Gaelic revival
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The Gaelic revival (Template:Langx) was the late-nineteenth-century national revival of interest in the Irish language (also known as Gaelic)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and Irish Gaelic culture (including folklore, mythology, sports, music, arts, etc.). Irish had diminished as a spoken tongue, remaining the main daily language only in isolated rural areas, with English having become the dominant language in the majority of Ireland.
Interest in Gaelic culture was evident early in the nineteenth century with the formation of the Belfast Harp Society in 1808 and the Ulster Gaelic Society in 1830, and later in the scholarly works of Robert Shipboy MacAdam, John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry, and the foundation of the Ossianic Society. Concern for spoken Irish led to the formation of the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language in 1876, and the Gaelic Union in 1880. The latter produced the Gaelic Journal. Irish traditional sports were fostered by the Gaelic Athletic Association, founded in 1884.
The Gaelic League (Template:Lang) was established in 1893 by Eoin MacNeill and other enthusiasts of Gaelic language and culture. Its first president was Douglas Hyde. The objective of the league was to encourage the use of Irish in everyday life in order to counter the ongoing anglicisation of the country. It organised weekly gatherings to discuss Irish culture, hosted conversation meetings, edited and periodically published a newspaper named Template:Lang, and successfully campaigned to have Irish included in the school curriculum. The league grew quickly, having more than 48 branches within four years of its foundation and 400 within 10. It had fraught relationships with other cultural movements of the time, such as the Pan-Celtic movement and the Irish Literary Revival.
Important writers of the Gaelic revival include Template:Lang, Patrick Pearse (Template:Lang) and Template:Lang.
Early movements
The Belfast "renaissance"
The Belfast "renaissance of Irish music", that saw the staging of the Belfast Harpers Assembly in July 1792,<ref name=":0">Sara C. Lanier, «"It is new-strung and shan't be heard": nationalism and memory in the Irish harp tradition». in: British Journal of Ethnomusicology; Vol. 8, 1999</ref> has been seen as "the precursor by a century of the Irish Gaelic Revival",<ref name=":02">Template:Cite book</ref> and to have been "the beginning of a long association between northern Protestants" and the struggle to preserve and advance the Irish language".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1795, with the aim of preventing "the total neglect and to diffuse the beauties of this ancient and much-acclaimed language", the Northern Star, the newspaper of the United Irishmen, produced the Irish-language grammar, dictionary and anthology, Bolg an tSolair.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In the same year, the Star advertised classes in the language offered by Pádraig Ó Loingsigh (Patrick Lynch) at the Belfast Academy.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 1808, one of the harp festival's principal organisers, the physician and polymath, James MacDonnell established the Belfast Harp Society. In addition to "preserving the national music and national instrument of Ireland", it sought to procure and disseminate "information relative to the language, history and antiquities of Ireland".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
With an additional subscription from MacDonnell, and with the enthusiastic support of Mary Ann McCracken (who is known to have studied from Charles Vallency's Irish grammar),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and her Gaeilgeoir friend, the poet Mary Balfour of Limavady,<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> the Society organised Irish language classes. These were provided by James Cody.<ref name=":03">Template:Cite journal</ref> who used An Introduction to the Irish Language (1808)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> compiled by the Presbyterian minister William Neilson (Uilliam Mac Néill).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
From 1828/30, MacDonnell resumed this work as chairman of Cuideacht Gaoidhilge Uladh (the Ulster Gaelic Society).<ref name=":04">Template:Cite book</ref> The society focussed on the contemporary Irish vernacular, rather than in the classical language of manuscripts, but abjured the religious evangelism that persuaded other Protestants to pursue a similar interest.<ref name=":12">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Mac Póilin (2018), p. 177</ref> With Tomás Ó Fiannachta, Robert Shipboy MacAdam, joint secretary of the society, published An introduction to the Irish language intended for the use of Irish classes in the Royal Belfast Academical Institution<ref name=":022">Template:Cite web</ref> – a grammar for the school founded on progressive principles by William Drennan and other United Irish veterans.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
After the Ulster Gaelic Society ceased to operate in 1843, MacAdam employed the poet Aodh Mac Domhnaill (Hugh McDonnell)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> as a full-time scribe and collector of songs, folklore, and Irish-language manuscripts. MacAdam himself collected extensively, sometimes finding his material among Irish-speaking immigrants to Belfast.<ref>Mac Póilin (2018), p. 176.</ref>
Dublin societies
Early pioneers of more rigorous Irish scholarship were John O'Donovan (who was to become professor of Celtic Languages at Queen's College, Belfast), Eugene O'Curry and George Petrie. O'Donovan and O'Curry found an important outlet for their work in the Irish Archaeological Society, one of the first text publication societies of Ireland, founded in 1840.<ref name="Tierney16">Tierney (1980), p. 16</ref> In 1854 it merged with the Celtic Society, to form the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
From 1853, translations of Irish literary works, particularly mythological works of the Ossianic Cycle—associated with the Fianna—were published by the Ossianic Society, in which Standish Hayes O'Grady was active.<ref name="Tierney16" /> The Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language was formed in 1877 by, among others, George Sigerson and Thomas O'Neill Russell.<ref name="Tierney16" /> The secretary of that society, Father John Nolan, split with it in 1880 and formed the Gaelic Union, of which the president was The O'Conor Don, and whose members included Douglas Hyde and Michael Cusack.<ref name="Tierney17">Tierney (1980), p. 17</ref> Cusack's interest in Gaelic culture was not restricted to the language; he took a keen interest in the traditional games of Ireland, and in 1884, with Maurice Davin, he would found the Gaelic Athletic Association to promote the games of Gaelic football, hurling and handball.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1882 the Gaelic Union began publication of a monthly journal, the Gaelic Journal. Its first editor was David Comyn; he was followed by John Fleming, a prominent Irish scholar,<ref name="Tierney17" /> and then Father Eugene O'Growney.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Gaelic League
In November 1892 Douglas Hyde gave a lecture to the National Literary Society entitled "The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He said that the Irish people had become almost completely anglicised, and that this could only be reversed through building up the language.<ref>Tierney (1980), p. 20</ref> Eoin MacNeill followed this up with an article in the Gaelic Journal, "A Plea and a Plan for the Extension of the Movement to Preserve and Spread the Gaelic language in Ireland", and set about forming an organisation to help bring this about, together with Eugene O'Growney and J. H. Lloyd (Template:Lang).<ref>Tierney (1980), pp. 21–2</ref> The Gaelic League (Template:Lang) was founded on 31 July 1893. Hyde was elected president, MacNeill secretary, and Lloyd treasurer, and Thomas O'Neill Russell was among those elected to the council.<ref>Tierney (1980), p. 24</ref>
The Gaelic League held weekly meetings that were a combination of classes and conversation.<ref>Tierney (1980), p. 26</ref> Its focus on the vernacular form of language and modern literature distinguished it from the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, The Celtic Society and the Gaelic Union. Within months it had branches in Cork and Galway. After four years it had 43 branches, and after ten years more than 400.<ref name=Tierney28>Tierney (1980), p. 28</ref> Although it was more concerned with fostering the language in the home than with teaching it in schools, it was nonetheless successful in having Irish added to the curriculum; the number of schools teaching it rose from about a dozen in the 1880s to 1,300 in 1903.<ref>Tierney (1980), p. 42</ref> The League took over the Gaelic Journal in 1894, when O'Growney retired as editor, with MacNeill replacing him.<ref name=Tierney28/> In January 1898 it began publication of a weekly newspaper, Template:Lang.<ref>Tierney (1980), p. 44</ref> In March of the following year, following a dispute with the owner, this was replaced by Template:Lang, with MacNeill again as editor.<ref>Tierney (1980), p. 48</ref> In 1901 MacNeill was replaced as editor by Eoghan Ó Neachtain, who was in turn replaced in 1903 by Patrick Pearse.<ref>Tierney (1980), p. 73</ref> The League also concerned itself with the folk music of Ireland, and was involved in the movement which led to the organisation of the Feis Ceoil (Festival of Music) by Annie Patterson in 1897.<ref>Tierney (1980), pp. 29–30</ref>
The League's relations with contemporary cultural movements were strained, and sometimes hostile, despite the fact that some of the League's leaders were on friendly terms with those movements. Pan-Celticism was viewed with suspicion by many members because its leaders in Ireland, especially Lord Castletown, were closely associated with the Irish establishment.<ref>Edwards (1977), pp. 31–32</ref> When Douglas Hyde was invited to the planned Pan-Celtic Congress of 1900—to be held in Dublin—as a delegate of the League, the Template:Lang (executive committee) refused to send any representative, though Hyde might attend as an individual if he wished. Hyde reluctantly declined to attend.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The Irish Literary Revival was denounced because its works were written in English, not Irish, and therefore tended even more towards anglicisation. Eoin MacNeill wrote, "Let them write for the 'English-speaking world' or the 'English-speaking race' if they will. But let them not vex our ears by calling their writings Irish and national."<ref name=Tierney66>Tierney (1980), p. 66</ref> Patrick Pearse said of the Irish Literary Theatre, recently founded by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, that it should be "strangled at birth".<ref name=Tierney66/>
Writers
Template:Lang (Father Peter O'Leary), a parish priest from Castlelyons in County Cork, began contributing to the Gaelic Journal in 1894, and in November of that year he published the first instalment of Template:Lang, which was to become his best-known work. It was described by the journal as a "specimen of Munster Irish, one of the best samples, if not the very best, of southern popular Gaelic that has ever been printed."<ref>Tierney (1980), p. 35</ref> Template:Lang was the first major work of modern literature in Irish.<ref name=Murphy>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Lang serialised the Template:Lang in the Cork Weekly Examiner in 1900–1901, and followed it up with a series of modern renderings of ancient Irish tales such as Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang and Template:Lang, all of which eschewed scholarship in favour of colloquial, entertaining Irish.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> After Template:Lang, his best-known work is his autobiography, Template:Lang. All his works are written in what was called Template:Lang (the language of the people).<ref name=Murphy/>
Patrick Pearse (Template:Lang), the editor of Template:Lang—and later a revolutionary leader in the Easter Rising—wrote poetry, short stories and plays. He is considered the first modernist writer in Irish.<ref name=Koch>Template:Cite book</ref> Pearse rejected what he called the imposition of "dead linguistic and literary forms on a living language", but at the same time rejected the idea that only native speakers like Template:Lang could produce "Irish Irish".<ref>Edwards (1977), p. 97</ref> He produced two books of short stories, Template:Lang (1907) and Template:Lang (1916).<ref name=Koch/> His collection of poems, Template:Lang (1914) contains his most famous poem, "Template:Lang" ("I am Ireland").<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Template:Lang is sometimes considered to be the best writer of the period.<ref name=Koch/> He wrote more than 400 short stories between 1901 and his death in 1928. His stories were darker than those of his contemporaries. According to his entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, they deal with "isolation, conflict between good and evil, the tragedy of life, hatred, blindness, despair, and madness."<ref name=NiM>Template:Cite web</ref> He wrote one novel, Template:Lang (Exile), described by John T. Koch as a "strange and brooding psychological novel, the first of the genre in Irish", about a Connemara man living in London.<ref name=Koch/> Template:Lang's works were controversial, addressing themes such as alcoholism and prostitution, which Template:Lang and others within the movement found objectionable.<ref name=NiM/>
See also
References
References
External links
- The Revival of the Irish Language, from The Irish Fireside, 1886
Template:Gaelic literature Template:Gaels Template:National revivals Template:Authority control