Rebel Tongue: Irish Language and Resistance
Stieg Hedlund is a noteworthy game designer, but also a writer not only of game narratives but also a blog focused on history, language, and culture, Deru Kugi. He was also an editor of my forthcoming book, Roseleigh, and agreed to write a guest post about where his topics intersect with mine.
When I was 11, my mother purchased the Horslips record, Happy to Meet — Sorry to Part. She bought it because it looked like a concertina — a musical instrument she was learning at the time. I liked it because it friggin’ rocked. Music mavens generally count it as the first Celtic rock album. More recently, other bands I’ve enjoyed, such as Big Country, The Pogues, and The Real McKenzies worked in the genre. It was also my first encounter with the Irish language.
Two of Happy to Meet — Sorry to Part’s 14 tracks, “An Bratach Bán”, and “Bím Istigh Ag Ól” bore names and lyrics not in English. Though having a familiar sound, it was completely incomprehensible to me. In those days before the internets, there was nowhere to turn to learn more. Even now, asking the tubes does little good. We only learn the titles translate to “The White Flag”, and “I’m Inside Drinking”, respectively.¹ Now as then, I accept these songs for their musical qualities, being unable to grasp their content.
In my widening studies of myths during my teen years, I encountered those of the Celts, learning a few words. When I visited Ireland for the first time, I saw with interest that the signage was bilingual. Also on that trip, we visited relatives of Brendan, a friend of my brother’s, near Killarney. He said he felt bad for not being able to understand the older couple’s thick accents. I could reassure him I had definitely heard Irish words.
At one time, the Irish language was in full retreat in its home country. Various groups invaded Ireland at several times in its history. But Henry VIII decided on thorough conquest, culminating in 1603 with Hugh O’Neill’s surrender to James I. This reshaped the island into a feudal tributary and eventually part of Great Britain. Naturally, the English preferred their own language be used for administration. And despite the nearly unanimous refusal of the Irish to convert to the state religion of Anglicanism, the Catholic church in a perverse effort to show their flock as “civilized” promoted the use of English as well. Even as early as the late 1270s, Edward I was warned:²
Hybernica lingua vobis et vestris sit inimica.
Irish-speakers are enemies to you and yours.
In 1800 the majority of people spoke Irish, but as bilingualism spread from the city centers, being a monolingual Irish speaker branded one a rustic peasant. The people themselves sought to shed this stigma, forcing their children to learn English:³
I have myself reported the fact that the anxiety of the people to learn English in parts of Ireland which I have visited is so intense that they have instituted a sort of police system over the children to prevent them uttering a single word of Irish — they themselves not knowing a single word of English — so that, under such circumstances, a child when he went home at night was a sort of dummy if he had not other children to communicate with. I saw in such cases that the intelligence of the children was positively stunted — that it dwindled away.
The so-called Potato Famine — known in Irish as an Drochshaol, “the hard times” — of course landed hardest on those same Irish-speaking rural farmers. 1M people died, and another 1–1.5M emigrated, taking their language with them to mainland Britain, Australia or the Americas. By 1841, the census showed Irish speakers had dwindled to less than half the population.⁴ Monoglot speakers declined still more sharply. There were 800,000 in 1800, 319,602 by mid-century, and only 16,873 in the early 20th century.⁵
However, as I’ve discussed in my posts on argots, language can be a form of resistance as well. Irish was completely incomprehensible to the British, and so, effectively, a secret language. The British saw this deviation from the official language and use of Irish as subversive. They banned it, only pushing the Irish further towards radicalism.
From the late 1800s to World War I, Europe experienced significant societal changes, many focused on language revival. In Ireland, this was twofold: a literary revival, led by W. B. Yeats and a linguistic revival whose most important writers were Peadar Ua Laoghaire and Pádraig Pearse. By 1884, the bilingual Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge (Gaelic Journal) began publication with a masthead announcing it was:
Of these, Pearse came to be one of the more important figures in Ireland’s fight for independence as well. At 16 he joined Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League). By 23 he became the editor of the league’s newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light, referring to a weapon of myth).
Schooled as a barrister, the one case Pearse tried became emblematic of the conjoined struggles for Irish independence and language. In defiance of a law requiring carts to bear the owner’s name in English, poet, author, and songwriter, Niall Mac Gioll Bhridé (Anglicized as Neil McBride) had on his, in Gaelic script, “N. MAC GIOLLA ḂRIĠDE FIOḊ-MÓR”. He refused to pay the one-shilling fine a bobby demanded of him for displaying “illegible” writing and defended himself in court only to be fined another shilling. Pearse took on his appeal, and also lost, but brought publicity to the case, declaring:⁶
[I]t was in effect decided that Irish is a foreign language on the same level as Yiddish.
Although Conradh na Gaeilge was apolitical, the British arrested Irish speakers at recruitment meetings and jailed them for sedition. Some remained unsure of their language’s value. When Pearse spoke extolling Irish in one of the strongest remaining Irish-speaking areas in the country, his native South Connemara, one listener asked:⁷
Ach cěn mhaith i nuair a théann tú thar An Teach Dóite.
Little good is it when you go beyond An Teach Dóite.
The small village of An Teach Dóite marked the eastern extent of the Irish-speaking community at the time.
By the time of the Easter Rising, Pearse had become one of the highest-ranking leaders of both the Óglaigh na hÉireann (Irish Volunteers) and the Bráithreachas Phoblacht na hÉireann (Irish Republican Brotherhood). After the rebels stormed the General Post Office and made it the headquarters of the Rising, Pearse stood outside the building to read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.
After six days of fighting, the British captured Pearse, court-martialled, and executed him by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol. Such was the fate of many. The organizations involved in the Gaelic Revival were banned in 1919, including Óglaigh na hÉireann, Sinn Féin, and Conradh na Gaeilge and Cumann na mBan (The Irishwomen’s Council). Senior British army officer General Neville McCready, later admitted such bans only had the effect of turning moderates into extremists.⁸
Once Ireland finally achieved independence in 1921, the Irish language could be freely taught. Although there are few, if any monoglot Irish speakers today, nearly 25% of the populace have some knowledge of the language, spreading even to urban areas.
One thing Brendan’s relative told me about — partially through his wife, who spoke more English — was a pilgrimage site nearby. Anglicized as Cahercrovdarrig and sometimes called the “‘The City’ of Shrone”, he named it Cathair Crobh Dearg. Crobh Dearg, meaning “Red Claw”, refers to a pagan figure, likely a local form of the triple goddess, the Morrígna, who later morphed into a Christian saint. Within the site, there is a ruin of what might be a megalithic tomb, an ogham stone, an earthen mound, a sacred well, and an altar stone. A Bealtaine ritual also became Christianized into a May Day event with adherents making circuits of the grounds reciting prayers.
The otherworld, according to the Irish, is only three feet away — even closer in places like Cathair Crobh Dearg. So too, apparently, is the Rebellion. In 1915, nationalists used the site to test improvised explosive devices in preparation for the Easter Rising.⁸
Notes
- “Happy to Meet — Sorry to Part”, Wikipedia, retrieved May 2024.
- J. A. Watt, “Gaelic Polity and Cultural Identity”, New History of Ireland, A. Cosgrove (ed.), 1993.
- P. J. Keenan, 1868, quoted in Diarmuid Ó Donnchadha, Costaran Taoide (The Tide Is Turning), 1995.
- John O’Beirne Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland, 1994.
- Iarfhlaith Watson & Máire Nic Ghiolla Phádraig, “Is there an educational advantage to speaking Irish? An investigation of the relationship between education and ability to speak Irish”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2009.
- Pádraig Pearse, An Claidheamh Soluis, June 1905.
- Maureen Wall, “Decline of the Irish language”, A View of the Irish Language, Brian Ó Cuív (ed.), 1969.
- Paraphrased in Helene O’Keeffe, “Banned! Why nationalist groups were driven underground in 1919”, Atlas of the Irish Revolution, April 2020.
- noeldonnellon, “Cathair Crobh Dearg: An important pilgrimage site for pagans and early Christians, named for a Celtic goddess-turned-saint”, Atlas Obscura, November 2017.
