The Language of Irish Writing

The Irish Language

Oliver Cromwell

Cromwell only spent 9 months in Ireland from August 1649 to May 1650, but his impact was to be everlasting on the island. With fierce brutality Cromwell succeed in completing the English conquest of Ireland where others had failed. Cromwell first set a course to Drogheda. 3,500 men women and children were killed over the two day battle, with the city suffering heavy bombardment. Nearby towns surrendered or evacuated. Less than a month later, Cromwell arrived at Wexford town. Here over 1500 people were slaughtered in the massacre that ensued. Cromwell rested in Youghal until the spring of 1650 and then turned his attention towards Kilkenny and the Tipperary towns of Fethard, Clonmel and Cashel. By May 1650 Ireland had been placed under British rule and Cromwell returned home. Sieges on both Limerick and Galway, the last city under Irish control to fall, ended in October and November 1650 respectively. English rule in Ireland was complete.

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Cromwell only spent 9 months in Ireland from August 1649 to May 1650, but his impact was to be everlasting on the island. With fierce brutality Cromwell succeed in completing the English conquest of Ireland where others had failed. Cromwell first set a course to Drogheda. 3,500 men women and children were killed over the two day battle, with the city suffering heavy bombardment. Nearby towns surrendered or evacuated. Less than a month later, Cromwell arrived at Wexford town. Here over 1500 people were slaughtered in the massacre that ensued. Cromwell rested in Youghal until the spring of 1650 and then turned his attention towards Kilkenny and the Tipperary towns of Fethard, Clonmel and Cashel. By May 1650 Ireland had been placed under British rule and Cromwell returned home. Sieges on both Limerick and Galway, the last city under Irish control to fall, ended in October and November 1650 respectively. English rule in Ireland was complete.

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Language is one the most fundamental of all the elements and features shared by many Irish writers. Language, quite simply, is the way we see the world. It is through language that we share our world - our conception and our understanding of the world - with each other. What happens, though, when the language we use it not our own? Is it possible to share, to communicate, our world and ourselves to others when the words we use are in some way alien to us?

Before the advent of writing in the English language there was Gaelic poetry. Gaelic culture was a predominantly oral one. That is to say, its literature was not written down but, rather, transmitted by word of mouth. Poets or 'File' had an important role in Gaelic society. Poetry was a means of communicating historical events, as well as celebrating family and race. Poets thus wielded much power and influence and, certainly, the continuing importance placed on the artist in our own time, is borne out of this Gaelic past. However, as times changed and Gaelic traditions and culture came under threat from English invasion and colonisation, the tone of the poetry shifted to one of lament and sorrow for a culture and a way of life that was rapidly disappearing. A poet such as Aogan Ó Rathaille (c.1675-1729) in 'Cabhair ni Ghairfeadh (No Help I'll Call)' powerfully articulates his own loss of privilege but also the dispossession of the Gaels in general. It is a tone and a theme that can be observed to continue on into 19th Century Irish poetry written in the English language.

Though the Irish language did not fully disappear, it is fair to say that a major element of an Irish writer's experience in the last 200 years has been concerned with making the English language his or her own, of using it to express Irish themes and Irish realties. This is an act of appropriation, of taking the tool that once was used to oppress and using it, in turn, to express, and powerfully so. Words, then, and their application take on a certain resonance in an Irish context. A writer like J.M Synge (1871-1907), for instance, uses English in such a way that it seems to be Irish: he captures the syntax and the rhythms of the Irish language through the medium of English. He is being true to the Irish language and, as a consequence, reenergizing and revitalising the English language so that it can become a means of articulating Irish concerns.
But there can also be a continuing residue of distrust and anxiety concerning the English language, even in more recent times. The dramatist Brian Friel (1929-), in his play Translations (1979), recognises the power that language possesses in shaping the world we live in. He at once mourns the loss of the Irish language but understands, too, the reality of the English language's presence and pervasiveness in Ireland. He realises that in the act of translation from one language into another, there are gains and losses. In an Irish context, this has many reverberations.

The ambiguous relationship to the English language underpins other aspects of Irish writing regarding issues of identity and our relationship to the past, the present and the future. At the heart of the language problem is a question of power: of who is speaking and who is spoken about. It is a question of control; that is, control over, not only the language, but also those things that flow from language: the narratives/stories we tell to both ourselves and to others.

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