FERGUSON, SIR SAMUEL (1810-1886), Irish poet and antiquary, was born at Belfast. He was educated at Trinity col lege, Dublin, was called to the Irish bar in 1838, and was made Q.C. in 1859, but in 1867 retired from practice upon his appoint ment as deputy-keeper of the Irish records. He was knighted in 1878. His two masterpieces, "The Forging of the Anchor," one of the finest of modern ballads, and the humorous prose extrav aganza of "Father Tom and the Pope," appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. He published Lays of the Western Gael in 1865, Poems in 188o, and in 1872 Congal, an attempt to revivify the heroic age of Ireland in an epic poem. He died at Howth on Aug. 9, i886. His most important antiquarian work, Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, was published in 1887.
See Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of his Day (1896), by his wife, Mary C. Ferguson; also an article by A. P. Graves in A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue (19oo), ed. Stopford Brooke and T. W. Rolleston; and J. O'Hagan, Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson (1887).