ABSTRACT
Manuscript 1288 (H.I. 14) in the library of Trinity College Dublin contains a satirical poem 'A uaisle Éirionn searc mo chuim ' composed about 1712 and ascribed there to Aodh Ó Dálaigh, but elsewhere attributed with perhaps greater probability to Sean Ó Neachtain, a member of the same scribal and literary circle.1 The butt of its wit was the soi-disant 'Captain' Charles Lynegar, variously known as Séarlus, Cathal or Cormac Ó Luinfn, a direct descendant of the Ó Luinín hereditary historians to the Mag Uidhir chieftains of Fermanagh, who styled himself on occasion 'Master and Professor of the Irish language in Trinity College' and 'ard ollamh Éireann '.2 There was some justification for his use of these high-sounding tides, in that up to the late seventeenth century members of his immediate family continued to pursue their hereditary studies, using titles such as 'chief antiquary and king at arms of Ireland'3 and ollamh Mhic Guibhir? while he himself supplemented his starvation wages as lecturer in Irish to the divinity students at Trinity College c. 1708-1729 by drawing up pedigrees for patrons of Irish or Anglo-Irish ancestry.5 The poem accuses Lynegar of reneging on his Catholic faith, of pretentious vanity and of manufacturing unreliable genealogies, all charges that seem largely borne out by what is known otherwise of die man and his career.6 However when the author jeers
If Ó Luinin yonder receives a prize from any ungenerous, hard man the nimble knave, be he Gael or Gall, is (henceforth) a descendant of kings7
he is repeating an accusation levelled against all professional seanchaidhe by various English and Anglo-Irish observers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the art of seanchas was still widely practised. For instance the apothecary Thomas Smyth in 1561 berated the
Shankee, which is to say in English, the petigreer. They have ... great plaintye of cattell ... they make ignoraunt men of the country to bely ve that they be discended of Alexander the Great, or of Darius, or of Caesar, or of some other notable prince; which makes the ignorant people to run madde, and cerieth not what they do; the which is very hurtful to the realme.8
