Robert Dwyer Joyce, M.D. / James J. Walsh.

  • Walsh, James J. (James Joseph), 1865-1942.
Date:
[1900]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Robert Dwyer Joyce, M.D. / James J. Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Robert Dwyer Joyce was born in the county of Lim- erick, Ireland, in 1828. His family belonged to the old family of the Joyces from the Joyce country so-called in the county of Galway. The fact that they are generally called the fighting Joyces will serve to account for the strain of martial ardor that runs through Joyce’s poetry, that is if any such explanation is ever needed for such a characteristic in Irish poetry. Most of the poet’s wri- tings were to be concerned with warlike events and leg- ends and with military story. The old family name of the Joyces in the long ago had been Jorse, which very probably points to an Iberian or Spanish origin. The Celts from the northern coast of Spain frequently made incursions on the coast of Ireland, and somehow the west coast seems to have suffered more from them than the east. They appear to have traded more or less regularly with the east coast, but to have gone on piratical expe- ditions on the western coast of the island. Occasionally they landed on the coast and established themselves. This would account for the many Spanish characteristics that may be noted among the population along the west coast, a notable example of it being in the people of the Claddagh, the famous old fishing suburb near the city of Galway. Sometimes the foreign element seems to have been rather exclusive, and to have maintained its identity with racial characteristics of its own. More often, how- ever, as might be expected from the temptations of the sight of the fair Irish girls, its members were tempted to marry outside of the clan, thus accounting for the many dark-eyed, very dark-haired girls with long black lashes, the Maureen Dhus and Kathleen Dhus of the west coast, who so startlingly remind the traveller at times of their Spanish ancestry. The Joyce family, from which Robert Dwyer Joyce was descended, had established itself not far from the