Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Facultatea de Litere
Departamentul de engleza
IRISH LITERATURE
2014
PART ONE
Obiective:
dezvoltarea
deprinderilor
cercetare
individuala
concretizata
prin
prelegere teoretica
analiza de text
discutie
eseu.
Tematica:
Beginnings in the Celtic world: Celtic society and culture.
Early Irish Literature. The Mythological Cycle. The World of the Sidh in W.B.
Yeatss early poems. Feminine Revisions of the Sidh.
The Cycle of Ulster. Cuchulain and the Yeatsian theatre.
The Cycle of Munster. From Fenian Stories to Joyces Finnegans Wake.
The King Cycle of Tales. The Madness of Sweeney. The Sweeney Figure in
Irish Literature, from Flann OBrien to Seamus Heaney.
Continental Celtic
Celto-Iberian
Lepontic
Insular Celtic
P-Celtic(Brythonic)
Welsh
Cornish
Breton
Q-Celtic(Goidelic)
Irish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic
Manx
Around 500 B.C., Ireland was settled by a Q-Celtic people, the Gaels, who spread
through the whole island. In the course of the next centuries, a number of historical
provinces came into being:
a) Ulster (Ulaid), in the north of Ireland;
b) Munster (Mumu), in the south of Ireland;
c) Connacht (Connachta), in the west of Ireland;
d) Leinster (Laigin), in the east of Ireland;
e) Meath (Mide), the residence of Irelands High Kings, in the middle, with Tara
as its capital.
The Hill of Tara, known as "Teamhair", was once the ancient seat of power in Ireland
142 kings are said to have reigned here in prehistoric and historic times. In ancient
Irish religion and mythology Tara was the sacred place of dwelling for the gods. Saint
Patrick is said to have come to Tara to confront the ancient religion of the pagans at
its most powerful site.
Tribal: the greatest political unit is the tribe (tuath), led by a king (r)
Pastoral: the Celts had no towns in the modern understanding of the term,
their hill-forts were of primarily military significance. Cattle-raising was
regarded as a superior form of social activity, while farming was relegated
to the plebs.
Metempsychosis: the souls were immortal, they could migrate from the
human world to the Otherworld (e.g. Tr-na-n-og); they could dwell within
other creatures and objects (shape-changing)
Togla (destructions)
Tna (cattle-raids)
Tochmarca (wooings)
Fessa (feasts)
Aislinga (visions)
Aitheda (elopments
Serca (loves)
Catha (battles)
Immrama (voyages)
After the arrival of Christianity and the adaptation of the Latin alphabet to the Irish
language, the tales are collected and incorporated into four main cycles, namely:
Mythological
King (historical)
Task:
Write a 4000-word essay on Cultural Landmarks of the Celtic World (8 p.)
Fish
Nuala Ni Dhomnaill, Swept Away
The Tuatha D Danann are the tribe of the Goddess Dana (or Danu), a mothergoddess signifying fertility and plenty, married to the god Bile (or Belenos), a skycentred deity.
The father to most of the gods of the tribe is the Dagda, the good God in the Celtic
sense of good at anything. A figure of immense power, he is often pictured as a
rustic old man, clothed in garb, and possessing three magical objects: a gigantic club
(with which he can both kill enemies and cure friends), a cauldron that never gets
exhausted, a harp that plays by itself.
The Dagda is the father of Ogma (the Irish god of eloquence), and Brigid (or the
"Fiery Arrow or Power".) Brigid is a Celtic three-fold goddess. Her three aspects are
(1) Fire of Inspiration as patroness of poetry, (2) Fire of the Hearth, as patroness of
healing and fertility, and (3) Fire of the Forge, as patroness of smithcraft and martial
arts. She is mother to the craftsmen.
Through the goddess Boann (whose spirit lives within the Boyne river and is
goddess of poetic inspiration and powerful spiritual insight) the Dagda fathered
Aengus (Oengus) Og, the Celtic god of youth and love, described in the following
terms by the Irish poet A.E.:
". . . An energy or love or eternal desire has gone forth which seeks through a
myriad forms of illusion for the infinite being it has left. It is Angus the Young, an
eternal joy becoming love, a love changing into desire, and leading on to earthly
passion and forgetfulness of its own divinity. The eternal joy becomes love when
it has first merged itself in form and images of a divine beauty that dance before it
and lure it from afar. This is the first manifested world, the Tr nan g or World of
Immortal Youth. The love is changed into desire as it is drawn deeper into nature,
and this desire builds up the Mid-world or World of the Waters. And, lastly, as it
lays hold of the earthly symbol of its desire it becomes on Earth that passion
which is spiritual death . . .
One of the most beautiful lyrical tales in the cycle, Aislinge Oengusa (The Vision of
Aengus) recounts how Aengus, in a dream, has the vision of a beautiful girl, who
prompts a quest that will take years until he will find her shape-changed in a bird.
Manannn MacLir is the god of the oceans, who lives in Tr-na-n-og (The Land of
Eternal Youth) and is married to the beautiful goddess Fand, whose name is
translated as The Pearl of Beauty. Stories of rebirth and the Otherworld are
associated with him, while his name is commemorated in that of the Isle of Man.
Manannns father, Lir, was an Irish god who dwelt on the cliffs of Antrim. One story
in the cycle (The Story of the Children of Lir) recounts the tribulations of his other
four children who were transformed into swans by an evil step-mother, and endured
cruel hardship for many centuries until restored to their human shape. This story,
among others, was translated into English by Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) in
a collection of Irish myths entitled Gods and Fighting Men:
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11
Fomori. The God Lugh assumes the leadership of the tutha and leads them to
victory after he himself kills Balor of the Evil Eye, the most formidable of the fomori.
Lugh becomes thus a divine archetype of kingship, while he is also the
Samildnach (the many-gifted one), mastering all the arts and the crafts, moving
between all the activities of society and be patron of each one.
The Irish female deities usually indicate sexuality and fertility, with powerful magical
and warlike connotations. There are five goddesses identified with war, and inspiring
battle madness. The Morrgan ("terror" or "phantom queen") is the greatest of them,
being associated with war and death on the battlefield, sometime appearing in the
form of a carrion crow. Other goddesses of war are the Badb (fury), Dea (the
hateful one) Nemain (frenzy), while Macha (who is also goddess of the horses) is
also included here. Another triad is formed by the goddesses identified with the
sovranty and spirit of Ireland, represented as three sisters, Eire, Banba and Fotla.
Some of these deities attracted singular worship, associated with the festivals that
marked the Celtic year:
Beltain, celebrated around 1 May, was a fire festival sacred to the god
Belenos, the Shining One. Cattle were let out of winter quarters and driven
between two fires in a ritual cleansing ceremony that may have had practical
purposes too. It was a time for feasts and fairs and for the mating of animals.
Lughnasadh was a summer festival lasting for two weeks that fell around 31
July. It was said to have been introduced to Ireland by the god Lugh, and so
was sacred to this god. This festival was celebrated with competitions of skill,
including horse-racing (perhaps this is why the festival was also linked to the
goddess Macha)
12
2.4.
After their being defeated by the Milesians, the Danaan were allotted spiritual
Ireland.
They became spirit people, inhabiting the sdhe (another name for the Otherworld),
which was associated with barrows, tumuli, mounds, hills.
This new habitat led to another name for the Danaan, aes sdhe (people of the Sdh)
or fairy people.
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
13
The Bean Sdhe (woman of the hills): a female fairy attached to a particular
family. She had the function of keening like a mortal woman when a family
member died.
Leprechaun: a diminutive guardian of a hidden treasure (origin: Lughchromain little stooping Lugh)
Puca (Puck):a supernatural animal who took people for nightmarish rides; a
mischievous spirit who led travellers astray.
Slua Sdhe: the fairy host who travel through the air at night, and are known
to 'take' mortals with them on their journeys.
2.5.
Poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure, W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was born to an
Anglo-Irish Protestant family, but turned into a committed Irish nationalist, becoming
thus the primary driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival a movement which
stimulated new appreciation of traditional Irish literature, encouraging the creation of
works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from English culture.
Yeats was also co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, another great symbol of the literary
revival, which served as the stage for many new Irish writers and playwrights of the
time.
After the establishment of the Irish Free State, Yeats was appointed to the first Irish
Senate Seanad ireann in 1922 and re-appointed in 1925.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee
described as "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives
expression to the spirit of a whole nation".
With regard to his poetic output, this corresponds to three main phases:
The first phase is associated with the Irish Revival of the 1890s which
brought about an upsurge of interest in Celtic myth and legend. This allowed
Yeats, as well as other writers, to bring mythical motifs and figures into their
works as symbols and expressions of Irishness past and present.
Collections:
Collections:
14
Responsibilities (1914)
Yeatss later poetry is less public and more personal. The poems are
characterised by a mature lyricism, exploring contrasts between the physical
and spiritual dimensions of life, between sensuality and rationalism, between
turbulence and calm, which inform Yeatss theories of contraries and of the
progression which can result from reconciling them.
Collections:
It is the early poems that Yeats draws heavily on Irish myth, employing mythological
figures and mythic motifs alongside with theories drawn from occult writings (in which
he was also interested.) Though dissimilar at a first glance, the two areas bear
comparison in several aspects:
Metaphysical content;
The exile, the quest, the voyage: symbols of the spirits journey from life to
death.
On the basis of these, Yeats constructs his own system of opposites, which may be
seen to inform his poetry:
The Sdhe
Spirit
Matter
Imagination
Reason
Eternal
Ephemeral
Immortal
Mortal
Id
Ego
Earth
Night
Day
15
Though opposed, points of contact may be established between the two realms,
which are associated with states that may be labelled as in-between:
Twilight, dawn
Dreams, visions
In The Stolen Child (a poem based on Irish legend) the faeries beguile a child
(presumably in a dream) to come away with them.
The Stolen Child
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flappy herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There weve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand.
[. . .]
Away with us hes going,
The solemn-eyed:
Hell hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
16
17
18
through the medieval to modern periods women are gradually excluded from the
social, political and cultural spheres, being relegated to the domestic sphere. Proof
may be found in different areas, such as:
Proverbs and formulaic expressions (e.g. the three worst curses that
can befall a village are: to have a wet thatcher, a heavy sower and a
woman poet.)
to revive /re-posses energies related to creativity, fertility and selfsufficiency which some connect to the Celtic ideals of womanhood.
19
20
The daughter of an Irish diplomat Eavan Boland (1944-) spent much of her youth
living in London and New York City.
One of Ireland's few recognized women poets, Boland addresses broad issues of
Irish national identity as well as the specific issues confronting women and mothers
in a culture that has traditionally ignored their experiences. As she herself has
stated,
As an Irish woman poet I have very little precedent. There were none in the 19th
century or early part of the 20th century. You didnt have a thriving sense of the
witness of the lived life of women poets, and what you did have was a very
compelling and at time oppressive relationship between Irish poetry and the
national tradition.
In Bolands view we all [women] exist in a mesh, web, labyrinth of associations
we ourselves are constructed by the construct images are not ornaments, they
are truths.
Her collections of poems include In Her Own Image (1980), Night Feed (1982),
Outside History (1990), In a Time of Violence (1994).
She has also written a prose memoir, Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and
the Poet in Our Time (1995).
In The Woman Turns herself Into A Fish, Boland engages directly with Yeatss The
Song of the Wondering Aengus, re-writing the mermaid image:
The Woman Turns Herself into a Fish
its done:
I turn,
I flab upward
blub-lipped,
hipless
and I am
sexless
shed
of ecstasy,
a pale
swimmer
sequin-skinned,
pealing eggs
screamlessly
in seaweed.
Its what
I set my heart on.
Yet
21
ruddering
and muscling
in the sunless tons
of new freedoms
still
I feel
a chill pull,
a brightening,
a light, a light
and how
in my loomy cold,
my greens
still
she moons
in me.
Task:
Choose one of the following topics to develop into a 4000-word essay of the
argumentative type:
1. The Celtic Pantheon in its Indo-European Context (8 p.).
2. The World of the Sidhe with W.B. Yeats and Nuala NiDhumnaill (10 p).
3. The Dreamers Mermaid or the Mermaids Dream? (The Song of the
Wandering Aengus vs. The Woman Turns Herself Into a Fish) (10 p.)
22
23
3. 2. Emain Macha is the seat of power in Ulaid (Ulster), situated near modern
Armagh.
The dun (hill-fort) was named after the Red Queen Macha, said to be its founder.
Macha had used her brooch to mark the boundary of her capital, so the name Emain
Macha could mean the "Brooch of Macha".
Macha was identified as the Irish goddess of fertility, war and of horses, being one of
the aspects of Morrgan. She was portrayed as red goddess, either because she was
dressed in red or that she had red hair.
She reappeared in the Ulaid Cycle as wife of Crunnchu and was associated with the
curse placed upon the men of Ulster. In this version, Emain Macha means "The
Twins of Macha", such as asserted in one tale of the dinnseachas type, entitled the
Pangs of Ulster.
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25
26
It also holds Conchobar responsible for the defection of Fergus and 3000 other
warriors, including his own son, Cormac, to Ulster's traditional enemy Connacht,
when he had the sons of Uisnech put to death.
THE EXILE OF THE SONS OF USNACH
The Ulaid feasted one day in the house of Fedlimid, the chronicler of King
Conchobar, and as the feast came to an end, a girl-child was born to the wife
of Fedlimid; and a druid prophesied about her future. [Her name is to be
Deirdre. The child will grow to be a woman of wonderful beauty and will cause
enmity and trouble and will depart out of the kingdom. Many will die on
account of her.]
The Ulaid proposed to kill the child at once and so avoid the curse. But
Conchobar ordered that she be spared and reared apart, hidden from mens
eyes; and that he himself would take her for his wife. So Deirdre was
entrusted to foster-parents and was reared in a dwelling apart. A wise woman,
Leborcham, was the only other person allowed to see her.
Once the girls foster-father was flaying a calf outside in the snow in
winter to cook it for her, and she saw a raven drinking the blood in the snow.
Then she said to Leborcham, Fair would be man upon whom those three
colours should be: his hair like the raven, and his cheek like the blood, and his
body like the snow. Grace and prosperity to you! said leborcham. He is not
far from you, inside close by: Naoisi the son of Usnach. I shall not be well,
said she, until I see him.
Once that same Naoisi was on the rampart of the fort sounding his cry.
And sweet was the cry of the sons of Usnach. Every cow and every beast that
would hear it used to give two-thirds excess of milk. For every man who heard
it, it was enough of peace and entertainment. Good was their valour too.
Though the whole province of the Ulaid should be around them in one place, if
the three of them stood back to back, they would not overcome them, for the
excellence of their defence. They were as swift as hounds at the hunt. They
used to kill deer by their speed.
When Naoisi was there outside, soon she went out to him, as though to
go past him, and did not recognise him. Fair is the heifer that goes past me,
said he. Heifers must grow big where there are no bulls, said she. You have
the bull of the province, said he, the king of the Ulaid. I would choose
between you, said she, and I would take a young bull like you. No! said he.
Then she sprang toward him and caught his ears. Here are two ears of
shame and mockery, said she, unless you take me with you.
Naoisi sounded his cry, and the Ulstermen sprang up as they heard it,
and the sons of Usnach, his two brothers, went out to restrain and warn him.
But his honour was challenged. We shall go into another country, said he.
There is not a king in Ireland that will not make us welcome. That night they
set out with 150 warriors and 150 women and 150 hounds, and Deirdre was
with them.
Conchobar pursued them with plots and treachery, and they fled to
Scotland. And they took service with the king of Scotland and built a house
around Deirdre so that they should not be killed on account of her. One day
the steward saw her and told the king of her beauty, so that he demanded her
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
27
for wife; and the sons of Usnach had to flee and take refuge on an island in
the sea.
Then Conchobar invited them back and sent Fergus as a surety; but when
they came to Emain, Naoisi and his followers were killed, and Deirdre was
brought to Conchobar, and her hands were bound behind her back.
When Fergus and Cormac heard of this treachery, they came and did great
deed: three hundred of the Ulaid were killed, and women were killed, and
Emain was burnt by Fergus. And Fergus and Cormac went to the court of Ailill
and Maeve, and for sixteen years the Ulaid had no peace.
But Deirdre was for a year with Conchobar, and she never smiled or
raised her head from her knee.[. . .] And when Conchobar was comforting her
she used to say:
Conchobar, what are you doing? You have caused me sorrows and tears.
As long as I live, I shall not love you.
What was dearest to me under heaven, and what was most beloved, you
have taken from me, - a great wrong - so that I shall not see him till I die.
Two bright cheeks, red lips, eyebrows black as a chafer, pearly teeth
bright with the noble colour of snow.
Do not break my heart. Soon I shall die. Grief is stronger than the sea, if
you could understand it, Conchobar.
What do you hate most of what you see? said Conchobar. You, she
said, and Eogan son of Dubhthach. you shall be a year with Eogan, said
Conchobar. He gave her to Eogan. They went next day to the assembly of
Macha. She was behind Eogan in the chariot. She had prophesied that she
would not see two husbands on earth together. Well, Deirdre, said
Conchobar. You look like a sheep between two rams, between Eogan and
me. There was a big rock in front of her. She thrust her head against the
rock, so that it shattered her head, and she died.
That is the exile of the Sons of Usnach, and the exile of Fergus and the
Tragic Death of the sons of Usnach and of Deirdre. Finit. Amen. Finit.
Summary by Myles Dillon
28
TAIN BO CUAILNGE
Once when their royal bed had been made ready for Ailill and Maeve they
conversed as they lay on the pillows. It is a true saying, girl, said Ailill, that
the wife of a good man is well off. It is true, said the girl. Why do you say
so? Because, said Ailill, you are better off today than the day I wed you. I
was well off without you, said Maeve. I had not heard or known it, said Ailill,
but that you were an heiress and that your nearest neighbours were robbing
and plundering you. That was not so, said Maeve, for my father, Eochu
Feidlech son of Finn, was high king of Ireland. And she went on to boast of
her riches, and he of his.
Their treasures were brought before them, and it appeared that Maeve
had possessions equal to those of Ailill, save for a splendid bull, Whitehorn,
which had belonged to Maeves herd but had wandered into the herd of Ailill
because it would not remain in a womans possession. All her wealth seemed
to Maeve not worth a penny, since she had no bull equal to that of Ailill. She
learned that there was one as good in the province of Ulster in the cantred of
Cuailnge, and she sent messengers to ask a loan of it for a year, promising a
rich reward. If the reward was not enough, she would even grant the owner
the enjoyment of her love. The messengers returned without the bull and
reported the owners refusal. There is no need to smooth over difficulties,
said Maeve, for I knew that it would not be given freely until it was taken by
force, and so it will be taken.
Maeve summoned the armies of Connacht and Cormac son of Conchobar
and Fergus son of Roech, who were in exile from Ulster at the time, and set
out to carry off the precious bull. Before the expedition started, she consulted
her druid for a prophesy. He told her that she at least would return alive. Then
she met a mysterious prophetess who rode on the shaft of a chariot, weaving
a fringe with a gold staff, and she asked her to prophesy. The woman
answered, I see crimson upon them, I see red. Four times Maeve appealed
against this oracle, but each time the answer was the same; and the
prophetess then chanted a poem in which she foretold the deeds of
Cuchulainn.
On the first day the army advanced from Cruachan as far as Cuil Silinni,
and the tents were pitched. Ailills tent was on the right wing of the army. The
tent of Fergus was next, and beside it was the tent of Cormac, son of
Conchobar. To the left of Ailill was the tent of Maeve and next to hers that of
Findabair, her daughter. [...] Fergus was appointed to guide the army, for the
expedition was a revenge for him. He had been King of Ulster for seven years
and had gone into exile when the sons of Usnach were killed in violation of his
guaranty and protection. And so he marched in front. But he felt a pang of
longing for Ulster and led the army astray northward and southward while he
sent warnings to the Ulstermen. But the Ulstermen had been stricken with a
mysterious sickness which afflicted them in times of danger, the result of a
curse laid upon them by Macha, a fairy whom they had wronged. Cuchulainn
and his father, Sualtam, were exempt from the curse, and they set out to
oppose the enemy. They arrived at Ard Cuillenn, and Cuchulainn told his
father to go back and warn the Ulstermen to depart from the open plains into
the woods and valleys. He cut an oak sapling with a single stroke, and, using
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
29
one arm, one leg, and one eye, he made it into a hoop, wrote an ogam on it,
and fixed it around a stone pillar. Then he departed to keep a tryst with a girl
south of Tara.
The Connacht army reached Ard Cuillenn and saw the ogam. Fergus
interpreted it for them. Any man who advanced farther that night, unless he
made a hoop in the same way, would be slain by Cuchulainn before morning.
Ailill decided to turn aside into the forest for the night. In the morning
Cuchulainn returned from his tryst and found the army at Turloch Caille Moire,
north of Cnogba na Rig. There he cut off the fork of a tree with a single stroke
and cast it into the earth from his chariot, so that two-thirds of the stem was
buried in the earth. He came upon two Connaught warriors and beheaded
them and their charioteers. He set their heads upon the branches of the treefork and turned their horses back toward the camp, the chariots bearing the
headless bodies of the men. [. . . ]
The Man who did this deed, Fergus said, is Cuchulainn. It is he who
struck the branch from its base with a single stroke, and killed the four as
swiftly as they were killed, and who came to the border with only his
charioteer.
What sort of man, Aillil said, is this Hound of Ulster we hear tell of?
How old is this remarkable person?
It is soon told, Fergus said. In his fifth year he went to study the arts
and the crafts of War with Scathach, and courted Emer. In his eight year he
took up the arms. At present he is in his seventeenth year.
Is he the hardest they have in Ulster? Maeve said.
Yes, the hardest of all, Fergus said. Youll find no harder warrior
against you - no point more sharp, more swift, more slashing; no raven more
flesh-ravenous, no hand more daft, no fighter more fierce, no one of his own
age one third as good, no lion more ferocious; no barrier in battle, no hard
hammer, no gate of battle, no soldiers doom, no hinderer of hosts, more fine.
Youll find no one there to measure him - for youth or vigour, for apparel,
horror or eloquence; for splendour, fame or form, for voice or strength or
sternness, for cleverness, courage or blows in battle; for fire or gury, victory,
doom, or turmoil; for stalking, scheming or slaughter in the hunt; for swiftness,
alertness or wilderness; and no one with the battle-feat nine men on each
point - none like Cuchulainn.
On the next day the army moved eastward, and Cuchulainn went to meet
them. He surprised Orlam son of Ailill and Maeve and killed him, and the next
day he killed three more with their charioteers. The army advanced and
devastated the plains of Bregia and Muirthemne, and Fergus warned them to
beware of Cuchulainns vengeance. They went on into Cuailnge and reached
the river Glaiss Cruind, but it rose against them so that they could not cross. A
hundred chariots were swept into the sea. Cuchulainn followed hard upon
them seeking battle, and he killed a hundred men. Maeve called upon her
own people to oppose him in equal combat. Not I, not I! said each one from
where he stood. My people owe no victim, and if one were owing I would not
go against Cuchulainn, for it is not easy to fight with him. That night a
hundred warriors died of fright at the sound of Cuchulainns weapons.
30
31
flesh from his horns on the way, and when he came to the border of Cuailnge,
his heart broke, and he died.
Summary by Myles Dillon
3.5.1.2.
3.5.1.3.
3.5.1.4.
3.5.1.5.
32
Play: Cuchulain, as a Young Man, arrives at a Well, whose waters are said to give
immortality. An Old Man, who has spent 50 years waiting for the chance of drinking
from its waters, urges him to join him, for else his life will be spent in ceaseless
warfare. Cuchulain decides to pursue the Hawk guardian of the well, and in doing so
he embraces his heroic destiny.
The Green Helmet
Source: Fledd Bricrenn (Bricrius Feast)
Bricriu, a mischief-maker, invites the warriors of Ireland to a feast, where he
maliciously exploits the contention that the choicest portion of meat is given to the
greatest hero. Cuchulain, Conall Cernach and Laegaire Buadach claim the title in
turn. To decide which of these warriors is the greatest, a giant or demon, named
Uath (Horror) appears and challenges them into a beheading game. Only Cuchulain
accepts the challenge and beheads the giant, to be then proclaimed by Uath the
greatest champion in Ireland.
Play: Cuchulain makes a sacrificial gesture in offering himself to the Red Man from
the sea (Manannan in disguise) to kill.
On Bailes Strand
Source: Aided Oenfhir Aife (Violent Death of Aifes Son)
Before the birth of his son, Cuchulain placed a geis upon him: Connla was to never
reveal his name to any man; he was to fight any man who impeded his path.
When Connla grew into a young man, he set out for Emain Macha in search of his
father. There he encountered many warriors of the Red Branch, but refused to give
each warrior his name, and he either wounded or killed them. Finally Conchobar
send Cuchulain against the boy, and, though warned by Emer that the young man
was possibly his son by Aife, his duty to his king forced him fight and kill Connla.
Play: Reluctantly, Cuchulain swears loyalty to Conchobar and is forbidden by him to
befriend an unknown young man sent by Aife. After learning that the youth he killed
was his own son, Cuchulain dies fighting the waves, mistaken their foam for
Conchobars crown.
A Blind Man and a Fool act as chorus, framing the main action of the play.
ON BAILES STRAND (1901, P.1904)
FOOL: What a clever man you are though you are blind! Theres nobody with
two eyes in his head that is as clever as you are. Who but you could have
though that the henwife sleeps every day a little at noon? I would never
be able to steal anything if you didnt tell me where to look for it. And what
a good cook you are! You take the fowl out of my hands after I have
stolen it and plucked it, and you put it into the big pot at the fire there, and
I can go out and run races with the witches at the edge of the waves and
33
get an appetite, and when Ive got it, theres the hen waiting inside for me,
done to the turn.
BLIND MAN [who is feeling about with his stick]: Done to the turn.
FOOL [putting his arm round Blind Mans neck]: Come now, Ill have a leg and
youll have a leg, and well draw lots for the wish-bone. Ill be praising you
while youre eating it, for your good plans and for your good cooking.
Theres nobody in the world like you, Blind Man. Come, come. Wait a
minute. O shouldnt have closed the door. There are some that look for
me, and I wouldnt like them not to find me. Boann herself out of the river
and Fand out of the deep sea. Witches they are, and they come by in the
wind, and they cry, Give a kiss, Fool, give a kiss, thats what they cry.
Thats wide enough. All the witches can come in now. I wouldnt have
them beat at the door and say, Where is the Fool? Why has he put a lock
on the door? Maybe theyll hear the bubbling of the pot and come in and
sit on the ground. But we wont give them any of the fowl. Let them go
back to the sea, let them go back to the sea.
BLIND MAN [feeling legs of big chair with his hand] Ah! [Then, in a louder
voice as he feels the back of it]. Ah - ah FOOL: Why do you say Ah - ah?
BLIND MAN: I know the big chair. It is to-day the High King Conchubar is
coming. They have brought out this chair. He is going to be Cuchulains
master in earnest from this day out. It is that hes coming for.
FOOL: He must be a great man to be Cuchulains master.
BLIND MAN: So he is. He is a great man. He is over all the rest of the kings of
Ireland.
FOOL: Cuchulains master! I thought Cuchulain could do anything he liked.
BLIND MAN: So he did, so he did. But he ran too wild, and Conchubar is
coming to-day to put an oath upon him that will stop his rambling and
make him as biddable as a housedog and keep him always at his hand.
He will sit in this chair and put the oath upon him.
FOOL: How will he do that?
BLIND MAN: You have no wits to understand such things. [The Blind Man has
got into the chair]. He will sit up in this chair and hell say: Take the oath,
Cuchulain. I bid you take the oath. Do as I tell you. What are your wits
compared with mine, and what are your riches compared with mine? And
what sons have you to pay your debts and to put a stone over you when
you die? Take the oath, I tell you. Take a strong oath.
FOOL [crumpling himself up and whining]: I will not. Ill take no oath. I want
my dinner.
BLIND MAN: Hush, hush! It is not done yet.
FOOL: You said it was done to a turn.
BLIND MAN: Did I, now? Well, it might be done, and not done. The wings
might be white, but the legs might be red. The flesh might stick hard to the
bones and not come away in the teeth. But, believe me, Fool, it will be
well done before you put your teeth in it.
FOOL: My teeth are growing long with the hunger.
BLIND MAN: Ill tell you a story - the kings have story-tellers while they are
waiting for their dinner - I will tell you a story with a fight in it, a story with a
champion in it, and a ship and a queens son that has his mind set on
killing somebody that you and I know.
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
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35
36
37
Play: Though in legend Cuchulain is said to die young, here he has aged with the
poet.
The Morrigan gets Eithne Inguba to falsify a message from Emer, so that Cuchulain
leaves to fight against Medbs army, who has attacked Ulster again. He is wounded
six times in battle. Aife appears and ties him to a stake, ready to avenge upon him
the death of Connla. But it is not her, but the Blind Man (from On Bailes Strand) who
beheads the hero, having been promised 12 pennies by a big man. Cuchulains
mode of dying becomes an indictment of the modern materialist society which no
longer treasures heroes and artists alike.
38
Task
Choose from one of the following topics to develop into a 4000-word essay of the
argumentative type:
1. Tain Bo Cualgne and the Celtic Framework (9 p.)
2. Constructing and De-constructing Mythic Heroism: representations of
Cuchulain in Tain Bo Cualgne , W. B. Yeatss Cuchulain plays and Nuala
NiDhumnaills Chuchulain I. (10 p.)
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40
4.1.
The Fionn Cycle contains a group of tales developed in Munster and Leinster and
dating to the 3rd century A.D.
Most stories centre on the exploits of the mythical hero Fionn mac Cumhaill, his son
Oisn, and other famous members of the fian (warrior-band) of Fionn, collectively
known as the Fianna, who hunt, fight, conduct raids, and live an open-air nomadic
life.
This set of literary conventions reflects a feature of early Irish society in that such
bands of warriors did live outside the structures of that society while retaining links
with it.
Another characteristic is its frequent celebration of the beauty of nature, evoked in
vivid language.
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42
Who are you and where have you come from? he asked. Tell us your
name and the name of your kingdom.
I am called Niamh of the Golden Hair and my father is the king of Tir
na n-Og, the Land of Youth, the girl replied.
Then tell us, Princess Niamh, why have you left a country like that and
crossed the sea to come to us? Has your husband forsaken you or has some
other tragedy brought you here?
My husband didnt leave me, she answered, for Ive never had a
husband. Many men in my own country wanted to marry me, but I wouldnt
look at any of them because I loved your son.
Finn started in surprise. You love one of my sons? Which of my sons
do you love, Niamh? And tell me why your mind settled on him? he asked.
Oisin is the champion Im talking about, replied Niamh. Reports of his
handsome looks and sweet nature reached as far as the Land of Youth. So I
decided to come and find him.
Oisin had been silent all this time, dazzled by the beautiful girl and
when he heard her name him as the man she loved he trembled from head to
toe. But he recovered himself and went over to the princess and took her
hand in his. You are the most beautiful woman in the world and I would
choose you above all others. I will gladly marry you!
Come away with me, Oisin! Niamh whispered. Come back with me to
the Land of Youth. It is the most beautiful country under the sun. You will
never fall ill or grow old there. In my country you will never die. Trees grow tall
there and treed bend low with fruit. The land thaws with honey and wine, as
much as you could ever want. In Tir na n-Og you will sit at feasts and games
with plenty of music for you, plenty of wine. You will get gold and jewels, more
than you could imagine. And a hundred swords, a hundred silk tunics, a
hundred swift bay horses, a hundred keen hunting dogs. The King of the Ever
Young will place a crown on your head, a crown that he has never given to
anyone else, and it will protect you from every danger. You will get a hundred
cows, a hundred calves, and a hundred sheep with golden wool. You will get
a hundred of the most beautiful jewels youve ever seen and a hundred
arrows. A hundred young women will sing to you and a hundred of the
bravest, young warriors will obey your command. As well as all of this, you will
get beauty, strength and power. And me for your wife.
Oh, Niamh, I could never refuse you anything you ask and I will gladly
go with you to the Land of Youth! Oisin cried and he jumped up on the horse
behind her. With Niamh cradled between his arms he took the reins in his
hands and the horse started forwards.
Go slowly, Oisin, till we reach the shore! Niamh said.
When Finn saw his son being borne away from him, he let out three
loud, sorrowful shots. Oh, Oisin, my son, he cried out, why are you leaving
me? I will never see you again. Youre leaving me here heartbroken for I know
well never meet again!
Oisin stopped and embraced his father and said goodbye to all his
friends. With tears streaming down his face he took a last look at them as they
stood on the shore. He saw the defeat and sorrow on his fathers face and the
sadness of his friends. He remembered his days together with them all in the
excitement of the hunt and the heat of battle. Then the white horse shook its
mane, gave three shrill neighs and leapt forward, plunging into the sea. The
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
43
waves opened before Niamh and Oisin and dosed behind them as they
passed.
As they travelled across the sea, wonderful sight appeared to them on
every side. They passed cities, courts and castles, white-washed bawns and
forts, painted summerhouses and stately palaces. A young fawn rushed past,
a white dog with scarlet ears racing after it. A beautiful young woman on a bay
horse galloped by on the crests of the waves, carrying a golden apple in her
right hand. Behind her, mounted on a white horse, rode a young prince,
handsome and richly dressed with a gold-bladed sword in his hand. Oisin
looked in awe at this handsome couple but when he asked Niamh who they
were, she replied that they were insignificant compared to the inhabitants of
the Land of Youth.
Ahead of them and visible from afar, a shining palace came into view.
Its delicate, marble facade shone in the sun.
Thats the most beautiful palace I have ever see! Oisin exclaimed.
What country are we in now and who is the king?
This is the Land of Virtue and that is the palace of Fomor, a giant,
Niamh replied. The daughter of the king of the Land of Life is the queen. She
was abducted from her own country by Fomor and he keeps her a prisoner
here. She has put a geis on him that he may not marry her until a champion
has challenged him to single combat. But a prisoner she remains for no one
wants to fight the giant.
Niamh, the story youve told me is sad, even though your voice is
music in my ears, Oisin said. Ill go to the fortress and try to overcome the
giant and set the queen free.
They turned the horse towards the white palace and when they arrived
there they were welcomed by a woman almost as beautiful as Niamh herself.
She brought them to a room where thy sat on golden chairs and ate and
drank of the best. When the feast was over, the queen told the story of her
captivity and as tears coursed down her cheeks she told them that until the
giant was overcome she could never return home.
Dry your eyes, Oisin told her. Ill challenge the giant. Im not afraid of
him! Either Ill kill him or Ill fight till he kills me.
At that moment Fomor approached the castle. He was huge and ugly
and he carried a load of deerskins on his back and an iron bar in his hand. He
saw Oisin and Niamh but did not acknowledge their presence. He looked into
the face of his prisoner and straight away he knew that she had told her story
to the visitors. With a loud, angry shout he challenged Oisin to fight. For three
days and three nights they struggled and fought but, as powerful as Fomor
was, Oisin overpowered him in the end and cut off his head. The two women
gave three triumphant cheers when they saw the giant felled. When they saw
that Oisin was badly injured and too exhausted to walk unaided, they took him
gently between them and helped him back to the fortress. The queen put
ointments and herbs on his wounds and in a very short time Oisin had
recovered his health and spirits. They buried the giant and raised his flag over
the grave and caned his name in ogham script in stone. Then they feasted till
they were full and slept till dawn in the feather beds that were prepared for
them.
The morning sun awoke them and Niamh told Oisin they must continue
on their journey to Tir na n-Og. The queen of the Land of Virtue was sad to
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
44
see them go, and indeed they were sad to leave her, but she was free now to
return home, so they said goodbye to her and that was the last they saw of
her. They mounted the white horse and he galloped away as boisterously as a
March wind roaring across a mountain summit.
Suddenly the sky darkened, the wind rose and the sea was lit up by
angry flashes of light. Niamh and Oisin rode steadily through the tempest,
looking up at the pillars of clouds blotting out the sun until the wind dropped
and the storm died down. Then, ahead of them, they saw the most delightful
country, bathed in sunshine, spread out in all its splendour. Set amid the
smooth rich plains was a majestic fortress that shone like a prism in the sun.
Surrounding it were airy halls and summerhouses built with great artistry and
inlaid with precious stones. As Niamh and Oisin approached the fortress a
troop of a hundred of the most famous champions came out to meet them.
This land is the most beautiful place I have ever see! Oisin exclaimed.
Have we arrived at the Land of Youth?
Indeed we have. This is Tir na n_og, Niamh replied. I told you the
truth when I told you how beautiful it was. Everything I promised you, you will
receive.
As Niamh spoke a hundred beautiful young women came to meet
them, dressed in silk and heavy gold brocade, and they welcomed the couple
to Tir na n-Og. A huge glittering crowd then approached with the king and
queen at their head. When Oisin and Niamh met the royal party, the king took
Oisin by the hand and welcomed him. Then he turned towards the crowd and
said. This is Oisin, Finns son, who is to be married to my beloved daughter,
Niamh of the Golden Hair. He turned to Oisin. Youre welcome to this happy
country, Oisin! Here you will have a long and happy life and you will never
grow old. Everything you ever dreamt of is waiting for you here. I promise you
that all I say is true for I am the king of Tir na n-Og. This is my queen and this
is my daughter Niamh, the Golden-haired, who crossed the sea to find you
and bring you back here so that you could be together for ever.
Oisin thanked the king and queen and a wedding feast was prepared
for Oisin and Niamh. The festivities lasted for ten days and ten nights.
Niamh and Oisin lived happily in the Land of Youth and had three
children. Niamh named the boys Finn and Oscar after Oisins father and son.
Oisin gave his daughter a name that suited her loving nature and her lovely
face; he named her Plur na mBan, the Flower of Women.
Three hundred years went by, though to Oisin they seemed as short as
three. He began to get homesick for Ireland and longed to see Finn and his
friends, so he asked Niamh and her father to allow his to return home. The
king consented but Niamh was perturbed by his request.
I cant refuse you though I wish you had never asked, Oisin! she said.
Im afraid that if you go youll never return.
Oisin tried to comfort his wife. Dont be distressed, Niamh! he said.
Our white horse knows the way. Hell bring me back safely!
So Niamh consented, but she gave Oisin a most solemn warning.
listen to me well, Oisin, she implored him, and remember what Im saying. If
you dismount from the horse you will not be able to return to this happy
country. I tell you again, if your foot as much as touches the ground, you will
be lost for ever to the Land of Youth.
45
Then Niamh began to sob and wail in great distress. Oisin, for the third
time I warn you: do not set foot on the soil of Ireland or you can never come
back to me again! Everything is changed there. You will not see Finn or the
Fianna, you will find only a crowd of monks and holy men.
Oisin tried to console her but Niamh was inconsolable and pulled and
clutched at her long hair in her distress. He said goodbye to his children and
as he stood by the white horse Niamh came up to him and kissed him.
Oh, Oisin, here is a last kiss for you! You will never come back to me
or to the Land of Youth.
Oisin mounted his horse and turning his back on the Land of Youth, set
out for Ireland. The horse took him away from Tir na n_og as swiftly as it had
brought Niamh and him there three hundred years before.
Oisin arrived in Ireland in high spirits, as strong and powerful a
champion as he had ever been, and set out at once to find the Fianna. He
travelled over the familiar terrain but saw no trace of any of his friends.
Instead he saw a crowd of men and women approaching from the west. He
drew in his horse and, at the sight of Oisin, the crowd stopped too. They
addressed him courteously, but they kept on staring at him, astonished at his
appearance and his great size. When Oisin told them he was looking for Finn
MacCumhaill and asked of his whereabouts the people were even more
surprised.
Weve heard of Finn and the Fianna, they told him. The stories about
him say that there never was anyone to match him in character, behaviour or
build. There are so many stories that we could not even start to tell them to
you!
When Oisin heard this a tide of weariness and sadness washed over
him and he realized that Finn and his companions were dead. Straight away
he set out for Almu, the headquarters of the Fianna in the plains of Leinster.
But when he got there, there was no trace of the strong, shining white fort.
There was only a bare hill overgrown with ragwort, chickweed and nettles.
Oisin was heartbroken at the sight of that desolate place. He went from one of
Finns haunts to another but they were all deserted. He scoured the
countryside but there was no trace of his companions anywhere.
As he passed through Wicklow, through Glenasmole, the Valley of the
Thrushes, he saw three hundred or more people crowding the glen. When
they saw Oisin approach on his horse one of them shouted out, Come over
here and help us! You are much stronger than we are! Oisin came closer and
saw that the men were trying to lift a vast marble flagstone. The weight of the
stone was so great that the men underneath could not support it and were
being crushed by the load. Some were down already. Again the leader
shouted desperately to Oisin, Come quickly and help us to lift the slab or all
these men will be crushed to death! Oisin looked down in disbelief at the
crowd of men beneath him who were so puny and weak that they were unable
to lift the flagstone. He leaned out of the saddle and, taking the marble slab in
his hands, he raised it with all his strength and flung it away and the men
underneath it were freed. But the slab was so heavy and the exertion so great
that the golden girth round the horses belly snapped and Oisin was pulled out
of the saddle. He had to jump to the ground to save himself and the horse
bolted the instant its riders feet touched the ground. Oisin stood upright for a
moment, towering over the gathering. Then, as the horrified crowd watched,
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
46
the tall young warrior, who had been stronger than all of them, sank slowly to
the ground. His powerful body withered and shrank, his skin sagged into
wrinkles and folds and the sight left his clouded eyes. Hopeless and helpless,
he lay at their feet, a bewildered blind old man.
(from Marie Heaney, OVER NINE WAVES, Faber and Faber, 1994)
Accounts of Fionns death vary, but in folk tradition he is still alive (sleeping in a
cave), ready to help Ireland in times of need.
The cycle has been Christianized, and some stories present the meeting of Osin
and other survivors of the Fianna with St. Patrick, the warriors lamenting the
abeyance of heroic conduct in Christian Ireland.
4. 4. 1. Ossianism
The Scott James MacPherson is among the first to have revived the figure of Oisin
under the guise of Ossian, an ancient Caledonian bard, whose poems he claimed to
have discovered and then translated into English with the publication of:
Temora (1763)
Ossianism had a massive cultural impact during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Napoleon carried a copy into battle; Goethe translated parts of it, and one of Ingres'
most romantic and moody paintings, the Dream of Ossian was based on it.
47
48
It further relates to Fionn mac Cumhaill who, having passed away (Macool, Macool,
orra whyi deed ye diie?), will inevitably return (Mister Finn, youre going to be Mister
Finnagain!
Its structure is governed by Giambattista Vicos division of human history into three
ages (divine, heroic, and human), to which Joyce added a section called the
Ricorso, emphasizing the Neapolitan philosophers cyclical conception.
It also systematically reflects Giordano Brunos theory that everything in nature is
realized through interaction with its opposite.
It also connects to modern psychology, the novel enacting the processes of the
sleeping mind in keeping with Joyces description of it as the dream of Fionn lying in
death beside the Liffey.
The main characters of the novel are:
Issy (Daughter)
49
HCE perpetrates a sexual misdemeanour in the Phoenix Park, and becomes the
victim of a scadalmongering. ALP defends him in a letter written by Shem and
carried by Shaun. The boys endlessly contend for Issys favours. HCE grows old and
impotent, is buried and revives. Aged ALP prepares to return as her daughter Issy to
catch his eye again.
In testimony of this cyclic conception, the novel starts in the middle of a sentence
and ends with its beginning:
Finnegans Wake (1939)
riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and
Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer damores, frover the short sea, had passencore
rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe
minor to wielderfight his penisolate war, nor had topsawyers rocks by the
stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens Countrys gorgios while
they went doublin their mumper all the time, nor avoice from afire bellowsed
mishe mishe to tauf-tauf thuartpeatrick, not yet, though vennissoon after, had
a kidscad buttened a bland old isaac, not yet, though alls fair in vanessy,
were sosie sesters wroth with thone nathandjoe. Not a peck of pas malt had
Jhem or Shen brewed by archlight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be
seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall (bababadalgharagharaghtakmminorronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhhounawskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once
wallstrait oldparr is related early in bed and later on life down through all
christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice
the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of himself
prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepoindandplace is at the knock out in the park where
oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.
[. . .]
A way a lone a last a loved a long the
Task
Consider one of the following topics to develop into a full-length essay:
1. Celtic Connections: from the Finn to the Arthurian cycle of tales (9 p.)
2. Irish Heroes in Joycean Metamorphosis: Fion MacCumhail, Tim Finnegan and
Finnegans Wake (9 p.)
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51
5.1.1.
The most famous tale in the cycle is Buile Suibhne, which recounts the tribulations
of the Mad King Sweeney.
Suibne, originally a vigorous ruler and a great warrior, is drive mad by the sound of
battle, as consequence of a curse imposed on him by a cleric named Rnn. He
takes to the wilderness, where he spends may years naked or very sparsely clothed,
living in tree-tops, bemoaning his fate, and celebrating nature in haunting lyrical
verse. Finally, having travelled much of Ireland, he arrives at a small religious
community, where St. Moling welcomes him and, after Suibne is killed by one of the
servants, buries the madman in consecrated ground.
BUILE SUIBHNE
[THE MADNESS/FRENZY OF SWEENEY]
Suibhne son of Colman was king of Dal nAraide. One day St. Ronan was
marking the boundaries of a church in that country, and Suibhne heard the
sound of his bell. Then his people told him that the saint was establishing a
church in his territory, he set out in anger to expel the cleric. His wife Eorann
sought to restrain him and caught the border of his cloak, but he rushed
naked from the house, leaving the cloak in her hands. Ronan was chanting
the Office when Suibhne came up, and the king seized the psalter and threw it
into the lake. He then laid hands on the saint and was dragging him away,
when a messenger arrived from Congal Claen to summon him to the battle of
Moira. Suibhne departed with the messenger, leaving Ronan sorrowful. Next
day an otter from the lake restored the psalter to the saint unharmed. Ronan
gave thanks to God and cursed the king, wishing that he might wander naked
through the world as he had come naked into his presence.
Ronan went to Moira to make peace between Domnall and Congal Claen,
but without success. He and his clerics sprinkled holy water on the armies, but
when they sprinkled in on Suibhne, he slew one of the clerics with a spear
and made a second cast at Ronan himself. The second spear broke against
the saints bell, and the shaft flew into the air. Ronan cursed Suibhne, wishing
that he might fly through the air like the shaft of his spear and that he might
die of a spar cast like the cleric whom he had slain.
Thereafter, when the battle was joined, the armies on both sides raised
three mighty shouts. Suibhne was terrified by the clamour. His weapons fell
from his hands. He was seized with trembling and fled in a frenzy like a bird of
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
52
the air. His feet rarely touched the ground in his flight, and at last he settled
upon a yew tree far from the battle field. There he was discovered by a
kinsman, Aongus the Fat, who had fled the field after the victory of Domnall.
Aongus sought to persuade Suibhne to join him, but Suibhne flew away like a
bird and came to Tir Conaill, where he perched on a tree near the church
called Cill Riagain. It happened that the victorious army of Domnall had
encamped there after the battle. Domnall recognised him and lamented his
misfortune.
Suibhne fled again and was for a long time travelling through Ireland till he
came to Glenn Bolcain. It was there that the madmen used to abide when
their year of frenzy was over, for that valley is always a place of great delight
to madmen. Glenn Bolcain has four gaps to the wind and a lovely fragrant
wood and clean-bordered wells and cool springs, and a sandy stream of clear
water with green cress and long waving brooklime on its surface.
For seven years, Suibhne wandered throughout Ireland, and then he returned
to Glenn Bolcain. There Loingsechan came to seek him and found the
footprints of Suibhne near the river where he came to eat watercress, He slept
one night in a hut and Suibhne came near and heard him snore. And he
uttered a lay:
The man by the wall snores: I dare not sleep like that. For seven years
since that Tuesday at Moira I have not slept for a moment. [. . .]
The cress of the well of Druim Cirb is my meal at terce. My face betrays it.
Truly I am Suibhne the Madman. [. . .]
Though I live from hill to hill on the mountain above the valley of yews,
alas! That I was not left to lie with Congal Claen. [. . .]
Green cress and a drink of clear water is my fare. I do not smile. This is
not the fate of the man by the wall. [. . .]
[. . .]At last Suibhne came to the monastery of St. Mo ling. Mo Ling made him
welcome and bade him return from his wanderings every evening so that his
history might be written, for it was destined that his story should be written
there and that he should receive a Christian burial. Mo Ling bade his cook
give supper to Suibhne, and, wherever he travelled during the day, he would
return at night. The cook would thrust her foot into some cowdung and fill the
hole with milk, and Suibhne would lie down to drink. But the cooks husband,
who was a herdsman, grew jealous of this attention by his wife, and he slew
Suibhne with a spear as he lay drinking the milk one evening. Before his
death he confessed his sins and received the body of Christ and was
anointed. [The conversation of Suibhne, Mo Ling and Mongan the herdsman
is recorded in a poem of twenty-six quatrains, in which Suibhne says:
Sweeter to me once that the sound of a bell beside me was the song of a
blackbird on the mountain and the belling of the stag in a storm.
Sweeter to me once than the voice of a lovely woman beside me was the
voice of the mountain grouse at dawn.
Sweeter to me once was the cry of wolves than the voice of a cleric within
bleating and whining.
53
Though you like to drink your ale in taverns with honour, I would rather
drink water from my hand taken from the well by stealth.
Though sweet to you yonder in the church the smooth words of your
students, sweeter to me the noble chant of the hounds of Glenn Bolcain.]
Then Suibhne swooned, and Mo Ling and his cleric brought each a stone
for his monument, and Mo Ling said:
Here is the tomb of Suibhne. His memory grieves my heart. Dear to me
for the love of him is every place the holy madman frequented. [. . .]
Dear to me each cool stream on which the green cress grew, dear each
well of clear water, for Suibhne used to visit them.
If the King of the stars allows it, arise and go with me. Give me, O heart,
thy hand, and come from the tomb.
Sweet to me was the conversation of Suibhne: long shall I remember it. I
pray to the chaste King of heaven over his grave and tomb.
Suibhne arose out of his swoon, and Mo Ling took him by the hand, and
they went together to the door of the church. And Suibhne leaned against the
doorpost and gave a great sigh, and his spirit went to heaven, and he was
buried with honour by Mo Ling.
Summary by Miles Dillon
54
55
5.3.
Through the story of his wanderings physical and mental Suibhne became the
principal Irish exponent of the legend of the Wild Man.
Many of the motifs attached to him are associated with rites of passage and the
transition from one state to another.
Through its overt religious symbolism, the story is historically rooted in the clash
between pre-Christian and Christian customs and values, and, by extrapolation,
tradition vs. modernity, past vs.present, nature vs. culture, the individual and the
state.
Another motif relates to the state of frenzy and the world of vision entailed by it (the
frenzy unlocks the gifts of poetry ad seership.)
The Suibne story continues to inspire Irish writers, notably Flan OBrien in At-SwimTwo-Birds (1939) and Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray (1982)
5.3.1.
Brian ONolan is best known for his novels An Bal Bocht, At Swim-Two-Birds and
The Third Policeman written under the nom de plume Flann O'Brien.
He also wrote many satirical columns in the Irish Times under the name Myles na
gCopaleen.
Other pseudonyms he used were: John James Doe, George Knowall, Brother
Barnabas, and the Great Count O'Blather.
56
57
58
5.3.2.
Heaney was born into a nationalist Irish Catholic family at Mossbawn, in a rural area
thirty miles to the north-west of Belfast.
His main collections of poetry are:
North (1975)
Heaney's work is often set in rural Londonderry, the county of his childhood. Hints of
sectarian violence can be found in many of his poems, even works that on the
surface appear to deal with something else. Like the Troubles themselves, Heaney's
work is deeply associated with the lessons of history, sometimes even prehistory.
Under the influence of P.V. Globs The Bog People which dealt with the discovery
of well-preserved Iron Age bodies in the Danish bogs, many of which seemed to
have been ritually sacrificed to earth deities, Heaney evolved the bog myth to
distance the sectarian killings in modern Ulster through their analogues of 2000
years ago.
In Punishment, for example, the body of a young Danish woman accused of
adultery and sacrificed to the land in an ancient fertility ritual prompts him meditate
on tribal revenge and justice, finding its modern counterpart in the shaved and tarred
heads of young Irish women humiliated by the I.R.A. for fraternizing with British
soldiers.
PUNISHMENT (from North, 1975)
I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.
It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
The Celtic Paradigm in Irish Writing
59
60
61
62
Task
Consider one of the following topics to develop into a full-length critical essay:
1. Mad King Sweeney and the Buile Motif in Irish Literature (10 p.)
2. At-Swim-Two-Birds and Sweeney Astray: Two Versions of Buile Sweeney.
(10)
3. The Matter of Ireland and Heaneys Ars Poetica: Punishment vs. Exposure..
(10 p.)
63
Minimal Bibliography:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Mohor-Ivan,
Ioana,
REPRESENTATIONS
OF
IRISHNESS:
7.
8.
64
IRISH LITERATURE
PART TWO:
Colonial Themes and the
Politics of Representation
Galai
2014
Cuprins
Cuprins:
INTRODUCTION The Matter of Ireland . . . . . 4
CHAPTER 1 The Anglo-Norman Legacy in Irish
Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.1. The Norman Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
1.2. Norman Cultural Influences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3. Anglo-Norman Literary Productions . . . . . . . . . . .14
1.3.1. Chansons des geste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3.2. Goliardic poems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3.3. The danta gradha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Cuprins
APPENDIXES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Appendix 1: Brief Chronology of Historical Events. . 60
Appendix 2: Suggested Essay Topics . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Appendix 3: Individual Authors and Texts . . . . . . . . 62
Appendix 4: Pronunciation Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
best land the country possessed. But, despite the efforts undertaken by the
English state in order to persuade people to emigrate to Ireland, the largest
part of the colonists establishing James Is Plantation of Ulster in 1608 were
Scots from the neighbouring coast, carrying with them their extreme version
of Protestantism.
The next important moment within the history of Anglo-Irish
relationships occurred during the 17th century Civil Wars in England, that
confirmed once again for the English that Ireland did represent a security
threat for their state. As the Catholic Irish registered their support on the
Kings side, at the end of the war Cromwell took full revenge on them,
sending his troops to reconquer Ireland as the first step in the reconstitution
of the British Empire. It was rendered easier for Cromwell and his army
because the Protestants over there, whatever their political allegiance,
tended to rally round him as the champion of their race and creed 3 , while the
Irish resistance became racial and Catholic instead of Royalist. After the fall
of Drogheda had broken the back of resistance in the East, Cromwell went
home, leaving the rest of the army carry on, in an atrocious way, the guerrilla
war in the West.
The subsequent land settlement completed the transference of the soil
from Irish to British proprietors, aiming to fulfil a three-fold objective: to pay
off in Irish land the soldiers who had fought, to render the English hold secure
against another rebellion like that of 1641 4 , and lastly to extirpate
Catholicism, by trying to push the whole indigenous population to the west of
the river Shannon, to Cannaught, a region that invokes a deep primitive
Gaelic feeling, but is economically very poor 5 .
The most important outcome of the Cromwellian policy was the fact
that Ulster had now to face its own set of problems deriving from the largescale settlements of Scots in Down, Antrim and Derry. The Cromwellian
conquest also led to the downfall of the Old English interest in Ireland. The
real beneficiaries were the New English planters of pre-1641, now styling
themselves as Old Protestants 6 to distinguish themselves from the Baptists
and Quakers (the New Protestants) of the Cromwellian army.
Another key-date in the history of Irelands colonisation is the year
1689, when the Catholic King James II was deposed by the English
Parliament in favour of the Protestant William of Orange. A year later, James
II landed in Ireland, aided by French money, troops and generals, trying to
complete the conquest of a land where already three-fourth of its population
obeyed him. In response to this action, the Protestants in the north
proclaimed William king and fortified Derry, enduring the famous Catholic
siege of 169o until William landed in Ireland and released the town.
The decisive battle was fought at the Boyne on the 12 July 1690, upon
two quarrels. It was the struggle of the Anglo-Scots against the Catholic Irish
for the leadership of Ireland, but also the struggle of Britain and her European
allies to prevent a Jacobite restoration in England, and the consequent
3
grievance - the man and the question which had first given it power -,
dominating the British politics until the beginning of the First World War.
Meanwhile, after the fall of Parnells parliamentary, its followers
reunited within a new shell organisation, the United Irish League, and the
political landscape was further complicated by the emergence of other
groups struggling for hegemony, such as the Gaelic League 12 and later, in
1908, the Sinn Fein, a party that united a number of smaller groups to
campaign for Irish independence.
In reaction to this growing nationalism, the Orange Order opposition to
an independent and united Ireland intensified and before the outbreak of the
First World War Ireland was on the brinks of a civil war, with both sides
illegally armed and the drilling of the Ulster Volunteers in the North answered
by similar demonstrations in the south. When the war broke out, even if
conscription was not applied in Ireland, most Ulster Volunteers and Irish
National Volunteers joined the British army, while the Fenian linked
organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, disapproving of Irish support
for England, decided that a new insurrection was to take place in Ireland
before the end of the war. The outcome was the Easter rebellion of 1916.
It was not so much the rebellion of the Easter week that completed the
change in the attitude of the Irish people generally as its aftermath, for the
government made the mistake of shooting the rebels, one by one, even those
who were wounded, and of arresting and executing people who had no
involvement in the rising. This led to a complete reversal of the Irish opinion
which turned its sympathies from the Irish parliamentary party and, in a wave
of national anger, gave its approval to Sinn Fein, which won the general
elections in 1918.
The victorious Sinn Fein pledged itself to the Irish republic and
proceeded to put into operation a policy of passive resistance to continued
British rule, refusing to send its members to occupy their places at
Westminster.
The outcome of this measure was the Anglo-Irish war from early 1919
to July 1921, or the troubles as the people euphemistically called it. It was a
struggle characterised by guerrilla warfare, ambushes, raids on police
barracks, and planned assassinations on the one side; and reprisals, the
shooting-up and burning-up of towns, executions and terrorising on the other.
Eventually public opinion in America and in Britain demanded a truce, which
was arranged in July 1921, followed by the signing of a treaty five months
later that conceded dominion status to the twenty counties that formed the
Irish Free State, while the six Protestant counties of Ulster remained within
the British Union, with a Home Rule Parliament of their own. 13
Northern Ireland had been brought into existence, but its future was
far from assured. The act of 1920 had set up a state in which about one third
of the population was bitterly hostile. Some took part in an attempt to
overthrow it by force, others adopted an attitude of non-cooperation, enabling
thus the unionists to appropriate loyalty and good citizenship to themselves
and identify Catholicism with hostility to the state.
12
Events in the rest of Ireland during these years also helped to keep
alive old issues in the north. The dismantling of the Anglo-Irish Treaty after
1932, the new Irish constitution of 1937, and the policy of raising the partition
question on every possible occasion heartened the nationalists but confirmed
the unionists in their resolve that Ulsters position within the United Kingdom
and the Empire must remain unchanged. Eires neutrality in the Second
World War was the final proof of how far the paths of the two Irish
governments had diverged 14 . More than this, the cultures of the two
communities were also divergent, with a minimum of social contact
established between them: each had its own churches, schools, newspapers
and forms of recreation. For one community, soccer and rugby were
appropriate games, while for the other Gaelic football and hurling were
national sports. In mixed rural areas, a complex and subtle system of
relationships came into existence in which both sides were taking great pains
to avoid causing offence. From time to time, IRA, a legacy from the days of
Fenianism, attempted offensive operations to overthrow partition.
The old issues survived into the post-war age as well. A new
campaign of violence was carried on from 1956 to 1962. There were
occasions when nationalist demonstrations were broken up by the police.
Nationalists continued to complain of discrimination in the distribution of
houses and jobs, the enforcement of law and order and the drawing of
electoral boundaries. Unionists retorted that Catholics were disloyal to the
state and used occasional royal visits to reaffirm their loyalty to Britain. 15
Yet, the 1960s were years of change for both communities, North and
South. In the Republic change was above all economic and social. A new
government brought along the shift from conservatism to innovation, paving
the way for the expansion of education and beginning the erosion of the rural
political and cultural domination.
In Northern Ireland, change was most obviously political, but important
social and economic changes occurred as well. Due to the general benefits
brought by the implantation of the British Welfare State in Northern Ireland,
an articulate middle-class had risen within the Catholic community, more
prepared than its predecessors to acquiesce in the constitutional status quo,
provided Catholics received a fair deal within it. A sign of the new mood of
the catholic community was the growth of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights
Association, founded in 1967. This body, unlike previous organisations, did
not challenge the existence of the Northern Ireland state, but demanded
merely the ending of abuses within it. From August 1968, marches and
demonstrations in support of this objective were held in various towns, but
the police and the Protestant right wing saw this development as a new
attempt to undermine the state so that successive demonstrations were
broken up by police and harassed by Protestant extremists. A year later
disorder had reached such a height with Protestant mobs launching savage
attacks on Catholic areas of west Belfast that the Northern Irish government
was obliged to request the British government to send in troops to restore
order.
14
J.L.McCracken, Northern Ireland, 1921-66, in The Course of Irish History, op. cit., pp
316-322.
15
idem
10
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
But the crisis deepened as in the 1970s IRA appeared on the scene of
battle, reorganised as the Provisional IRA and reverted to nationalist military
traditions and with the first IRA victims the government lost control of its own
Army who turned against nationalists. The politics of internment 16 which was
subsequently applied only helped to increase the level of violence, so that in
1972 the British government decided to suspend the Northern Ireland
government and introduce direct rule from Westminster 17 .
From 1972 to the present day all attempts to deal with the Troubles
in Ireland 18 have offered only momentary respite from the embittered clash
between the two communities, as the sharp divergence between unionist and
nationalist aspirations has remained. Northern Ireland is still an extremely
parochial place where matters of life and death have forced people to fall
back on their own resources and close ranks, a place where identity has
always been conceived in antithetical pairs, Catholic/Protestant,
Republican/Unionist, Irish/Scot or Anglo-Irish, and where conflict is still based
on an atavistic claim to territory on both sides.
Northern Ireland has remained a place where history and its versions
play a central role in shaping the attitudes of the two groups involved in this
intricate drama, as each community has its different interpretation of more
remote or more recent events that would legitimate its claims. Nationalist
history classically portrays an opposition between Britain and Ireland, planter
and Gael as that between oppressor and oppressed, the central events of
this historical narrative being the successive invasions of Ireland in the 16th
and 17th century, undertaken with great ferocity, entitling the Irish to a
catalogue of grievances whose rhetorical force derives from the reciprocity
principle: their moral advantage against the putative descendants of
oppressors. On the other hand, Protestant history celebrates 17th century
events as those which allowed the defence of civilisation, freedom and true
religion, as well as the establishment of a Protestant Ascendancy, while for
rhetorical purposes the more recent history (from the 1920s onwards) is
employed as a catalogue of grievances against the Catholics who have failed
to accept the will of the majority and subverted the state using violent means.
To this it adds a folk history, feelings handed down from generation to
generation, always pointing to the goodness of us versus the badness of
them, which is culturally ingrained and genetically transmitted, plus a
personal history for everybody has his own memories of fathers and
ancestors who have been cast as martyrs in this drama.
As recent events have demonstrated, the peace-process proved to be
only a fragile mutual cease-fire, the two communities continuing to step on
each others feet persistently. The only hope for a true lasting peace would
be for the reason of living to triumph over the law of the dead.
16
12
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
The Song records Dermots journey to enlist the Norman support for
regaining his kingdom, and the victory of Strongbow, followed by the
latters subsequent marriage to Aoife, Dermots daughter.
14
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
Historical characters:
W.B. Yeats, The Dreaming of the Bones (1919): A rebel soldier who
has taken part in the Easter Rising flees to Corcomroe Abbey, where
he encounters the ghosts of Dermot and Dervorgilla, who beg him to
absolve them of their guilt. The soldier refuses, renewing the curse:
My curse upon all that brought in the Gall
Upon Dermots call, and on Dervorgilla!
16
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
This poem survives in only one manuscript, Harley MS 913, British Library,
London.
Probably compiled in Ireland in the early-mid 1300s, The Land of
Cokaygne is not an isolated poem; its fictional and parodic otherworld
belongs to a tradition of poems dealing with an imaginary paradise where
leisure rules and food is readily available.
17
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
Gerald Fitzgerald, the 4th Earl of Desmond (1333-1398) was the first
to adapt the courtly love tradition of the Norman French to the Irish. In
the poetry of courtly love, the love of woman is exalted, a redemptive
force for both the lover and his beloved. Gerald's poem is a rebuttal of
the fierce clerical misogyny that was prevalent in the Middle Ages:
Woe to him who slanders women.
Scorning them is no right thing.
All the blame they've ever had
is undeserved, of that I'm sure . . .
His poem O Woman Full of Wile is one of the finest examples of the
Irish Danta Gradha.
18
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
19
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
Colonial oppositions:
The West
The Orient
Colonist
Self
Civilisation
Colonised
Other
Barbarism
Modernity
Backwardness
21
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
22
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
23
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
BARBARISM
PROTESTANTISM
ORDER
RESTRAINT
REASON
CATHOLICISM
LAWLESSNESS
VIOLENCE
IRRATIONALITY
24
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
25
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
26
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
BUFOON
MASTER
KNOWLEDGE
SERVANT
IGNORANCE
RESTRAINT
ENGLISH
BOASTFULNESS
HIBERNO ENGLISH
SUPERIORITY
INFERIORITY
27
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
2.3.
28
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
Though they still wear some of the traditional traits of the dramatic
type, being cast as comic rustics who display a propensity for banter
and blarney and still put their lips to the jug with some regularity,
Boucicaults Stage Irishmen are far removed from the extreme
silhouette of the figure of ridicule, emerging as more than stereotypical
drunken sots to take an active, at times courageous part in the social,
economic and political conflicts of their world.
Endowed with bravery, loyalty and wit, they overcome all obstacles /
adversaries and finally become agents of reconciliation between
opposing parties: landlord/peasant; English/Irish.
TRADITIONS
I
Our guttural muse
was bulled long ago
by the alliterative tradition,
her uvula grows
vestigial, forgotten
like the coccyx
or a Brigids Cross
yellowing in some outhouse
while custom, that most
sovereign mistress,
beds us down into
the British Isles.
We are to be proud
of our Elizabethan English:
varsity, for example,
is grass-roots stuff with us;
we deem or we allow
when we suppose
and some cherished archaisms
are correct Shakespearean.
Nor to speak of the furled
consonants of the lowlanders
shuttling obstinately
between bawn and mossland.
30
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
32
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
33
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
34
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
Cultural groups:
35
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
37
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
38
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
39
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
3.2.3. The sean bhean bhocht and the popular ballad and
In their turn, the popular ballads of the late eighteenth- and nineteenthcenturies blend the traditions of the Old Woman of Beara with those of the
goddesses of war and death, which stand for the darker side of the Celtic
matriarch. Their favourite trope becomes thus the Sean Bhean Bocht, an
idealised persona of the land who suffers historic wrongs, and, Kali-like,
requires the sacrifice of successive generations of sons in the hope that the
recurring heroic failures to eject the invader will finally prove successful.
Richard Kearney has suggested that the Sean Bhean Bocht has been turned
into an emblem of Irish nationalism because it is closely linked to its
sacrificial mythology in which the blood sacrifice of the heroes is needed to
free and redeem Ireland, at the same time in which these heroic sacrificial
martyrs are rewarded by being remembered for ever [14]. Moreover, this
nationalist sacrificial mythology can be further tied to pagan concepts of
seasonal rejuvenation and the sacrificial aspects of Christianity in the
Crucifixion and tradition of martyrdom [15].
THE WEARIN OF THE GREEN
Oh, Paddy dear! an did ye hear the news thats goin round?
The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground.
No more St. Patricks Day well keep, his colour cant be seen,
For theres a cruel law agin the wearin o the green!
I met wid Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand.
And he asaid, Hows poor Ould Ireland, and how does she
stand?
Shes the most distressful country that iver yet was seen,
For theyre hangin men and women there for wearin o the green.
An if the color we must wear is Englands cruel red,
Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed;
Then pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod, And never fear, twill take root there, tho under foot tis trod!
When law can stop the blades of grass from growing as they
grow,
And when the leaves in summer-time their color dare not show,
Then I will change the color, too, I wear in my caubeen,
But till that day, praise God, Ill stick to wearin o the green.
40
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
41
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
42
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
43
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
44
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
The literal translation of the title of this play is "town without laughter.
It is set in a rotting thatched cottage, with a bed placed centre stage.
Characters:
Mommo, the senile grandmother, once a famed seancha
(storyteller), is now bedridden and fixated on her bygone days.
She endlessly tries to recount the major details of a legendary
and long-ago laughing competition, without ever relating the
contest's results.
Mary, her middle-aged unmarried grand-daughter, had, some
time before, left their country home to become a professional
nurse, and feeling strangely unfulfilled, has returned to care for
her aged and infirm grandparent
Dolly, Mary's younger sister, with children and mired in a
loveless marriage, is now expecting another child without
knowing who the real father is.
The smoldering rivalries between the two sisters act as a catalyst that
force Mommo to finish her story, with the painful recognition that the
laughing contest, won by her husband coincided with the death of the
couples son.
This acts as a cathartic moment, uniting the three women into a family.
The final image of the play is that of the two granddaughters climbing
into the bed with their grandmother. It is a protean feminine image
which, reaching back beyond the woman-nation trope, reclaims for
Cathleen a more distant layer of inheritance in the strong woman of
Celtic mythology: the shape-shifting Cailleach Beara and the Celtic
triune sovereignty goddesses.
45
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
50
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
51
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
52
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
53
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
4.3.2.2. Poetry
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) : Coole Park 1929; Coole Park and
Ballylee 1931
COOLE PARK
I meditate upon a swallows flight,
Upon an aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in natures spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.
54
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
55
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
4.3.2.3. Drama
Lennox Robbinson (1886-1958): The Big House (1926), (Killycregs in
Twilight (1937)
o The Big House offers four scenes from the recent life of a Big
House family, the Alcocks of Ballydonal House in County Cork,
which span the years 1918 and 1923, the period which witnessed
to the fall of the old order and the inevitable decline of the Big
House in Irish life and culture. At the beginning of the play, the
myths of the Ascendancy sustain both the appearance of the
house, with its impressive Georgian architecture and large,
comfortable rooms described as containing the vestigial of
generations [21, 139] and the beliefs that underpin St Leger
Alcocks quasi-feudal utopianism, which makes him revel in the
privileged position of Ballydonal as symbol of the Anglo-Irish
culture in the community and in his own role as paterfamilias to the
surrounding peasant villagers. But, through the course of the play,
the individual members of the family as well as the house and the
myths sustaining it are besieged by history: the two sons, sent to
fight in the Great War under the English flag, are both killed on the
front, while at home, the villagers, whom the family attempted to
defend against the Black and Tans, turn against their Protestant
neighbours. Betrayed from within, the house is attacked by the
Irregulars for favouring the Free State government and burnt to the
ground.
W.B. Yeats: Purgatory (1938)
o An old peddler and his 16-year-old son return to the ruined big house
where the father was conceived. The old man relates how his mother
married a drunken stable-hand who wasted her inheritance, eventually
burning the house down. At the age of 16 the peddler, hating his father
who had kept him ignorant and made him coarse, killed him on the night
of the fire. The ghost of the stable-hand and his bride now re-enact the
peddlers conception, and in an attempt to exorcise guilt and remorse, he
stabs his own son with the knife he used on his father. To his horror the
hoof-beats start again, as the ghosts live through their passion and their
suffering once more.
PURGATORY
OLD MAN. But there are some
That do not care whats gone, whats left:
The souls in Purgatory that come back
To habitations and familiar spots.
BOY. Your wits are out again.
OLD MAN. Re-live
Their transgressions, and that not once
But many times; they know at last
56
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
57
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
58
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
o Friels play permutes a Catholic family into a big house setting, in order to
chronicle its disintegration at a reunion in Ballybeg Hall. The wedding of
the youngest daughter Claire to a small local greengrocer coincides with
the death of the patriarch of the family, District Justice ODonnell, who has
oppressed his children in his need for absolute authority. Eamon, married
into the family, is aware of the decline and is the only one to experience a
sense of loss, as the play moves slowly and lyrically towards an extended
scene of Chekhovian leave-taking where the members of the family say
goodbye to each other and to their past.
ARISTOCRATS
EAMON: What political clout did they wield? (Considers. Then
sadly shakes his head.) What economic help were they to their coreligionists? (Considers. Then sadly shakes his head.) What
cultural effect did they have on the local peasantry? Alice?
(Considers. Then sadly shakes his head.) We agree, Im afraid.
Sorry, Professor. Bogus thesis. No book.
(. . . ) You know what will happen, dont you? The moment youve
left the thugs from the village will move in and loot and ravage this
place within a couple of hours. (. . . ) Well I know its real worth - in
this area, in this county, in this country. And Alice knows. And
Casimir knows. And Claire knows. And somehow will keep it going.
(. . .)Sorry . . .Sorry . . . sorry again . . . Seems to be a day of
public contrition. What the hell is but crumbling masonry. Sorry.
(Short laugh.) Dont you know that all that is fawning and fore-locktouching and Paddy and shabby and greasy peasant in the Irish
character finds a house like that irresistible? Thats why we were
ideal for colonising. Something in us needs this . . . aspiration.
59
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
c. 300 BC
432 AD
795
1006
1169
1541
1586
1595-1601
1607
1609
1641-1646
1649-1654
1689
1690
1695
1791
1795
1798
1800
1803
1829
1845
1848
1858
1867
1879
1800
1893
1899
1913
1916
1919-1921
1922
1937
1948
1968
1972
1985
1994
60
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
REPRESENTATIONS.
9. THE COMIC IRISHMAN IN LITERATURE.
10. IRISH COLLEENS AND STAGE IRISHMEN IN FILM.
11. IRISH WOMENS WRITING.
12. LINGUISTIC EXPERIMENTATION WITH THE IRISH WRITERS.
13. REWRITING HISTORY AND TRADITION WITH CONTEMPORARY
IRISH WRITERS.
14. IRISHNESS AND THE LITERATURE OF THE DOUBLESELVES.
15. IRELANDS TRAVELLERS TALES.
16. COLONIAL THEMES IN IRISH LITERATURE.
17. REPRESENTATIONS OF IRELAND AND IRISHNESS IN FILM.
18. POST-COLONIAL READINGS OF IRELAND/IRISHNESS.
61
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
62
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
63
Colonial Themes and the Politics of Representation in Irish Literature
Minimal Bibliography
MINIMAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bradshaw, Brenna, Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (eds.), REPRESENTING
IRELAND: LITERATURE AND THE ORIGINS OF CONFLICT, Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1993.
Brady, Ciaran, Mary ODowd and Brian Walker (eds.), ULSTER: AN ILLUSTRATED
HISTORY, foreword by J. C. Beckett, London: B .T. Batsford, 1989.
Brophy, James D. and Raymond J. Porter, CONTEMPORARY IRISH WRITING,
Boston: Iona College Press, Twayne Publishers, 1983.
Brown, Terence, IRELANDS LITERATURE, Mercier Press, 1992.
Cairns, David and Shaun Richards, WRITING IRELAND: COLONIALISM,
NATIONALISM AND CULTURE, Manchester, Manchester UP, 1988.
Crotty, Patrick (ed.) MODERN IRISH POETRY. AN ANTHOLOGY, Lagan Press,
1993.
Deane, Seamus, A SHORT HISTORY OF IRISH LITERATURE, London et al.:
Hutchinson; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.
Deane, Seamus, CELTIC REVIVALS: ESSAYS IN MODERN IRISH LITERATURE,
1880-1980, London: Faber and Faber, 1985.
Foster, John Wilson, COLONIAL CONSEQUENCES: ESSAYS IN
LITERATURE AND CULTURE, Mullingar: The Lilliput Press, 1991.
IRISH
PART THREE
Irish Spaces and Ideologies of
Representation
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
POLITICAL NATIONALISM
1.2.
1.3.
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
1.4.
Irish Literature
CELTICISM:
Cultural discourse on the Irish identity, emerging in the second half of the 19th
century, influenced by Matthew Arnolds lectures collected and published as On
the Study of Celtic Literature (1876)
1.4.1. Matthew Arnold (1822 1888): poet and cultural critic.
His principal writings are:
in poetry, Poems (1853), containing "Sohrab and Rustum," and "The Scholar
Gypsy;" Poems, 2nd Series (1855), containing "Balder Dead;" Merope (1858);
New Poems (1867), containing "Thyrsis," "A Southern Night," "Rugby
Chapel," "The Weary Titan," and his masterpiece, "Dover Beach."
in prose, On Translating Homer (1861 and 1862), On the Study of Celtic
Literature (1867), Essays in Celtic Literature (1868), Essays in Criticism, 2nd
Series (1888), Culture and Anarchy (1869), Literature and Dogma (1873), God and
the Bible (1875), Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877), Mixed Essays (1879),
Irish Essays (1882), and Discourses in America (1885).
He also wrote some works on the state of education in mainland Europe.
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
Arnolds aim is ultimately that of getting his fellow Englishmen accept that
an invigorated British culture may stem only of the blending of the positive aspects
of Saxon common sense and steadfastness 5 with Celtic sensibility, which would
provide the only antidote to what he calls the Philistinism of modern economic
society: . . . we may use German faithfulness to Nature to give us science and to free us
from insolence and self-will; we may use the Celtic quickness of perception to give us
delicacy and to free us from hardness and Philistinism6.
As Cairns and Richards note, the importance of Arnolds study resides with
the fact that the critic managed to produce a context for the cultural incorporation
of the Celts which flattered them into accepting a subsidiary position for themselves vis-vis the English7, the recognition of the values of their cultural products being a
healing measure in Anglo-Irish relations on the cultural plane. More than this, due
to the fact that the sensibility of the Celtic nature, its nervous exaltation, have something
feminine in them, and the Celt is peculiarly disposed to feel the spell of the feminine
idiosyncrasy8, the centrality of the Celts within the British culture was guaranteed through this resort to the categories of sexuality - by the needs of the masculine
Saxons.
According to Seamus Deane, one major outcome of the English critics study
was that of introducing the Celtic idea as a differentiating fact between Ireland
and England, managing to give this word a political resonance it has not yet
entirely lost.9 Consequently, it was accepted that the Celtic spirit was utterly
different from the Saxon one, and Spensers dichotomy between the English order
and the Irish lawlessness was re-written as that between Saxon pragmatism and
Celtic spirituality:
ENGLISH
Saxon
material
reasoned
realist
objective
scientific
modern
masculine
IRISH
Celt
spiritual
emotional
idealist
visionary
mystic
primitive
feminine
The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, edited by Robert Welch, Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1996, p.
21.
6 Quoted from D. Cairns and S. Richards, op. cit., p. 47.
7 Ibid., p. 49.
8 Ibid., p. 48.
9 Seamus Deane, Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature, London: Faber and Faber, 1985.
5
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
1.5.
Irish Literature
GAEL-ICISM:
1.5.1. FAMILISM:
The Great Potato Famine which had struck Ireland in 1846, had led to a sudden
drop in population among the rural Catholic class11, and, as a consequence, during
the latter half of the 19th century, the Irish countryside underwent a complex series
of economic, social and cultural accommodations with the new circumstances
brought by the simplification of rural social relations, caused by the decline in
number and importance of the landless labourers, and the rise in prominence of the
tenant farmers, who became the most numerous class in the land. These social
changes found a counterpart in the distinct culture which this class evolved in
response to these novel social and economic factors, marked by a series of practices
and procedures, collectively termed familism, which the tenant-farmers used in
order to consolidate, extend and transmit family holdings from generation to
generation. Among these practices, Cairns and Richards note:
. . . a number of procedures to control access to marriage, including the imposition
and perpetuation of strict codes of behaviour between men and women, general
endorsement of celibacy outside marriage and postponement of marriage in farmers
families until the chosen heir was allowed by the father to take possession of the farm
[ . . . ]the spread of matchmaking as a preliminary to marriage; pressure on surplus
sons and daughters to emigrate; pressure on them to observe strict chastity and not,
See D. Cairns and S. Richards, op. cit., Chapters 3 and 4.
According to Hugh Kearney (The British Isles: A History of Four Nations, Cambridge,
Cambridge U.P., 1989), the Famine enhanced once more the differences between the Irish Catholic
south and the mainly Scots Presbyterian north, due to their contrasting experiences. While the
northern rural areas, were the main element of popular diet was oats, were spared in the main by
the failure of the potato crops, the southern ones of small farming and labouring classes, heavily
dependant on the potato, were decimated by starvation and disease. By 1847 large numbers of small
farmers were obliged to emigrate to the United States, while by 1851 statistics showed that Ireland
had lost one quarter of its population, either by emigration or by death, a social tragedy that had its
greatest impact on the Catholic poor.
10
11
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
through following their own desires, to risk the transmission of the farm under
unfavourable circumstances through a msalliance . . .12
The codes of belief and behaviour upon which familism rested, particularly the
regulation of sexuality, and unquestioned patriarchal authority 13, were also discursively
controlled by Catholicism, hence the merging of the two provided the additional
marks of identity to the Gaelic Irishness.
Thus, while retaining what were perceived as positive characteristics of
Celticism, such as the assumed spirituality and anti-materialism of the Irish, the
rural definition of Irishness deployed linguistic, religious and moral categories not
only as criteria of national identity, but also as a code for anti-Englishness14. In this
view, anything English could not be but a corrupting influence on the Gaelic
mentality.
Declan Kiberd in his study of modern Irish literature and culture, Inventing
Ireland, shows how this definition of Irishness mainly aimed at projecting the
country as not-England, where anything English was ipso facto not for the Irish [. . . ],
but any valued cultural possessions of the English were shown to have their Gaelic
equivalents15.
IRISH
Gael
Irish language
Brehon law
Gaelic football
Catholic
moral
manly
rural
ENGLISH
Saxon
English language*
English law*
soccer*
Protestant
corrupt
effeminate
urban
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
1.6.
Irish Literature
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
from Manifesto for the establishing of the Irish Literary Theatre (1897)
We propose to have performed in the spring of every year certain Celtic and Irish
plays, which whatever be their degree of excellence, will be written with a high
ambition, and so to build up a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature. We hope
to find in Ireland an uncorrupted and imaginative audience, trained to listen by its
passion for oratory, and believe that our desire to bring upon the stage the deeper
thoughts and emotions of Ireland will ensure for us a tolerant welcome, and that
freedom of expression which is not found in the theatre in England, and without
which no new movement in art or literature can succeed. We sill show that Ireland
is not the home of buffoonery and easy sentiment, as it has been represented, but the
home of an ancient idealism.
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
from
THE NECESSITY FOR DE-ANGLICISING IRELAND (1892)
When we speak of The necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation, we
mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people,
for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is
Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything
that is English, simply because it is English. (. . .)
I shall endeavour to show that this failure of the Irish people in recent
times has been largely brought about by the race diverging during this
century from the right path, and ceasing to be Irish without becoming
English. I shall attempt to show that with the bulk of the people this change
took place quite recently, much more recently than most people imagine, and
is, in fact, still going on. I should also like to call attention to the illogical
position of men who drop their language to speak English, of men who
translate their euphonious Irish names in English monosyllables, of men who
read English books, and know nothing about Gaelic literature, nevertheless
protesting as a matter of sentiment that they hate the country which at every
hands turn they rush to imitate.(..)
What we must endeavour to never forget is this, that the Ireland of
today is the descendant of the Ireland of the seventh century, then the school
of Europe and the torch of learning.(. . .) What the battleaxe of the Dane, the
sword of the Norman, the wile of the Saxon were unable to perform, we have
accomplished ourselves. We have at last broken the continuity of Irish life,
and just at the moment when the Celtic race is presumably about to largely
recover possession of its own country, it finds itself deprived and striped of
its Celtic characteristics, cut off from the past, yet scarcely in touch with the
present. It has lost since the beginning of this century almost all that
connected it with the era of Cuchullain and of Ossian, that connected it with
the Christianisers of Europe, that connected it with Brian Boru and the
heroes of Clontarf, with the ONeills and ODonnells, with Rory OMoore,
with the Wild Geese, and even to some extent with the men of 98. It has lost
all that they had - language, traditions, music, genius and ideas.
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
1.7.1.Plays:
1.7.1.1.
In the Shadow of the Glen (1902): Nora Burke is married to Dan, a sheep
farmer many years her elder, and they live in the last cottage at the head
of a long glen in County Wicklow. Dan shams his death because he
suspects Nora to be a bad wife. A passing Tramp begs shelter from the
wet night and the woman lets him in, but then she leaves the Tramp
alone in order to call to a young neighbouring sheep farmer, Michael
Dara. Once she is gone, Dan Burke sits up. He shares his suspicions and
his schemes with the Tramp and assumes his sham death-pose before
Nora and Michael enter. Michael is hatching plans for Dans legacy and
Noras thoughts are taking on an unexpected dark complexion, when the
old man rises up and banishes his wife from the house. The Tramp takes
up her cause, soothing her with fine words to win her over to a life on the
road. They leave together, while Dan and Michael compliment each other
over whiskey.
1.7.1.2.
Riders to the Sea (1904): a one-act play which tells of an old woman,
Maurya, who has lost her husband and five of her six fishermen sons to
the sea, and who earnestly begs the last Bartley not to undertake a
treacherous crossing to sell a pig on the mainland. When Bartleys body
is returned, dripping in a sailcloth, the old woman transcends her agony
by accepting her loss.
10
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
11
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
12
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
I seen two women, and three women, and four women coming in,
and they crossing themselves, and not saying a word. I looked out
then, and there were men coming after them, and they holding a
thing in the half of a red sail, and water dripping out of it - it was a
dry day, Nora - and leaving a track to the door. (She pauses again with
her hand stretched out towards the door. It opens softly and old women
begin to come in, crossing themselves on the threshold, and kneeling down
in front of the stage with red petticoats over their heads.)
MAURYA (half in a dream, to CATHLEEN): Is it Patch, or Michael, or what is
it at all?
CATHLEEN: Michael is after being found in the far north, and when he is
found there how could he be here in this place?
MAURYA: There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea,
and what way would they know if it was Michael they had, or
another man like him, for when a man is nine days in the sea, and
the wind blowing, its hard set his own mother would be to say what
man was it.
CATHLEEN: It is Michael, God spare him, for theyre after sending us a bit
of his clothes from the far north. (She reaches out and hands MAURYA
the clothes that belonged to Michael. MAURYA stands up slowly and takes
them in her hands. NORA looks out.)
NORA: Theyre carrying a thing among them and theres water dripping
out of it and leaving a track by the big stones.
CATHLEEN (in a whisper to the women who have come in): Is it Bartley it is?
ONE OF THE WOMEN: It is surely, God rest his soul. (Two younger
WOMEN come in and pull out the table. Then men carry in the body of
Bartley, laid on a plank, with a bit of sail over it, and lay it on the table.)
CATHLEEN (to the women, as they are doing so): What way was he drowned?
ONE OF THE WOMEN: The grey pony knocked him into the sea, and he
was washed out . . . . .
1.7.1.3.
The Well of the Saints ( 1905): Martin and Mary Doul, two blind beggars
have been led to believe that they are beautiful by the lies of the
townsfolk, when in fact they are old and ugly. A saint restores their sight
with water drawn from a well in a place across a bit of the sea, where
there is an island. They are now able-bodied, and must hire themselves
out for manual labour to survive. Martin goes to work for Timmy the
smith and tries to seduce his betrothed, Molly, but she viciously rejects
him, and Timmy sends him away. Blindness descends on them once
more, the saint goes to restore their sight a second time. The couple
refuse the cure this time, decided to embrace a life on the roads, having
seen the ill-will of those around them.
1.7.1.4.
13
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
1.7.1.5.
Irish Literature
The Playboy of the Western World (1907): it tells how Christy Mahon
arrives in a Co. Mayo village and wins the hearts of the local women by
boasting that he has killed his father. His prowess at the local sports
confirms him in the role of a hero and as fitting mate for Pegeen Mike,
daughter of Michael James (Flaherty), a widower who owns the country
pub where Christy stays. Christy woos Pegeen Mike away from her
cousin, Shawn Keogh, a pathetic, priest-fearing peasant, by his fine talk
and athletic feats. When the supposedly murdered father enters the
scene, the community turn upon their hero, despite his offer to slay his
da a second time. Escaping from their clutches, he tames his father, and
the two leave the stage, disdainful of the gullible Mayo peasants. Christy,
the servile son, has been transformed into a figure of power and dignity
by this rite of passage, and Pegeen Mike is left to lament her loss of the
only playboy of the western world. The play was condemned by
nationalists as a travesty of western Irish life which evoked a peasantry
of alcoholics and ineffectual fantasists rather than a people ready to
assume the responsibilities of self-government.
FROM
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD (1907)
. . . not a play with a purpose in the modern sense of the world, but although
parts of it are, or are meant to be extravagant comedy, still a great deal
more that is behind it is perfectly serious when looked at in a certain light.
. . There are, it may be hinted, several sides to The Playboy.
1) Christie [twisting round on her with a sharp cry of horror]: Dont
strike me. I killed my poor father, Tuesday was a week, for doing
the like of that.
Pegeen [with blank amazement]: Is it killed your father?
Christie [subsiding] With the help of God I did, surely, and that the
Holy Immaculate Mother may intercede for his soul.
Philly [retreating with Jimmy]: Theres a daring fellow.
Jimmy: Oh. Glory be to God!
Michael [with great respect] That was a hanging crime, mister honey.
You should have had good reasons for doing the like of that.
Christie [in a very reasonable tone]: He was a dirty man, God forgive
him, and he getting old and crusty, the way I couldnt put up with
him at all.
Pegeen: And you shot him dead? [. . .]
Christie: I did not, then. I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it on the
ridge of his skull, and he went down at my feet like an empty sack,
and never let a grunt or groan from him at all.
2) Christie: . . .Well, thisd be a fine place to be my whole life talking out
with swearing Christians, in place of my old dogs and cats; and I
stalking around, smoking my pipe and drinking my fill, and never
a days work but drawing a cork an odd time, or wiping a glass, or
rinsing out a shiny tumbler for a decent man. [He takes the
14
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
looking-glass from the wall and puts it on the back of a chair; then
sits down in front of it and begins washing his face]. Didnt I know
rightly, I was handsome, though it was the divils own mirror we
had beyond, would twist a squint across an angels brow; and Ill
be growing fine from this day, the way Ill have a soft lovely skin
on me and wont be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be
ploughing all times in the earth and dung. [. . .]
3) Christie [impressively]: With that sun came out between the cloud
and the hill, and it shining green on my face. God have mercy on
your soul, says he, lifting a scythe. Or on your own, says I, raising
the loy.
Susan: Thats a grand story.
Honor: He tells it lovely.
Christie [flattered and confident, waving bone]: He gave a drive with
the scythe, and I gave a lep to the east. Then I turned around with
back to the north, and I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him
stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet. [He raises the
chicken bone to his Adams apple.]
Girls [together]: Well, youre a marvel! Oh, God bless you! Youre the
lad, surely!
4) Christie [to Pegeen]: And what is it youll say to me, and I after doing
it this time in the face of all?
Pegeen: Ill say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but
whats a squabble in your back yard, and the blow of a loy, have
taught me that theres a gap between a gallous story and a dirty
deed. [. . .]
Christie: Youre blowing for to torture me. [His voice rising and
growing stronger]. Thats your kind, is it? Then let the lot of you be
wary, for, if Ive had to face the gallows, Ill have a gay march
down, I tell you, and shed the blood of some of you before I die.[. .
.]If I can wring a neck among you, Ill have a royal judgement
looking on the trembling jury in the courts of law. And wont there
be crying out in Mayo the day Ill stretch upon the rope, with ladies
in their silks and satins snivelling in their lacy kerchiefs, and they
rhyming songs and ballads on the terror of my fate?
5) Christie: Ten thousand blessings upon all thats here, for youve
turned me a likely gaffer in the end of all, the way Ill go romancing
through a romping lifetime from this hour to the dawning of the
Judgement Day.
1.7.1.6.
Deirdre (1910)
15
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
1.8.
Irish Literature
Rural Ireland started to display gloomier contours once Padraic Colum, Lennox
Robinson and T. C. Murray changed the peasant plays focus on the seamy side of
the farmers lives: agrarian disputes, the fight for landownership, conflicts between
fathers and sons, the unhappiness of matches made to conform to the dictates of
familism. Where Synge exploited the image of the Irish tramp as a symbol of
imagination and freedom, Colums Broken Soil (1903), revised as The Fiddlers
House (1907) showed his audiences the real cost involved in having one in the
family. Con Hourican, an instinctive artist and wanderer brings his daughters
endless worry, shame and poverty, driving Mairie into a loveless marriage in order
to save her family. The Land (1905), set at the end of the Land Wars, dealt with the
generational conflicts between Murtagh Cosgar and his son, Mat, over the value of
the old rural way of life. Pressed by the ambitious school-teacher Ellen Douras to
seek his fortune by emigrating to America such as all of his elder brothers had
attempted, Mat left behind the land for which his father had fought so hard to keep
intact. Like the previous play, The Land embodied a theme of intimate and
recognisable social significance in its real setting, and though love was presented as
a disruptive force, it was not improper. Moreover, it raised the question of the
worth of the fields won after the Land War in the changing conditions of the
countryside where the fittest chose emigration, while the relatively dull and
unenterprising Sally Cosgar and Cornelius Duras remained behind to marry and
succeed their parents.
It was this latter version of the peasant play which became the popular genre
of the Irish theatre after the Independence. Theatre as a means for the selfexpression of a rural society had followed the social changes underwent by the
class representing it. If, in the beginning of the dramatic movement, the peasants
had been discovered as a kind of primordial rural society, untouched by modern
forms of life, as landowners and citizens of an independent nation they could no
longer play this role. While the pastoral idyll became the focus of satire in plays
such as Denis Johnstons The Moon in the Yellow River (1931), the traditional
subjects and style of the peasant play remained in the limelight of the Abbey stage
helped by successive playwrights like George Shiels, Bryan MacMahon, Tom
Coffey, John Murphy, or John B Keane. Shiels The Rugged Path (1940) introduced
the audience into a peasant cottage setting provided with electric light and a radio,
a metaphor for progress which is set into violent contrast to the traditional notions
of law and order based on colonialist conditions marked by the Irish tolerance for
lawlessness and contempt for the informer. The members of the Tansey family
become the microcosm within which the play explores the two contrasting
Part 3. Irish Spaces and Ideologies of Representation
16
Ioana Mohor-Ivan
Irish Literature
attitudes related to rural violence, exemplified by the wild Dolises from the
mountains who terrorise the local farmers and kill an old man for two pounds.
While the older generation are afraid to accuse them partly because of their fear of
retribution and partly because of the old prejudice against informing, the younger
ones decide to give evidence against the Dolis, embarking thus on the rugged
path of change and confrontation. John Murphys The Country Boy (1959) picked
up the thread of the story from where The Land had left it by focussing on the
figure of the returned emigrant, the homecomer who, having left his parents farm
and established himself in a non-farming society could be contrasted to the
peasants. Where Colums play looked at the causes leading to the rural exodus,
Murphys The Country Boy treats emigration as an individual and not a social
problem. Eddie Maher, having left fifteen years ago for America, returns home for
a vacation with his American wife Julia to find his younger brother Curly planning
to emigrate for much the same reasons like his own: their father, the voice of an
unyielding past is obstinate in his intention not to turn over the control of the farm
to his son. Nevertheless, the old Maher does not stand for the abuse of patriarchy,
but for the values of rural existence and even the flaw in his character, his
contrariness, is finally revealed as a virtue: it is the test of Curlys resolution, for he
must prove mature and self-willed enough not to be afraid of his fathers anger
before he can take over the farm. Moreover, the simple rural virtues of the native
place are set in contrast to the flimsiness of Eddies and Julias make-believe: the
first trying to hide his story of failure under an air of snobbery and a trunk filled
with the American homecomers symbols of prosperity, the latter disguising her
lower-class origin and proletarian status under the mask of the tourist, always
comparing Ireland to America in a condescending manner. The plays nostalgic
stance towards rurality as an embodiment of what T.K. Whitaker calls a sort of
Paradise Lost 16 ensures the happy ending whereby exposure to his forsaken roots in
the country prompt Eddie undergo a recognition crises with a purging effect that
enables him to reconcile with his situation and admit its truth in front of his family,
helping thus Curly learn the lesson and remain by the farm. Keanes Many Young
Men of Twenty (1961) is an angry response to the same phenomenon which
reached some of its highest rates at the end of the fifties. The play, set in a country
pub where the emigrants gather for a last drink before their departure, one of the
characters protests against the political establishment for their neglect of this
human tragedy. The Field (1965) treats a similar theme like that of Shiels The
Rugged Path, with the action being set in motion by a dispute over land and
money, followed by The Bull McCabes murder of his rival and his terrorising of
his neighbours against informing. But, unlike in Shield where the farmers
eventually testify against the murderer, in The Field the villagers do not inform,
justice is not done, and the picture of the rural world is harsh and joyless. In other
plays like The Year of the Hiker (1963) and Big Maggie (1969) Keane addressed the
theme of the sexual repression with deep roots in the cultural and religious
definitions of rurality, making a strong case for the joys of sex and the evil of its
suppression.
T.K. Whitaker, Economic Development 1958-1985 in Kieran A. Kennedy (ed.), Ireland in
Transition, Cork and Dublin: Mercier, 1986, p. 10.
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1.9.
Irish Literature
Black pastoral: works which self-consciously invert the earlier idealizations of life
in the west of Ireland by presenting it as brutal and unidyllic (Nicholas Grene)
It tells the story of Francis 'Francie' Brady, a schoolboy who retreats into a
violent fantasy world as his troubled home life (with a suicidal mother,
frequently abused both verbally and physically by the husband, and a bitter
alcoholic father) collapses. Becoming obsessed with the sanctimonious Mrs.
Nudgent who once claimed that the Brady family were a bunch of pigs,
Francie eventually kills her, with the butchers bolt gun he has taken from
the abattoir where he works.
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2.2.
Irish Literature
THE ALIEN
CITY
Belfast
THE HEROIC
CITY
Dublin
Unionist
Nationalist
Industry
Revolution
Protestant
Catholic
Materialist
Idealist
Entrepreneurial
Sacrificial
Decadent
Moral
English
Irish
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The same gap between illusion and reality lies at the centre of Denis Johnstons The
Old Lady Says No!, a play written in 1926, but first produced in 1929 at the Gate
Theatre, following its rejection by the Abbey. Using an expressionistic technique of
collage, the play aims to juxtapose the complexities and complacencies of the Irish
Free State, metonymically rendered through the urban experience of his
contemporary Dublin, against the revolutionary imaginings of a Robert Emmet.
The play begins thus as a sentimental re-creation of Irelands heroic past with a
playlet staging Robert Emmets unsuccessful rising of 1803 and his love for Sarah
Part 3. Irish Spaces and Ideologies of Representation
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Curran. But the actor in the play is knocked out and has a nightmare about being
the real Emmet wandering round 1920s Dublin, and struggling to give coherence to
the bewildering scenes he encounters. At one point the crowd becomes menacing,
questioning his identity and threatening him. Emmet, excited, gets hold of a
revolver which goes off and a young man whom he has shot apparently dies
interminably. The other death Emmet has to confront in the play is the historical
gratuitous slaughter of Lord Kilwarden for which the bitter figure of Grattan
blames the heros followers. Grattan accuses Emmet of prolonging the cult of
bloodshed endemic in Irish history: Oh, it is an easy thing to draw a sword and
raise a barricade. It saves working, it saves waiting. It saves everything but blood.
And blood is the cheapest thing the good god has made (Johnston: 1988, 375). As
with the murder of the young man, Emmet is forced to face the unintended
violent consequences of his romantic ideals. Johnstons image of the mythical heromartyr is emblematically that of a somnambulist and an actor, a two-fold shadow
facing a de-glorified society achieved with so much human blood. But,
significantly, towards the end of the play, Emmet comes to see that he is but a playactor, free to rebel and repudiate the tradition of violence that history has assigned
to him. Flinging away his sword, he forgives the strumpet city Dublin, metonymy
for Ireland (Murray: 2000, 124), and, instead of delivering the famous historical
speech from the dock, he adds: There now. Let my epitaph be written (Johnston:
1988, 421), before lying down in his previous state of concussion. This is a
recognition that words can alter the shape of history and a plea to abandon
traditional pieties in favour of new, revised and enabling alternatives.
Brendan Behans The Hostage, performed in 1958 as An Giall at the Pike Theatre, is
written in the context of the renewed IRA border campaigns in the 1950s,
questioning the revolution for what its history did to make Irish politics a muddle.
The song which celebrates Michael Collins sums up the political dilemma entailed
in the split between the Laughing Boys ideal of a free Ireland and the reality of the
partially fulfilled republican project, the legacy of which materialised in the
obstinate movement to continue the quixotic struggle for Irelands total liberation
from English control (Murray: 2000, 150). The Hostage is set in an old house, once
a Republican sanctuary, now a brothel, which is owned by Monsewer, a Gaelicspeaking English aristocrat and also a convert to Irish nationalism. As Pat, a former
IRA member who runs the place, says: He was born an Englishman, remained one
for years . . .He had every class of comfort until one day he discovered he was an
Irishman..(Behan: 1962, 14-5) The absurdity of this situation sets the note for
Behans mockery of the Irish political fanaticism. The new I.R.A campaign is seen
as part of Monsewers lunacy which makes him plan battles fought long ago
Part 3. Irish Spaces and Ideologies of Representation
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against enemies long since dead (Behan: 1962, 6), while he also engineers a scheme
to get hold of a British hostage in order to forestall the execution of an IRA man in
Belfast. Leslie, the English soldier who ends up in the brothel, gradually gets the
affection of its occupiers and develops a romantic relationship with Teresa, the
Irish servant-girl. Nevertheless, since the IRA youth has been hanged, Leslies fate
seems sealed, but his death comes accidentally, at the end of the play, being shot in
the confusion of a police raid. As in Minnies case, nobody knows who has killed
Leslie: probably the IRA, as Minnie was probably shot by the Auxiliaries, but in
both cases the odds speak also for the other side, and Behan leaves the question
open to any of the two alternatives: Its no ones fault. Nobody meant to kill
him.(Behan: 1962, 108)
2.4.
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(Belfast murals: Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Red Hand of Ulster vs.
Bobby Sands, IRA martyr)
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that no matter what our religion is, no matter what our politics is, we have
the same chances and the same opportunities as the next fella.
SKINNER: . . .Because you live with eleven kids and a sick husband in two
rooms that arent fit for animals. Because you exist on a state subsistence
thats about enough to keep you alive but too small to fire your guts.
Because you know your children are caught in the same morass. Because for
the first time in your life you grumbled and someone else grumbled and
someone else, and you heard each other, and became aware that there were
hundreds, thousands, millions of us all over the world, and in a vague
groping way you were outraged. Thats all its all about, Lilly. It has nothing
to do with doctors and accountants and teachers and dignity and boy scout
honour. Its about us - the poor - the majority - stirring in our sleep.
LILY: . . .its for him I go all the civil rights marches. Isnt that stupid? You
and him [Michael] and everybody else marching and protesting about
sensible things like politics and stuff and me in the middle of you all,
marching for Declan. Isnt that the stupidest thing you ever heard?
MICHAEL: I knew they werent going to shoot. Shooting belonged to a
totally different order of things. And then the Guildhall Square exploded
and I knew a terrible mistake had been made. And I became very agitated,
not because I was dying, but that this terrible mistake be recognized and
acknowledged. . .
LILY: And in the silence before my body disintegrated in a purple
convulsion, I thought I glimpsed a tiny truth: that life had eluded me
because never once in my forty-three years had an experience, an event,
even a small unimportant happening been isolated, and assessed and
articulated. . .
SKINNER: And as we stood on the Guildhall steps, two thoughts raced
through my mind: how seriously they took us and how unpardonably
casual we were about them; and that to match their seriousness would
demand a total dedication, a solemnity as formal as theirs.
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Cal (1983) focuses on the psychological torment and political victimhood of Cal
McCluskey, a young working-class Catholic living in a Protestant housing estate in
Northern Ireland during the Troubles. He is drawn into the Provisional IRA by
Crilly, a former school friend, who pressurises him into being the getaway driver in
the assassination of Robert Morton, a reserve policeman in the mainly Protestant
Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Cals feelings of guilt and self-loathing which stem from this event are
intensified by his romantic attraction to Mortons Catholic widow, Marcella, with
whom he develops a doomed relationship. Unable to confess his crime to Marcella
or extricate himself from the clutches of Crilly and the local IRA commander,
Skeffington, Cal broods relentlessly on his shame and abjection.
His torment deepens when he and his father are burned out of their home by
Loyalist paramilitaries, after which Cal moves to an abandoned cottage on the
Morton farm, where he is employed as a labourer. Here his tortured affair with
Marcella develops in secret, though any hope of them building a new life together
is soon shattered when Cal sees Crilly planting a bomb in the library where
Marcella works.
The novels climax is swift and sudden. After Crilly and Skeffington are
apprehended by the police, Cal informs the authorities about the bomb and then
returns to Marcella to await passively his own arrest on Christmas Eve.
MacLaverty adapted Cal for the screen in 1984. The film starred Helen
Mirren and John Lynch.
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Minimal Bibliography
Bradshaw, Brenna, Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (eds.), REPRESENTING
IRELAND: LITERATURE AND THE ORIGINS OF CONFLICT, Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1993.
Brady,
IRISH
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ANNEX 1
INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS & TEXTS
(Recommended for individual research)
1. J.M. Synge, In the Shadow of the Glen, Riders to the Sea, The Well of
the Saints, The Playboy of the Western World
2. The Field (film)
3. Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy
4. The Butcher Boy (film, directed by Neil Jordan)
5. W.B.Yeats, Easter 1916
6. Sean OCasey, The Dublin Trilogy (In the Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and
the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars)
7. Denis Johnston, The Old Lady Says No!
8. Brian Friel, The Freedom of the City
9. Bernard MacLaverty, Cal
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