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Irish

Definition: Irish

Irish

Adjective

1. Of or relating to or characteristic of Ireland or its people.

Noun

1. People of Ireland or of Irish extraction.

2. Made in Ireland chiefly from barley.

3. The Celtic language of Ireland.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

Date "Irish" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1350. (references)

"Irish" is a common misspelling or typo for: trade.

 

Specialty Definition: Goidelic

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Goidelic is one of two major divisions of modern-day Celtic languages (the other being Brythonic). Also known as Gaelic, or Q-Celtic for the way it uses a "C" or "K" to begin words that, in the hypothetical base Indo-european language, began with "Qu" (in contrast with Brythonic, which changed the sound much more severely to a "P").

The three Goidelic languages to survive into modern times are Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, and Manx. Goidelic languages were once restricted to Ireland, but in the 6th century Irish colonists and invaders began migrating to Scotland and slowly pushed out the Brythonic language found there. Manx is in turn an offshoot of Scottish Gaelic, with heavy influence from Norse from the time the Isle of Man was controlled by Viking Scandinavians. Goidelic languages were once common on the western edge of Celtic Europe; there is also evidence that they were spoken in the region of Galicia in Spain.

Irish Gaelic, (known as 'Irish', formerly 'Erse'), is one of Ireland's two official languages and is still fairly widely spoken in the west of Ireland. An Irish speaking area is called a Gaeltacht and they are to be found in Counties Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry and, to a lesser extent, in Waterford and Meath. Scots Gaelic is still spoken to some extent in the north and west of Scotland and the Hebrides but partly because of its lack of official recognition and partly because of large-scale emigration from this part of Scotland, there are not as many native speakers as there used to be. There are now believed to be 1000 native speakers of Scots Gaelic in Nova Scotia and 60000 in Scotland. Manx is the almost extinct language of the Isle of Man, however attempts to revive it continue.

The other commonly used Celtic languages belong to the Brythonic branch of Celtic and include Welsh and Breton, as well as the nearly-extinct Cornish language.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Goidelic."

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Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Island of Ireland is the second-largest island in Europe. It lies on the west side of the Irish Sea, across from Great Britain.

The island of Ireland, named Hibernia by the Romans, is 485km (301 miles) from North to South and 275km (171 miles) from East to West. Central lowlands are framed by hillier areas. The River Shannon, which runs from North-East to South-West, is the longest river, and there are a large number of lakes, of which Lough Neagh is probably the most famous. For more detailed information see: Geography of Ireland.

Politically, the island of Ireland is currently divided into:

The island is often said to be part of the British Isles. However, many people, especially those from the Republic, take exception to this name, which seems to suggest the whole island belongs to Britain. For this reason, the term Islands of the North Atlantic (IONA) is sometimes used as a more neutral alternative.

The division of the island into "Northern" and "Republic" is a relatively recent development, only coming about in 1920. The island itself has been inhabited for about 9,000 years. The Irish language, Gaelic (commonly referred to as 'Irish' by the people of Ireland), arrived with the Celts in the last centuries BC. Almost nothing is known of the languages spoken before. In the 5th century, the country was converted to Christianity with Saint Patrick being central in this effort according to tradition. It subsequently became a centre of Christian scholarship. This was brought largely to an end, however, with the invasion of the Vikings in the 10th century and the Normans in the 12th century.

In 1172, King Henry II of England gained Irish lands, and from the 13th century, English law began to be introduced. English rule was largely limited to the area around Dublin known as the Pale initially, but this began to expand in the 16th century with the final collapse of the Gaelic social and political superstructure at the end of the 17th century. From that time, English (more accurately British) influence and expansion grew, and with it spread the English language. Over time there grew a movement to shake off British rule, and for Ireland to become independent. See history of Ireland for more details.

More recently, the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998 has brought a degree of powersharing to Northern Ireland, giving both unionists, who favour it remaining a part of the United Kingdom, and nationalists, who favour it becoming part of the Irish state a hand in running its affairs. However, the power conferred by the agreement is limited, and the agreement has come close to breaking down on a number of occasions. The political future of Northern Ireland remains unclear.

In a limited number of areas, the island operates as a single entity. The Irish rugby team, for instance, includes players from the north and the south, and the Irish Rugby Football Union governs the sport on both sides of the divide. Gaelic football is, arguably, the most popular form of football and is played and organised on an All-Ireland basis. Once largely confined to one side of the divide, in recent years counties from Northern Ireland have had success. In 2002 and 2003, Armagh and Tyrone respectively won the coveted Gaelic football All-Ireland title, with both teams meeting in the 2003 final. Hurling, a kin of field hockey, is another popular traditional Irish sport, with teams from all 32 counties north and south competing. However, successes in this sport largely are confined to southern teams. Both these sports are governed by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), with its headquarters at Dublin's Croke Park, a magnificent 80,000 seater stadium at which both All-Ireland finals are played. Many matches in the final stages of the campaign (i.e. Quarter-finals, Semi-Finals etc.) are competed here. Boxing is also an All-Ireland sport governed by the I.A.B.A. The major religions, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, are organised on an all-island basis. However soccer is organised within each state, with the (Northern) Irish Football Association and the (Southern) Football Association of Ireland. Some trades unions are also organised on an all-Irish basis and associated with the Irish Congress of Trades Unions (ICTU) in Dublin, while others in Northern Ireland are affiliated with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the United Kingdom.

The island also has a shared culture across the divide in many other ways. Traditional Irish music, for example, though showing some variance in all geographical areas, is broadly speaking the same on both sides of the divide.

Ireland is a full member of the European Union since January 1, 1973. Both the Republic of Ireland itself and Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom joined simultaneously. The Republic of Ireland is also a member of the European Econonomic and Monetary Union. As such, the Irish Pound was replaced by the Euro as the official currency on the 1st of January, 2002.

Other Wikipedia Articles

Footnotes

1 The term Ulster is often used by many unionists. The terms North of Ireland or Six Counties are used by many nationalists and republicans. Each community usually takes offence at the other's term. Northern Ireland is the official name and the one used most widely across the communities.

simple:Ireland

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Ireland."

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Irish

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The word Irish can mean:

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Irish."

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Irish fiction

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Although the epics of Celtic Ireland were written in prose and not verse, most people would probably consider that Irish fiction proper begins in the 18th century. However, there are aspects of Early Irish prose that appear to have had some influence on the Irish novel: the use of exaggeration for humorous effect, a near obsession with lists, and a strong sense of satire. This article is concerned with the history of Irish fiction written in English. For Irish fiction written in Irish, see Modern literature in Irish. For a general overview of Irish writing in all genres, see Irish literature.

The 18th Century

Irish fiction can be said to begin with the publication in 1726 of Jonathan Swift's masterpiece Gulliver's Travels. This novel, often treated as a book for children, is one of the most savage satires in the English language and set the highest possible standard for Irish writers to come.

The next Irish novelist of importance was Laurence Sterne (1713-1768). Stern was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary and was in his mid-forties when he published The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen (1759-1767). This satire on the biographical novel is one of the most innovative and influential novels in English, and its foregrounding of the authorial voice and playful refusal to accept a conventional linear timeframe mark it out as a precursor of such modernist novelists as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.

Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) is a moral tale based on the story of Goldsmith's own family. It is notable for rejecting the florid style of most fiction of the day in favour of a more direct, conversational mode. Although not particularly successful when published, it has become on of the most enduring works of 18th century fiction in English.

The 19th Century

The 19th century was a golden age of fiction in English, and Irish writers were to participate fully. Although born in Oxford, Maria Edgeworth (1767 - 1849) spent most of her life in Ireland and wrote what is generally considered the first novel on an Irish theme, Castle Rackrent (1800). This story of landlords and tenants on an Irish estate, and of the abuse of the latter by the former, was criticised at the time for its characters' apparent lack of religious feeling or scruples, but can be seen as a reasonably accurate representation of life on a great estate at the turn of the century, drawing, as it does, on the author's own experience of managing her father's estate. She wrote a number of other novels, the most interesting being Ormond (1817).

Lady Morgan (Sidney Owenson) (1776(?)-1859) was also a prolific writer but her most successful work was her third novel, The Wild Irish Girl (1806), which can be read as a direct response to Castle Rackrent. Morgan's novel, however, is much more explicitly political, displaying clear Jacobin feminist politics. She emphasizes the legacy of the 1798 rebellion in Ireland and uses the novel to promote an Irish view of Irish history and prehistory.

Some of the early novels of Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824) covered ground similar to that covered by Edgeworth. However, he is now best remembered for Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). This is a Faustian tale of a man, Melmoth, who sells his soul to the devil and then wanders round Europe trying to find someone to take on his satanic bargain for him. It is told through the accounts of those he approaches to help him. The book brought a whole new dimension to the Gothic novel and is considered a cult masterpiece.

William Carleton (1794-1869) came from a large family and his father was a poor tenant farmer. Carleton was educated at hedge schools and spent much of his youth surrounded by extreme poverty. His Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, which made him an extremely popular author, showed life on the other side of the social divide from the many 19th century Irish novels written by members of the landlord class.

John Banim (1798-1842) was born in Kilkenny into a prosperous farming family. He studied art in Dublin and then returned home to work as an art teacher. In 1820, after recovering from tuberculosis, he went back to Dublin to pursue a career in writing. He wrote plays and poetry, but is best remembered for his novels, many of them written in collaboration with his brother Michael Banim (1796-1874). Their major works in fiction were the twenty-four volumes of The Tales of the O'Hara Family. One of these, The Nowlans is among the finest of all 19th century novels. The first Catholic Irish novelists of any note, the Banims wrote the first realistic fictional portraits of the Irish peasants and their novels spare no details of the sufferings endured by their people at the time of the Penal Laws.

Gerald Griffin (1803–1840) was born in Limerick. Like his friend John Banim, Griffin wrote poetry and plays, and like so many other Irish dramatists he moved to London in search of success. However, his reputation rests on The Collegians (1989), a novel he wrote after returning to Ireland. The Collegians is based on a real life court case in which Daniel O'Connell acted for the defence.

Charles Kickham (1828-1882) was born in County Tipperary. At the age of thirteen, he was involved in a gunpowder accident, permanently injuring his sight and hearing. A Young Irelander, he was arrested in 1865 for writing 'treasonous' articles and sentenced to fourteen years penal servitude. He started writing novels in prison and his Knocknagown; or The Homes of Tipperary (1879) was the most popular Irish novel of the 19th century.

Edith Somerville (1858-[1949]]) and her cousin, Violet Florence Martin (1862-1915 ) published their first novel, An Irish Cousin in 1889 under the names of Somerville and Ross. They went on to enjoy enormous popularity with books like The Irish R.M. and The Real Charlotte, a novel of the first rank. Following in the footsteps of Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan, they popularised big house novels as an Irish genre.

Bram Stoker (1847 -1912) was born in Dublin and studied Maths at Trinity College. Although he wrote some 18 books, he is best known as the author of Dracula.

By the 1880s, the main outline of the Irish novel had been drawn up. Typically, the best novels of the 19th century addressed the 'national question' via the relationship between landlord and tenant and was written either by a member of the landlord class who used fiction to call for an improved relationship based on mutual respect, or by a member of the Catholic middle class who was sympathetic to the tenants. This situation may be seen as not untypical of colonial literature, the colonists attempt to absorb the colonised into a unified world picture while the colonised attempt to promote a sense of separate identity. This 19th century novel was soon to face two challenges, one from the emergence of modernism, the other from the collapse of colonial rule and the emergence of the Irish Free State.

Into the Modern

George Moore (1852-1933) spent much of his early career in Paris and was one of the first writers to use the techniques of the French realist novelists in English. His novels were often controversial. A Drama in Muslin (1886) was banned from public libraries because it dealt with lesbianism. Esther Waters (1894), the book that finally established his reputation as a novelist in the tradition of Zola, had as its subject extramarital sex and illegitimacy, and The Brook Kerith (1916) imagined a Christ who did not die on the cross but who was nursed back to health and then travelled to India to study mysticism. Moore was involved in the setting up of the Abbey Theatre and wrote several volumes of memoirs. His short stories helped popularise the form among Irish authors and he can be seen as one of the precursors of the most famous Irish novelist of the 20th century, James Joyce.

Joyce (1882-1941) is often regarded as the father of the literary genre "stream of consciousness" which is best exemplified in his famous work, Ulysses. Joyce also wrote Finnegan's Wake, Dubliners, and the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ulysses, often considered to be the greatest novel of the 20th century, is the story of a day in the life of a city, Dublin. Told in a dazzling array of styles, it was a landmark book in the development of literary modernism. If Ulysses is the story of a day, Finnegan's Wake is a night epic, partaking in the logic of dreams and written in an invented language something like English, it was a book without followers until the emergence of writers like William Burroughs in the 1950s and 1960s.

Joyce's high modernism had its influence on coming generations of Irish novelists, most notably Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Brian O'Nolan (1912-1966), who published as both Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, and Aidan Higgins (born 1927). Beckett, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, is one of the great figures in 20th century world literature. Perhaps best known for his plays, he wrote many works of fiction and his trilogy Molly, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, written, like Waiting for Godot, in the period between 1947 and 1949, is perhaps the greatest of all second generation modernist fiction.

O'Nolan was bilingual and his fiction clearly shows the mark of the native tradition, particularly in the imaginative quality of his storytelling and the biting edge of his satire. These traits are especially evident in At Swim Two Birds (1939), which was highly praised by Joyce, and The Third Policeman, published in 1967, after his death.

The big house novel prospered into the 20th century, and Aidan Higgins' first novel Langrishe, Go Down is an experimental example of the genre. Higgins later fiction tended towards greater disjunction and experimentation. He has also published short stories and several volumes of memoirs.

More conventional exponents of the big house novel include Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), whose novels include Encounters (1923), The Last September (1929), The Funny Bone (1928); and The Death of the Heart (1938) and Molly Keane (1904-1996) (writing as M.J. Farrell), author of Young Entry (1928), Conversation Piece (1932), Devoted Ladies (1934), Full House (1935), and The Loving Without Tears (1951)among others.

Francis Stuart (1902-2000) started his literary life as a protege of W. B. Yeats and married Isuelt, daughter of Maude Gonne. He published his first novel, Women and God in 1931. Stuart was a prolific novelist, but many of his books are now long out of print. He went to work in Germany in the late 1930s, and declined to leave with the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, he broadcast anti-British talks on German radio. The controversy surrounding these actions was to stay with Stuart until his death. However, his finest and most enduring novel, Black List, Section H (1971), is a barely fictionalised account of those years.

With the rise of the Irish Free State and the Republic of Ireland, the terms of the 'national question' shifted. The issue of land ownership had been more or less resolved and the real question now was how to build a nation state. Inevitably, novelists from the so-called lower social classes began to dominate. Frequently, these authors wrote of the narrow, circumscribed lives of the lower-middle classes and small farmers. Exponents of this style range from Brinsley MacNamara (1890-1963) (real name John Weldon), whose 1918 The Valley of the Squinting Windows could be said to have created the genre, to John McGahern (born 1934), whose first novel, The Dark (1965), a portrayal of child abuse in a rural community, cost him his job as a teacher.

Brian Moore (1921-1999) was born in Belfast but became a citizen of Canada in 1953. He wrote a series of scrupulously written novels examining the Catholic conscience in the modern world.

The short story has also proven popular with Irish fiction writers. Well known short story writers include Frank O'Connor (1903-1966) and Sean O Faolain (1900-1991).

Irish Fiction Now

Contemporary Irish fiction has moved to reflect the changes in the society that produces it. There are fewer novels set in the countryside and more urban fiction being written. The last few years has also seen a rise in the volume of popular fiction being published across a range of genres from romantic novels to hardboiled detective stories set in New York. Some notable names are Maeve Binchy, Seamus Deane, Roddy Doyle, Dermot Bolger and Jennifer Johnston. There has also been an increasing emphasis on writing by women which found concrete expression in the founding of the Arlen House publishing venture. However, such is the amount of fiction being published that it is difficult to judge for the moment which are the books and authors that will stand the test of time.

External links

Web pages devoted to individual authors are too numerous to list here. These two sites give biographical and bibliographical information on most of the writers discussed in this article.

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Irish language

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Irish (Gaeilge na hÉireann) is a Goidelic language spoken in Ireland. The language is sometimes known as Gaelic or as Irish Gaelic (SAMPA: /"geIlIk/) but in Ireland this usage is regarded as an anachronism, like the term British Isles. More often, it is described as the Irish language or merely Irish in colloquial expression. (The term 'Gaelic' is can sometimes be confused with a variant of the language spoken in Scotland.)

Irish has recently received a degree of formal recognition in Northern Ireland, under the Good Friday Agreement alongside a small minority language called Ulster Scots (though some critics have pointed out that Ulster Scots is not a language in its own right but simply dialects of Lowland Scots).

There is an Irish language version of Wikipedia at [1].

Gaeltachtaí

There are pockets of Ireland where Irish is spoken as a native, traditional language. These regions are known as Gaeltachtaí (sing. Gaeltacht). The most important ones are in Connemara (Conamara), including Aran Islands (Oileáin Árann) in County Galway (Contae na Gaillimhe), and the west coast of County Donegal (Contae Dhún na nGall), in Irish called Tír Chonaill, and the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry (Contae Chiarraí). Others exist in Mayo (Contae Mhaigh Eo), Meath (Contae na Mí), and Waterford (Contae Phort Láirge).

The numerically strongest Gaeltachtaí are those of Connemara and Aran. The highest percentages of Irish speakers is found in Ros Muc, Connemara, and around Bloody Foreland (Cnoc na Fola) in Tír Chonaill.

Dialects

There are a number of distinct dialects of Irish. Roughly speaking, the three major dialect areas coincide with the provinces of Munster (An Mhumhain), Connacht (Connachta), and Ulster (Ulaidh).

Munster dialects

Munster Irish is spoken in the Gaeltachtaí of Kerry (Ciarraí), Coolea (Cúil Aodha) in the western part of County Cork (Contae Chorcaí), and the tiny pocket of Irish-speakers near Dungarvan (Dún Garbháin) in County Waterford (Contae Phort Láirge). The most important subdivision in Munster is that between Decies Irish (spoken in Waterford) and the rest of Munster Irish.

The one typical feature of Munster Irish is the use of personal endings instead of pronouns with verbs, thus "I must" is in Munster "caithfead", while other dialects prefer "caithfidh mé" ("mé" means "I").

Connacht dialects

Connacht Irish is, for all the practical purposes, identical with Connemara-Aran Irish, with the exception of the very threatened dialect spoken in the northern part of County Mayo (Maigh Eo). The remnants of the Irish of Tourmakeady (Tuar Mhic Éadaigh) and Joyce Country (Dúthaigh Sheoige) in southern Mayo are very similar to the Irish spoken in Connemara. Thus, the most important subdivision is that between Northern Mayo Irish and the rest of Connacht. Northern Mayo dialect is in grammar and word-building essentially a Connacht dialect, but shows an affinity in vocabulary with Ulster Irish.

Connacht Irish is in many respects the most standard kind of Irish, and very popular with learners, thanks to Mícheál Ó Siadhail's self-tuition textbook Learning Irish. However, there are features in Connacht Irish which are not accepted standard, notably the preference for verbal nouns ending in -achan, such as "lagachan" instead of "lagú" = "weakening".

Ulster dialects

The most important of the Ulster dialects today is that of the Rosses (na Rosa), which has been used extensively in literature by such authors as the brothers Séamus and Seosamh Mac Grianna, locally known as Jimí Fheilimí and Joe Fheilimí.

Ulster Irish sounds very different and shares several in Ireland unusual features with Scots Gaelic, as well as having lots of peculiar words and shades of meanings. However, since the demise of those Irish dialects spoken natively in what is today Northern Ireland, it is probably exaggerated to see Ulster Irish as an intermediary form between Scots Gaelic and the southern and western dialects of Irish. Indeed, Scots Gaelic does have lots of non-Ulster features in common with Munster Irish, too.

The Irish of Meath is a special case. It belongs to the Connemara dialect, as the Irish-speaking community in Meath is simply a group of Connemara speakers who moved there in the nineteen thirties, after a land reform campaign spearheaded by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, subsequently the greatest modernist writer in the language.

Comparisons

The differences between dialects are considerable, and have led to recurrent difficulties in defining standard Irish. Even everyday phrases can show startling dialectal variation: the standard example is "How are you?":

In recent times, however, contacts between speakers of different dialects have become more common, and mixed dialects have originated. Nevertheless, many dialect speakers (especially Ulster) are still jealously trying to guard their own variety against influences from other dialects. Among non-native speakers, this can be seen as a quest for authenticity. Regional accents are commonly taught to non-natives and imitated: an urban non-native speaker of Irish in Cork City (Cathair Chorcaí) is very probably trying to emulate Coolea or Kerry dialect; one from Belfast (Béal Feairsde) tends to speak an Irish modelled on the Rosses dialect of Donegal; and Galwegian Irish-speakers, living next door to Connemara, will do their best to sound like a Connemara native.

There also exists a cant called Shelta, based primarily on Irish, in use by the Irish Travellers.

Linguistic Structure

The most unfamiliar features of the language are the orthography, the initial mutations, and the use of two different verbs for "to be". However, initial mutations are found in other Celtic languages (as well as in some Italian dialects, as an independent development); and the two verbs for "to be" are to some extent analogous to those found in Spanish.

Orthography

The written language looks, to those unfamiliar with it, like a lot of unusual consonantal combinations and vowels everywhere! Once understood, the orthography is relatively straightforward. The acute accent, or fada (´), serves to lengthen the sound of the vowels and in some cases also changes their quality. For example, in Munster Irish (Kerry), "a" is /uh/ or /ah/ and "á" is /aw/ in "law" but in Ulster Irish (Donegal), "á" tends to be /ah/ lengthened.

About the time of World War II, Séamas Daltún, in charge of Rannóg an Aistriúcháin or the official translators department, issued his own guidelines about how to standardise Irish spelling and grammar. This de facto standard was subsequently approved of by the State and called the Official Standard or "Caighdeán Oifigiúil". It simplified and standardized the orthography. Many words had silent letters removed and vowel combination brought closer to the spoken language.

Examples:

Modern Irish has only one diacritical sign, the acute (á é í ó ú). The punctum delens, used over consonantal letters in the pre-Caighdeán orthography, has been ousted by the leniting h, added immediately after the consonantal letter.

Consonants

Irish consonants are either palatalised or plain (velarised/labialised). Palatalised consonants are also called "soft" or "slender" (caol in Irish); plain consonants are also called "hard" or "broad" (leathan in Irish). (This contrast also occurs in many Slavic languages, such as Russian.)

In principle, the quality of the consonant depends on the neighbouring vowels: a preceding or following a, o, or u makes the consonant broad, while i and e make the consonant slender. This is the general idea; however, historical developments have lead into a situation where vowel letters are often used as otherwise mute indicators of consonantal quality. Thus, in a word such as "seó" (this is the English word "show", a long-established loan word in Irish, where it has developed new meanings), the -e- is just an indicator of the s- being pronounced as slender, i.e. approximately as the English "sh" sound.

Mutations

In Irish, there are two classes of initial mutations:

History and politics

The Irish Language Movement

The Irish language was the most widely spoken language on the island of Ireland until the 19th century. A combination of the introduction of a primary education system (the 'National Schools'), in which Irish was prohibited and only English taught by order of the British Government in Ireland, and the Great Famine("An Drochshaol") which hit a disportionately high number of Irish language speakers (who lived in the poorer areas heavily hit by famine deaths and emigration), hastened its rapid decline. Irish political leaders, such as Daniel O'Connell(Dónall Ó Conaill), too were critical of the language, seeing it as 'backward', with English the language of the future. Contemporary reports spoke of Irish-speaking parents actively discouraging their children from speaking the language, and encouraging the use of English instead.

Some, however, thought differently. Though the initial moves to save the language were championed by Irish unionists, such as the linguist and Protestant clergyman William Neilson, in the end of the eighteenth century, the major push occurred with the foundation by Douglas Hyde, the son of a Church of Ireland rector, of the Gaelic League (known in Irish as 'Conradh na Gaeilge'). Leading supporters of Conradh included Pádraig Mac Piarais and Éamon de Valera. The revival of interest in the language coincided with other cultural revivals, such as the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the growth in the preformance of plays about Ireland in English, by such luminaries as William Butler Yeats, J.M. Synge, Sean O'Casey and Lady Gregory, with their launch of the Abbey Theatre.

Even though they wrote in English (and indeed some disliked Irish) the Irish language affected them. The version of English spoken in Irish, known as Hiberno-English bears striking similarities in some grammatical idioms with Irish. In contrast to English as spoken in England, Hiberno-English offers a greater range of expression. Some have speculated that even after the vast majority of Irish people stopped speaking Irish, they perhaps subsconsciously used its grammatical flair in the manner in which they spoke English. This fluency is reflected in the writings of Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and more recently in the writings of Seamus Heaney, Paul Durkan, Dermot Bolger and many others. (It may also in part explain the appeal in Britain of Irish-born broadcasters like Terry Wogan, Eamonn Andrews, Graham Norton, Desmond Lynam, etc.)

This national cultural revival of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century matched the growing Irish radicalism in Irish politics. Many of those, such as Pearse, de Valera, W.T. Cosgrave Liam Mac Cosguir and Ernest Blythe''Earnán de Blaghd'\', who fought to achieve Irish independence and came to govern the independent Irish state, first became politically aware through Conradh na Gaeilge, though Hyde himself resigned from its presidency in 1915 in protest at the movement's growing politicisation.

Independent Ireland & the language

The independent Irish state from 1922 (The Irish Free State 1922-37; Éire from 1937, also known since 1949 as the Republic of Ireland) launched a major push to promote the Irish language, with some of its leaders hoping that the state would become predominantly Irish-speaking within a generation. In fact, many of these initiatives, notably compulsory Irish at school and the requirement that one must know Irish to be employed in the civil service, proved counter-productive with generations of school-children alienated by what was often heavily-handed attempts at indoctrination, that created a cultural backlash. Demands that children learn seventeenth century Irish poetry, or study the life of Peig Sayers (a Gaelic speaker from the Blasket Islands) whose accounts of her life, as recounted in Irish language books, though fascinating, was taught in a poor manner, left a cultural legacy of negative reactions among generations, all too many of whom deliberately refused to use the language once they left school.

The emergence of a new, more pragmatic and technocratic leadership in the beginning of the sixties, with Seán Lemass as Taoiseach, marked the shift in the attitude of Ireland's dominant élites towards the language. Whereas the first three presidents of Ireland (Douglas Hyde/Dubhghlas de hÍde, Sean T. O'Kelly/Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh and Eamon de Valera) and the fifth (Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh) were all so fluent in Irish that it became the working language in their official residence, later presidents struggled with any degree of fluency, its use declining to such an extent that it is only used now (if at all) in occasional speeches. Similarly, where earlier generations of Irish government leaders were highly fluent, recent prime ministers (Albert Reynolds/Ailbhe Mag Raghnaill, John Bruton, Bertie Ahern) had little fluency, they struggling to pronounce passages of their speeches in Irish to their Ard-Fheiseanna (party conference(s), pronounced 'Ord Desh-ana') .

It is, though, disputed to what extent such professed language revivalists as de Valera genuinely tried to Gaelicise political life. Ernest Blythe did little, in his day as Minister of Finance, to assist Irish language projects beyond the vested interests of already established organisations. Even in the first Dáil Éireann, few speeches were delivered as Gaeilge (in Irish), with the exception of formal proceedings. None of the recent taoisigh (plural of 'Taoiseach', meaning 'prime minister') has been fluent in Irish, of the recent Presidents only Mary McAleese - Máire Mhac Ghiolla Íosa - (though Mary Robinson/Máire Mhic Róíbín studied the language to improve her fluency while in office; the President of Ireland does take her inauguration 'Declaration of Office' in Gaelic, but that too is optional.

Even modern parliamentary legislation, through supposed to be issued in both Irish and English, is frequently only available in English. Much of publicly displayed Irish is ungrammatical, thus irritating both language activists and enemies of the language and contributing to the public image of the revival as phony and bogus. In 2002, at the launch of Dublin's new traffic management system, it was revealed that the vast majority of signs would be in English only. The justification offered was that, in making the English lettering large enough to be easily read by motorists from a distance, there was no space to include Irish. The use of the single Irish words left, 'An Lár' (meaning city centre terminus) was criticised on the basis that no-one would know what it meant, even though it was a term used widely for decades on street signs. Even the once common method in Ireland of beginning and ending letters (beginning 'A Chara' (meaning friend) and ending 'Is Mise le Meas') is becoming rarer.

On balance, the overly enthusiastic promotion of Irish by the political and cultural elite from the 1920s did more harm than good to the language's longterm prospects. Instead of winning over people to the concept that they could speak Irish, they attempted to follow a process of saying they must speak Irish. That created a backlash that made many people more determined than ever not to. The language went into long-term decline, with Gaeltacht areas (exclusively Irish speaking areas) shrinking as the results of each national census returns were analysed. Today, most people even in what are officially Gaeltacht areas, no longer speak the language. In a last ditch effort to stop the complete collapse of Irish-speaking in Connemara in Galway, new planning controls have been introduced to ensure that only Irish speakers will be given permission to build homes in Irish speaking areas. But even this may be too little, too late, as many of those areas have a majority of English-speakers, with most Irish speakers being bilingual, using English as their everyday language except among themselves.

Attempts have been made to offer some support for the language through the media, notably the launch of Raidió na Gaeltachta (Gaeltacht radio) and Teilifís na Gaeilge (Irish language television, called initially 'TnaG', now completely renamed TG4). Both have had limited success. While TG4 has offered Irish-speaking young people a forum for youth culture in gaelic (through rock and pop shows, travel shows, dating games as Gaeilge (in Irish), and even a controversial award-winning 'soap opera' in Irish called 'Ros na Rún' (featuring among others an Irish-speaking gay couple and their child!) most of TG4's viewership comes from showing European soccer matches and films in English.

In 1938, the founder of the Conradh na Gaeilge, Douglas Hyde, was inaugurated as the first President of Ireland. The record of his delivering his inauguration 'Declaration of Office' in his native Roscommon Irish remains almost the only surviving remnant of anyone speaking in that dialect, which in effect died out with him. Over sixty years later, the majority of the Gaeltacht and Irish speaking areas in existence as he took that oath, no longer exist.

Northern Ireland

Attitudes towards the Irish language in Northern Ireland have traditionally reflected the political differences between its two divided communities. The language has been regarded with suspicion by Unionists, who have associated it with Catholic dominated Republic in the south, and more recently, with the republican movement in Northern Ireland itself. Many republicans in Northern Ireland, including Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, learnt Irish while in prison. The language was not taught in Protestant schools, and public signs in Irish were effectively banned under laws by the Parliament of Northern Ireland, which stated that only English could be used.

This was not formally lifted by the British Government until the early 1990s. However, Irish-medium schools, known as gaeilscoleanna had been established in Belfast and Derry, as was an Irish-language newspaper called Lá ('day'). BBC Radio Ulster began broadcasting a nightly half-hour programme in Irish in the early 1980s called Blas ('taste'), and BBC Northern Ireland also showed its first TV programme in the language in the early 1990s. The Ultach Trust was also established, with a view to broadening the appeal of the language among Protestants, although hardline Unionists like the Reverend Ian Paisley contined to ridicule it as a 'leprechaun language'. Ulster Scots, was, in turn, ridiculed by nationalists as 'a DIY language for Orangemen'.

The Irish Language Today

In spite of all the efforts since Ireland achieved independence (some critics claim because of those efforts) the Irish language is in rapid and perhaps terminal decline in the Republic of Ireland. According to data compiled the Irish Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, only one quarter of households in Gaeltacht areas possess a fluency in gaelic. The author of a detailed analysis of the survey, Donncha Ó hÉallaithe, described the Irish language policy followed by Irish governments a 'complete and absolute disaster.' The Irish Times (January 6, 2002), referring to his analysis, which was initially published in the Irish language newspaper Foinse, quoted him as follows: 'It is an absolute indictment of successive Irish Governments that at the foundation of the Irish State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi Irish-speaking areas, but the number now is between 20,000 and 30,000.'

According to the language survey, levels of fluency among families is 'very low', from 1% in Galway suburbs a maximum of 8% parts of west Donegal. With such sharp decline, particular among the young, the real danger exists that Irish will largely become extinct within two generations, possibly even one. While the language will continue to exist among English speakers who have learned fluency and are bilingual (though mainly English-speaking in their everyday lives) Gaeltachtaí embody more than just a language, but the cultural context in which it is spoken, through song, stories, social traditions folklore and dance. The death of the Gaeltachtaí would make a break forever between Ireland's cultural past and identity and its future. All sides, irrespective of their view on the methodology used by independent Ireland in its efforts to preserve the language, agree that such a loss would be a cultural tragedy of a monumental scale.

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Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Irish language."

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Irish literature

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Irish literature

For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a disproportionate contribution to world literature in all its branches. The works that are best known outside the country are in English, but Irish Gaelic also has the most significant body of written literature, both ancient and recent, in any Celtic language, in addition to a strong oral tradition of legends and poetry. See also the main article on modern literature in Irish.

This Irish language tradition has contributed to making Irish literature in English something quite distinctive from English literature in other countries. From the older tradition, Irish writers in English have inherited a sense of wonder in the face of nature, a narrative style that tends towards the deliberately exaggerated or absurd, a keen sense of the power of satire. In addition, the interplay between the two languages has resulted in an English dialect, Hiberno-Irish, that lends a distinctive syntax and music to the literature written in it.

Poetry

Irish poetry has a long and complex history. The Irish language has the oldest vernacular literature and poetry in that language represents a more or less unbroken tradition from the 6th century to the present day. However, since at least the 14th century, poetry in English has also been written in Ireland and by Irish writers abroad.

During the late middle ages, the breakdown of the old Gaelic order that had supported the old professional bards broke down, and Irish language poetry started to become marginalised and by the 19th century had entered the realms of folk art.

The 18th century witnessed both a late flowering of bardic poetry and song and the first major Irish poets in English, Jonathan Swift and Oliver Goldsmith.

In the 19th century, Irish poets writing in English set out to reinvent the Gaelic tradition in the new language, frequently translating bardic and other early Irish poets and retelling stories from Celtic mythology in Victorian verse. This trend resulted in the early work of W. B. Yeats.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Yeats' style changed under the influence of his contact with modernism. The generation of Irish poets that followed Yeats were, to simplify, divided between those who were influenced by his early Celtic style and those who followed such modernist figures as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, both of whom wrote poetry as well as their better known fiction and drama.

During the course of the 20th century, the influence of Yeats has tended to dominate. either as role model or as someone to rebel against. However, this period also saw the emergence of such significant figures as Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney and Brian Coffey. This period also saw a revival of poetry in Irish, at least partly as a result of government policy decisions in support of the language.

Fiction

Although the epics of Celtic Ireland were written in prose and not verse, most people would probably consider that Irish fiction proper begins in the 18th century with the works of Jonathan Swift (especially Gulliver's Travels) and Oliver Goldsmith (especially The Vicar of Wakefield).

A number of Irish novelists emerged during the 19th century, including Maria Edgeworth, John Banim, Gerald Griffin, Charles Kickham, William Carleton, George Moore and Somerville and Ross. Most of these writers came from the Anglo-Irish ruling classes and they wrote what came to be termed novels of the big house. Catleton was an exception, and his and Stories of the Irish Peasantry'' showed life on the other side of the social divide. Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, was somewhat outside this tradition.

George Moore spent much of his early career in Paris and was one of the first writers to use the techniques of the Frence realist novelists in English. He can be seen as one of the precursors of the most famous Irish novelist of the 20th century, James Joyce. Joyce is often regarded as the father of the literary genre "stream of consciousness" which is best exemplified in his famous work, Ulysses. Joyce also wrote Finnegan's Wake, Dubliners, and the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce's high modernist style had its influence on coming generations of Irish novelists, most notably Samuel Beckett, Brian O'Nolan, who published as Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, and Aidan Higgins. O'Nolan was bilingual and his fiction clearly shows the mark of the native tradition, particularly in the imaginative quality of his storytelling and the biting edge of his satire.

The big house novel prospered into the 20th century, and Aidan Higgins' first novel Langrishe, Go Down is an experimental example of the genre. More conventional exponents include Elizabeth Bowen and Molly Keane (writing as M.J. Farrell).

With the rise of the Irish Free State and the Republic of Ireland, more novelists from the so-called lower social classes began to emerge. Frequently, these authors wrote of the narrow, circumscribed lives of the lower-middle classes and small farmers. Exponents of this style range from Brinsley McNamara to John McGahern.

The short story has also proven popular with Irish fiction writers. Well known short story writers include Frank O'Connor and Sean O Faolain .

Theatre

Although the documented history of Irish theatre began at least as early as 1601, the earliest Irish dramatists of note were William Congreve, one of the most interesting writers of Restoration comedies, and Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who were two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage in the 18th century.

In the 19th century, Dion Boucicault was an extremely popular writer of comedies. However, it was in the last decade of the century that the Irish theatre finally came of age with the emergence of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde and the establishment in Dublin in 1899 of the Irish Literary Theatre.

This last company, later to become the Abbey Theatre, performed plays by Y.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, and Sean O'Casey. Equally importantly, through the introduction by Yeats, via Ezra Pound, of elements of the Noh theatre of Japan, a tendency to mythologise quotidian situations, and a particularly strong focus on writings in dialects of Hiberno-English, the Abbey was to create a style that held a strong fascination for future Irish dramatists.

The twentieth century saw a number of Irish playwrights come to prominence. These included Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan Denis Johnston, Brian Friel, Thomas Kilroy, Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, and John B. Keane. There was also a rise in the writing of plays in Irish, especially after the formation, in 1928, of An Taidhbhearc, a theatre dedicated to the Irish language. The Gate Theatre, also founded in 1928, introduced Irish audiences to many of the classics of the European stage.

Since the 1970s, a number of companies have emerged to challenge the Abbey's dominance and introduce different styles and approaches. These include Focus Theatre, The Children's T Company, the Project Theatre Company, Druid Theatre, TEAM and Field Day. These companies have nurtured a number of writers, actors, and directors who have since gone on to be successful in London, Broadway and Hollywood.

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Irish mythology

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Irish mythology is the collection of tales and beliefs out of Celtic folklore and religion in Ireland, mostly prior to the widespread introduction of Christianity. Major legendary cycles that have survived to the present day include the Tain and the Fenian cycle.

Topics in Irish mythology

Festivals and Seasons

Gods and Goddesses

Heroes and Heroines

Legendary creatures

Places

Miscellaneous

Accounts and Writings

Other sources

Also see

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Irish poetry

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The history of Irish poetry is complicated by the fact that since at least the 14th century it has been the history of two poetries, one in Irish language and the other in English language. The complex interplay between these two traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English, has produced a set of traditions that are both rich and difficult for the outsider to follow.

The Earliest Irish Poetry

Poetry in Irish represents the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe. The earliest examples date from the 6th century, and are generally short lyrics on themes from religion or the world of nature. They were frequently written by their scribe authors in the margins of the illuminated manuscripts that they were copying. Another source of early Irish poetry is the poems in the tales and sagas, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge. Unlike many other European epic cycles, the Irish sagas were written in prose, with verse interpolations at moments of heightened tension or emotion. Although usually surviving in recensions dating from the later medieval period, these sagas, and especially the poetic sections, are linguistically archaic, and afford the reader a glimpse of prechristian Ireland.

Medieval/Early Modern

Bardic Poetry

Irish bards formed a professional hereditary caste of highly trained, learned poets. The bards were steeped in the history and traditions of clan and country, as well as in the technical requirements of a verse technique that was syllabic and used assonance, half rhyme and alliteration. As officials of the court of king or chieftain, they performed a number of official roles. They were chroniclers and satirists whose job it was to praise their employers and damn those who crossed them. It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire could raise boils on the face of its target. However, much of their work would not strike the modern reader as being poetry at all, consisting as it does of extended genealogies and almost journalistic accounts of the deeds of their lords and ancestors.

Metrical Dindshenchus

The Metrical Dindshenchus, or Lore of Places, is probably the major surviving monument of Irish bardic verse. It is a great onomastic anthology of naming legends of significant places in the Irish landscape and comprises about 176 poems in total. The earliest of these date from the 11th century, and were probably originally compiled on a provincial basis. As a national compilation, the Metrical Dindshenchus has come down to us in two different recensions. Knowledge of the real or putative history of local places formed an important part of the education of the elite in ancient Ireland, so the Dindshenchus was probably a kind of textbook in origin.

The Poems of Fionn

Verse tales of Fionn and the Fianna, sometimes known as Ossianic poetry, were extremely common in Ireland and Scotland throughout this period. They represent a move from earlier prose tales with verse interludes to stories told completely in verse. There is also a notable shift in tone, with the Fionn poems being much closer to the Romance tradition as opposed to the epic nature of the sagas. The Fionn poems form one of the key Celtic sources for the Arthurian legends.

The Kildare Poems

British Library Manuscript, Harley 913, is a group of poems written in Ireland in the early 14th century. They are usually called the Kildare poems because of their association with that county. Both poems and manuscript have strong Franciscan associations and are full of ideas from the wider Western European Christian tradition. They also represent the early stages of the second tradition of Irish poetry, that of poetry in the English language, as they were written in Middle English.

Spenser and Ireland

During the Elizabethan reconquest, two of the most significant English poets of the time saw service in the Irish colonies. Sir Walter Raleigh had little impact on the course of Irish literature, but the time spent in Munster by Edmund Spenser was to have serious consequences both for his own writings and for the future course of cultural development in Ireland. Spenser's relationship with Ireland was somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, an idealised Munster landscape forms the backdrop for much of the action for his masterpiece, The Faerie Queen. On the other, he condemned Ireland and everything Irish as barbaric in his prose polemic A View of the Present State of Ireland.

In A View, he describes the Irish bards as being " soe far from instructinge younge men in Morrall discipline, that they themselves doe more deserve to be sharplie decyplined; for they seldome use to chuse unto themselves the doinges of good men, for the ornamentes of theire poems, but whomesoever they finde to bee most lycentious of lief, most bolde and lawles in his doinges, most daungerous and desperate in all partes of disobedience and rebellious disposicon, him they sett up and glorifie in their rymes, him they prayse to the people, and to younge men make an example to followe." Given that the bards depended on aristocratic support to survive, and that this power and patronage was shifting towards the new English rulers, this thorough a condemnation of their moral values may well have contributed to their demise as a caste.

The 18th Century

The 18th Century perhaps marks the point at which the two language traditions reach equal weight of importance. In Swift, the English tradition has its first writer of genius. Poetry in Irish now reflects the passing of the old Gaelic order and the patronage on which the poets depended for their livelihoods. This, then, is a period of transition writ large.

Gaelic Songs: the End of an Order

As the old native aristocracy suffered military and political defeat and, in many cases, exile, the world order that had supported the bardic poets disappeared. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that much Irish language poetry and song of this period laments these changes and the poet's plight. The following verse from Caoine Cill Chais (The Lament for Kilcash) serves as an example. The old house of Cill Chais stands empty, its woods gone to serve the needs of the British navy:

Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad,
tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár;
níl trácht ar Chill Chais ná a teaghlach,
is ní bainfear a cling go bráth;
an áit úd ina gcónaíodh an deighbhean
a fuair gradam is meidhir tar mhná,
bhíodh iarlaí ag tarraing tar toinn ann,
is an tAifreann binn á rá.

(What shall we from now on without timber?
The last of the woods is gone.
No more of Kilcash and its great house
And the bells that will ring no more.
The place where that great lady waited
Who for grace put all women to shame
When earls came by sea to meet her
And the Mass was sweetly proclaimed)

However, being practical professionals, the poets were not above writing poems in praise of the new English lords in the hope of finding a continuity of court patronage. This was not generally a successful tactic, and Gaelic poets tended to be folk poets until the Gaelic revival that began towards the end of the 19th century. However, many of the poems and songs written during this period of apparent decline live on and are still recited and sung today.

Cúirt An Mheán Óiche

Cúirt An Mheán Óiche (The Midnight Court) by Brian Merriman (1747-1805) is something of an oddity in 18th century Irish poetry in Irish. Merriman was a teacher of mathematics who lived and worked in the Munster counties of Clare and Limerick. Cúirt An Mheán Óiche, effectively his only poetic work, was written around 1780. The poem begins by using the conventions of the Aisling, or vision poem, in which the poet is out walking when he has a vision of a woman from the other world. Typically, this woman is Ireland and the poem will lament her lot and/or call on her 'sons' to rebel against foreign tyranny.

In Merriman's hands, the convention is made to take an unusual twist. The woman drags the poet to the court of the fairy queen Aoibheal. There follows a court case in which a young woman calls on Aoibheal to take action against the young men of Ireland for their refusal to marry. She is answered by an old man who first laments the infidelity of his own young wife and the dissolute lifestyles of young women in general. He then calls on the queen to end the institution of marriage completely and to replace it with a system of free love. The young woman returns to mock the old man's inability to satisfy his young wife's needs and to call for an end to the celibacy among the clergy so as to widen the pool of prospective mates.

Finally, Aoibheal rules that all men must mate by the age of 21, that older men who fail to satisfy women must be punished, that sex must be applauded, not condemned, and that priests will soon be free to marry. To his dismay, the poet discovers that he is to be the first to suffer the consequences of this new law, but then awakens to find it was just a nightmare. In its frank treatment of sexuality and of clerical celibacy, Cúirt An Mheán Óiche is a unique document in the history of Irish poetry in either language.

Swift and Goldsmith

In Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Irish literature in English found its first writer of real genius. Although best known for prose works like Gulliver's Travels and A Tale of a Tub, Swift was a poet of considerable talent. Technically close to his English contemporaries Pope and Dryden, Swifts poetry evinces the same tone savage satire and horror of the human body and its functions that characterises much of his prose. Interestingly, Swift also published translations of poems from the Irish.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730?-1774) started his literary career as a hack writer in London, writing on any subject that would pay enough to keep his creditors at bay. He came to belong to the circle of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds. His reputation depends mainly on a novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, a play, She Stoops to Conquer, and two long poems, The Traveller and The Deserted Village. The last of these may be the first and best poem by an Irish poet in the English pastoral tradition. It has been variously interpreted as a lament for the death of Irish village life under British rule and a protest at the effects of agricultural reform on the English rural landscape.

The 19th Century

During the course of the 19th century, political and economic factors resulted in the decline of the Irish language and the concurrent rise of English as the main language of Ireland. This fact is reflected in the poetry of the period.

Irishing English

Paradoxically, as soon as English became the dominant language of Irish poetry, the poets began to mine the Irish-language heritage as a source of themes and techniques. Probably the first significant Irish poet to write in English in a recognisably Irish fashion was Thomas Moore (1779-1852). Moore's Irish Melodies, his most enduring work, was extremely popular with English audiences and the poet became the toast of London. The poems are, perhaps, somewhat overloaded with harps, bards and minstrels of Erin to suit modern tastes, but they did open up the possibility of a distinctive Irish English-language poetic tradition and served as an exemplar for Irish poets to come.

In 1842, Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), Thomas Davis, (1814-1845), and John Dillon (1816-1866) founded The Nation to agitate for reform of British rule. The group of politicians and writers associates with The Nation came to be known as the Young Irelanders. The magazine published verse, including work by Duffy and Davis, whose A Nation Once Again is still popular among Irish Nationalists. However, the most significant poet associated with The Nation was undoubtedly James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849). Mangan was a true poète maudit, who threw himself into the role of bard, and even included translations of bardic poems in his publications.

Another poet who supported the Young Irelanders, although not directly connected with them, was Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886). Ferguson once wrote: 'my ambition (is) to raise the native elements of Irish history to a dignified level.' To this end, he wrote many verse retellings of the Old Irish sagas. He also wrote a moving elegy to Thomas Davis.

William Allingham (1824-1889) was an important figure in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Day and Night Songs was illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Millais.

Folk Songs and Poems

During the 19th century, poetry in Irish became essentially a folk art. One of the few well-known figures from this period was Antóin Ó Raiftearai (Anthony Raftery), who is known as the last of the wandering bards. His Mise Raiftearai an file is still learned by heart in Irish schools.

In addition, this was one of the great periods for the composition of folk songs in both languages, and the majority of the traditional singer's repertoire is typically made up of 19th century songs.

The Celtic Revival

Probably the most significant poetic movement of the second half of the 19th century was French Symbolism. This movement inevitably influenced Irish writers, not least Oscar Wilde (1845-1900). Although Wilde is best known for his plays, fiction, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, he also wrote poetry in a symbolist vein and was the first Irish writer to experiment with prose poetry. However, the overtly cosmopolitan Wilde was not destined to have much influence on the future course of Irish writing.
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was much more influential in the long run. Yeats, too, was influenced by his French contemporaries but consciously focused on an identifiably Irish content. As such, he was responsible for the establishment of the literary movement known as the Celtic Twilight. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

Apart from Yeats, much of the impetus for the Celtic Twilight came from the work of scholarly translators who were aiding in the discovery of both the ancient sagas and Ossianic poetry and the more recent folk song tradition in Irish. One of the most significant of these was Douglas Hyde (1860 - 1949), later the first President of Ireland, whose Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired.

The 20th Century

Yeats and Modernism

In the 1910s, Yeats became acquainted with the work of James Joyce, and worked closely with Ezra Pound, who served as his personal secretary for a time. Through Pound, Yeats also became familiar with the work of a range of prominent Modernist poets. He undoubtedly learned from these contacts, and from his 1916 book Responsibilities and Other Poems onwards his work, while not entirely Modernist, became mush more hard-edged than it had been.

After Yeats: Clarke, Higgins, Colum

However, it was to be Yeats' earlier Celtic mode that was to be most influential. Amongst the most prominent followers of the early Yeats were Padric Colum (1881-1972), F. R. Higgins (1896-1941), and Austin Clarke (1896-1974). In the 1950s, Clarke, returning to poetry after a long absence, turned to a much more personal style and wrote many satires on Irish society and religious practices.

Irish Modernism

In fact, Irish poetic Modernism took its lead not from Yeats but from Joyce. The 1930s say the emergence of a generation of writers who were to engage with experimental writing as a matter of course. The best known of these is Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. Beckett's poetry, while not inconsiderable, is not what he is best known for. The most significant of the second generation Modernist Irish poets who first published in the 1920s and 1930s include Brian Coffey (1905-1995), Denis Devlin (1908-1959), Thomas McGreevy (1893 - 1967), Blanaid Salkeld (1880-1959), and Mary Devenport O'Neill (1879-1967). Coffey's two late long poems Advent and Death of Hektor. are widely held to be the most important works in the canon of Irish poetic Modernism.

Poetry in De Valera's Ireland

While Yeats and his followers wrote about an essentially aristocratic Gaelic Ireland, the reality was that the actual Irish Free State of the 1930s and 1940s was a society of small farmers and shopkeepers. Inevitably, a generation of poets who rebelled against the example of Yeats, but who were not Modernist by inclination, emerged from this environment. Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), who came from a small farm, wrote about the narrowness and frustrations of rural life. John Hewitt (1907-1987), who many consider to be the founding father of Northern Irish poetry, also came from a rural background but lived in Belfast and was amongst the first Irish poets to write of the sense of alienation that many at this time felt from both their original rural and new urban homes. Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), another Northern Irish poet, was associated with the left-wing politics of Michael Roberts's anthology New Signatures but was much less political a poet than W. H. Auden or Stephen Spender, for example. MacNeice's poetry was informed by his immediate interests and surroundings and is more social than political.

Poetry in Irish

With the foundation of the Irish Free State it became official government policy to promote and protect the Irish language. Although not particularly successful, this policy did help bring about a revival in Irish-language literature. Specifically, the establishment in 1926 of An Gum, a Government sponsored publisher, created an outlet both for original works in Irish and for translations into the language.
Since then, a number of Irish-language poets have come to prominence. These include Máirtín Ó Direáin (1910-1988), Seán Ó Ríordáin (1916-1977), Máire Mhac an tSaoi (1922-), Gabriel Rosenstock (1949-), and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (1952-). While all these poets are influenced by the Irish poetic tradition, they have also shown the ability to assimilate influences from poetries in other languages.

The Northern School

The Northern Irish poets have already been mentioned in connection with John Hewitt. In the 1960s, and coincident with the rise of the Troubles in the province, a number of Ulster poets began to receive critical and public notice. Prominent amongst these were Michael Longley (1939-), Seamus Heaney (1939-), and Paul Muldoon (1951-).

Heaney is probably the best-known of these poets. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, and has served as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory and Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard, and as Professor of Poetry at Oxford.

Muldoon has been Howard G. B. Clark '21 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. In 1999 he was also elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.

These poets share a formal conservativeness and a willingness to engage with the difficult political situation in Northern Ireland.

Experiment

New Writers Press and After

In the late 1960s, two young Irish poets, Michael Smith (1942-) and Trevor Joyce (1947-) founded the New Writers Press publishing house and a journal called The Lace Curtain. Partly this was to publish their own work and that of some like-minded friends, and partly it was to promote the work of neglected Irish modernists like Coffey and Devlin. Both Joyce and Smith have published considerable bodies of poetry in their own right.

Among the other poets published by the New Writers Press were Geoffrey Squires (1942-), whose early work was influenced by Charles Olson, and Augustus Young (1943-), who admired Ezra Pound and who has translated older Irish poetry, as well as work from Latin America and poems by Bertolt Brecht

Younger poets who write what might be called experimental poetry include Maurice Scully (1952-) and Catherine Walsh (1964-).

Outsiders

In addition to these two loose groupings, a number of prominent Irish poets of the second half of the 20th century could be described as outsiders. These include Thomas Kinsella (1928-), whose early work was influenced by Auden. Kinsella's later work exhibits the influence of Pound in its looser metrical structure and use of imagery but is deeply personal in manner and matter. He is Professor of English at Temple University, Philadelphia. Kinsella also edited the poetry of Austin Clarke, who, in his later work at least, could also be included with the outsiders in Irish poetry.

Michael Hartnet (1944-1999) was unusual amongst Irish poets in that he was equally fluent in both Irish and English. As well as original work in both languages, including haiku in English, he published translations in English of bardic poetry an of the Tao Te Ching.

Eoghan O Tuairisc/Eugene Watters (1919-1982) was another bilingual poet. His The Weekend of Dermot and Grace (1964) is one of the most interesting Irish long poems of the second half of the 20th century and one of the few examples of the application of the lessons of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land in any work by an Irish poet.

Patrick Galvin (1927-) worked mainly with the ballad tradition and his poetry displays his left-wing politics. He has also written several volumes of memoirs, one of which, Song for a Raggy Boy has been made into a film.

Women Poets

The second half of the century also saw the emergence of a number of women poets of note. Two of the most successful of these are Eavan Boland (1944-) and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (1942-). Boland has written widely on specifically feminist themes and on the difficulties faced by women poets in a male-dominated literary world. She is professor of English at Stanford University. Ní Chuilleanáin's poetry reflects an interest in Celtic spirituality. She is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.

Irish Poetry Now

As can be seen, there has been a tendency for Irish poets to become academics and teachers of poetry. In recent years, and thanks partly to the activities of The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and of Poetry Ireland, this tendency has widened out to include a network of writers' workshops spread around the country with funding provided to employ writers to facilitate. These bodies also support and fund poetry readings. In addition, most local authorities and many schools, prisons, universities, and other institutions employ writers-in-residence.

These opportunities for employment have tended to lead to the professionalisation of poetry in Ireland and this is probably most clearly demonstrated by the establishment in recent years of an M.A course in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin. The possible implications of these developments for the future of poetry in Ireland remain to be seen.

External Links

For early poetry in Irish and English: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/
 Swift: http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet318.html
 Cuirt an Mheán Oíche: http://www.showhouse.com/prologue.html
 Goldsmith: http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem875.html and http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/golds02.html
 Mangan: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/2701/poetry/mangan/
 Moore: http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet233.html
 Ferguson: http://www.poetry-archive.com/f/ferguson_samuel.html
 Wilde: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/wpoems.html
 The Arts Council: http://www.artscouncil.ie/
 Poetry Ireland: http://www.poetryireland.ie/
 General Biographical Information: http://www.irishwriters-online.com/index.html

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Irish poetry."

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Irish Republic

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Note: This article is about the historic Irish Republic: Not to be confused with the modern Republic of Ireland (1949 - present), which is often incorrectly referred to as the 'Irish Republic.' [1]

The Irish Republic was the Irish state set up by Dáil Éireann, the illegal assembly made up of the majority of Irish MPss elected in the British general election in 1918, the state failed to achieve any international recognition and lasted until 1922 when it was replaced by the Irish Free State.

It origins dated back to the Easter Rising of 1916, when a small minority of Irish republicans under Padraig Pearse seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic. Though this insurrection was crushed, and at the time had little public support, its surviving leaders, notably Eamon de Valera seized control of a small monarchist party, Sinn Féin that had wrongly been credited by the British Government and the people with being behind the Rising, and used it as a vehicle to campaign for a republic. It won a clear majority of (largely uncontested) seats in the 1918 general election and formed the Assembly of Ireland (in gaelic, Dáil Éireann) in Dublin. The Dáil first assembled in the Mansion House in Dublin in January 1919.

The new body passed a series of documents, including

Government

Its government was initially made up of a ministry or cabinet called the Áireacht, presided over by a Príomh Áire or prime minister. An alternative english title, President of Dáil Éireann came to be used, in particular during the second office holder's tour of the United States. The first President of Dáil Éireann was Cathal Brugha, was elected to the post in January 1919 because the person who would have received it, Eamon de Valera was in a British gaol. In April 1919, having escaped, Eamon de Valera was elected to the post, following Brugha's resignation.

Initially the Irish Republic had no head of state, not least because Sinn Féin was still badly split between monarchists (led by Arthur Griffith) and republicans under de Valera. In August 1921, de Valera had Dáil Éireann upgrade his post to a full head of state, known as President of the Republic.

War of Independence

From 1919 to 1921 the Irish War of Independence was fought, between the Irish Republican Army (the paramilitary army of the Irish Republic) and British forces, notably the notorious Black and Tans (former soldiers specially recruited, who wore uniforms of blan and khaki, hence the name). Both sides carried out brutal murders; The Black and Tans burned entire villages and massacred ordinary civilians, while the IRA burned historic buildings and mounted a form of ethnic clensing against protestants, particularly in the Munster area. (They even tried to burn down historic Carton House, the home of the eighteenth century Irish patriot and rebel, Lord Edward Fitzgerald until a family member reasoned with them!)

The largely Catholic police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary found itself caught in the middle; murdered by the IRA as part of the Crown forces, while trying to restrain and halt by brutality of the Black and Tans. By 1921, the IRA, as its senior strategist, the Irish Republic's Minister for Finance, Michael Collins admitted, was on the brink of collapse. Luckily however, the British government did not realise how close they were to victory, and offered a Truce which the astonished Irish leaders accepted.

The Treaty

In December 1921, negotiators from the Irish Republic's government, led by Griffith and Collins and the British Government team under Prime Minister David Lloyd George and including Winston Churchill, signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, replacing the Irish Republic with a new dominion called the Irish Free State. The leadership of the Republic split between pro and anti-treatyites, the latter under the leadership of resigned president Eamon de Valera. However the public clearly was in favour of the Treaty and the new state. The Civil War ended in 1923.

The Irish Republic had a short existence. It is difficult to work out exactly what public support it had, for of the two elections that took place during its existence, in 1918 and 1921, the former saw most seats won without a contest, while in the latter all seats but four were elected unopposed. Whether that was because of genuine public support or fear of challenging Sinn Féin and in particular the IRA is impossible to guess. Accounts have come to light of by-elections being won by Sinn Féin in 1917 and 1918 because, in one notorious case, a gun was placed to the head of Returning Officer about to announce the victory of a non-Sinn Féin candidate and he was told to 'think again'. (He recounted and 'found' extra votes that 'gave' the seat to Sinn Féin.) A recent Irish academic study, on the basis of examining voting patterns in contested seats, in contested by-elections and in local government elections, concluded that Sinn Fein had the support of somewhere between 45% and 48% of the electorate.

But given the likelihood that a large proportion of voters supporting the party did not necessarily agree with its policy platform (a common occurrence in democracies, where votes may be gained through (i) support for popular candidates irrespective of policy, (ii) voters who join a perceived 'bandwagon', (iii) people being turned off by rival parties and so vote for the 'least worst option', (iv) personal reasons separate from national agendas) it seems likely that probably no more than one in three Irish voters in 1918 supported the idea of UDI (Unilaterally Declared Independence), with the vast majority accepting for some form of workable self government short of an independent republic. Such analysis reflects contemporary records and memories of those who lived in the period, who spoke of the vast majority of people in their areas being either indifferent, unenthuastic or moderate in their views, with only small groups (whether Sinn Féin, the Irish Parliamentary Party or unionists) being passionately committed to a 'cause'.

Though the leaders tried to set up a functioning parliament and government, the Irish Republic never was internationally acknowledged as a legitimate regime by any state in the world. Efforts by President de Valera in the United States and the Republic's 'ambassador' at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War One, Sean T. O'Kelly to get international recognition failed. According to international law, and even most Irish historians, the real government in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 continued to be the British Dublin Castle regime under the Chief Secretary of Ireland (the British cabinet minister who effectively headed the Dublin Castle administration) and the nominal head, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the King's representative. Even some of those who fought to 'preserve the Republic' and abandon the Anglo-Irish Treaty in the Irish Civil War (1922-23), most notably Eamon de Valera, later admitted that their opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Irish Free State was a mistake. (De Valera answerably unambiguously 'opposing the Treaty' when asked near the end of his life by someone 'what was your biggest mistake?')

Speaking in Dáil Éireann in the 1990s, current Taoiseach (prime minister) and leader of the anti-treaty Fianna Fáil party, Bertie Ahern, admitted that the real date from which Irish independence should be measured, isn't 1919 and the formation of the Irish Republic but 1922 and the formation of the Irish Free State, the first internationally recognised, legally legitimate Irish State.

Footnote

1 The Republic of Ireland is often incorrectly referred to as the 'Irish Republic' in some elements of the British media, notably the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and The Times. The usage of the term, though incorrect and having no basis in law, declined somewhat in the 1990s but still remains inexplicably the preferred house style in some British publications.

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Irish theatre

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The history of Irish theatre begins with the rise of the English administration in Dublin at the start of the 17th century. Over the next 400 years, this small country was to make a disproportionate contribution to drama in English.

Small Beginnings

Although there would appear to have been performances of plays on religious themes in Ireland from as early as the 14th century, the first well-documented instance of a theatrical production in Ireland is a 1601 staging of Gorboduc presented by Lord Mountjoy Lord Deputy of Ireland in the Great Hall in Dublin Castle. The play had been written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton for the 1561/2 Christmas festivities at the Inner Temple in London and appears to have been selected because it was a story of a divided kingdom descending into anarchy that was applicable to the situation in Ireland at the time of the performance. Mountjoy started a fashion, and private performances became quite commonplace in great houses all over Ireland over the following thirty years.

The First Playhouse

When Thomas Wentworth became Lord Lieutenant in 1633. He wanted to turn Dublin into a true capital and as part of his programme, he planned a theatre for his court. A member of his court, John Ogilby was charged with bringing over a company from London and was made the first Irish Master of the Revels. The an outbreak of plague in London, which had closed down the theatres there, made it easier to recruit for the project, and Ogilby even managed to bring over a resident playwright, James Shirley. In 1637, they premiered Shirley's The Royal Master in the new Werburgh Street Theatre, which had probably opened the previous year.

The Court in Kilkenny

In 1642, as a result of the English Civil War, Dublin Royalists were forced to flee the city. Many of them went to Kilkenny to join a confederacy of Old English and Irish that formed in that city. Kilkenny had a tradition of dramatic performance going back to 1366, and the Dublin company, much attenuated, set up in their new home. At least one new play was published in Kilkenny; A Tragedy of Cola's Fury, OR, Lirenda's Misery, a blatantly political work with the Lirenda of the title being an anagram of Ireland.

With the restoration of the monarchy in 1661, Ogilby was commissioned to design the triumphal arches and write masques for the new king's entrance into London. Ogilby was reinstated as Master of the Revels and returned to Dublin to open a new theatre in Smock Alley. Although starting well, this new theatre was essentially under the control of the administration in Dublin castle and staged mainly pro-Stuart works and Shakespearean classics. As a result, Irish playwrights and actors of real talent were drawn to London.

The Restoration

An early example of this trend is William Congreve, one of the most important writers for the late 18th London stage. Although born in Yorkshire, Congreve grew up in Ireland and studied with Jonathon Swift in Kilkenny and at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduating, Congreve moved to London to study law at the Temple and pursue a literary career. His first play, The Old Bachelor (1693) was sponsored by John Dryden, and he went on to write at least four more plays. The last of these, The Way of the World (1700) is the one Congreve work regularly revived on the modern stage. However, at the time of its creation, it was a relative failure and he wrote no further works for the theatre.

With the accession to the throne of William of Orange, the whole ethos of Dublin Castle, including its attitude to the theatre, change. Smock Alley stayed in existence until 1811 and new theatres, such as the Theatre Royal, Queens' Theatre, and The Gaiety Theatre opened during the 19th century. However, the one constant for the next 200 years was that the main action in the history of Irish theatre happened abroad, mainly in London.

The 18th Century

The 18th century saw the emergence of two major Irish dramatists, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who were two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage in the 18th century. Goldsmith (1728-1774) was born in Roscommon and grew up in extremely rural surroundings. He entered Trinity College in 1745 and graduated in 1749. He returned to the family home, and in 1751, began to travel, finally settling in London in 1756, where he published poetry, prose and two plays, The Good-Natur'd Man 1768 and She Stoops to Conquer 1773. This latter was a huge success and is still regularly revived.

Sheridan (1751-1816) was born in Dublin into a family with a strong literary and theatrical tradition. His mother was a writer and his father was manager of Smock Alley Theatre. The family moved to England in the 1750s, and Sheridan attended Harrow Public School. His first play, The Rivals 1775, was performed at [Covent Garden]] and was an instant success. He went on to become the most significant London playwright of the late 18th century with plays like The School for Scandal and The Critic. He was owner of the Drury Lane Theatre, which he bought from David Garrick. The theatre burned down in 1809, and Sheridan lived out the rest of his life in reduced circumstances. He is buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

The 19th Century

After Sheridan, the next Irish dramatist of historical importance was Dion Boucicault (1820-1890. Boucicault was born in Dublin but was sent to England to complete his eduction. At school, he began writing dramatic sketches and soon took up acting under the stage name of Lee Moreton. His first play was Legend of Devil's Dyke 1838 in which he acted himself in Brighton. His first London production was London Assurance 1841. This was a great success and he seemed set to become the major writer of comedies of his day. However, his next few plays were not as successful and Boucicault found himself in debt. He recovered some of his reputation with The Corsican Brothers (1852), a well constructed melodrama.

In 1853, he moved to New York, where he soon became a hit with plays like The Poor of New York ([[1857]), Dot (1859, based on Charles Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth) and The Octoroon (1859). These plays tackled issues such as urban poverty and slavery. Boucicault was also involved in getting the 1856 law on copyright passed through Congress. His last New York play was The Colleen Bawn (1860). In that year, Boucicault returned to London to stage The Colleen Bawn and the play ran for 247 performances at The Adelphi Theatre. He wrote several more successful plays, including The Shaughran (1875) and Robert Emmet (1884). These later plays helped perpetuate the stereotype of the drunken, hotheaded, garrulous Irishman that had been common on the English stage since the time of Shakespeare. Other Irish dramatists of the period include John Banim and Gerald Griffin, whos novel The Collegians formed the basis for The Colleen Bawn.

Boucicault is widely regarded as the wittiest Irish dramatist between Sheridan and Oscar Wilde (1845-1900). Wilde was born in Dublin into a literary family and studied at Trinity College, where he had a brilliant career. In 1874 he won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. Here he began his career as a writer, winning the Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna. His studies were cut short during his second year at Oxford when his father died leaving large debts.

During a short but glittering literary career, Wilde wrote poetry, short stories, criticism and a novel, but his plays probably represent his most enduring legacy. Wilde's first stage success came with Lady Windemere's Fan (1892), which resulted in his becoming the most talked about dramatist in London. He followed this up with A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and his most famous play The Importance of Being Earnest that same year.

With these plays, Wilde came to dominate late-Victorian English theatre. His plays are noted for the lightness of their wit, but he also contrived to address some serious issues around sexual and class roles and identity, as he wrote himself 'treating the serious things lightly and the light things seriously'. Events in Wilde's personal life were to overtake his literary success and he died in Paris in 1900. He remains one of the great figures in the history of Irish theatre and his plays are frequently performed all over the English-speaking world.

Wilde's contemporary George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was a very different kind of writer. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876 intending to become a novelist. Here he became active in socialist politics and became a member of the Fabian Society. He was also a very public vegetarian. His writing for the stage was influenced by Henrik Ibsen. His early political plays were not popular, but he made a breakthrough with John Bull's Other Island (1904). Shaw was extremely prolific, and his collected writings filled 36 volumes. Many of his plays are now forgotten, but a number, including Major Barbara, Saint Joan (usually considered his masterpiece) and Pygmalion are still regularly performed. Pygmalion was the basis for the movie My Fair Lady, a fact which benefitted the National Gallery of Ireland as Shaw had left the royalties of the play to the gallery. A statue to the playwright now stands outside the gallery entrance. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924

The Abbey and After

A seachange in the history of the Irish theatre came with the establishment in Dublin in 1899 of the Irish Literary Theatre, later to become the Abbey Theatre. The history of this theatre is well documented, and its importance can be seen from the list of writers whose plays were first performed here in the early days of the 20th century. These included W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, George Moore, and Sean O'Casey. Equally importantly, through the introduction by Yeats, via Ezra Pound, of elements of the Noh theatre of Japan, a tendency to mythologise quotidian situations, and a particularly strong focus on writings in dialects of Hiberno-English, the Abbey was to create a style that held a strong fascination for future Irish dramatists. Indeed, it could almost be said that the Abbey created the basic elements of a national theatrical style.

This period also saw a rise in the writing of plays in Irish, especially after the formation, in 1928, of An Taidhbhearc, a theatre dedicated to the Irish language. The Gate Theatre, also founded in 1928 under the direction of Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammoir, introduced Irish audiences to many of the classics of the European stage.

Mid 20th Century

The twentieth century saw a number of Irish playwrights come to prominence. Samuel Beckett is probably the most significant of these. Beckett had a long career as a novelist and poet before his first play, Waiting for Godot (1953) made him famous. This play, along with his second, Endgame, is one of the great works of absurdist theatre. Beckett won the Nobel Prize in 1969.

The Lyric Theatre, founded in 1944 by Austin Clarke was based in the Abbey until 1951 and produced many of Clarke's own verse plays. From the mid 1950s, the Unitarian Church at St Stephen’s Green , Dublin was home to Amharclann an Damer/The Damer Theatre. The Damer produced both professional and amateur Irish language theatre. The world premier of Brendan Behan’s An Giall (The Hostage) took place here in 1957. The theatre closed in the late 1970s. Behan went on to be an extremely popular dramatist, particularly through hi work with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London

Other important Irish dramatists of this period include: Denis Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, and John B. Keane.

Recent Developments

Since the 1970s, a number of companies have emerged to challenge the Abbey's dominance and introduce different styles and approaches. These include Focus Theatre, The Children's T Company, the Project Theatre Company, Druid Theatre, TEAM and Field Day. These companies have nurtured a number of writers, actors, and directors who have since gone on to be successful in London, Broadway and Hollywood or in other literary fields. These include Roddy Doyle, Peter Sheridan, Brian Friel, Stephen Rea, Gary Hynes and Gabriel Byrne.

Further Reading

External Links

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Music of Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Ireland is internationally known for its folk music, which has remained a vibrant tradition throughout the 20th century, when many traditional forms worldwide lost popularity to pop music. In spite of emigration and a well-developed connection to music imported from the United Kingdom and United States, Irish music has kept many of its traditional aspects. It has also been modernized, however, and fused with rock and roll, punk rock and other genres. Some of these fusion artists have attained much mainstream success, at home and abroad, including Sinead O'Connor, Van Morrison, The Pogues, The Chieftains, The Cranberries and the Afro-Celt Sound System.

Irish traditional music is meant for dancing at celebrations for weddings, saint's days or other observances. Songs are almost always divided into two eight-bar strains which are each played twice to make a 32-bar whole. This makes for an eminently danceable music, and Irish dance has been widely exported abroad. Set dancing is the most popular of the Irish traditional dances, having been revived in the early 1980s and popularized after Riverdance's surprise success in 1994. Riverdance was a group starring Michael Flately and Jean Butler that formed to perform during an interval in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest and soon became popular throughout the world. Other traditional dances include reels and jigs, as well as imported polkas and [[mazurka]s.

Pub sessions are now the home for much of Irish traditional music, which takes place at informal gatherings in urban pubs. The first of these modern pub sessions took place in 1947 in London's Camden Town at a bar called The Devonshire Arms; the practice was only later introduced to Ireland. By the 1960s pubs like O'Donoghues in Dublin were holding their own pub sessions, and the Fleadh Ceoil music festival was sparking increased popular interest in traditional music.

Traditional Irish instruments include:

The uillean pipes play a prominent part in a form of instrumental music called Fonn Mall, descendents of ancient songs, as well as in the unaccompanied vocal music called sean nós. Tony McMahon, Davy Spillane and Altan play these traditional airs, while Seán Ó Riada's The Chieftains are largely responsible for the revitalization of folk music in the 1960s. Traditional music, especially sean nós, played a major part in Irish popular music later in the century, with Van Morrison, Hothouse Flowers and Sinead O'Connor using traditional elements in popular songs. The Pogues, led by Shane MacGowan, helped fuse Irish folk with punk rock to some success beginning in the 1980s, while the Afro-Celt Sound System achieved considerable fame adding West African influences in the 1990s.

References

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Northern Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Northern Ireland, a region of the United Kingdom of