Paris and the world's first English-Irish dictionary
As a rare copy of the “Begly Dictionary” joins the collection of the CCI’s Old Library, the Embassy of Ireland and the CCI present this outstanding publication, printed in Paris in 1732.
Background
The story of the Begly Dictionary is intertwined with that of the Irish College in Paris, which can trace its roots to 1578 when a small group of six clerical students came together in the College de Montaigu, today the site of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. This community grew during the 17th century as Ireland went through a period of immense political, religious and social upheaval, what the great poet Dáibhí Ó Bruadair called “tonnbhriseadh an tseanaghnáthaimh” (“the violent overthrow of the old order”). The old Gaelic nobility, having suffered military defeat at the hands of the English crown forces, fled to Europe to seek help but were never to return. After this Flight of the Earls the grip of colonial rule on Ireland tightened and repression increased. The English government introduced a series of Penal Laws which included a ban on Catholic education in Ireland. As a result, the Irish Colleges in Europe grew in number and importance. By the end of the 18th century over thirty had been established all over Europe, including St. Anthony’s College in Louvain in 1607, where the Franciscans published Irish books in the Gaelic typeface. But as the eminent historian Liam Swords noted “[o]f all these, Paris was the first and most important, catering for the greatest number of Irish students studying abroad.”
An illustration of a student of the Irish College in Rome in the 18th century, from "Catalogo degli ordini religiosi della chiesa militante espressi con imagini..." (1742) by Filippo Buonanni.
Source: Archive.org, Public Domain.
Irish was the language of the people and of the clergy in Ireland at this time, with the exception of some areas of Leinster in the east. Thus, it was seen by the Irish Catholic Church as key to combating efforts to spread Protestantism in Ireland. The first published book in Irish, however, was a catechism printed with the support of Elizabeth I in 1571 with the aim of converting the Irish to the reformed faith.
With the printing of Catholic religious books nearly impossible in Ireland, the Irish Colleges in Europe sought to fill the gap. They became hives of counter-reformation intellectual activity and writing, and publishing in Irish flourished on the continent. The Irish College in Louvain was pioneering in this regard; the Franciscans had been printing and publishing Irish books there since 1611. These were mainly religious works and catechisms but also included Míchéal Ó Cléirigh’s Foclóir nó sanasán Nua in 1643, the first ever Irish dictionary to be published.
A section of the Irish Primer prepared for Elizabeth I, who was the impetus for many of the first books printed in Irish.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Digitised version of the full text of this primer
An Irish postage stamp from 1944 depicting Mícheál Ó Cleirigh, a historian and scribe who published an Irish dictionary at Leuven in 1643.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Throughout the 18th century the Irish College in Paris, then located at the Collège des Lombards, became more prominent in the publishing sphere. An Irish catechism by Aindrias Ó Duinnshléibhe, the prefect of the college, appeared in 1742, while the English-Irish Dictionary of John O’Brien, Bishop of Cloyne and former student, was published in Paris in 1768. First among these, however, was Begly’s Dictionary in 1732. This dictionary and the other publications emanating from this community underline the central importance of Paris in this sphere.
In the battle for the mind of Ireland, for over two hundred years the Irish College, Paris, was paramount.
Liam Swords, Irish College Paris, 1985.
Various sketches of the Collège des Lombards done in 1860 by Léon Leymonnerye (1803 - 1879).
Source: Musée Carnavalet / Ville de Paris; via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Uniform and flag of the Irish Régiment de Clare in 1690, as depicted in "Uniformes militaires, où se trouvent gravés en taille-douce les uniformes de la Maison militaire du Roi" (1772) by Claude-Antoine Littret de Montigny. Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín enlisted as a soldier in this regiment for a year.
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr
Mac Cruitín was a poet, scribe and teacher who was born in Co. Clare in the west of Ireland around 1785. Working initially under the patronage of local Gaelic noble families, he moved to Dublin around 1713 where he wrote A brief discourse in vindication of the antiquity of Ireland in 1717. This book appears to have upset the authorities in Dublin and led to Mac Cruitín being illegally imprisoned for a year.
In 1728 he was at the Irish College in Louvain where he published The elements of the Irish language grammatically explained in English and he later enlisted as a soldier in the French army in the Régiment de Clare. Having left the army in 1729 he then went to Paris where he helped in the preparation of the dictionary. Mac Cruitín had returned to his native Clare by 1738 where he ran a school until his death in 1755.
The printing of the dictionary
The dictionary is 717 pages long and was printed by Jacques Guérin, or “Séamus Guerin” as the name appears on the title page. Guérin had his printing press on the Quai des Augustins at this time. Ó Beaglaoich had a special Gaelic type cast for the dictionary at the Loyson type foundry in Paris in 1730. It’s possible that this was based on Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín’s Gaelic script, although some suggest it was based on Ó Beaglaoich’s hand. The only other book this Gaelic type appeared in was the Ó Duinnshléibhe’s catechism, also printed by Guérin. It is not known how many copies of the dictionary were made; in any case, the book is very rare today.
Sample of the Loyson type foundry's Gaelic type from "Epreuve des caracteres de la fonderie de Loyson et Briquet" (1751).
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr
The title-page of Aindrias Ó Duinnshléibhe's "An Teagasg Críosduidhe do réir ceasda agus freagartha ... " (1742).
Front matter
The dictionary contains a Latin dedication to Abbé de Vaubrun who was an important patron of the Irish community in Paris; he gave money for works on the Collège des Lombards as well as for the building of the chapel there. There is also a Latin epigram by an Irish-born scholar named Patrick Trant, who was a member of Academie Royale des Sciences. He praises Ó Beaglaoich for his efforts to revive the language of Ireland and of the old religion (i.e. Catholicism), the sounds of which Ireland had forgotten.
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The dedication in the Begly Dictionary
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Église Saint-Éphrem-le-Syriaque on rue des Carmes, all that now remains of the former Collège des Lombards.
Photo: Guilhem Vellut / CC-BY
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Epigram by Patrick Trant
The English preface, most likely written by Ó Beaglaoich himself, gives a key insight into his motivation for publishing the work and to contemporary attitudes to the language. Ó Beaglaoich defends the Irish language, which has been “hitherto cryed down and ridiculed by the English” and laments the fact it hasn’t had the chance to flourish as “most of the other tongues of Europe”. Even so, he thinks Irish “more copious and elegant in expression [and] more harmonious and musical in pronunciation” than those other languages.
[T]he Irish, tho it has been declining these 500 years past ... will be found inferior to none.
It is not only the English who are to blame for Irish’s decline, however. Ó Beaglaoich firmly points the finger at the Irish themselves who “can so strangely neglect cultivating and improving a language of some Thousands of Years”. He hoped his work would help the Irish “recover out of their error”. Given the considerable number of ancient Irish manuscripts that survived at the time, in spite of Ireland’s wars with “the Danes [Vikings] and the English”, he thought:
[t]he Irish Gentry have therefore Opportunities enough, still left, for recovering and preserving their Mother-Language, and consequently, are without the least colour of excuse if they shamefully continue to neglect it.
Ó Beaglaoich intended to print more books in Irish, including an Irish-English dictionary. Unfortunately, whether due to death or other circumstances, this never came to pass.
A poem by Aodh Buí Cruitín follows this preface on the next two pages; rather extraordinarily, it is the only Irish language poem to have been printed in the entire 18th century. Like Begly’s preface, it is also addressed to the Irish nobility. Mac Cruitín exhorts them to wake up from their heavy sleep and rediscover the wonder of their native tongue. He likens the abandonment of the ancestral language to a serious sickness or affliction:
A Uaisle Éireann áile ... tréigid bhur dtromshuan ... Tróm an téidhmse a thárlaidh dhaoibh, idir mhnáibh agus mhacaoimh, ar séanadh seanrádh bhur sean. Cómhrádh soluis bhur sinnsear.
And he praises the editor as a patriotic and noble Irishman whose publishing activity will help revive the language:
“Conchubhar Caomh Ó Beaglaoich ... duine uasal Éireannach, do bháigh le hInis Éilge, do dhail glanchlódh Gaoidheilge, d’aithbheodhadh ár dteanga tráth ... ”.
From 1701 up until the Revolution, all books published in France had to be submitted to the royal censor for review who would then give the King’s approbation for the book to be printed. The copy of the dictionary held by the Centre Culturel Irlandais contains this royal seal of approval. It is interesting to note, however, that copies intended for the Irish market did not include this approbation, no doubt for fear of upsetting the English authorities in Ireland.
The entry for “potatoe”, so consequential a crop in Irish history, is also of much interest. Nowadays variously práta, fata or préata, depending on your dialect, Ó Beaglaoich gives the following translation or definition:
Rúitidhe is maith le a nitheadh potátaoi.
[A root that is good for eating (is the) potato]
Sport also features in the entries. To “kick a foot ball” is “liothroíd [sic] do chosadh, nó do phreaba le cois”, and the hurler appears as both “teilgtheoir” (in modern Irish a pitcher, thrower, or projector) and “iománuighe” (now spelled iománaí and still meaning a hurler!).
Ó Beaglaoich coined some new terms for words such as banker (“stórchúmhduíghtheoir”) which have since been overtaken by a loan word from English (baincéir). His rendering of the English idiom “I smell a rat” or “Atáim amhrasach ar nídh” has stood the test of time, however; the 2013 English-Irish Dictionary similarly translated it as “bheith san amhras/amhras a bheith ort”.
And if love is eternal, so too is grá(dh)! The Irish for “I love you with all my heart” Ó Beaglaoich renders as “Ata grádh mo chródhe agam dhuit”.
The title-page of John O'Brien's 1768 Dictionary.
Source: Centre Culturel Irlandais, Old Library.
Impact and legacy
Ó Beaglaoich and Mac Cruitín’s dictionary was pioneering in that it was the first Irish dictionary to take a bilingual approach. Despite its faults, it remained an important reference work for decades; another English-Irish dictionary like it didn’t appear until 1814. The breadth of its impact is difficult to assess given the dearth of information about the amount and distribution of copies. We do know, however, that it was referred to by other Irish lexicographers working in the 19th century; perhaps it also encouraged John O’Brien to publish his Irish-English dictionary in Paris in 1768, although he doesn’t list Begly’s Dictionary as a source.
Thanks to the work of the many successors Ó Beaglaoich and Mac Cruitín, and to the important work of Foras na Gaeilge in more recent years, the Irish speakers and learners of today have access to unparalleled lexicographical resources. Speaking at the launch of the new Irish dictionary in Dublin in December 2025, Irish President Catherine Connolly said:
Is comhartha dóchais é an foclóir seo, dóchas go bhfuil borradh faoin nGaeilge, dóchas go bhfuil daoine ag iarraidh í a labhairt mar ghnáth-theanga laethúil. Dóchas go mairfidh sí i bhfad inár ndiaidh.
[This dictionary is a sign of hope, hope that our language is flourishing, hope that people want to speak it as an everyday language. Hope that it will live long after us.]
The Begly Dictionary came about in a vastly different political and linguistic context, without any government support and indeed faced in Ireland with considerable official hostility. Nevertheless, it was also a sign of hope as well as an act of faith that Ireland’s language would survive and prosper as a living language into the future. Today, the dictionary serves as a reminder of the historic importance of Paris and Europe in making that hope a reality, and as an inspiration for all those who continue to work to advance Irish on our continent today.
President Catherine Connolly speaking at the launch of An Foclóir Nua (The New Irish Dictionary) in December 2025.
Source: Foras na Gaeilge
