Osborn Bergin

Who was Osborn Bergin?

Osborn Joseph Bergin was a scholar of the Irish language and Early Irish literature. He was born in Cork and was educated at Queen's College Cork, then went to Germany for advanced studies in Celtic languages, working with Heinrich Zimmer at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin and later with Rudolf Thurneysen at the University of Freiburg, where he wrote his dissertation on palatalization in 1906. He then returned to Ireland and taught at the School of Irish Learning and at University College Dublin. Within one year of becoming Director of the School of Irish Studies in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Bergin resigned both the senior professorship and his office of Director. The reason for his resignation was never made public. He died in a nursing-home in Dublin at the age of 76; he never married.

Osborn Bergin, who never used the name Joseph except when signing with his initials, did not seem to have felt the need of institutional religion, and during his lifetime attended religious services only on rare occasions. He developed Irish nationalist sympathies and remained a firm nationalist all his life, though without party affiliations. From the number of Irish-speakers living in Cork city, Bergin quickly mastered the spoken Irish of West Munster. By 1897 his knowledge of spoken and literary Modern Irish was so strong that he was appointed lecturer in Celtic in Queen's College, Cork. It was during this time that he became an active member of the Gaelic League.