literature in Irish

literature in Irish. Ireland has the oldest vernacular literature in western Europe. Apart from inscriptions the earliest surviving writings in Irish are interlinear glosses in Latin religious texts. The earliest manuscript entirely in Irish is Lebor na hUidre, ‘the Book of the Dun Cow’, written in Clonmacnoise c.1100.

Of major importance are the early prose sagas, classified by modern scholars into four separate cycles.1.  The Mythological Cycle tells of the Tuatha Dé Danann, originally the deities of the pagan Irish but reinterpreted after the coming of Christianity as earlier inhabitants of the country. They included Lug, Nuadu, the sea‐god Manannán, and the Dagda (literally the ‘good god’). The foremost mythological tale is Cath Maige Tuired (The Battle of Moytura), in which the Tuatha Dé are first oppressed by and finally defeat the race of giants known as the Fomori, a struggle reminiscent of the similar conflict between the Olympians and Titans of classical mythology.2.  The Ulster Cycle recounts the exploits of the heroes around Conchobar mac Nessae, king of the Ulaid. The foremost tale is Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle‐Raid of Cooley), in which the young hero Cú Chulainn defends Ulster alone against the invading army of Queen Medb. The Ulster Cycle is heroic in the strict sense. War is the chief activity of its heroes and loyalty and prowess are their main virtues. There are numerous other Ulster tales, of which the tragic story of Deirdre and Naoisi is perhaps the best known.3.  The stories concerning early rulers of Ireland are collectively known as the Cycle of the Kings. They cannot always be entirely distinguished from the mythological tales, containing as they do much mythological and legendary material. The tale of the birth and early life of Cormac mac Airt is a good example. Perhaps the finest king tale is Togail Bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel), which tells how Conaire, king of Tara, is induced to break his gesa or ‘taboos’ one by one, with disastrous consequences.4.  The Ossianic Cycle deals with Fionn mac Cumhaill, his son Oisín, his grandson Oscar, and the other heroes of his fian or ‘war‐band’. Unlike the Ulster heroes who occupy a central place in society and fight from chariots, the Ossianic heroes live in the forest as outlaws and travel exclusively on foot. The Ossianic Cycle, itself of ultimately mythological origin, is poorly attested in the earlier literature. The turning point is the late 12th‐century text Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Ancients), in which St Patrick meets Oisín and Caoilte, two surviving heroes of the fian, and accompanies them around Ireland. The Acallam is thus a work of dinnsenchas or toponymic lore. As each story is told, Patrick enjoins that it be written down lest it be lost. The Acallam is almost certainly a Gaelic counterblast to the contemporary Cistercian reforms. The anonymous author, by making St Patrick the preserver of the pagan past, is protesting at the Cistercian expulsion of native learning from the monasteries.Lebor Gabála, ‘the Book of Invasions’, though not a saga, deals inter alia with the Tuatha Dé Danann. The work, which underwent constant revision, relates the synthetic history of Ireland, a largely spurious account of the various peoples to have inhabited Ireland before the coming of the Gaels themselves. The various sources of this ‘history’ include the Bible, Isidore of Seville, and much native tradition. The synthetic history was not seriously questioned until the 19th century.

The classical ethnographers noticed that the Celts sang eulogies and satires to the accompaniment of the lyre. The bardic poets of medieval Ireland are direct inheritors of this ancient tradition, for the poet (Ir. file, ‘seer’) is a transmutation of the pagan druid. The oldest poetry consists of stressed alliterative lines, often without stanzaic form. The bulk of early poetry, however, is syllabic and is composed for the most part in four‐line stanzas. Such a metrical form is based on Christian Latin metres. Whether the rhyme of Irish syllabic poetry derives from Latin models is less certain.

We have a certain amount of nature poetry associated with early monasticism as well as several didactic poems on Christian themes, Félire Oengusso (The Martyrology of Oengus) (c. 800), for example, and the biblical Saltair na Rann (Metrical Psalter) (late 10th century).

By the early 13th century praise poetry had reached its fullest development, involving a high degree of metrical adornment. None the less the pagan origins of this poetry are reflected in the way the poets composed reclining in the dark. The main function of bardic encomium was to legitimize the rule of the chieftain addressed. Since poets were well rewarded for their poems, they were prepared even to support the lordship of the Anglo‐Norman nobility.

A large corpus of Ossianic lays in syllabic metres survives together with much personal poetry. Noteworthy are the so‐called dánta grádha, love poems that exhibit the influence of the European Renaissance.

The first book printed in Irish, John Carswell's Foirm na nUrrnuidheadh, was a translation of the Presbyterian Book of Common Order and appeared in Edinburgh in 1567. The Catechism of Seán Ó Cearnaigh, published in Dublin in 1571, was the first book printed in Irish in Ireland. Ó Cearnaigh plagiarized Carswell but unlike the Scottish book, which was in roman type, the Irish catechism was printed in a specially cut Gaelic font, which was also used for the New Testament in 1602 and Leabhar na nUrnaightheadh gComhchoidchionn (the Book of Common Prayer) in 1608. William Daniel saw both through the press, though several hands are to be seen in the two works. The 1608 Irish Prayer Book is an excellent translation, regrettably never reprinted.

The Catholics, prevented from publishing in Ireland, produced devotional works on the Continent. The Franciscans of St Anthony's College in Louvain were the pioneers, publishing Teagasg Críosdaidhe or Catechism by Giolla Brighde Ó hEodhasa, but based on Canisius and Bellarmine, in Antwerp in 1611. St Anthony's College acquired its own press and the first books printed there were Desiderius by Florence Conry (1616), an adaptation of a Spanish devotional tract, and Mac Aingil's Sgáthán Shacramuinte na hAithridhe (1618), an original composition on the Tridentine understanding of penance. Mac Aingil is a consummate stylist and his work enjoyed great popularity. Theobald Stapleton's Latin and Irish Catechismus seu doctrina Christiana printed in Brussels in 1639 is unusual since it uses roman characters for the Irish and a simplified spelling.

The secular priest Geoffrey Keating produced two devotional works, Eochairsgiath an Aifrinn, an explication and defence of the Counter‐Reformation doctrine of the eucharist, and Trí Biorghaoithe an Bháis (Three Shafts of Death). This latter sought to deflect the Irish Catholics from sin, for Keating believed that the English conquest was divine punishment. Keating's most important work was Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (FFÉ), a narrative history of Ireland from the beginning till the coming of the Normans, whose object was to defend the Irish against the calumnies of the foreign historians and to explain how Irish and Old English had fused to become the Catholic Irish nation. Keating's historical writing is therefore as religious as his religious tracts are political. Since Keating accepted without question the synthetic history of the Lebor Gabála, FFÉ compares unfavourably with that of his Englishspeaking contemporaries. Although Keating did not publish his works but circulated them in manuscript, they were widely read.

Another important historical work was Annála Ríoghachta Éireann, an annalistic history of Ireland from the biblical flood to the 16th century. The chief compiler of the work was Michael O'Clery, a Franciscan friar (b. c.1590), who was sent to Ireland to gather material for a history of the country. Since he was not a priest, O'Clery was unlikely to be proscribed. Indeed it appears from his colophons that he worked among other places in the library of Archbishop James Ussher. O'Clery had three collaborators: Farfassa O'Mulconry, Peregrine O'Duigenan, and Peregrine O'Clery. After years of collecting material O'Clery and his colleagues settled in Drowes, Co. Donegal, in 1632 and there produced their annals, more commonly known as the Annals of the Four Masters.

Duald Mac Firbis (1600–71) was a member of a well‐established family of historians. He compiled a genealogical compendium The Great Book of Genealogies and also assisted Sir James Ware in his historical researches. Irish lexicography began in earnest in the 17th century. The most important work perhaps was the Latin–Irish dictionary of Richard Plunkett, completed in Trim in 1662. Although Plunkett's work was never printed, the Celtic scholar Edward Lhuyd published material from it in his Archaeologia Britannica (1707), whence some entries found their way into later dictionaries, misprints and all.

A completely new departure in prose writing was Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (PCT), a savage satire upon the labouring classes of Gaelic society. As well as describing the demonic origins of ‘Clan Thomas’ and incidents from their history, the author gives an account of two sittings of an assembly in north Kerry in 1632 and 1645. It has been thought that PCT was written after the second of these dates, but internal evidence indicates that both are projections and that the work was composed c.1615. PCT parodies Irish story‐telling and owes much to medieval English and continental writing. A sequel to PCT was written by a different author in Leinster c.1662 and appended to the original work. PCT clearly struck a chord with the Irish‐reading public for it survives in many manuscripts and gave rise to a whole new class of Irish writing.

The prose writers of the earlier part of the 17th century were often trained poets and composed in the traditional syllabic metres. Mac Aingil's poem to the infant Jesus, for example, is deservedly famous. As the 17th century progressed the looser stressed metres gained in importance. Geoffrey Keating composed chiefly in such metres, though syllabic poems of his also survive. Patrick Hackett (c.1600–1654), a Dominican priest from Tipperary, excelled at invective. The Munsterman David O'Bruadar (1625–98) was a master of poetic language in a variety of metres. PCT is sometimes erroneously ascribed to him.

The political upheavals of the 17th century gave rise to the caoineadh, a long poetic lament consisting of four‐stressed lines and the same endrhyme throughout. Among the best‐known examples are Tuireamh na hÉireann by Seán Ó Conaill (fl. 1650) and the ananymous Síogaí Rómhánach, composed 1650–3. Poetry flourished in south‐east Ulster in the 17th and 18th centuries, the first Oriel poet being Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta (1647–1733). The most important poet of the late 17th century was the Munsterman Egan O'Rahilly (c.1675–1729). O'Rahilly is an evocative and accomplished poet who produced the first fully developed aisling, a poem in which a maiden, the personification of Ireland, appears to the poet, laments her present condition, and looks for the return of the Stuarts (see jacobitism) and a new age.

By 1800 the Irish language was apparently in terminal decline. The only works printed in the language were catechisms, sermons, and translations of scripture. In the first half of the 19th century manuscripts continued to be transcribed and folk poets still composed in some places. The most famous of these was the Mayoman Antaine Ó Reachtabhra or Raftery (1784–1835), many of whose songs are still remembered.

From the end of the 18th century a number of scholars published editions of texts and anthologies of poetry, but it was not until c.1875 that the revival of Irish as a spoken medium was seriously contemplated. The foundation of the Gaelic League in 1893 was crucial, not least because the league encouraged the creation of new literature. Many of its early members were scholars of the language, e.g. Douglas Hyde and Patrick Dinneen (1860–1934), whose second dictionary (1927) was for long the standard work, or creative writers in it, such as Patrick Pearse and Peter O'Leary (1839–1920). The latter, more commonly known as an tAthair Peader, was the first to abandon the archaizing classical language in favour of the simple diction of everyday speech. His literary folk tale Séadna (1910) quickly became a classic.

The native government, established in 1922, took responsibility for the cultivation of the language and an ambitious plan of translating prose works was undertaken. Unfortunately many of the originals selected were of second rank and the Irish versions remained unread.

One of the most important figures of the early 20th century was Pádraig Ó Conaire (1882–1928). Though from Galway and the child of Irish‐speaking parents, Ó Conaire eschewed the folk tale as a model for his short stories and consciously wrote in a modern idiom. The Gaeltacht produced a number of autobiographies in the 1920s and 1930s.

After the Second World War a new generation of writers, both native speakers and others, came into being, assisted in part by the foundation of the Irish‐language magazine Comhar. Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1907–70), Liam Ó Flaitheartaigh (1897–1984), and Seosamh Mac Grianna (1901–93) are particularly significant in prose, and Máirtín Ó Direáin (1910–88) and Máire Mhac an tSaoi (1922– ) in poetry. Seán Ó Ríordáin (1917–77) was discouraged from writing by the reception of his first collection Eireaball Spideoige (1952), but he is considered by some the greatest poet in Irish for three centuries.

The present state of Irish literature is anomalous since the reading public for Irish is very small, but the output in both verse and prose is relatively large. The contemporary literature is varied in content and much of it compares favourably with writing in English in Ireland. Noteworthy are the prose writers Diarmuid Ó Súilleabháin (1932–85) and Eoghan Ó Tuairisc (1918–82), for example, and the poets Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (1952– ), Biddy Jenkinson (1949– ), and Liam Ó Muirthile (1950– ). Literary criticism has flourished in the periodical Irisleabhar Mhá Nuad and elsewhere.

Nicholas Williams