Re orga na nGael: Joseph Cooper Walker (1761-1810)

An absorbing study of an eighteenth century Protestant antiquarian, An absorbing study of an eighteenth century Protestant antiquarian, his contacts with other antiquarians, both Protestant and Catholic, his cultivation of various Gaelic scribes with a view to safeguarding Irish manuscripts and producing new ones, and his efforts to come to an understanding of a shared Irish past, culminating in his Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786), a study of the poets of the old Gaelic order and their music.