John Edward Pigot

John Edward Pigot (1822–1871) was an Irish music collector and lawyer, who played a key role in the foundation of the National Gallery of Ireland.

Life
Pigot was born in Kilworth, County Cork, the eldest son of the Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, David Richard Pigot and his wife Catherine Page. He became friendly with Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy of the Young Ireland movement. They published advertisements in The Nation asking those who had Irish tunes to send them in. This started the Pigot Collection. He studied for the Bar in London and while there met Patrick McDowel. He was an avid collector and gave Pigot many tunes which he added to among the Irish in London.

While in London, Pigot and Duffy paid a call on Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane Carlyle in April 1845 in order to defend the Irish and Irish Nationalism against Carlyle's attacks in On Chartism and other works. In his 1892 Conversations with Carlyle, Duffy recounts this initial meeting and quotes from Jane Carlyle's half-burnt diary that had been rescued from a general fire meant to destroy all of her personal memoirs. Here Jane commented on meeting for the first time "real hot and hot live Irishmen" such as she had "never seen before" (J. Carlyle qtd. in Duffy, 1892, p. 1). Jane decides that Pigot, whom she found to be unusually handsome, was destined to be an Irish revolutionary martyr: "Mr. Pigot will rise to be a Robespierre of some sort; will cause many heads to be removed from the shoulders they belong to; and will 'eventually' have his own head removed ... Nature has written on that handsome but fatal-looking countenance of his, quite legibly to my prophetic eye, 'Go and get thyself beheaded, but not before having lent a hand towards the great work of immortal smash'" (ibid., pp. 3–4).

Jane Carlyle describes Pigot as: "a handsome youth of the romantic cast, pale-faced, with dark eyes and hair, and an 'Emancipation of Species' melancholy spread over him" (ibid., p. 2).

Pigot went to Bombay and practised at the Indian Bar returning to Ireland due to ill health in 1871. In all, Pigot collected over 2,000 airs. The collection was held by Dublin doctor Robert Lyons. Pigot's collection was included in the 1908 publication Old Irish Folk Music and Songs, by P. W. Joyce.

A memorandum written by Pigot in 1853 played a crucial role in the foundation of the National Gallery of Ireland, and he was appointed one of its first Governors.