Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (41 page)

Oakboys, Hearts of Oak
. This militant, highly public mid- and south-Ulster combination emerged in 1763 in protest against the passing of the Road Act which required all highways to be repaired by the personal labour of householders along the route. The largely Protestant Oakboys objected to the fact that landed proprietors, in their capacity as grand jurors, often had roads and bridges made for their own convenience with the burden of repairs falling on the poorer ratepayers. Thus it was a protest against the use of public taxes for private roads. They also objected to attempts by the Anglican ministers to exact the strict legal rate of
tithe
and the exaction of small
dues
(fees for christenings, marriages, funerals and
churching
). Wearing oak boughs in their hats, they gathered together to erect gallows and paraded to the clergymen's houses. There they compelled them not to exact more than a specified proportion of the tithe. They also visited the houses of the resident gentlemen and forced them to swear they would not assess the county at more than a specified rate and that they would make no more roads. The sting was taken out of the protest by the passing of a less contentious road act within a few months. (Donnelly, ‘Hearts of Oak', pp. 7–73.)

Oates, Titus
.
See
Popish Plot.

oakum
. Caulking fibre made by picking and unravelling old hemp rope. It was used to stop the cracks in wooden ships.

ob
. Contraction of the Latin
obiit
which means he or she died.
See obolus
.

obit
. A memorial mass or recitation of prayers performed on the anniversary of the death of a person, usually that of a deceased member of a cathedral or monastic institution, a lay member of a confraternity, a benefactor or well-disposed civic official. Religious institutions such as cathedrals or monasteries maintained a register known as a ‘book of obits' in which such dates were entered. (Crosthwaite and Todd,
The book of obits
.)

oblations
. Small
dues
and offerings or gifts for religious purposes, usually small monetary payments for specific church services such as weddings, baptisms, churching of women and funerals. Oblations of one penny or halfpenny were also paid at major religious festivals such as Christmas, Easter or on the feast-day of the parish.

obolate
. Land worth one halfpenny per year.

obolus
.
(Abbreviated as
ob
.) A halfpenny or coin of small denomination.

observant
.
See
conventualism.

octave
. The eighth day after a festival, both days being included so that the eighth day always falls on the same day as the festival itself.

Octennial Act
(1768). The octennial act (7 Geo. III, c. 3) introduced the practice of a fixed-term parliament, in this case a period of eight years. Previously parliament was dissolved only on the death or proclamations of the monarch.

O'Curry, Eugene
(1796–1862). Self-taught calligrapher, translator and scholar, O'Curry worked for three years in the
Ordnance Survey
where he met
John O'Donovan
and
George Petrie
. He catalogued Irish manuscripts for the
Royal Irish Academy
, Trinity College Dublin and the British Museum. In 1854 he was appointed professor of Irish history and architecture in the Catholic University of Ireland. His lectures (1855–6) on ancient Irish manuscript sources were published in 1861 and a further three volumes of lectures (1857–62) called
The manners and customs of the ancient Irish
appeared posthumously in 1873. (O'Curry,
Lectures
.)

O'Donovan, John
(1809–61). Born in Co. Kilkenny, O'Donovan is numbered (along with
Eugene O'Curry
and
George Petrie
) among the outstanding Irish scholars of the nineteenth century. After a three-year stint in the Irish Record Office (1826–9) he transferred to the
Ordnance Survey
where he compiled over 140,000 placenames. His letters which contain notes and observations on the placenames and antiquities of Ireland were published in 50 volumes posthumously between 1924 and 1932 by Michael O'Flanagan. O'Donovan published a grammar of the Irish language in 1845, contributed articles on history and topography to the Dublin
Penny Journal
and to publications of the Irish Archaeological Society (of which he was a co-founder with Eugene O'Curry and James Todd). His translation of
The martyrology of Donegal
was published posthumously by William Reeves and James Todd in 1864. O'Donovan's crowning achievement was his translation of the annals of the kingdom of Ireland by the four masters which issued in seven volumes between 1848 and 1851.
See Four Masters, Annals of.

oenach
. Ancient Gaelic assembly or fair, apparently associated with political or social as well as commercial affairs.

OESA
. The Order of Hermits of St Augustine.
See
Augustinian Friars.

office
. For devotional purposes the monastic day was divided into seven or eight canonical hours. The night prayers of matins (also known as vigils or nocturns) began at 2am or 3am in the summer and were followed by the singing of lauds at first light in Benedictine monasteries. Thereafter the office was recited at 6am (
prime
), 9am (
terce
), noon (
sext
) and 3pm (
nones
). Vespers (also known as
lucernarium
because candles were lit at its celebration) was recited in the evening and compline, the last of the canonical day-hours, was said before retiring at night.

OFM
. The Order of Friars Minor.
See
Franciscans.

ogham
. A short-hand writing style based on a 20-letter alphabet derived from Latin. Ogham stones, which were upright and inscribed, were erected as boundary markers as well as gravestones. Over 300 have been identified in Ireland dating from 350 ad to 600 ad.

ogee
. An arch or moulding associated with
Gothic
architecture which is described by means of four centres so as to be alternatively convex and concave.

Old English
. The Catholic descendants of Anglo-Norman settlers who monopolised government positions until the Reformation, after which they were gradually edged out and replaced by the Protestant New English (Tudor and Jacobean settlers and administrators). In the late medieval period they are also referred to as the ‘middle nation' because they represented a middle ground between the Gaelic Irish with whom they shared a common birthplace and the English of England with whom they shared a common ethnic origin. (Canny,
The formation
.)

Old Pretende
r. James III, the Stuart claimant to the throne of England, who died in 1766.

ollamh
. Currently translated as professor, this Gaelic term originally referred to a chief poet, physician, carpenter, goldsmith, metalworker or indeed any person of high status in their profession.

Onomasticon Goidelicum
. A dictionary of Irish placenames, their location and the documentary source from which it was extracted. It was compiled by Edmund Hogan between 1900–10 as an aid to scholars working on old Irish manuscripts.

OP
. Order of Preachers.
See
Dominican.

op. cit
. (L.,
opere citato
or
opus citatum,
in the work cited) A footnote convention, now almost obsolete, referring the reader to a work already quoted. In modern usage this is obviated by shortening the original reference. Use
Ibid
. (and the relevant pagination if appropriate) where the work cited is the same as the reference immediately previous.

openfield
.
See
commonfield.

oral history
. Oral history, the recording and transcription of reminiscences, is a method of gathering evidence rather than a subject area. The evidence acquired supplements and enhances evidence assembled through conventional means. Oral history has grown in popularity over the last 50 years as the boundaries of historical study expanded to embrace groups of people whose lives and experiences heretofore were not considered important enough to be documented. It has opened up new and varied fields of inquiry such as labour history, the social life of families, the socialisation of boys and girls, courtship, urban culture and leisure activities and the experiences of combatants in wartime. The method has limitations. The interviewees may be unrepresentative; they may falsify their accounts; they may have poor recall. These, however, are limitations that historians account for in dealing with all historical evidence. Unrepresentativeness does not make evidence invalid; it only becomes problematic when the experience of a small sample is generalised. Falsification, for whatever reason, is always a possibility but the interviewer should be alert to internal inconsistencies and data provided by the interviewee should be compared with what has been obtained from other sources. (Brewer,
The Royal Irish Constabulary
; Finnegan and Drake,
Sources
; Thompson, ‘The voice of the past', pp. 21–28.)

Orange Order
. A sectarian association founded in 1795 in Loughgall following an armed confrontation between the Catholic
Defenders
and Protestant
Peep O'Day Boys
in which the Defenders came off worst. The Orange oath required members to pledge themselves to support and defend the monarch as long as he supported the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. Catholic
relief acts
, competition for land and fear of a French invasion – all of which threatened Protestant dominance in Ireland – heightened sectarian tension and encouraged the rapid spread of the order. Highly confrontational, it almost immediately engaged in pogroms against Catholics who were expelled in large numbers from their homes in Armagh, Down, Tyrone and Fermanagh. By the close of the century the order had attracted almost 170,000 members and the
yeomanry
was heavily infiltrated. Although the order was officially neutral, many Orangemen opposed the
Act of Union
because they believed it was to be accompanied by measures to emancipate Catholics. In the nineteenth century the government made several attempts to curb Orangeism. It was suppressed in 1825, persisted for a number of years in the guise of
Brunswick clubs
but disbanded after 1836 following a critical select-committee report. It emerged renewed under William Johnson to defy the Party Processions Act and became more broadly-based in the 1880s in opposition to the activities of the
Land League
and government proposals for home rule for Ireland. Since 1905 the order has been a constituent element of the
Unionist Party
. (Gray,
The Orange Order
; Haddick-Flynn,
Orangeism
; McClelland, ‘The later Orange Order', pp. 126– 137; Senior, ‘The early Orange Order', pp. 36–45.)

ordeal, trial by
. An early method of legal proof derived from the belief that divine intervention either by sign or miracle could determine an issue between contending parties. If you could clasp red-hot iron, plunge your hand into boiling water or sink when cast into water, God must surely be on your side and therefore you must be right. The role of the court was simply to determine which party should go through the proof and to ensure the forms were observed. As a method of proof it very quickly fell into disuse for the guilty were as like to pass through the ordeal as the innocent and it proved almost impossible to get a conviction. It was condemned by the Lateran Council of 1215 and prohibited by Henry III in 1219.
See
battle, compurgation and fire.

Order of Saint Patrick, The most illustrious
. The Order of St Patrick was established in 1783 by George III to reward high officials and peers for their loyalty. Modelled on the Order of the Garter it was the national order for Ireland. It was a one-class order consisting of the sovereign and 15 knights-companions (22 from 1833), none of whom ranked below an earl. The grand master (the sovereign's deputy) was always the current lord lieutenant. Investitures took place in the hall of Dublin Castle and were followed by the installation in St Patrick's cathedral. Six installations were conducted between 1783 and 1868. The prince of Wales, Albert Edward (later Edward VII), got the Patrick at the last installation. The star of the order consisted of the cross of St Patrick on a field argent, surmounted by a trefoil vert charged with three imperial crowns and surrounded by the motto
Quis separabit
. The order's most celebrated insignia – the badge and star worn by the lord lieutenant – were known as the Irish ‘crown jewels'. They were stolen in 1907 from a safe in the Bedford Tower and never recovered. The order disappeared after the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. (Casey, ‘The most illustrious'; Galloway,
The order.)

ordinary
. 1: A prelate, either a bishop or archbishop, who exercises authority over a diocese or province 2: A book listing heraldic descriptions of arms 3: A simple common charge or device on an escutcheon.

Ordnance Survey
. The Ordnance Survey was established in 1824 to provide a precise admeasurement of the townlands of Ireland as a precursor to a nationwide valuation of buildings and land. Although the eighteenth-century maps of the British Ordnance Survey (the Board of Ordnance) were produced for military purposes – the threat of a French invasion – the first Irish Ordnance Survey maps were designed to meet civil needs in the area of local taxation. Its military origin, however, was not severed for the nucleus of the new body comprised army officers and soldiers as well as civilians. From 1825 a number of field survey teams, headed up by a lieutenant from the Royal Engineers or the Royal Artillery, commenced the process of mapping the country from north to south using a scale of six inches to the statute mile. The first maps were published in 1833 and by 1846 six-inch maps of the entire country were on sale. The new maps became the basis for the geological survey, the census of population, the creation of new administrative divisions and proved invaluable in the field of valuation. Thomas Frederick Colby, first director of the Ordnance Survey, intended to supplement the maps with a comprehensive biographical memoir of each parish to be compiled from materials accumulated by the field survey teams. The Board of Ordnance, however, took fright at such ambition and cancelled the programme before it had extended beyond the counties of Ulster. The Ulster memoirs have since been published. In addition to maps, the records of the Ordnance Survey contain much to interest the local historian. The field books contain the numerical measurements taken by the surveyors as they progressed, including the dimensions of buildings. A different set of field books, the
name books
, list the various spellings of each townland together with letters and notes on placenames and antiquities. The registers and remark books describe the boundaries of each townland. These records can be found in the National Archives, together with a large volume of correspondence between the surveyors in the field and the central body in the Phoenix Park. (Andrews,
History
;
Idem, A paper landscape
; MacNeill,
The Ordnance
; Madden, ‘The Ordnance', pp. 155–63.)