Denny Lane

Denny Lane (4 December 1818 – 29 November 1895) was an Irish businessman and nationalist public figure in Cork city, and in his youth a Young Irelander.[1]

An 1889 bust of Denny Lane sculpted by John Lawlor

Plaque on Cork's South Mall

Although a Catholic, he graduated from the mainly Protestant Trinity College, Dublin, where he joined the College Historical Society, became a friend of Charles Gavan Duffy and Thomas Davis, and moved in the circle from which the Young Ireland movement sprang.[2] He was called to the bar from Inner Temple.[1] Under the pen name "Domhnall na Glanna"[3] or "Domhnall Gleannach",[4] he wrote Irish nationalist and romantic lyrics which were published in The Nation in the 1840s, the best known being "Carraigdhoun" (or "Lament of the Irish Maiden") and "Kate of Araglen".[1][4] Lane and his college classmate Michael Joseph Barry were the most prominent Young Irelanders in Cork, and were interned in Cork City Gaol after the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848.[1][5] Thomas Carlyle on his 1849 Irish tour met Lane on 17 July, describing him as a "fine brown Irish figure, Denny; distiller – ex-repealer; frank, hearty, honest air; like Alfred Tennyson a little".[6]

Lane took over his father's distillery in Cork and later started several industrial businesses near the city, with mixed success.[1] He took an interest in technology and industrial innovation.[1] He was on the boards of the Macroom Railway Company and the Blackrock and Passage Railway Company, and also involved in Cork's School of Art, School of Music, and Literary & Scientific and Historical & Archaeological societies.[1][7] He stood for Parliament in the 1876 Cork City by-election, but the Home Rule vote was split with John Daly, so that unionist William Goulding was elected.[1]

He died at his home on Cork's South Mall in November 1895, aged 77.[1]