The Irish
language has the oldest literary tradition in Europe[i],
second only to Greek. It belongs to the
Indo-European linguistic family, as do its closest relations - Scots Gaelic,
Manx Gaelic (known as Q-Celtic languages) and Welsh, Cornish and Breton (the
P-Celtic languages).
Irish is
apolitical; it is not a political construct. It belongs to all of the citizens of Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland regardless of religious belief.
Consider, for example, Cumann Gaelach na hEaglaise, the Irish Guild of the Church. It was founded in
1914
“to preserve within the Church of Ireland the
spirit of the ancient Celtic Church; promote the use of the Irish language in
the Church; collect from Irish sources suitable hymns and other devotional
literature; and encourage the use of Irish art and music in the Church.”
To help
mark the centenary of the Guild, the Church of Ireland promoted a project under
the title "Towards 2014: Promoting the Irish language within the Community
of the Church of Ireland."
The
Anglican Guild keeps a list of its clergy who speak Irish fluently. One of them is Archdeacon Gary Hastings from
East Belfast, and currently Rector of the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas in
Galway. Religious services in Irish are
conducted on occasions in Belfast, for example at St Georges Church of Ireland
and also in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church.
Recognition
of the key historical role played by Presbyterians and Methodists to preserve
the Irish language was articulated last year by Assemblyman Paul Givan. The same point has been made by an academic at
Queen’s University Belfast.
She
asserts that
“The support given to Irish may be regarded as
vexatious by unionists. Many Ulster
Protestants are unaware that Irish is a legitimate part of their cultural
heritage, and see it primarily as the tool of Sinn Féin in promoting
republicanism. They reject Irish as
something that would taint them by association...Yet in the past, Protestants
have done much to promote Irish. It was
an object of affection and admiration for many influential nineteenth century
Protestants and unionists. [ii]”
Consider
these two examples - Robert Shipboy MacAdam (1808 - 1895) and Alice Milligan (1869-1953).
“Educated at Royal Belfast Academical Institution,
MacAdam was of that generation of Presbyterian industrialists who saw no
contradiction between the encouragement of the Irish language and loyalty to
the Crown... At the age of 22 he founded the Ulster Gaelic society - the first
of its kind in Ireland - collected many Irish manuscripts, and publishing a
Gaelic dictionary.” [iii]
“There was no other person in the whole of Ireland
who had spent so much in preserving these literary treasures. Especially, in a time when the English
efforts were to stamp out all traces of the Irish culture. Before long, he had put together the first
collection in Irish of song, proverbs, folktale, and folklore.”
The
Plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century witnessed the immigration of
many settlers from Scotland. Many of
them were Gaelic speakers. When, for example, the Marquis of
Argyll brought his troops to Antrim in the 1640’s, most of them were Gaelic
speakers who later settled in Ireland [iv].
Dr
Blaney’s account adds that some of the Gaelic-speaking Scots were
Presbyterians, some were Anglicans, and others Episcopalians. It observes, to take one example, that
Rasharkin was settled by Anglican Highlanders who petitioned the Bishop of
Connor to provide them with a Gaelic-speaking Minister. As if to prove that there was little
difference between the settlers’ Gaelic and that of the natives, MacAdam is
quoted in 1873 that he had conversed with “Glensmen and Arranmen” and “can
testify to the identity of their speech”.
Myra
Zepf, the daughter of Dr Blaney, is an Irish speaker and author of three
children’s books in Irish. She was
appointed last week as Northern Ireland’s first Children’s Writing Fellow. The role has been created by the Arts Council
and Queen’s University’s Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre. She is quoted as explaining how Irish has
been an enriching and beautiful part of her life, and that she is pained at its
politicisation at Stormont. [v]
Alice
Milligan was born in Omagh to a middle class Methodist and Unionist family.
“In 1891 she was profoundly affected by the death
of Charles Stuart Parnell and converted to the cause of Irish nationalism, despite
her family background. She promoted the
Irish language as a member of the Gaelic League (the number of Irish language
speakers in Belfast rose from 900 to almost 4000 within 10 years)... She
co-edited journals, the Northern Patriot and Shan Van Vocht... Along with Anna
Johnston and Maud Gonne, she helped organise the centenary commemorations of
the 1798 rebellion. When Maud formed the
radical women’s organisation Inghinidhe na hÉireann (in 1900), Alice wrote plays to support its
cultural activities.”[vi]
These
Daughters of Ireland aimed “to discourage the reading and circulation of low
English literature, the singing of English songs and to combat English
influence which is doing so much injury to the artistic taste and refinement of
the Irish people.”
Quoting
these objectives, a prominent Cambridge University historian observes:
“The last phrase should be noted. For all their militant anti-Englishness, this
and other movements on the broad Gaelicist front were cultural, not political.[vii]”
We are
surrounded by the Irish language every day. One of the best examples is its reflection in
most of our place-names and in many of our surnames. Kathleen’s Island (Enniskillen) is the county
town of The Men of the Manaigh Tribe (Fermanagh) [viii], one of
whose many attractions is Owen’s Height (the Ardhowen theatre). The Mouth of the River Farset (Belfast) is our
capital city.
One of
the commonest surnames in Ulster, McCullough, bears testament to the Provincial
name, Uladh. MacConUladh means son of a hound of Ulster. A researcher[ix]
says that the surname originates in Scotland where it is spelled
McCulloch. The latter is and was common
in Galloway, whence stemmed so many of Ulster’s settlers during the Plantation
period.
Incidentally,
the place-name Galloway is Scots Gaelic, and the term Gallowglass [x]
derives from two words Gall (meaning
foreigner) and óglach (meaning
young warrior).
On the subject of
Scotland, the beach that was in the news recently from which a young warrior
from Glasgow, the surfer Matthew Bryce departed before his dramatic rescue and
recovery in the Ulster Hospital, is called Machrihanish. This is Scots Gaelic and might mean the Plain
of the Isle (or of Ness, or possibly the Plain of Shanais).
One
aspect of rural Ulster life with which all people closely identify is our
townlands. For example, Derebard (Doire an Bhaird in Irish), translates into English as poet’s oak-wood. The townland is serendipitous as a
birth-place, if you are WF Marshall, “the bard of Tyrone,” sometimes referred
to as a Scots-Irish poet.
One
journalist[xi]
paid homage on the fiftieth anniversary of his death. Marshall became a Presbyterian Minister in
Castlerock, but was brought up in one Tyrone’s few English toponyms, Sixmilecross,[xii]
6 Irish miles from Omagh.
Marshall’s
writings are recounted in what he called the Tyrone dialect. In so doing, he revelled in Gaelic
place-names reflected in the lilt of “Tyrone Jigs.”
“There’s Cavanamara and dark Derrymeen,
There’s Carrickatane and Munderrydoe,
With Strawletterdallan and Cavankilgreen
All dancing a jig with Cregganconroe”
Drumlester townland
is synonymous with Marshall. In Irish it
is Droim leastair meaning Ridge of wooden vessels.
Not to
forget the poet’s own surname. The name Marshall
occurs all over Ireland, but is common only in Ulster. Found in Ireland from early medieval times[xiii],
it is commonest in Down, Derry/Londonderry, Antrim and also in Dublin.[xiv]
Bell adds that its northern prevalence
stems from The Plantation of Ulster by Scottish settlers.
The name
is Norman, originally le Maréschal.
This stems from the same word in Old French,
meaning “horse servant.” Appropriate
pathos for the bard, living and dying in clabber to the knee.
Irish, in common with the other Celtic languages and most of Europe’s languages, categorizes nouns as either masculine or feminine. A brilliant book by an authoritative international linguist[xv] makes amusing and informative play of this fact. He makes a persuasive case to show how English is at a disadvantage expressively and poetically without grammatical gender differentiation.
Genders, as he puts it, are language’s gifts to poets.
Poetic
and prosaic Irish loves alliteration and it does onomatopoeia better than any
other language. It is this very sonorous
quality that the M.P. Gregory Campbell’s parody may have sought to mimic with satirical
and controversial effect.
Learning
Irish or Scots Gaelic as a second or third language has proven educational
advantages. Travellers arriving in
Inverness airport cannot fail to observe the publicity which promotes this
fact. Students who learn Gaelic,
becoming conversant in more than one language, perform better across all other
subjects than those who are mono-lingual.
One of
Great Britain’s leading arts and culture journalists, Richard Morrison of the
Times, commented on the importance of the UK’s non-English languages thus. Britain’s Gaelic languages, he argued, are
thriving. Welsh has 500,000 speakers,
Scots Gaelic has 50,000, there are 3,000 fluent Cornish speakers, and 600
people speak Manx.
He added[xvi]:
“When a native language dies, a lot of other things
disappear too. Place names and family
names become inexplicable. Local
traditions vanish because people no longer have the words to describe their
customs....And the world’s stock of useful words (that only occur in one
language yet identify something we all need to articulate...) is diminished....
© Michael
McSorley 2017
[i] “Lingo, a language
spotter’s guide to Europe” p207-212 Gaston Dorren
[ii] “Protestants and
the Irish Language: Historical Heritage and Current Attitudes in Northern
Ireland,” Professor Rosalind M.O. Pritchard
[iv]. “Presbyterians
and the Irish Language" (1996), Roger Blaney
[v] Ivan
Lyttle Belfast Telegraph 6 May 2017 news p.10
[vi] “Celebrating
Belfast Women: a city guide through women’s eyes,” p 38 Women’s Resource &
Development Agency
[vii] Modern
Ireland 1600-1972 R F Foster pp 449-450(Penguin Press 1988)
[x] Collins English
Dictionary millennium edition p 627,Gallowglass means heavily-armed mercenary
soldiers, originally Hebridean (Gaelic-Norse), from Irish gall
(foreigner) + óglach (young warrior-servant)
[xi] Paul Clements
Irish Times 27 January 2009 p 15 An Irishman’s Diary.
[xii] Patrick McKay “A
Dictionary of Ulster Place-Names” 1999 p 132 ISI QUB.
[xv] Guy
Deutscher “Through the Looking Glass , why the world looks different in other
languages” chapter 8 Sex and Syntax
[xvi]Richard Morrison
“When languages die whole worlds die too” The Times 1 June 2013 p19.
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