This is a series to record Irish barristers of days gone by who, for one reason or the other, were never elevated to the position of judge (the shades of those so elevated can look forward to their own series). The series will feature the bad with the good, the mad as well as the sane, and the obscure at least as often as the well-known.
Irish barrister of the week March 25-April 1 2026 is the famous bon vivant and poet ‘Pleasant’ Ned Lysaght (1763-1810)
From the Clare Journal and Ennis Advertiser, 26 February 1891, this great account of Ned’s life and character:
“A CELEBRATED CLAREMAN
EDWARD LYSAGHT
(By D. J. O’Donoghue, in the “Evening Telegraph.”)
The name of Lysaght recalls pleasant memories of the Irish Bar in its palmiest days—of a time when the dreary phraseology of the courts was illumined by the burning eloquence of Grattan, Burrows and Burke, and by the combined eloquence and flashing wit of Curran, Yelverton, and Plunket, and their many great rivals. Their brilliant appeals effectually prevented that somnolence so inevitably associated with legal contests. Lysaght did not a little towards rendering the Irish Bar, when in the zenith of its glory, the admiration of Europe, and his personality will ever retain its interest for his countrymen.
At the mere mention of his name many readers will perhaps draw a more fanciful than real portrait of the man. They will picture to themselves a personage devoted to the cause of his country’s independence, scorning the bribes that were to be had without making by all with genius a vote, or other influence, and ruining his professional prospects rather than betray Ireland by assenting to the “base juggle” of the Union. Such a picture would be in accordance with general notions, but it would be a very misleading one, for Lysaght only wrote as a rule for those with the biggest purses, and if he ever had any scruples concerning the Union, he dismissed them for a consideration.
If, on the other hand, leaving aside his political conduct, and thinking only of him socially, we were to imagine a bon vivant, with the merriest of smiles, and a comfortable appearance, setting the tables in a roar, delighting even his temporary opponents by his witty songs and neat repartees, careless of all the ordinary precautions or of the fashionable observances of life, disarming the criticism of his friends and admirers, when remembered particularly inconsistent, by his provoking and contagious good humour—such an embodiment of Lysaght would have the impress of truth upon it.
With all his powers, however, it is not at all certain that he would have been to the present generation the leading figure he is but for some freak of fortune. His capabilities for wit and humour can hardly be exaggerated, but his actual achievements in that direction can be and have been. So famous was he as a humourist that all the best anonymous pieces of his time, if they were notably witty, were confidently attributed to him, without other evidence being thought necessary besides the chief fact of their cleverness and point—no small compliment to his ability. Fortune favoured him in this way to such an extent that he has been credited with the authorship of no less than three famous songs, of which we shall have a word to say hereafter…
Many of Lysaght’s best pieces evidently only served a temporary purpose, that of enlivening some social gatherings; and as he was careful not to bother himself about mere fame, or with mere matters of business, were probably soon forgotten. He was unquestionably the life and soul of every party, and in that sense only was a party man. Seeing that the choicest fruit of his intellect was generally reserved for these jovial assemblies, we may say with truth (if the alteration of Goldsmith’s famous reference to Burke can be pardoned) that he gave up to ‘parties’ what was meant for mankind. In all the practical concerns of life he was unsuccessful, but as a convivialist he shone pre-eminently, and as a boon companion none could hold a candle to him. For him the chief end of life was enjoyment, and in seeking that end it is not wonderful if he sometimes grew careless as to the means employed.
Like Milliken, he was a lawyer, and resembled him further in not being overburdened with clients. Otherwise, so far as aggrieved creditors were concerned, it is not unlikely that he would have made as many appearances as a defendant, as he did as a counsel. His lore was again to posterity, for too great a prosperity at the Bar might have meant a serious diminution of his diminution of his sprightly songs and ‘bon mots.’
His wit never failed him. Once, when pressed for money, he applied to Mr. La Touche, the banker — a very cautious individual — for a couple of situations in his gift. The banker asked him to name them. “Well,” replied the incorrigible wit, “if you let me be cashier one day, I’ll turn runner the next.”
A good many of his jokes are simply clever puns, in the manufacture of which he was an adept. The following will serve as a specimen. Having occasion to want something from a grocer of his acquaintance, he made his request, and was told that he must wait till the grocer’s wife, Mrs. S., came down. “Occupied with the children, I suppose?” queried Lysaght. “Thank God, she has none,” replied the bumptious tradesman. “Oh! then Mrs. S. is a barren S.,” was Lysaght’s retort.
Though of good family, he had little to expect from them in the way of fortune. As Sir Jonah Barrington remarks, he was “left little else than his brains and his pedigree.” Want of money was doubtless the principal incentive of most of Lysaght’s poetical work. Yet the things he was paid to write — the political and personal squibs and lampoons — have long since ceased to live, while many of the songs penned by him on the impulse of the moment for a private entertainment, and apparently left to sink or swim, have survived, and will most likely last as long as Irish literature.
He was born on December 21st, 1763, in County Clare, and was educated at the school kept by the Rev. Patrick Hare at Cashel. Among his schoolfellows was John Lanigan, the future ecclesiastical historian of Ireland. When about sixteen years of age Lysaght entered Trinity College, and distinguished himself greatly in the Historical Society. Becoming a member of the famous Historical Society, he was one of its most popular members, for even at a very early age he had deservedly obtained the cognomen of ‘Pleasant Ned Lysaght.’ Tom Moore was one of his early acquaintances, and it is surprising how little the poet says of this witty companion of his youth in his Diary. But he has left on record his admiration for Lysaght. ‘I look back upon him with feelings of love. All his words were “like drops of music.’
Another early friend was Robert Owenson, the father of Lady Morgan. To the latter Lysaght was sponsor, and is said to have predicted her future greatness. Entering the Inner Temple about 1784, he was called to the English Bar in 1788, having previously graduated at no less a place than Oxford University, never a congenial place to Irishmen. He did not succeed in England, not even comparatively speaking, as was the case with respect to his connection with the Irish Bar. His explanation of it was that he had not law enough for the King’s Bench, was not dull enough for Chancery, and would have to shoot a formidable rival at the Old Bailey before he could make his way there.
According to Sir Jonah Barrington, who has been not unjustly credited with a too fertile imagination, and with ‘recollecting’ more than he ever heard or saw, Lysaght ‘considered law as his trade’ and conviviality (to the cultivation whereof no man could apply more sedulously) his profession. But even a trade requires to be followed assiduously, if any advantages are to be derived from it, and assiduity was not his strong point.
After staying some time in England he had a curious adventure. With his usual carelessness he contracted a marriage which threatened him with many penalties. The daughter of a jeweller in the Strand became enamoured of him, and he reciprocated the affection with his never-failing gallantry. He understood her father to be wealthy – he was woefully taken in. He proposed… and was accepted at once, and after apparent hesitation the jeweller not only gave his consent, but actually was generous enough to settle all his property on the (to them) already rich lover. In the meantime the old man contrived to get many bills backed by Lysaght, who was never very cautious in such matters, and once the marriage was settled decamped, leaving nothing behind him of value but rendering Lysaght liable for a very large amount of money.
Such a disappointment would have been a lasting source of anguish to many men, but our poet airily assured his creditors that he would pay them ‘when he could,’ with which valuable declaration they were apparently obliged to be satisfied. Lysaght, took care not to pay, shortly after retired to Dublin and with him his wife, and soon forgot that he ever owed anything in the company of the congenial spirits at the Irish bar to which he had been called in due course. His wife proved, it is said, a good one, and survived him some years. His two daughters inherited some of his ability, and were clever music teachers, one of them composing the music for several of his songs.
He was at least a social success in Dublin, and led the way where mirth and gaiety were required. The choicest favorites of Dublin society were generally those who resembled the ‘Rakes of Mallow’ in
‘Spending faster than it comes
Beating waiters, bailiffs, duns
And were undeniably
Bacchus’s true begotten sons’
They were like their prototypes, too, in
‘Leading short but merry lives and
Going where the devil drives’
And most of them probably answered the rest of the description.
We may reasonably infer that Lysaght joined in these riotous times and manners. He does not conceal his partiality for the fair sex or for wine, but he professed to prefer the former. With all due respect to his memory, this may be doubted. In one of his songs he declares that he would forgo Bacchus for Chloe, but his habits in life tell a different tale. However, this is what he protests:-
‘Sweet Chloe advised me, in accents divine
The joy of the bowl to surrender;
Nor lost in the turbid excesses of vine
Delights more ecstatic and tender;
She bade me no longer in vineyards to bask
Or stagger at orgies, the dupe of a flask
For the sigh of a sot’s but the scent of the cask
And a bubble the bless of the bottle’
He wrote several fine tributes to the fair sex, notably the exquisite song “Kate of Garnyvilla” (as he spelled it). This has been attributed to J. A. Wade by Sir R. P. Stewart, but it is certain that Lysaght was its author, and that Wade could not have written it. It is perhaps the best poem that Lysaght has left, and if space allowed might be quoted here with advantage.
Whatever he may have uttered politically before the Union was projected, he does not seem to have written much. He wrote some really patriotic effusions on this subject while he was yet unbribed. Such are ‘Old Ireland’ and ‘The Man who led the Van of Irish Volunteers’ which are familiar to every Irish leader. But he praised both Castlereagh and Lord Clare. He wrote an epitaph for the latter, and when the former was contesting County Down in the Year 1803, Lysaght helped him by writing in his favour and against the popular (?) candidate, Colonel John Meade. He seems to have obtained his reward, for he became a police magistrate in Dublin before he died which event took place in 1810. In such estimation was he held that £2500 was collected for the benefit of his family after his death.
In 1811, a collection of his ‘Poems’ was published under the editorship of Dr Griffin, Protestant Bishop of Limerick. It is not only a miserably inadequate selection, but it was made in a partisan spirit. His pro-Union productions are admitted, while nearly everything national had been excluded. If he had written ‘The Rakes of Mallow’ or ‘Kitty of Coleraine,’ they would have been found doubtless in this volume, but there is not even a reference to them, and if his most intimate friends did not know him as the author of such pieces, we may rest assured he never wrote them. As for the ‘Sprig of Shillelagh,’ it was written by HB Code, author of several dramas, who included it in one of them in 1814, adding what is now known as the last verse…
Being a Protestant, Lysaght was not influenced by the pretence that Catholic emancipation would immediately follow the marriage force of the two countries. It is conceivable that a few Catholics were induced to support it by such specious promises, made only to be broken. He supported it therefore on its merits, or, if he did not, his eulogy of the men who carried it means nothing. It would be useless to quote his ‘loyal’ efforts; they are practically worthless; our readers would naturally prefer to hear what he had to say against the ill-starred connection. Let me quote his admirable song ‘How Justly Alarmed is each Dublin Cit’
‘How justly alarmed is each Dublin cit,
That he’ll soon be transformed to a clown, sir !
By a magical move of that conjuror, Pitt,
The country is coming to town, sir.
Through Capel Street, soon, as you’ll rurally range,
You’ll scarce recognize it the same street;
Choice turnips shall grow in your Royal Exchange
Fine cabbages down along Dame Street
Wild oats in the College won’t want to be tilled
And hemp in the Four Courts may thrive, sir
Your markets again shall with mutton be filled
By St Patrick, they’ll graze them alive sir
In the Parliament House, quite alive shall then be
All the vermin the island e’er gathers
Full of rooks, as before, Daly’s club house you’ll see
But the pigeons won’t have any feathers
Our Custom House quay, full of weeds, oh, rare sport?
But the minister’s minions, kind elves, sir
Will give us free leave all our goods to export
When we’ve got none at home for ourselves, sir!
Says an Alderman ‘Corn will grow in your shops’
This union must work for enslavement
That true, says the sheriff for plenty of crops
Already I’ve seen on the pavement!
Ye brave loyal yeomen, dressed gaily in red
This minister’s plan must elate us
And well may John Bull, when he’s robbed us of bread
Call poor Ireland ‘The Land of Potatoes’
This ingenious ridicule of the so-called blessing that the Union was to bring in its train depends for some of its humour on the occasional play upon words. Lysaght played upon them to perfection. The allusions to ‘wild oats,’‘crops’ (croppies) hemp, pigeons, rooks (gamblers and their dupes) and similar pleasantries will at once disclose his meaning. In another poem, ‘Grattan and Freedom,’ he cunningly uses puns as arguments in favour of Grattan. He declares trades and professions ready to vote for him for cogent reasons.
Distinguished by honour’s true pride
Physicians, at liberty’s station
Will vote for the man who applied
Much balm to the wounds of our nation
The children of Erin’s he ‘d heal
While others would blister and bleed ‘em
(The faculty’s pulse let me feel)
Oh, tis beating for Grattan and Freedom… ‘
Lysaght was full of courage and spirit and would never brook an insult, in spite of his general amiability. Injuries were the only debts he ever repaid with interest. A humorous anecdote of his love of lighting is related by a chronicler of this period. Being engaged as a second to a duelist, he cocked his pistol when the other noticed, and remarked, ‘Your pistol is cocked, Mr. Lysaght, be careful.’ The latter replied, ‘So it is. Cock yours, my boy and let us have a shot as we’re idle.’
In conclusion, it may be mentioned that in personal appearance Lysaght did not belie his nature. He looked a droll. With a most comical countenance, a particularly long nose, he could not fail to raise a smile. He was short in stature, but he had a large heart and many admirable traits of character. He was a good father and an excellent husband, even his foes have admitted. Above all, in the eyes of his contemporaries he was a fellow of infinite humour and fancy and no sorrow could be resting long where this kindly humour beamed.”
Image of Ned via Clare County Library
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