IRISH

IRISH
1. The adjective for Ireland, its people, languages, and traditions: Irish GAELIC, the Irish language, the Irish Question, Irish whiskey. Its nuances are varied, ranging from the sublime (Irish patriot) through such humorous and mischievous ‘institutions’ as the Irish bull and Irish joke, to facetious phrases like an Irish hurricane a flat calm with drizzling rain an Irish rise a reduction in pay. Such expressions are sometimes deliberately used in Britain to express anti-Irish feeling. If something seems unusual, fey, or illogical, a common comment is: That's a bit Irish.

2. Irish Gaelic: In Connemara they speak Irish.

Irish and English

The relationship between the English and Irish languages is at least eight centuries old. In that period, the fortunes of both have waxed and waned, and the contacts have been complicated by conquest, rebellion, religion, ethnicity, immigration, emigration, politics, and education. As English has advanced and Irish retreated, it has been said both that English ‘murdered’ Irish and that Irish ‘committed suicide’ in the face of English. It is certainly true that the main reasons for the replacement of Irish by English are social and political rather than linguistic. They include: (1) The large-scale settlements begun in the 16c by the Tudors and reinforced by the Stuarts and Cromwell in the 17c. (2) The penal laws of the 18c which reduced the native population to subsistence level and ensured that Irish was no longer the first language for those who hoped to improve their political or social position. (3) The introduction of National Schools in 1831, where English was the sole medium of instruction. (4) The years of famine in the mid-19c, which resulted in mass emigration and a belief that land and language were blighted.

The heyday of Irish

When in the 12c the Normans invaded Ireland, they found a secure language with strong and distinctive traditions. Speakers of Irish had Gaelicized not only the earlier people of the island and other Celtic settlers, but also later Pictish, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse settlers. The French, Flemish, Welsh, and English languages went to Ireland with the Normans and became in due course subject to pressure from Irish. Only within the eastern coastal region known as the Pale did English maintain a fragile grip. Medieval statutes show both the power of Irish and a wish to protect English against it: in 1285, a letter sponsored by the Bishop of Kildare and sent to the king suggested that Irish-speaking clerics should not be promoted because of their wish to maintain their language, and in 1366, the Statutes of Kilkenny (written in French) enjoined the English to use English names, customs, and language. However, Irish encroached even at the highest levels: in the 14c, the Earls of Ormond and Desmond spoke Irish and the latter, although Lord Chief Justice, wrote Irish poetry.

The conquest of Ireland

In the 16c, the English defeated the Gaelic order in Ireland; land was confiscated and plantation schemes brought in large numbers of English and later Scottish settlers. From 1600, English grew in strength and by 1800 was regularly used by up to 50% of the population. However, such was the growth in population that on the eve of the famines of 1846–8 there were probably more Irish-speakers in absolute terms than at any previous time. What began with Tudor pronouncements became more and more part of the social tissue of the island. As the 19c famines and mass emigrations proceeded, English consolidated its position. The Catholic Church became more reconciled to it and wary of Protestant proselytism through Irish, a process started by Elizabeth. Political leaders such as Daniel O'Connell were more concerned with emancipation than language and a school system was established, managed by the Catholic clergy, that excluded Irish from the curriculum. The steady decline of Irish was abetted by a general, pragmatic desire to acquire English. By the mid-19c, few Irish monolinguals were left and bilingualism had become a way-station on the road to English alone.

The Gaelic League

The founding of the Gaelic League in 1893 marked the start of the strongest wave of revivalist sentiment, which has endured in all its vicissitudes. Irish revivalism, an example of linguistic nationalism, arrived only when the language was already in grave peril. Its leaders were such Dublin intellectuals as Douglas Hyde and Eoin MacNeill, whose Irish was acquired rather than native. The movement largely failed to engage the support of the dwindling group of native speakers in the rural and impoverished Gaeltacht: an Irish-speaking area in the west that was idealized, romanticized, and kept at a safe remove. In addition, Irish was often linked with the strength of Catholicism, an association which permitted English to be depicted as the secular medium of a foreign culture, despite the fact that the Catholic Church promoted English even in Irish-speaking parishes.

Irish since independence

The Gaelic League had considerable success in fighting for Irish in schools and university but did not alter the language habits of the general population. When the Irish Free State was set up in 1921, Irish became a government responsibility. It was declared the national language, but accompanying the rhetoric was a serious and sometimes pessimistic concern for its fate. The government was often (and continues to be) accused of paying only lipservice to revival. It entrusted the task to the schools and it is therefore in education that the most important action has taken place over the last 70 years, such as compulsory Irish classes and making the gaining of an overall secondary school leaving certificate dependent on passing Irish (a rule no longer in effect). However, these efforts have not reversed the long decline: Ireland is now an overwhelmingly English-speaking country in which only 1–2% use Irish regularly and, even in the Gaeltacht, many parents bring up their children in English. Given the strong social currents of English in everyday life, it is hard to see what more the schools could have done than apply a thin wash of Irish across the land. See BORROWING, CELTIC LANGUAGES, HIBERNO-ENGLISH, SHELTA.