical Knowledge of his native language than
what is commonly known.
He expects an answer on Monday evening, if not then, nunquam.
Glóire do Ḋia.
Lt Lacrow, Royal Engineers

3. JOHN O’DONOVAN JOINED THE ORDNANCE
SURVEY, OCTOBER 28TH 1830

4. GEORGE PETRIE. O’Donovan made his acquaintance in the autumn of 1831 and
advised him on the interpretation of texts relating to the Round Towers through the
summer of 1832.
Tee-Petrie

5. O’DONOVAN EMPLOYED, LATER RESIGNS!! JAN.18, ‘33.
O’Donovan was employed as Orthographer and Etymologist at 2s 6d a day at
Mountjoy House on October 28, 1830, his research at first being conducted in the
library. In October, 1831, his pupil, young Patrick O’Keeffe of 4 New Church St., off
Smithfield, who had ‘a most extraordinary talent for learning languages,’ was
employed as ‘draughtsman and calculator.’
In the evenings John did research for Myles John O’Reilly of the Heath House,
Portarlington; May 8, reported that he had ‘finished the translation and elucidation
of the first volume of the Annals of the Four Masters’ begun in 1830.
January 14th 1833, Larcom forwarded a list of 18 questions from O’Donovan relating to the
Parish of Culfeightrim (Cúl Eachtrann) in Antrim to … Lt. Robe of the Royal Artillery. One
question asked if Bonamargy was sited at the mouth of a river – the words of the
question suggested that the ‘Bon-’ was derived from bun -- the mouth of a river. Robe’s
reply of the 16th was testy: ‘a reference to the plan would have rendered this
unnecessary.’
We have no direct evidence of what happened next. Was the ‘plan’ available to O’Donovan?
Was Larcom caught between loyalty to a brother officer, ‘dear old Robe’ with whom he
had ‘lived …in great intimacy in London,’-- the two taking a set of chambers together on
his return from Gibraltar -- and the civil assistant O’Donovan who was offended? Were
angry words exchanged?
O’Donovan suddenly tendered his resignation, his library permissions at the Academy and
the RDS being revoked instantly.

6. FIRST MAPS; OS MEMOIR. O’DONOVAN RETURNS
On May 9, 1833, Colby presented the ‘whole atlas of Londonderry,’ just printed, to King
William, who expressed his approbation. Each sheet of the set in the RIA is initialled by
J. D[uncan] on dates in June and July, 1833, the latest, Sheet 48, on July 17. On July 12
Colby applied to the Treasury in London through Anglesey, the Lord Lieutenant, seeking
permission to prepare and publish a county Memoir for Londonderry. A favourable reply
was received, dated August 8.
Colby and Larcom set up three units: Geology, Natural History and Productive Economy
under Portlock, Natural Features and Social Economy under R K Dawson, and History
and Antiquities under Petrie. O’Donovan returned to work at 21 Great Charles St.
On August 2 Larcom reported to Petrie, who had earlier left for the North with Ferguson:
ODonovan is at work today! & as yet all seems harmony, if it should continue as I earnestly
hope it may I think things may be so settled in the course of a week that I may send him down to you,
& then if nothing unforeseen occurs I may indulge my anxious wish to join you myself.
I have tried so to organise the Department generally so as to guard against a split & I assure you
I am watching its results with an anxious eye.
Larcom’s note suggests that O’Donovan’s resignation in January had come after a ‘split’
and an absence of harmony.
And he was planning to do trial fieldwork with Petrie and O’Donovan in Derry towards a
Memoir of the county which had been recently mapped and published.

7. August 25, Larcom reported to Colby in Dublin:
….The light thrown on names alone by local enquiry is quite curious; I may instance Aghanloo,which has
been most wildly derived. O’Reilly thought achadh an lua field of the heap. Donovan thought the first
particle was Áth a ford ...when I asked Lancey he said there was no such thing as a ford.
Now, Petrie and I learnt that a boat & more recently an anchor had been found in the Td. Ballycastle
of Aghanloo -- this was something; yesterday Donovan learnt from an old Seanachie that the ancient
name of Ballycastle was Caislan ath na long – Castle of the ford of the Ships – here was confirmation ....
Thus the subject is cleared & I think an interest given to connecting them with history & raising
them above mere words & the whole of it due to local enquiry....
FIELD TRIAL TOWARDS THE MEMOIR IN DERRY, AUGUST ‘33
Towards the end of August 1833, we find the trio at work at Dungiven ‘with a view to the actual
publication of the Memoir of that County.’ O’Donovan’s field notes from that sortie, some
written in pencil and later inked, have survived, they run to about 50 pages recording
informants, lists of townlands and family names in the parishes of Carn, Balteagh, Banagher,
Maghera, Ballynascreen. At Aghanloo he noted: Áṫ an Lú, so pronounced. Mr. O’Conor
pronounces the first syllable of this name áh, ahanloo, which shews that it is not from aċaḋ, a field.
This made a clear case for sending O’Donovan to meet the people in the country; so John
O’Donovan began his first campaign of fieldwork in Co. Down in March 1834.

8. O’DONOVAN’S WORK IN THE FIELD 1834-41
[1834] ‘I am travelling through the County of Down to ascertain the correct
names of Parishes, Townlands, Villages, rivers &c. for the Ordnance Maps. I
have been appointed by the Superintendent of the Ordnance Survey to
superintend this particular Department…’
Delight at being out in the country, meeting and hearing the people, making
discoveries like Ballykinler,
FIELD NAME BOOKS.
Parish Name Books were the
primary document.
Ballykinler: ‘as soon as I heard it
pronounced by an old
Irishman, I said it must mean
the town of the candlestick’;
this potentially ‘silly conjecture’
became the true derivation,
when he found in Smith’s
History of the county (1744)
the information that the tithes
of the small ecclesiastical
parish of that name were
appropriated to Christ Church,
Dublin for ‘Wax Light.’

9. PROGRESS OF THE ORDNANCE SURVEY, IRELAND
1829-- Survey proceeded parish by parish and county
by county from north-east to south-west.
Each civil parish was surveyed and mapped onto a
MS Fair Plan; these were later combined to make a
county map. Survey officers entered in a Parish Name
Book the forms of the names used locally; Petrie’s
staff later added forms of the names from research in
libraries.
From March 1834 John O’Donovan decided by
local enquiry in the field the orthography of names
to appear on the engraved map, noting these in the
Parish Name Book.
Each county was published on a grid of six-inch
sheets measuring 3 by 2 feet.
Map by John Andrews.

10. JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1830
1831 Mountjoy House, Dublin
1832
1833
Resigned
Post Coleraine
1834 DOWN LONDONDERRY FERMANAGH
1835
ARMAGH/
MONAGHAN DONEGAL TOC
LOUTH*
TOC POK
1836 LOUTH* TOC POK
CAVAN/ LEITRIM
TOC MEATH TOC SLIGO* TOC POK Tara
1837 Research in Dublin Libraries
DUBLIN
EC
LONGFORD
TOC ROSCOMMON WESTMEATH TOC
KILDARE
TOC POK
1838 OFFALY TOC MAYO TOC GALWAY, i, ii TOC POK
LAOIS
TOC POK
1839 WICKLOW EC TOC
GALWA
Y iii
WFW CARLOW TOC POK EC KILKENNY EC CLARE EC
1840
WEXFORD
AC POK
LIMERICK
AC TOC POK
TIPPERARY
AC POK TOC
1841 WATERFORD TOC KERRY TOC
1842

11. GALWAY, ANCIENT TERRITORIES

12. THE MAN AND HIS WORK
Wakeman: At the time of my appointment to the office O'Donovan was about thirty
years of age. As in the case of almost every man who has risen from obscurity to
distinction, he was an incessant worker, never sparing himself, and evidently holding
his occupation as a labour of love. With all employed in the office he was a general
favourite, and in the intervals between his more serious business would not
unfrequently give us some of his experience as a traveller, telling his tale in a rich,
emphatic manner peculiarly his own.
Richard Niven – An Claidheamh Soluis, 1899: He was a jovial-looking, little stout man,
with a clean-shaven, typical Irish face of rosy complexion, and with a merry twinkle in
his eye, full of anecdote of the droll kind, and particularly clever at repartee. He always
interlarded his conversation with Irish words and phrases. I often heard him holding an
Irish conversation with Dr. Reeves, and he was most particular in endeavouring to
impress upon the latter the true pronunciation of the words.’
John Andrews in Sheetlines 62: O’Donovan’s ...fame and popularity remain thoroughly
well deserved. As a letter-writer he is often brilliant, not only informative about place-
names, antiquities, genealogy, and historical geography, …but also a rich series of hints
about Irish social and economic problems, cultural and religious preoccupations, …the
texture of life in town and countryside, and the hazards of travel in the 1830s.

13. THE BIG HOUSE
October 1835: I called at CASTLE CALDWELL & the Major received me very kindly. I stopped two
days, but a fashionable Gentleman’s house is no place for such a hardworking person as I am—
there is too much time spent {or wasted} at dinner, tea &c. &c. I thought it better to get rid of
Castle Caldwell hospitality as soon as possible. I stopped however long enough to get my
business done in that neighbourhood, & Major Bloomfield exerted himself to assist me.
Excuse hurry, and holly-eve night’s disturbance in a wild country village.
CASTLEKELLY, Roscommon, June, 1837: I have been able to write very little here, and intend to
go away as soon as possible as in the house of an Irish prince of large fortune [Denis H. Kelly]
too much time is wasted at dinners &c. which is so contrary to my habits of working all day and
night, that you would soon have to set me down as an idler were I to remain here many days
longer.
NEWPASS HOUSE, Rathowen, Westmeath, autumn 1837. O’Donovan reported from his office on
the top floor of the local Ordnance Survey headquarters, Newpass House at Rathowen, that he
could see the very conspicuous hill of Freamhainn, a place celebrated by the Irish annalists and
Bardic writers as the site of many battles, writing:
This hill is now cultivated and studded with corn stacks to the very top, so that every trace of its monuments,
if any existed, are in all probability destroyed. There appears to be a small tumulus on its top.

14. VISITATION OF TARA, AUGUST 13, 1836.
Petrie and Larcom, with Lieut.
Bordes, who had drawn the Fair
Plans of the Parishes of Tara and
Skreen, and O’Donovan, who was
then working in Co. Meath,
inspected the monuments on the
hill. Several sites found not to be
depicted on the Fair Plan.
On a trace combining the Fair
Plans of these two Parishes
Larcom began the task of adding
pencil sketches of monuments not
marked on the Fair Plans by
Bordes and his field party.
No evidence that George Petrie
visited Tara later except on that
one occasion.

15. BORDES’S FAIR PLAN --
LARCOM’S PENCILLED
ADDITIONS
Bordes’s Fair Plan, completed and
signed on July 2, had omitted
several monuments and their
features.
When the party of four visited the
hill, the missing features had first to
be discovered, examined and
sketched in pencil on the trace by
Larcom; Ráth Laoghaire, Ráth na
Ríogh and Ráth na Seanad.
The second large Claonfheart and
the concentration of ring-barrows
nearby at the north-west were not
marked by Larcom.
O’Donovan’s letters of the following
week state that the party made no
identifications with the
Dinnseanchus names on August 13.

16. O’DONOVAN’S ADDITIONS TO LARCOM’S TRACE
The numbers (figures)
on this map refer to
sites named by Kineth
O’Hartigan about the
year 1000 and
identified by
O’Donovan.
‘The chasms [numbers
omitted] will shew the
features now destroyed
or not identified.’

17. MONUMENTS ON TARA AFTER KINETH
O’HARTIGAN
After August 13, 1836, O’Donovan
continued the task of identifying the
sites described in the Dindseanchus
account of Kineth O’Hartigan with the
monuments on the Hill of Tara.
Two letters of his written on
successive days report his discoveries;
his identifications were then
incorporated in a new map of over 30
sites made by Patrick O’Keeffe and
based on Larcom’s ‘rough sketch’ on a
trace of Bordes’s Fair Plan, in which on
the previous Saturday Larcom had
added a number of monuments not
included by Bordes.
This was the basis for Petrie’s
Plate 7 in the 1839 publication: On the
History and Antiquities on Tara Hill.

18. O’DONOVAN PLAN 1836 = PETRIE’S PLATE 7

19. HILL OF TARA, THE
PUBLISHED MAP
MAY, 1837

20. GEORGE PETRIE’S VERSION OF DISCOVERY OF TARA
In the week following the visitation, O’Donovan returned to the hill, added further monuments
and observed in OS Letters Meath: ‘The failure in identifying the remains on Tara hill was
altogether the result of a want of due consideration’.
It was only when he ‘set it down hypothetically that Croppy Hill was in Rath-na-riogh near the
Mur of Tea and the House of Cormac’ that ‘every thing then followed as clear as noon-light’ and
the identification of the focal well Nemnach was made possible. This well was then numbered 1
in his version of the trace dated August 17.
From September 1836 to May 1837 O’Donovan and the team in Great Charles St. searched the
Irish Mss. in the Dublin libraries. Petrie then read his paper in three parts, April and May 1837.
O’D. Granard, May 8th 1837: ‘Now for a Summer’s work! Last winter was the dreariest season I
ever suffered from. I find myself awakened from it as from a nightmare.’
Although O’Donovan corrected Petrie’s conflated account of the visit in a letter from Baltinglass
in January 1839, the published volume did not state clearly that the written documents were not
consulted until the following week and then only by O’Donovan working alone:
‘Our first labour was to go over the ground with the map, in order to be satisfied of its accuracy,
and that no vestige of any ancient remain had been omitted. Till this task was completed we made
no use of the written documents…. Having satisfied ourselves that we had omitted nothing…we
commenced, with the map in hand, a second examination of the remains in the order pointed
out by the ancient descriptions.’ [Essay on Tara pp. 2-3.]

21. ROSCOMMON: ERRORS IN THE NAME BOOKS!
1837. Aug. 8: ‘Innumerable errors have been committed by the person who transcribed those
names; for example, he has transcribed … Ballyraughan for Ballyvaughan (vahan), Liss-na-
Bilarig for Lissabituny, an English square fort in Clooncusker called after the English family of
Byton, and has committed countless other blunders. …Here I am stuck in the mud in the middle
of Loughs, Turlaghs, Lahaghs, & Curraghs, the names of many of which are only known to a few
old men in their immediate neighbourhood, and I cannot give many of them utterance from the
manner in which they are spelled.’
TAL : What proof have you that Mr Casey wrote Lissabitunny which you say ‘of course’ he did.
I feel it my duty to desire that whatever you may write in your letters – you will not disfigure
official documents with remarks of this description.
I wish you to write the name in the Irish character – with an English translation & any
information you possess on the subject.
But by this destruction of documents by ribaldry – you really lower yourself in the opinion
of every one. [Memoranda]

22. O’DONOVAN’S REPLY
I wished to show the… process by which the mistake was committed. I saw that if Mr. Casey
heard the name pronounced he could not have written Lissabitunny as Lissabilarig. Such things
should be very carefully transcribed, and the descriptive remarks should have been inserted on
the ground and not from the plans. You may ask how do I know that such may have been the
case? I answer that I know by induction: when a Cave is described as a well, the describer cannot
have seen the object [Oweyaniska west of Rathcroghan]. Does this follow?
I fully consent to give up this style of writing, for the future, and to become very serious, cold
and un-Irish. That I have laid myself open to censure is too true {and I will be sorry for it yet} but
that what I have censured deserves censure no one will deny. J. O’Donovan – Sep. 8th.
1837.
[footnote] ‘Let Mr. Casey’s hand-writing be produced and you will then be able to see whether
my inference be right or wrong.’ [Roscommon Memoranda, 152.]
However, a fortnight later, Larcom, generous and fair-minded, acknowledging the justice of
O’Donovan’s complaint and his pertinacity, expertise and wit; observed in a note to Petrie : ‘I
often wish – as O’D. says -- that like the people on the moon – I could take my head off and put
it by to rest for a time.’

23. RIBALDRY?
O’Donovan at Elphin: ‘There is a tradition here that the Goldsmiths are descended from a foreign
friar who came to Ireland about a couple of centuries ago, and who seeing every inducement to
embrace the Religion of the state broke his vows of chastity, poverty &c and became a Minister
legens. And hence the family were called by the old Irish in their own language ꞅlioċt
ṁagaꞅlaiḋe an tꞅean ḃꞅáṫaꞅ, which I avoid translating for the sake of decency. This may
or may not be true, but it is worthy of remark that the family are remarkable for lasciviousness
and that almost all the Goldsmiths now living here are illegitimate…. [See Parish Name Book]
All this has little to do with topography.’
[Larcom had received new evidence from Lt. Lancey at Athlone about Goldsmith’s birthplace
only a month earlier and was considering publication.]
Petrie to O’Donovan Sep. 4th. 1837: ‘….And first I must tell you that I have read the said letters
with great pleasure and interest, notwithstanding their Pinkertonianism of style, which I cannot
help thinking a deformity. However this is a matter of taste and character, and you cannot help
indulging even perhaps though you desire to do so, an Irish pugnacity of expression in criticism,
the shillelagh style, which is certainly the most striking in effect, as it is the national
demonstration of energy and power. You knock down with such admirable form that it would be
a pity to restrain your arm, so more power to it!’

24. SPRING 1837--LARCOM STRESSED FROM OVERWORK.
Feby. 13 1837, L to P: I find it so perfectly impracticable to be free from business here -
- for the moment I approach it I am drawn into the full vortex – that I have resolved to
yield to the general will of all my friends & run across the Channel – but I go no further
than Carnarvon & only for a week or ten days.
The Kennedys are there & I shall join them. Tomorrow I sleep at Kingstown &
cross the next morning.
I have been trying to arrange the names & raths at Tarah – but my head is not
very clear & I have deferred it till I come back – when you must help me.
About March 13, Larcom departed for home in Hants.
March 21: Sharkey reporting progress on Tara to Larcom: I sincerely trust you will
return, perfectly restored to health ….
Highfield, Southampton, March 26, L to P: ….I do not go again thro’ London but much
as I find home tugging at my heart I must tear myself away – on Tuesday I start for
Bath & about the end of the week shall be at my work again.
April 22: Petrie read Part I of his paper on Tara at the Academy, displaying Sheet 31 of
the six-inch map of Meath including Tara.
Larcom was absent, suffering from sore throat and cold brought on, he wrote, by ‘the
worry of this plan… enough to kill ten horses.’

25. PORTRAIT OF JOHN O’DONOVAN, 1838, BY
CHARLES GREY

26. GLENDALOUGH, JANUARY 6/7 1839
On Sunday, January 6, O’Donovan and O’Conor continued east on foot over the hills
‘sinking thro’ the half dissolved masses of snow’ to St. Kevin’s Shrine:
‘Horribly beautiful! And truly romantic, but not sublime!’
O’Donovan, kitted out in knee-breeches and a pair of woollen stockings at the
hotel, and looking ‘like a madman,’ went at once to see the churches, ‘which gave me a
deal of satisfaction.’
After a very bad dinner they went to bed at half past midnight, O’Conor falling
asleep at once, O’Donovan lying awake, thinking of the work on the churches that lay
before them, apprehensive of the chance of their being delayed by more snowfalls.
But no snow fell. Instead, a most tremendous hurricane rocked the house ‘as if it were a
ship!’ O’Conor slept on. Soon the window was blown in and ‘a squall, mighty as a
thunderbolt,’ followed. O’Donovan, fearing that the roof would be blown off, tried to
hold the shutter closed, only to be blown in by the next squall. At this O’Conor awoke.
The havoc wreaked by the storm appeared in the morning; a tree down; cabins in
the glen ‘much injured,’ the boat of the upper lake ‘smashed to pieces.’
O’Donovan and O’Conor measured and sketched the monuments on 24 pages of
rough paper on Monday, January 7.

27. 24 PAGES OF ROUGH SKETCHES WITH
MEASUREMENTS ON JOTTER PAPER

29. DOORWAY, OUR LADY’S CHURCH
Fair drawing made by
O’Donovan in the office and
included in the letters for
Wicklow.
Measurements made and
noted on the site are repeated
in this drawing.

30. BETHAM: ‘A SMALL BIT OF CRITICISM’
A draft copy, 200 pages long, of the Derry Memoir prepared for the members of the
British Association meeting in Dublin in August 1835 was presented by RK Dawson to a
busy Sir Francis Beaufort at the Admiralty. He passed it to T. Crofton Croker from whom
this criticism came to Larcom. It appears that Betham was involved in drafting it.
‘The part entitled Pagan Antiquities is written with rather too great an appearance of
decision on some long disputed questions, — former writers may have been all wrong,
but the magic words ‘Ordnance Survey’ will not alone prove that this author is right.
Reference to authorities and to M.S.S. are not sufficiently explicit, and the libraries in
which the latter are deposited should be recorded.
Caissiol — Cahir & Cashel are given as synonimous, but Cahir & Cashel, have also
other meanings, — and no authority for this is produced, — O’Reily’s Dictionary is not
considered as at all equal to O’Brien’s as an authority, by any Irish scholar, but he
indulges his readers with many fanciful reveries in Etymology.
It seems somewhat inconsistent with the laws of good taste that Mr. Petrie, who appears
from the introduction to be the author employed in this work, should quote himself as a
positive authority.
It is to be hoped that a full and lucid index will accompany each volume.

31. SIR WILLIAM BETHAM: ‘ON THE AFFINITY OF THE PHOENICIAN
AND CELTIC LANGUAGES, AND ON THE CABIRI AND THEIR MYSTERIES.’
PRIA I(1836-37), 63-65.
April 24, 1837: The initiated of the
Cabiri were enjoined to the strictest
secrecy regarding the names of the
great Gods. The reason of this is now
obvious. Had they been known, the
sources of the wealth of the
Phoenicians would have been
revealed.
Feb. 13, 1837: On the Cabiric
Mysteries and Phoenician
Antiquities – ‘The author concluded
by observing, that such members of
the Academy as are Freemasons
must be struck by analogies which I
can not more clearly explain.’

32. MINUTES OF MEETING OF MONDAY, NOV. 26, 1838:
The author has taken undue liberties with the documents he professes to
explain. In this inscription the words are separated by points or stops, so
that the problem is, not given a series of letters to separate them into words
and then to find a translation, but given a number of words, separated and
distinguished already, to find the translation. Sir William Betham, however,
has not considered it necessary to follow these marks of distinction, and
has also occasionally taken the liberty of altering letters without any
authority from the original inscription.
But even though we should admit the legitimacy of the alterations the author
has made in the text of the Inscription, the language to which he has reduced
it, though apparently consisting of Irish roots, is not Irish, possesses no
grammatical structure, or uniformity and would not be intelligible to any Irish
Scholar. No evidence, therefore, is afforded by such an analysis, of the
alleged identity of the Etruscan with the Irish language….
But further, it is possible, if the same licence be allowed, to resolve into Irish
almost any words of any given language. Take, for example, the following
words of Virgil:
Quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando
Explicet et possit lacrymis aequare dolorem…[laborem].

33. O’DONOVAN’S PARODY OF BETHAM’S METHOD
 Quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando
 Explicet aut possit lacrymis aequare dolorem…[labores]
• [Urbs antiqua ruit, multos dominata per annos] Aeneid II, 362
Cuiċ iſ clad-im illeiġeaſ noct? iſ Cuiċ iſ fiú an ɼáḋ fán do?
 Aſ ph cet áit póſſet la cɼuí míſ E’gáiɼ a dol oɼem!
The litteral [sic] English of which is:
What is a lump of butter, as a cure, to night? And
What is the wavering saying worth to him
Going from a hundred places; I will marry with a month’s heart
Injustice going upon me.
What is the use of suggesting butter as a cure on such a night as this? And what is the value of
such an uncertain remedy to a man who is travelling about to a hundred places, and cannot rest
any where; and, as to marrying, how could such a person marry, except it were for a month, or
except he could be so hard hearted, as to abandon his wife after that period: injustice should first
become my character.

35. LT. THOMAS LARCOM, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE
ORDNANCE SURVEY IRELAND, 1828-46