Osmond Tisani

Who is Osmond Tisani?

Osmond Tisani was a South African expatriate, who became the first known person of African origin to speak the Irish of the Galway Gaeltacht by some ninety years.

Tisani was a son of an African chief who was exchanged during the Second Anglo-Boer War for the son of Marcus Óg Lynch of Barna House, County Galway, who was serving in the British army. Lynch Jr. died during the war, and by some means, Tisani came to live in Barna as early as 1905, when Marcus Óg built a handball alley in the village for his amusement.

Mr. Lynch's only other children, three sisters, were all members of the Sisters of Charity, while his own sister, Miss Lilly, lived with him. Osmond Tisani is known to have lived in the area till as late as the outbreak of World War I. He was a popular member of the student population in Galway.

Tisani is notable for becoming fluent in Irish, making him the first known person of African origin to speak the Irish of the Galway Gaeltacht by some ninety years.

He became an object of great curiosity in the area, few of the population having ever seen anyone who was not Caucasian or white-skinned before, and thus became part of local folklore for some generations. His ultimate fate is unknown; one tradition states that he died of loneliness and was buried in the local graveyard. The property was taken by the Land Commission in 1923 and the entire property sold on the death of Miss Lilly Lynch in 1930.