Scoláire Staire - History Scholar

The Free Online Irish History Magazine

Volume 2, Issue 1. January 2012

Articles - Reviews - Archives - Diary - News

Sport & Economic Turmoil: The Collapse of the GAA in the 1890s

Technology & The Future of HScolรกire istoriography Staire JANUARY 2012

Medieval Ireland: Writers and their Masters

Review: Charles Stewart Parnell Reassessed 1

“History & Technology: Opportunities and Challenges for Historians in the Digital Age.” A Special Roundtable Discussion hosted by Scoláire Staire, as part of the IHSA Conference 2012.

The Ruby Room @ The King’s Head, High Street, Galway.

Sunday 4 March 2012, 11.30am.

We are pleased to announce that Scoláire Staire will host its first event in conjunction with the Irish History Students’ Association in March 2012. The IHSA hold a conference every year which allows students to present their research to peers in a friendly environment. This year’s conference takes place in the historic city of Galway and is being organised by the history society (Cumann Staire) at NUI Galway. The call for papers officially opens on 15 January so be sure to get your abstracts in to the organisers.

The main presentation part of the conference will take place on Saturday 4 March in NUI Galway. Our editor will be in attendance throughout the day so if you have any ideas for articles etc. be sure to have a chat with him. On Sunday 4 March there will be a special roundtable discussion hosted by Scoláire Staire in the Ruby Room at The King’s Head on High Street. The topic for the discussion will be “History & Technology: Opportunities and Challenges for Historians in the Digital Age”. We will be talking about the huge advances in technology in the last decade, how these have greatly benefited historians, but also how they pose challenges for research in the future. As a product of the digital revolution, Scoláire Staire feels compelled to discuss these issues with the nect generation of historians. The event will last for one hour and anyone who wants to speak can throw in their penny’s worth for discussion. Or, you can just come along, have a brew and listen to the discussion. The event will be a casual affair and will be followed by a walking tour of Galway leaving from St. Nicholas’ Church nearby.

More Details: http://cumannstaire.com/ihsa/ http://www.irishhistorystudents.net http://scolairestaire.com http://thekingshead.ie/the-ruby-room.aspx ihsa2012@gmail.com scolairestaire@gmail.com 2

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Contents Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2012

4 Editorial

30 Opinion

5 News

36 Reviews

Labour history, bio,

29 PhD Diary

depiction of evictions.

REGULARS f

IN THIS ISSUE i 8 Sport : Trouble in the GAA

Richard McElligot looks at the collapse of the GAA as an organisation in the 1890s.

Middle-Ages : The Writers of Medieval Ireland

Denis Hamon investigates the motivations of the medieval Irish writers, who

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produced a disproportionate amount of material in various areas of literature.

Music: Irish Traditional and Modernity

Erick Falc’her-Poyroux questions the position of Irish music between the

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traditional and the modern.

31 Technology: The Challenges for Historians

Kieran Fitzpatrick examines the issues that historians will likely face in the

future due to the rise of social media and internet technology.

ScolĂĄire Staire JANUARY 2012

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Editorial

W

ell, here we are again.

The first issue of Scoláire Staire was very well received in Irish history circles across the globe as well as by a general readership. We aim to grow bigger with each issue so I urge you, our readers, to keep spreading the word about us. I would like to sincerely thank everyone who offered encouragement and best wishes after the first issue appeared last October. Now for what they call in the music industry, ‘the difficult second album’. This quarter we have a leading article that draws parallels with our own time. Dr Richard McElligot’s article on the collapse of the GAA in the middle of a global recession shows just how close the organisation came to oblivion in its early days. We also have articles on music, medieval writers and technology, as well as our regular reviews, Shay Kinsella’s PhD diary and other features.

a responsibility to counter the inevitable triumphalism that will come from some quarters. We need to emphasise the facts and make sure that we play our part in commemorating these important events properly. Scoláire Staire will play its part in refusing to accept the myths that may be peddled. We will act as a forum for constructive debate, a place to highlight the events that the mainstream media will pass over, and as always…a place to celebrate history for its own sake, not to serve any political objective in the present.

We hope you enjoy this issue and be sure to join us at the FORUM on scolairestaire.com.

We’re glad to be at the forefront of publishing sports and cultural history as well as the more traditional forms like political and social and economic history. We encourage historians to get in contact with us with ideas from any genre. Scoláire Staire aims to be as wide ranging as possible. This is the place to get your research recognised by people who wouldn’t necessarily see it otherwise.

Historians will play a major role in this coming decade of centenaries. This year alone, we have the centenaries of the signing of the Ulster Covenant, the sinking of the Titanic, and the formation of the Irish Labour Party, to name but a few.

Next year we have the Dublin lockout and the formations of the UVF, ICA and Irish Volunteers. Then it’s a steady stream through the First World War, the Easter Rising, the Battle of the Somme, War of Independence, the formation of Northern Ireland, and the Civil War. These are only a few of the events that come to mind but there are so many others that should be commemorated too. The divisive nature of many of these events means commemorations have the potential to cause trouble. Historians have 4

Dr Adrian Grant Editor

11 Oakfield Court Buncrana Donegal scolairestaire@gmail.com

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

News

The End of History at Magee College

The University of Ulster has announced the end of all history courses at Magee College from 2014, meaning the first year students enrolled in 2011 were the last. The Derry city centre campus has been the home to many Irish history students from degree to PhD level over the years. In expansion plans announced late last year a new School of Irish Literature and Languages will open on the campus and all history courses will be moved to the Coleraine campus. The Derry Journal reported that all 322 extra places allocated to Magee will be in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.

While the economic rationale of investing in STEM subjects is sound, it seems to Scoláire Staire that announcing plans to remove history from the University’s most historic campus in the lead up to Derry’s year as UK City of Culture in 2013 makes little sense. There will be huge investment in all things cultural in the city over the next 24 months, but unfortunately if you want a history degree you’ll have to leave the city.

Irish History Students’ Association Conference The IHSA conference will take place in Galway on the weekend of 2-4 March. The call for papers is now open.

Submit a 200 word abstract and 100 word bio to 2012ihsa@gmail.com. Scoláire Staire will be hosting a special event on technology and history on the Sunday. See page 2 or www.scolairestaire.com for more details. Our editor, Adrian Grant, will be at the conference all weekend so if you have any ideas for Scoláire Staire articles or features be sure to have a chat with him.

For more information see http://cumannstaire.com/ihsa/

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

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Pue’s Occurrences

Scoláire Staire was saddened to hear news last week the Irish history blog Pue’s Occurrences was ceasing its posts. The blog has been a great forum for debate on historical issues and a generally entertaining place for historians to connect with each other in an informal way. The editors of the blog leave behind a great legacy in the numerous posts that are still available on the site.

The announcement that ended the blog was ambiguous though, so we hold out hope that someone will come along and resurrect Pue or reincarnate the blog in some other guise. http://puesoccurrences.com/

You can take out ads in the e-mag vers or both. Drop us a line at scolairestair for publishers and organisations with apply. Scoláire Staire operates with v advertising o 6

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

News

Scoláire Staire Forum.

There is now an extensive FORUM on the Scoláire Staire website. We hope this will grow into a great resource for historians and students to discuss historical topics, and help each other out with research ideas and job opportunities. This forum can become a great network for the Irish historical community but we need our readers’ help to build it by starting conversations, creating topics and posting comments. It can also be a great place to discuss the content of our articles and features with the editor and authors. Check it out HERE today.

sion of Scoláire Staire, on our website, re@gmail for more information. Ideal h upcoming events. Competitive rates very little funding. Help us grow by on our pages!

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

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‘A Good Ship Going Down with the Tide’ The Collapse of the G.A.A. in the 1890s.

The 1890s saw a serious recession spread across the globe. Richard McElligot relates how the effects of that recession, along with other factors, almost crippled the fledgling Gaelic Athletic Association.

I

n the past few months, separate reports on the grave impact the twin scourges of recession and emigration are having on GAA activity, in areas like Kerry and Galway, have been published. They sketch a stark picture of the problems facing the Association in modern, rural Ireland. However, this 8

is not the first time the country’s greater social and economic situation has seriously threatened the Association.

When he founded the GAA on the 1 November 1884, Michael Cusack ushered in a sporting revolution in Ireland. The GAA initiated the mass participa-

tion in organised sport among ordinary Irishmen. To use Cusack’s own words, the Association spread across Ireland ‘like a prairie fire’. By 1889, it was reported that there were 777 affiliated branches in Ireland and the All Ireland Championships were already two years old. Yet despite this remarkable success, Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Sport the 1890s would witness the almost total collapse of the GAA in Ireland. For an organisation, which today has become so integral to Irish life and culture, it is remarkable just how close the GAA came to total disintegration.

By the summer of 1890, a massive economic depression had descended on the country caused by a sharp contraction in the demand for Irish agricultural exports in the British market. This led to a long downward slide in livestock and butter prices within Ireland, which lasted years. The economic situation was exaggerated by the reappearance of the potato blight.

This resulted in the widespread destruction of the potato crop across rural Ireland. Over the next five years the economy of Ireland, which was dominated by agriculture, would witness a prolonged recession, interspersed with frequent potato crop failures. It is important to remember that 72.5% of the "Discovery of the Potato Blight" by Daniel MacDonald. (mulititext.ucc.ie)

male population of the country was directly employed in agriculture, in 1891. As Tom Hunt has shown, direct employment in agriculture accounted for at least 61.8% of GAA members nationally, at this time. This did not include the thousands of men employed in the commercial, retail and skilled or unskilled labour sectors whose business, was heavily geared towards a supporting role for the agricultural economy. The effects of a large scale depression in what was the most dominant industry in Ireland, was a major factor in the decline of the GAA nationally during the 1890s. As Ireland’s tenant farmers struggled to pay their rent and put food on the table, sporting considerations naturally slipped into the background.

Mass Emigration The economic situation led to the reappearance of mass emigration as a feature in rural Irish life. The striking increase

in emigration mostly accounted for the 15% decrease in the Irish population between 1881 and 1901. Better economic opportunities in Britain and, more especially, in North America for those families decimated by the agricultural situation in Ireland, accounted for this steep rise in emigration. A government report stated that 83.7% of those emigrating were aged between fifteen and thirty-five. This was exactly the age group of young rural men which GAA membership largely depended on. As the lifeblood of many clubs began to seep away, the Association was already fighting a losing battle to maintain its popularity nationally.

In the three years to the end of 1891, the number of GAA clubs in Ireland fell by 438 with the most severe declines being in the west and south-east of the country. In Mayo alone, branches had fallen from thirty to three. In Ulster, club numbers were reported to have dropped from a high of fiftyeight in 1889, to eleven by 1891. In an early attempt to check what seemed like a terminal decline in the popularity of the Gaelic games, Maurice Moynihan, the honorary secretary of the GAA, wrote to all counties to attend a general meeting of the Association in Dublin: ‘Consisting of one member of each affiliated club during the year 1890, and now in existence, for the purpose of taking into consideration the present position of the Association, with

ScolĂĄire Staire JANUARY 2012

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the view of re-organising and uniting all its scattered forces in a solid phalanx for the preservation of the National pastimes: and also to take such action as may be deemed advisable under existing circumstances in support of the integrity of the national cause. ‘ The proposed meeting came off in the Rotunda Hospital on the 22 July 1890. The attendants agreed to appoint a paid secretary to look after the organisation and running of the GAA nationally. Yet despite Moynihan’s efforts, the GAA only further decayed. A mere six counties were represented at the Association’s Annual Convention in January 1892 , while only one club each from Cork, Dublin and Kerry entered that year’s All Ireland Hurling Champion10

ship. The financial position of the Association was reported to be dire. P.P. Sutton, the Gaelic correspondent for the newspaper Sport, declared: ‘Amongst the causes which have contributed to the decline of the Association in general may be mentioned emigration, the expenses of teams contesting for championship and tournament honours; and last though by no means least, the bad management of the County Committees. County Boards are largely responsible for the disappearance of many clubs, which, smarting under the bungling and unjust treatment of the governing body, became disorganised, and eventually disbanded.’

Emigration, he argued, had been the ‘deadliest enemy of all.’

In the south, he claimed, between 20-50% of the ‘old hands in clubs’ were now missing from their teams. Nationally, an RIC report on the estimated strength of the GAA in January 1894 highlighted the enormous collapse of the GAA. It found that in the entire north of Ireland only one branch of 100 members, survived in Belfast. Thus, all of Ulster, along with Carlow, Clare, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Offaly, Roscommon, Tipperary North, Wicklow and Wexford were reported to have no active branch of the GAA. In Kerry, club affiliation dropped from thirty-six in 1889 to a mere ten in 1894.

The 1890s, coinciding as it did with the reappearance of large scale emigration and the stagnation of the Irish economy, Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

presented a challenging environment for any sporting organisation. Indeed, throughout the country there was a noticeable decline in both rugby and association football clubs in this period. Yet, outside of the major economic or social factors, there was a myriad of secondary reasons as to why the GAA specifically found itself facing near destruction.

to such rural GAA clubs having a much more transient and ad-hoc nature. As a result most early teams were ephemeral combinations, coming and going almost in an instant rather than being permanent, organised clubs. Their experience may be contrasted to those clubs that were formed with a local village or town acting as an anchoring point.

Local divisions

In most counties a Gaelic club hierarchy developed whose base, consisted of these transient, non-affiliated clubs. Perched at the summit was a small group of semi-permanent, formally constituted clubs. Many rural Gaelic clubs were often at a severe financial disadvantage compared to their sporting rivals.

Unlike sports like cricket, Gaelic games, due to their implied nationalist outlook, did not attract the patronage of local landlords and gentry. In stark contrast to areas like Scotland where 89% of sporting club patrons and presidents were either members of the nobility or large landowners, patronage of GAA clubs by such groups was almost nonexistent. Some larger urban clubs like Tralee’s John Mitchels managed to acquire their own rented grounds, club rooms and had their own elected officers. Yet, the membership of the GAA in market towns, like Tralee, was so closely tied with the agricultural fortunes of their country brethren that, especially in economically bleak times such as the 1890s, these clubs could never match the financial clout of their cricket and rugby counterparts. GAA clubs were also far more vulnerable to the effects of emigration. The loss of even one of the more talented players or organisers in a small rural club

One explanation as to why the GAA was so vulnerable to the effects of emigration and economic depression was down to the nature of the vast majority of its clubs. Despite the GAA advocating a one parish/one club dogma, it is evident that across Ireland, in the early decades of the Association, several clubs did co-exist in the same parish or district. Though county boards tried to enforce the parish rule, many, such as the Cavan County Board, found it impossible to police and that earlier, interparochial divisions proved too resistant to such change. Indeed during the early years of the Association, people much more readily identified their sense of place with their local townlands rather than their parish. At the heart of rural Ireland, there existed a system of informal alliances between members of the farming community within such small territorial units like townlands. These alliances were used to pool resources during times of intense labour, such as the threshing season. Thus, the nucleus of many early rural GAA clubs can often be traced from such farming alliances. Utilising such townland networks as the principle basis for young men to form Gaelic sides inevitably led Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

often had a devastating effect. In Ke r r y, the Lispole St J o h n’s G A A c l u b mourned the departure of their member James Casey when he left the village to seek a new life in America. The young man was described as giving, ‘impetus to his favourite game which enabled the Lispole team to enter the field with any other, and often the team was able to carry off the laurels of victory which must, in justice to Jim Casey, be ascribed to him and the interest taken by him in the club’. No record of this club was uncovered in the months and years after his departure and, it is assumed, like so many clubs before it, St John’s simply disbanded through want of organisation and interest.

Along with the loss of key personnel through emigration, a lack of success on the field or disputes with county boards often contributed to clubs’ disbandment. Forty-one Gaelic games matches were reported as having taken place in Kerry in the 1890 season, including nineteen county championship matches. However, no fewer than eighteen games were either awarded as walkovers owing to a team not turning up, or ended before the allocated time as disputes over a scoring decision or the sending off of a player erupted and county board objections were sought. Often disputes over the outcome of a match led to courtroom-like 11

Statistics The decline of the GAA can be further illustrated if we examine the decrease in the national percentage of GAA membership. A police report on the GAA in 1891 indicated there was an average membership of fifty-three men per affiliated club. Some 98.2% of GAA members were aged between 15 and 35 years at this time. According to the 1891 census, the male population of Ireland, in this age bracket, stood at 786,423.Taking fifty-three as an average, the national GAA membership of 777 clubs in 1889 amounted to 5.2% of the Irish male population aged between 15 and 35. In contrast by 1891, GAA clubs had decreased to 339, and membership to 2.2% of this total male population. By 1894, GAA club numbers had fallen to a mere 118 or 0.79% of this Irish male population.

battles, between representatives of clubs involved, being played out at county board meetings and in the rigorous exchange of letters to the local and national papers, which could continue for weeks on end. The RIC reported that the GAA, which had once threatened to expand widely, was rapidly declining owing to clubs openly quarrelling with each other. Objections and counter-objections to the awarding of matches would be a feature of local and national contests throughout the 1890s and beyond. It is perhaps not surprising that supporters of games quickly became disheartened by witnessing decisive results on the field of play being subsequently overturned on a technicality, the inevitable result being a replay.

Apathy From the viewpoint of the spectator it is easy to understand how early Gaelic games failed to sustain the interest of the vast majority of patrons, especially given their quality. A noticeable feature of Gaelic games in the GAA’s first years was their lowscoring nature. The fact that 12

initially, a goal outweighed any number of points conceded naturally led to an attritional game.

This, and the crowded nature of the playing field, resulted in a heavily defensive game with physicality encouraged, the basic tactic being to prevent a team scoring a goal. The poor quality of the playing fields, the deep grass, unskilled players, a heavy, water absorbing football, use of everyday footwear and the crowded nature of a then, fortytwo man game, all combined to ensure matches were kept to low scores.

The unseasonable fixtures for Gaelic Games, especially as regards inter-county contests, also contributed to a growing lack of enthusiasm among supporters. In contrast to today, the GAA was originally confined to a winter and early spring playing season. The 1892 Munster Football Final, for example, was held in the depths of December, on a field covered in a foot of snow. The constant poor quality of matches, the bad weather in which they were often contested, and the incessant disputes over match decisions tested the commitment of even the most

enthusiastic GAA follower. Yet, along with these specific causes, there appeared to be a growing general apathy for the games of the Association themselves. The GAA had been established on a wave of popular enthusiasm.

Its momentum was fuelled by the Association being viewed as something new, unheralded and distinct. It brought a colScolĂĄire Staire JANUARY 2012

C.S. Parnell. See p. __ for a review of Paul Bew’s biography Enigma: A New Life of Charles Stewary Parnell.

‘No matter how magnificent or imposing anything earthly may be, people weary of admiring it in the end. It was the same with the G.A.A. We admired the games; we grew excitedly enthusiastic in our admiration of them, but it being the same thing every day, we ultimately failed to go see a match. ‘ Cleary saw that the novelty of the GAA had worn thin among the people of Ireland and hence why it found itself in such a precarious position.

O’Shea Divorce

our and pageantry to Irish life seldom seen in the decades before it. It became a focal point for communities to congregate and celebrate the athletic prowess of their men. Yet, by the early 1890s, this initial burst of enthusiasm seemed to have faded.

Writing in Sport, P.R. Cleary, a former national secretary of the GAA articulated as much: Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

While the economic situation took its toll, the downfall of Charles Stewart Parnell, as the leader of a united Irish Parliamentary Party, would have huge implications for the Association. In November 1890, Parnell’s affair with his married mistress Kitty O’Shea made headline news across Britain and Ireland. The scandal caused outrage among many political and church leaders in Ireland.

On 6 December, after several days debate on the question of his continued leadership of the

party, forty-four of the Irish Party’s seventy-seven sitting MPs rejected Parnell. The action split not just the party, but Irish nationalist opinion. Parnell had been one of the first patrons of the GAA. Like other sections of Irish society, the Association became deeply divided on the issue. Its other patrons were split in their support with John O’Leary, the noted former Fenian leader, in the pro-Parnellite camp while William O’Brien and Michael Davitt, both leading Irish political figures in the land agitation of the 1880s, supported the opposing side.

Disunity quickly appeared within the rank and file of the GAA. Nationally, the revolutionary Fenian organisation, the IRB, decided to use the influence it had gained on the GAA’s ruling Central Executive to throw the official support of the Association behind Parnell. When Maurice Moynihan, one of the leading figures of the IRB in Kerry, organised his national general meeting of the GAA in Dublin, the representatives present agreed to pledge their support to the leadership and ideals of Charles Stewart Parnell. However, this declaration resulted in the alienation of those in the GAA who were politically opposed to Parnell.

Police reports soon noted that the Association was being torn asunder due to internal dissension and if this breach was not soon repaired, it would become inseparable. Indeed, the RIC regarded the Parnell split as giving the previously popular GAA its coup de grâce. Parnell’s death, in October 1891, brought little resolution. The political fissure that cut open the Irish Party would continue to haunt Irish nation13

alist politics throughout the remaining years of the decade. Its effects on the GAA proved to be as catastrophic, as those of the economic climate in which it took place. The Parnell split had a brutal impact on the GAA precisely because it denied the Association a strong, coherent leadership at the very time that the GAA needed it most. Only with such unity could the Association have hoped to face and overcome the extraordinarily difficult challenge that the social and economic condition of the country posed, for a sporting organisation like itself.

Founder of the G.A.A. - Michael Cusack. (clarelibrary.ie)

As the economic and political climate worsened during the 1890s, the GAA became reduced to a spectre of its past glories. It would limp on in such a demoralised state for years. Only with the emergence of the Gaelic Revival, at the turn on the twentieth century, would the wind of the rebirth of Irish nationalism, stir the sails of its listing vessel.

Further Reading Richard McElligott, ‘Forging a Kingdom: The Establishment and Development of the Gaelic Athletic Association in Kerry, 1884-1924’ (PhD Thesis, University College Dublin, 2011).

National Archives of Ireland, Crime Branch Special Index.

National Library of Ireland, Census of Ireland 1891, General Report (1892), Ir 310 c 1.

Sport M. Cronin, W, Murphy, & P Rouse (eds), The Gaelic Athletic Association, 1884-2009 (Dublin, 2009).

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T. Hunt ,‘Parish Factions, Parading Band and Sumptuous Repasts: The Diverse Origins and Activities of Early GAA Clubs’ in D. McAnallen, D. Hassan & R. Hegarty (eds), The Evolution of the GAA Ulaidh, Eire agus Eile (Armagh, 2009).

N. Tranter, ‘The Patronage of Organised Sport in Central Scotland, 1820-1900’, Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1989).

Dr. Richard McElligott is chairman of the Sports History Ireland society. He has recently been awarded his doctorate from UCD for his thesis on the early history of the GAA. He is currently a teaching assistant with the Department of History and Archives, UCD. Email: richardmcelligott@vodafone.ie.

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Middle Ages

Glendalough, Co. Wicklow.

Writing with a Purpose: The Secret Agenda of Senchas

What motivated medieval Irish writers to produce such a large output of texts in various genres from law to geneology and poetry?

Denis Hamon investigates.

T

he medieval Irish intelligentsia was highly literate and dedicated to its written tradition. The weight of numbers alone bears witness to the enthusiasm with which Irish scribes not only copied existing texts from the continent, but also produced their own throughout the Middle-Ages.

Their production greatly varied in range and by the fifteenth century, the small island could boast a written tradition greater in size than many other nations of the old world, which encompassed law and saga literature, hagiography, wisdom texts, Scolรกire Staire JANUARY 2012

lore of places, immense genealogies, year after year of annals from every corner of the island, not to forget an intimidating amount of poetry. Writing these texts was left in the hands of a number of highly trained individuals, fluent in both Latin and their own vernacular. The question that comes to mind, then, is why such an enthusiasm, why such overwhelming interest in the formalisation of lore into a written format that would endure?

To find an answer to this question, it is interesting to consider

two things. First of all, the writers. It is crucial to understand who they were, where they hailed from, and, most importantly, whom they served. Secondly, the texts themselves, but not only what they say (or what we think they should say), but also how they changed throughout the centuries, evolving sometimes from ancient core poems only a few lines long to reach gigantic proportions and encompassing all the layers of tradition. And to understand the arguments presented in this article, one concept needs to be clarified; that of senchas.

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Image from the Book of Leinster (c. 1160).

TCD, MS 1339 (olim MS H 2.18).

plaining how a place received its name; genealogies; and to an extent, law (one of the great traditions of early Irish law being called the Senchas Már).

Senchas, in the Old Irish sense of the word, means ‘tradition’, and ‘old tales’. By extension, it acquired the sense of ‘genealogy’ or even ‘history’. The medieval Irish understood this word in all its shades of meaning and granted it a feel of grandeur related to the immense scope of the written tradition attached to it. Indeed, there is in the writings of the Irish a great deal of intertextuality. The pieces produced by Irish writers from the seventh century all the way to the end of the Middle Ages relate to each other and send back to elements of the tradition that give their readers the impression that looking at one text is but a short glance at a square inch fragment coming from a tapestry going on for miles. This tapestry is woven from many different threads, and each thread corresponds to a different genre of medieval writing: mythology (also called pseudohistory), that is to say fitting the Irish into the biblical frame of world history; lore of places (dindshenchas), short tracts ex16

All these sources send back to each other and create a common backdrop into which medieval Irish identity could take shape and flourish. And, as we shall see, these interconnections are far from being innocent. What we are dealing with here is a motivated attempt at glorifying a growing tradition that existed mostly to support the dynastic claims of local monarchs reaching for a higher power than their own temporal rule.

Patrons and Writers What does a writer create?

What can poets make that will put food on their table? Nothing, unless a patron decides to provide for them. Among these patrons, there must have been some who supported men of knowledge and arts just for their own sake, with no other motives – the law actually encourages kings to do just this, since a túath is not supposed to be a túath without a king, a scholar, a priest and a poet – but we have to leave room, and ample room at that, for the patron lord who expected something in return.

What can a poet offer a king? In a society where praise and satire is primordial, with the value of a man being measured by his honour (the lóg in enech, price

of the head), it is the glory and renown that poets and men of lore can bring to a king that corresponds to their currency, their means of repaying their patron lord for his generosity.

Such attempts at praising a dynast could be achieved in a number of ways. Genealogies were the easiest, and indeed the first, means of achieving their purpose that the custodians of tradition – or senchaide – could use. Genealogies have been an important part of Irish tradition since at least the seventh century, when we date back the earliest genealogical poems in Leinster. This is actually quite logical, since asserting the direct descent of a local dynasty from a legendary ancestor-founder is an obvious way of empowering the live representative of this bloodline. However, genealogies alone are but lists of names and not the most entertaining.

Therefore, probably as early as the eighth and ninth centuries, a foundation legend takes shape: a formal explanation of how Ireland came to be inhabited, where the Irish language came from and how their island fitted in the biblical vision of world history. This legend, that came to be known as the Lebor Gabála Érenn (the Book of the Taking of Ireland), is a fascinating piece of medieval literature that brings together all the layers of senchas to constitute a general backdrop in which Irish tales, both past and future, could take place.

The Lebor Gabála is an evolving pseudo-historical text that relates the successive invasions of ancestor-founders, fitting them in the ancient testament legends of the flood and drawing some elements from medieval exegetes such as Orosius or Isidore Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

of Seville.

The evolution of the text is an excellent witness of the shifting political interests of the successive writers and the way tradition could be used and altered, its message changing to fit the writer’s vision. The original mythical invaders of Ireland appear to have been only three: Partholón, Nemed and the sons of Míl (who was originally just a militis Hispanie apparently turned into a named character at a later phase, using the Latin phrase). They appear in the 830831 Historia Brittonum ascribed to Nennius, possibly witnessing the current state of the legend in the ninth century.

The tradition was later expanded, with new invaders being introduced in the compilations of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. What is most striking in this expansion, however, is the unorthodox character of the new elements introduced in the later period. Indeed, when the tale of the Gaedil, from whom Míl is descended, is a clear and obvious copy of the story of the Israelites in the Old Testament, the newly introduced invaders, namely the Fir Bolg and the Túatha Dé Danann seem very pagan, with some characters of the Túatha Dé being even cognate with Celtic deities found in Britain and on the continent. As one studies the tradition of this fundamental text, it becomes obvious that as time went, the Lebor Gabála took on an identity of its own that was not only an apocryphal origin legend relying on Christian cosmogony but also a native allegory drawing knowledge from unorthodox sources in order to highlight Irish identity. Transmission is of course a Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

crucial notion here, the transmission of knowledge from a pre-Christian period all the way to the tenth and eleventh century, when these non-Christian influences start to surface. But there is another concept that helps shed light on the circumstances of these cultural encounters and the merging of traditions in Ireland, and that is acculturation.

Acculturation The term acculturation, i.e. the meeting of two cultures and their subsequent interaction, was defined and quantified by French scholar Michel Meslin, who parsed its unfolding process into four distinct steps: the nature of their contact, its ampleur (a French word meaning both extent and importance), its length in time and finally its frequency. As peaceful as the cultural encounter of Chris-

tian missionaries with the native population seems to have been, we know for a fact that the Irish intellectual élite of the eighth and ninth centuries was largely Christian-dominated and the island capable of training such highly literate monks as Columbanus. Therefore, we can consider that the contact between these two cultures was peaceful in nature, increasingly important in ampleur with the multiplication of missionaries from Britain and the conversion of locals, stretching indefinitely through time and happening more and more when contact evolved from being foreign and punctual to being local and frequent.

In acculturation we find a guide to take us through the second half of the first millennium and explain why the written production of the Irish in the early Christian period is highly Chris-

The Lebor Gabála Érenn and its waves of invaders The written tradition known as Lebor Gabála Érenn is a complex text born of the successive reinterpretations of Ireland’s mythical history. It is a global and far-reaching construct that encompasses most of the medieval Irish written tradition (or senchas) and has been labeled “pseudo-history” by scholars, as opposed to actual History (capital H), from which it significantly differs. Yet to the Irish of the medieval period, the distinction between these two concepts was absolutely not as clear-cut as it is to us and History and pseudo-history could collide, and absorb each other on a regular basis.

Probably born from early genealogical poems of the seventh-eighth centuries, the Lebor Gabála Érenn gradually took shape, adding more and more invaders as the tradition expanded with each passing century.

What seem to be the three original invaders made the history of Ireland fit within Biblical world history. In the course of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, however, the tale was expanded to include several other invaders, namely the Fir Bolg, the Túatha Dé Danann and the infamous Fomoiri, all of them races of strange beings, more or less supernatural, reaching Ireland to lay claim to it until the next invasion. Their adventures and the wars they fight form a large part of the saga tradition called “Mythological Cycle” and they are central in the Medieval Irish perception of their own mythical history.

17

tian and mostly Latin, with a later relapse into unorthodox writings in the vernacular, such as sagas and origin-legends relying on gods and pagan characters, although always fitting (more or less) into a larger Christian background. A young Irish Church had to be wary of native tradition: superstition and local interpretations of the Christian doctrine have always been at the heart of the process of conversion. However, too much native influence could mean the failure of the island’s Christianisation.

Therefore, the earliest versions of the Lebor Gabála and the rest of the Irish written production in the early-Christian period are very much in keeping with the Christian canon, except the odd piece of poetry or genealogy here and there.

On the contrary, a tenth century Church, grown stronger in postGregorian times, had less to fear from native, non-Christian teachings that had lain around in partial form for centuries but had not had the power to question what had been the dominant religion in Ireland for generations. This is when acculturation entered its second stage, a reversed state where lingering elements of native superstition began to feel harmless enough for Christian writers to introduce into their own work.

If we consider that the Irish senchaide who wrote the texts that we still have today received their knowledge from ancestral sources through means now lost to us – probably oral – then we must accept that this knowledge was preserved in some form all the way from antiquity into the tenth-eleventh century. This is entirely possible and even in 18

keeping with some of the written material that has survived in medieval manuscripts. When one considers Sanas Cormaic, Cormac’s glossary, which is a late-ninth/early-tenth century collection of words, each with a short definition and a possible etymology, the notion of transmission becomes quite obvious.

Many of the words it contains are names of gods or pagan celebrations, it deals with magic and forbidden knowledge, and it has been described by scholars as a collection of glossaries put together to explain obscure terms found in some sources.

It is possible that these sources were oral as well as written, even though the glossary itself was written, and the fact that the non-Christian terms that it contains needed explaining bears witness to their evanescent nature and their unorthodox character. Transmission occurred at some level, probably in partial and altered form, but it is possible that native knowledge had become mostly unintelligible by the end of the first millennium and needed explaining, or even recreating when time had buried most traces of its former glory.

When this knowledge turned harmless in the later stages of the Christian period, it became possible for senchaide to use it to fit their own agenda. But what exactly could they gain in such endeavours? Well, as stated above, knowledge for knowledge’s sake makes scholars go hungry. Sages and historians of the medieval period had to eat just as much as their modern counterparts do, and in order to survive, they needed patron lords to pay for their expanses, their research and the vellum

for their manuscripts.

These patrons would hardly have given them everything for nothing. In return for a lord’s favour, it became the senchaide’s task to make the people holding

the purse look great and important in the eye of History. Genealogy could make one’s ancestry divine or heroic. A dindshenchas tale could turn a common wood or field into a celebrated landmark where such and such god or hero once had an adventure.

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

The Lebor Gabála provided a powerful backdrop that provided all the background information on the great figures of Irish pseudo-history, who could in turn be used locally in other genres of senchas.

rified by a custodian of tradition. In such a context, one can understand why the senchaide did not shy away from the less orthodox elements they introduced in their production in the later period. Not only, as averred above, had the native teachings turned to mere superstition overtime, with no centralised or organised power behind it, but also, it was a matter of life and death for them: they needed the business that their work provided for them, competition was fierce, and whatever they could use to make their production better was fair game.

Professionals

Part of the Martyology of Tallaght, separated from the Book Leinster. Now held by UCD.

The tradition could then fend for itself, drawing on its own momentum to grow and expand until it became unavoidable for any ruler to see their name gloScoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

As a conclusion, we could say that the Irish writers of the medieval period were not nostalgic pagans hiding in the Christian flock to preserve the ancient knowledge of their true faith.

They were simply professionals, and their trade was their praise for a lord who offered them a living and allowed them to perform their art. Some of them hailed from Christian monasteries, which were perfect places to learn to read and write and acquire a solid knowledge of Latin and Christian world-history, whereas some of them might very well have learned their letters elsewhere. It did not change the fact that these historians of old knew their own people, and the lords that ruled them: they understood the power of the Christian doctrine but also the glorious image of the native tradition, even after it had turned to superstition and had lost its religious character. In the end, they used both to establish the identity of their people and enhance the unique spirit of Irish medieval tradition.

Further Reading E. Bhreathnach, ‘The seanchas tradition in late medieval Ireland’ in B. Cunningham & E. Bhreathnach (eds), Writing Irish History (Dublin, 2007), pp. 1723.

F.J. Byrne, ‘Senchas: the nature of Gealic historical tradition’ Historical Studies IX (1974), pp.

137-59.

J. Carey, ‘Lebor Gabála and the legendary history of Ireland’ in H Fulton (ed.), Medieval Celtic Literature and Society (Dublin, 2005), pp. 32-48.

T.M. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland (Oxford, 2003).

M. Ní Bhrolcháin, An introduction to Early Irish Literature (Dublin, 2009).

D. Ó Cróinín, (ed.), A New History of Ireland, i (Oxford, 2005).

R.M. Scowcroft, ‘Leabhar Gabhála part I: the growth of the text’ Ériu XXXVIII (1987), pp.

81-142.

‘Leabhar Gabhála Part II: the growth of the tradition’ Ériu XXXIX (1988), pp. 1-66.

Denis Hamon completed his PhD in early Irish History in 2011 under the supervision of Dr. Elva Johnston in UCD. His research mostly deals with the written sources of the pre-Norman period in Ireland, their socio-political context and their meaning, relying on the concept of acculturation.

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‘There seems to be a curious delight in the feeling that the stranger knows far more than oneself and yet - being a stranger - understands nothing .’

Conor Cruise O’Brien, States of Ireland

T

he last two decades in Ireland have been a period of strong economic growth, followed by an equally strong recession, and the concrete results are easily visible in the towns and cities across the country, and arguably also on people’s faces. The evolution of social behaviours, possibly less visible, is equally marked. As such, one of the most common expressions heard from commentators or journalists, but also from scholars like Barney Frank, is that Ireland is ‘between tradition and modernity.’

20

One should first note that the expression, generally intended as a kindly comment, is not limited to the various forms of cultural expressions such as music, cinema or painting but can equally be extended to fields as diverse as religion or cooking, and can even be applied to economic or social areas.

eyes of these commentators, the phrase denotes primarily a tradition rooted in the past, with an indefinable purity and endogeneity. Conversely, modernity for them points to the future and to an exogenous character.

We are here at the heart of a conflict between two forces occupying both space and time.

Second, this cliché would seem to conjure up the unstable balance of the country in its present state, thereby indicating the imminent possibility of a traditionalist relapse. Indeed, in the

But these two concepts of tradition and modernity, however, are most often used in vague, simplistic and potentially misleading ways. Considered strictly from our cultural perspective, Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Left to right: Laurence Doherty, Ciaran Tourish and Kevin Doherty of The Pyros. The band, established in the dark days of the early 1980s, mix Irish traditional music with bluegrass and a stage show that includes such eccentricities as a hard-hat rhythm section. (jigtime.com/thepyros)

Music

Does Irish Music lie ‘Between Tradition and Modernity’?

The concepts of tradition and modernity are often perceived as incompatible. In this article, Erick Falc’her-Poyroux looks at how Irish music has fallen between both concepts and how it has evolved over the years.

they may however be defined with a few specific traits: Regarded as essentially rural in its origin, cultural tradition is supposed to be marked primarily by a sharp conservatism, a strong fragmentation, as well as an elitism based on (what is now termed) cultural consumption and the monopoly of cultural expression. The adjective ‘traditional’ has thus become in most Western languages synonymous with ancient, past or outmoded, referring only to a process aimed at retaining or reproducing, and denoting a contrario what is not modern. Thus, most European dictionaries tend to satisfy themselves with definitions Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

based solely on the relationship tradition-past, and forget to acknowledge the present and future principles.

Conversely, modernity is often regarded as urban and characterized by a constant need for change and a formal complementarity between, on the one hand, a strong individualisation of expression (copyrights being one of the most visible effects), and, on the other hand, a democratisation of culture engendering the development of mass media.

This dichotomy, usually analysed as a conflict, or as an on-going struggle, brings together two supposedly incompatible forces: being traditional and modern would be as contradictory as

being simultaneously oneself and another, as looking towards both the past and the future, or even as being at the same time Irish and foreign. It is to this particular context that is sometimes attributed the genesis of major figures such as Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, etc.

In other words, these authors were able to mark their time in finding an exemplary balance between two dimensions: a universal principle of acquired values and the necessity for creative freedom.

But besides the fact that this antithetical notion will take on a completely different meaning depending on whether it is received by an Irishman, a North Ameri21

Three Fiddlers in the Street - Fleadh Cheoil (author).

can, a South African or Japanese person, it reflects the existence of an extremely simplistic view of any human society, which has but one alternative: one should either be traditional or modern. Furthermore, it postulates a unique model of tradition and a unique model of modernity.

In this article, we will first set out to understand what has led some of us to oppose tradition and modernity, via an analysis of the main outside influences and the resulting identity crises that have occurred in music, one of the most vibrant components of Irish cultural life of the last 40 years, as testified by Niall Crumlish in his 1993 article ‘Irish Music - The Blueprint’: ‘There is absolutely no doubt that additional wealth, and jobs, can be created in the music industry in Ireland (...). At the risk of being repetitious, music is one of this country’s greatest natural resources. South Africa has its diamonds, the Middle-East its oil, France its food - we have our music. (...) Irish bands, songwriters and artists have proven that they - that we - are very good at this thing. Without any kind of government strategy an enormous amount has been achieved.

Much more can be’.

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If we try to summarize briefly what today forms the basis of traditional music in Ireland, and the potential foreign interactions, we should first cite the song genre known today as sean nós, whose origins may go back to pre-Norman times. Ballads will also be mentioned, born a few centuries later out of an urban European background. We will of course linger on the harp, which earned Irish musicians a tremendous reputation during the middle ages. Eleven or twelve centuries after its appearance in Ireland’s iconography, its genesis can still arouse heated debates: the advocates of the ex-nihilo birth of the Irish harp, however, find it more and more difficult to counter migrationist theories. The same applies to the Irish bagpipes, the result of a mix between several types of insular and continental instruments. With regard to the violin or the flute, the endogenous origin makes no doubt, especially for the tin whistle, originally an English instrument, whose production was only made possible by the new techniques brought about by the industrial revolution.

Industrial Revolution The arrival of the accordion marks an extremely important

phase of music in the world, since following its invention in 1826 in Vienna, the instrument spread to many different types of popular music in the world, in a few cases in rural areas (as in Mexico), but mostly in urban areas (Paris, Buenos Aires or South Africa, among other examples). It is also the main instrument of the industrial era, requiring the implementation of complex technology and highly accurate tools not previously available. More recently, the arrival of the piano and guitar as an accompanying instrument in the 1920s curiously triggered more debate than the in-

tegration of the bouzouki in the 1970s...

Regarding dancing in Ireland, the origins are rather clear as well: the reel probably comes from a dance called the hay, and arrived during the sixteenth century via England and the continent. It should also be noted that all the dances appearing during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are probably common to Ireland, Germany, France and Italy. The emergence of dancing masters throughout Europe in the eightScoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Right: Irish postage stamp.

Below: Crossroads dancing, c. 1930.

eenth century is another example of Europe’s intense cultural activity, no doubt grounded in the mixing of populations that came with the Napoleonic Wars.

What is remarkable about this is that, unlike Celtic Brittany for example, dancing in Ireland was never as fragmented as the major theories on traditional societies would suggest: if one has to remark that every Breton village had its own dance steps, and even its own rhythms, Ireland showed greater uniformity in this area during the nineteenth century. It was also at this time that the Irish began to question their cultural identity.

The first decades of the twentieth century witnessed a very intense debate on the authenticity of the dances: considered as foreign, a number of them (quadrilles, highland flings and barndances), were subsequently banned by the Executive Committee of the Gaelic League. In those days of course, ‘foreign’ meant ‘English’. These arguments have continued in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and one of the most recent examples was provided by the controversy surrounding the show Riverdance (1994). It was Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

on the creative freedom mentioned in our introduction that its author, Bill Whelan, developed a choreography mistakenly judged for what it was not: traditional Irish dancing. Purists were outraged, but the public was enthusiastic.

Among the incoming influences, one more element to take into account is tourism: this very lucrative market actually originally found its way into tourist areas of the West and South-West. Meanwhile, the central and eastern parts of the country remained rather quiet for a long time, or were lagging behind, depending on your point of view. Sessions in pubs, for example, only emerged there in the 1980s, about 20 years after areas like Kerry and Clare. Obviously, it would be simplistic to consider that tourism is responsible for this growing market, but it is undeniable that it is now one of its vital principles and potentially one of the most important sources of income for some musicians. However, the state does not benefit directly from this parallel economy where a renowned musician can sometimes earn as much as 1000 or 1500 Euro per month during the summer season, tax-free.

I should also briefly mention here the main outgoing influences: first the countless collectors and foreign travellers who came to observe, listen to and transcribe the music and life of Ireland. And we logically find numerous Irish tunes in the English operas of the eighteenth century, starting with the Beggar’s Wedding by Charles Coffey in 1728, the Aria di Camera

the following year by Daniel Wright and The Poor Soldier by the English composer William Shield in 1782.

Emigration The second outgoing factor of importance is emigration, in particular emigration to the United States, and the urbanisation of Irish music that was to follow. It is now accepted that Irish music survived for decades among the Irish immigrants in the United States, mainly in cities like New York or Boston, before reappearing in the collections published, for example,

by Captain Francis O’Neill. This difficult balance between a rural tradition and an urban context, however, turned O’Neill into one of the favourite targets of critics and scholars throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

More recently, Irish music has been able to find its way into the music industry in the USA, beginning with the success of the Clancy Brothers on stage and in the U.S. media in 1961, and to finally enter the world of show business through rock music, via recordings by Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Sinéad O’Connor, Kate Bush, Mike Oldfield, etc.. It is now quite clear that most (if not all) Irish musicians wishing to make a living from their art, traditional or not, do so outside 23

of Ireland.

The developments I have described and the resulting conflicts can therefore be summarised in two points: - Media and tourism marketing, - The use and value of the words ‘traditional Irish music’, i.e. its authenticity.

We will therefore try and analyse here the reasons for the crisis in Irish cultural expression within the traditional/modern dichotomy, the better to define the concept of tradition.

As was shown in our first part, the modernisation of music in Ireland necessarily involves a confrontation with foreign realities and cultures, to the point that its detractors sometimes point to an alienation from its origin, an entfremdung. In such cases, the cultural risk is that the music becomes estranged from its original creators and ceases to belong to its country of origin. This was of course what the 24

Gaelic revivalists feared at the end of the 19th century, and probably what still haunts some actors of the Irish cultural scene today, a century later.

Indeed, up until the 1950’s, the changes proposed by the younger generations were strictly limited to the context of Ireland and all the alterations were purely domestic: whether one considers the concept of the band, or the migration of dancers and musicians from the crossroads to the dance halls, all this happened for the sole benefit of the Irish people in Ireland. This development and the integration of values of modernity of the twentieth century already mentioned, such as urbanisation, the need for change, the development of mass media and the individualisation of expression, not only reflect the recent changes in Irish society, but also question the very definitions of tradition and modernity.

At the same time, the modernisation of Western coun-

tries caused a reversal of their economic logic, now based on production and no longer on consumption. This new representation also found its way into many documents concerned with human rights: whether we pay attention to Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, or Article 5 of the European Cultural Convention of 1954, we find that access to culture is not concerned so much with the right to creation as with the right to consumption.

Copyright One of the great phenomena of recent decades lies in the mass marketing of musical traditions, giving them ‘owners’ (or ‘authors’, in the economic sense of the word), which turns melodies into the property of a single individual. But, unlike classical music, pop, rock, jazz, etc., traditional music has never had individual authors in the strict economic sense of the word: the fundamental reason for its existScoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Left: Dancing, Ballinboreen. (Illustrated Sport) Below: Session at Willie Clancy Summer School. (Author)

ence is to be shared by all and enjoyed by all, in a unifying representation of the community.

It is thus logical to see many examples of artists foreign to traditional music affixing their name onto a tune whose author is little known or long gone, or even onto an anonymous folk melody. For example, few people are aware that the melody for “Mná na hÉireann”, based on an 18th century poem was composed by Seán Ó Riada in the 1960’s. The English pop group The Christians was thus able to record it in 1990 under the name “Words”, which is considered by the copyrights administration as ‘music trad. arr. H. Priestman’.

By contrast, traditional musicians have a strong tendency to cite their sources when interpreting a song or a tune on stage or on record, thus paying tribute to the continuity of the transmission with a simple ‘I learnt this song from the singing of ...’ or ‘I learnt this tune from the playing of ...’.

Still, the commodification of this musical tradition, however one may feel about it, can also be regarded as an adaptation to the environment: it is a testimony to, but also a consequence of Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

the opening of Ireland to the rest of the world since the sixties. Some Irish musicians, on seeing their music cross the borders to travel far and wide, may naturally feel dispossessed of a rich culture that they themselves have created. But in all fairness, this is also what some blues, jazz and flamenco musicians must have felt in similar circumstances decades before them. And it may very well be what some musicians from New York feel today when faced with the re-appropriation of rap music by urban youth the world over, from Brazzaville to Moscow. But when the music from a specific cultural context leaves its origins, it is no longer the psychological property of the community that created it, and

this may be what some Irishmen and Irish women find difficult to understand.

The Irish Cultural expression was therefore completely re-

shaped in only one or two decades (the 1970’s and 1980’s), and Irish music found itself facing a crisis due to its spread throughout the globe and its absorption by many foreign cultures. In these new contexts, of course, it no longer has the same meaning.

These new values of traditional Irish music are perfectly integrated into the overall economics of the early twenty-first century. Indeed, the main drive for the recent development, particularly in Ireland, is the third sector, called “service sector”.

We can therefore consider that music in Ireland supports and participates in the service sector, one of the main hallmarks of post-industrial societies.

Post-in dustrial societies are generally regarded as so close to each other that the phenomenon has been described with the term ‘globalisation’ (of culture, of economies, etc.).

The main argument in this regard is that modernisation has eliminated all social and cultural differences between the countries in which it was imposed.

But the dispute over the value of 25

Feis Loch Garman, 1903. (An Claidheamh Soluis)

‘traditional Irish music’ brings an entirely different light on this issue. For many decades, an ambient and almost institutionalised nationalism gave but a single hue to Irish culture, relegating to a minor position any feelings differing from this artificial mind-set. But, like all other nations, Ireland’s identity is manifold, and the many meanings of the term ‘traditional Irish music’ provide ample evidence.

Clashes between the supporters of different camps in Irish music can only be understood if one accepts the polysemy of the words ‘traditional Irish music’. There is no unique musical identity, and there is no unique cultural identity in Ireland.

Among others, the conference held in Dublin Castle in March 2003 and entitled ‘Talking Irish’ expressed almost 10 years ago the idea that the old trinity of Irishness (land, religion and nation) is no longer valid.

Modernity and Tradition The modernisation of Ireland is therefore one that leads effectively, from the 70’s onwards, to a diversification and cultural heterogeneity, a process whose effects can now be seen in political, economic and social terms.

In other words, Ireland found itself torn between an economic dynamism conforming to the Western model of the twentieth century, and the cultural tension of a fringe of the Irish society, who kept dreaming of an artificial and indivisible identity. Until the 1990’s, any other view was either dismissed or marginalised (see Delanty & O’Mahoney, 1999). Thus considered, ‘traditional culture’ has long been seen as an obstacle to modernisation, particularly 26

for the younger generations. It would now seem that this attitude is outdated, and no one can deny that music has been a force and a factor of change in that evolution, rather than a mere response to a new situation. The most striking conscious example of that new maturity acquired

by Irish music ever printed on a CD booklet in that respect is probably the explanation given by the duet Lá Lugh for the fifth song of their 1995 album: ‘While reworking an old song “Níl sé ’na lá” or “It is not yet day’” the sentiments of this song came to mind. The song thus evolved to “Tá sé ’na lá”, ...... It is the day, the time for many changes.’ (‘Brighid’s Kiss”, Gerry O’Connor and Eithne Ní Uallacháin.)

This shows that the dynamics

of modernisation is inseparable from the dynamics of confrontation on the theme of identity, in particular cultural identity.

This concept of cultural identity is often associated with the image of extreme, if not downright dangerous, nationalism: in reality, such a vision shows the same mistaken opposition between tradition and modernity.

The assertion of a broader and manifold Irish identity is therefore, from this point of view, a double victory and also marks a new attitude towards the past.

The attitude which came with the Gaelic revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that consisted in giving the past a quasi-religious value, and in freezing the country in an overpowering respect for ancestors, tends to disappear as the conScoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

cepts of tradition and modernity start merging. In this respect, tradition is modern, and modernity is traditional or, more appropriately, Ireland’s modernity is traditional and Irish traditions are modern.

But, at this point in our reflexion, can one still speak in terms of tradition and modernity regarding the terminology of traditional Irish music and its commodification? Indeed, as we have seen, the definitions of tradition are most often given by default, for what is not modern.

Tradition is too often defined by a lack, an absence, a deficiency rather than as a function, a force or an action.

Similarly, if the process of modernisation is a response to the need for modernity, no equivalent action term matches the concept of tradition. ‘Traditionalisation’ has not yet found its place in the language, while all indications are that it does exist: in short, tradition is not seen as a process. The term ‘tradition’

thus finds itself describing a product, and most often a cultural product marketed for passive consumption, guaranteed by official texts. Considering any tradition as a mere product, and not as an on-going process, is therefore to deny the right to change to a cultural expression and its original source, to deny it the right to identity, and potentially to sentence it to a slow but certain death.

In other words: should we not rather be talking about the modernisation and traditionalisation processes, rather than the static concepts of tradition and modernity; better still, shouldn’t we talk about the modernisation of tradition and the ‘traditionalisation’ of modernity?

In this current process of the modernisation of traditions, it is certain that Ireland possesses peculiar characteristics, and did not follow in the footsteps of most other Western nations, usually consisting of the industrial and the post-industrial

stages. It is commonly assumed, for example, that Ireland never experienced the industrial stage (in the economic sense of the term), going directly from the agricultural stage to the postindustrial and post-colonial stages. This assertion however seems to me in need of tempering, and by several factors.

Firstly, if the industrial stage never actually found its place on a purely technological and social (or political) level, one cannot hold this true for the cultural level; the arrival of the accordion and tin whistle during the nineteenth century are undeniable evidence of the influence of industry over the musical production.

Secondly, it would be extremely difficult to prove that Ireland’s musical culture is by and large based on a foreign reality imported from a neighbouring coloniser (the common definition of post-colonial societies).

At least, it would be very difficult to prove that that influence

Harp Competition at Fleadh Cheoil. (Author)

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

27

Joseph Haverty: The Piper (1844).

functions, that is to say commodified and exportable, whose function might appear to some as primarily commercial. Irish music production thus finds a balance between a ‘traditionalist’ inward force and a ‘modernist’ outward force, between an internal and an external function, and thus expresses the essence of tradition, by combining a centrifugal force with a centripetal force, or, rather, a tradition of conservation with a tradition of integration. was greater between Great-Britain and Ireland than between, say, Central Europe and Ireland.

One could however include, among the very few exceptions, the ballad-singing tradition imported from Great Britain with its urban traditions and language.

Cultural Economy Finally, it now seems clear that Ireland has managed to develop large areas of its economy thanks to specific aspects of its culture, and notably music.

In other words, Ireland nowadays is more a part of the centre than of the periphery in cultural terms, and one should recognise here the success of artists and writers of the late nineteenth century in their efforts to develop a culture unique to Ireland, giving it a cultural importance far outsizing its actual political size: the Nobel Prizes for Literature are one example, as are the Grammy Awards of the American recording industry.

Irish traditional music has, in short, two facets: a musical one based on internal functions, i.e. functions in use in Irish society (sessions, dances, etc.). And a second one, based on external 28

Ireland, in her search for identity, has been able to find in its music one of the best expressions of this balance, which appears naturally as one of the most relevant and revealing elements of contemporary Ireland. Constantly evolving, the two processes of tradition and modernity interweave and interconnect: tradition is modern, and modernity is traditional.

One should then never say, or let anyone say, that a cultural expression is “between tradition and modernity.” It may however be appropriate to honour the term ‘traditionalisation’.

It is generally considered that modernisation is driven by an economic and industrial development, bringing in its wake social changes, and then political and cultural changes. But the question can and should be considered in the other direction, because it is likely that cultural modernisation can also lead to a redefinition of economic and social modernisation. In other words, the world needs artists and creators to unceasingly and constantly rethink and reshape itself, especially when morale is low and unemployment high.

Further Reading F. Barry, ‘Between Tradition and Modernity: Cultural Values and the Problems of Irish Society’, The Irish Review, (2), 1987.

C. Crouch, Social change in Western Europe (Oxford, 1999).

N. Crumlish, ‘Industry Special: Irish Music - The Blueprint’, Hot Press, Vol. 17, N° 16, 25 August 1993, p. 43.

G. Delanty & P. O’Mahony, Rethinking Irish History: Nationalism, Identity and Ideology (London, 1998).

E. Falc’her-Poyroux, ‘Naissance d’une industrie musicale irlandaise’, Presses Universitaire du Mirail, mars 2003 (in French).

E. Falc’her-Poyroux, ‘L’image de la musique irlandaise en Irlande du Nord’: http://www.falcherpoyroux.info/mti.

E. Falc’her-Poyroux, ‘Identités musicales individuelles et collectives en Irlande’, CRINI conference: ‘Made in, Identités culturelles et emblèmes nationaux”’ Université de Nantes, 2009.

G. Therborn, European modernity and beyond. The trajectory of European societies 1945-2000 (London, 1995).

Erick Falc’her-Poyroux is a senior lecturer at the University of Nantes, France. He completed his PhD on ‘Ireland’s Musical Identity’ in 1996 and has written books in French about Ireland. He is also a member of Sofeir - the French Society of Irish Studies. www.falcher-poyroux.info Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

PhD Diary

SETTLING IN Shay Kinsella

To talk of ‘settling in’ to life as a PhD student is something of oxymoron, because I have rarely felt truly settled since beginning. The process has been a strange and busy one, adding a compelling and needy dimension to my life - one with an uncanny knack of producing alternate waves of gratification and guilt. To say it is constantly on my mind is the truth, however I may try to time-manage or compartmentalise. So rather than sharing my life with my thesis, it has become a fulcrum, and an unyielding one at that. I have already learned the absolute necessity of being passionate about the subject matter because otherwise, I doubt it would survive the demands of research and analysis.

Having formally started the process in mid-October, my supervisor has been guiding me towards drafting a provisional plan for the first year, at the end of which I hope to undertake a preliminary ‘Viva’ oral presentation to a panel of examiners on a part of the thesis, so as to be upgraded into the full PhD programme, from my current PhD-Track status. We have arranged a formal meeting every 3 weeks to discuss progress which provides me with the necessary impetus to get busy. It’s frightening how quickly 3 weeks can pass by, and it’s hard to believe that the second half of my yearly fees is due just next month.

Summer 2012 is not so far away after all, and there is a huge amount of research to be done before then.

In terms of key sources, I have spent the last two months working with original primary sources: examining and cataloguing a mass of documents (some kept in quite degenerative conditions) in the private archives of the family whose landed estate I am researching. The archive has never been consulted by a historian before, and while it constitutes a gold mine for historiography, I fear my head-lamp will need a lot of fuel to map its interior. Nevertheless, the joy of discovering a family letter or a political statement boost the confidence and motivation no end. However, I am constantly mindful of the need for focus, to have clear objectives in mind when consulting them so as to lend me some direction and to eliminate so much irrelevant, although fascinating detail. Such sources have also cemented my belief in the originality of the project, and have guided me towards a starting point for writing.

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Another encouraging aspect of my first few months in the process has been the wonderful feedback, guidance, encouragement and assistance from many historians, amateur and professional, with expertise in my subject. What a relief to discover that many of the roads I have set out upon have been explored before to a lesser or greater extent and that signposts have been erected, even if it takes a lot of effort to find them. This sense of a historical community is hugely enabling and it’s amazing the number and background of people with information once the word gets out that a landed estate is being investigated. Anecdotes, rumours, photographs and documents are beginning to surface from the most unlikely quarters in the community.

The next major step is to actually put digits on keys!

So, where to begin? A question that has constantly been on my mind for the last couple of months, and the pressure to get something down on paper has been building. I have been compiling mental paragraphs and arguments for many months now, but haven’t actually written anything down. In order to clear my head, I have limited my study in the last couple of weeks to a short chronological period and will now attempt to set out an argument with all the digressions, errors and waffle that have stalked my mind about the topic.

Only then will I be able to assess whether I am heading in the right direction, and dilute my argument with brutal severity and self-assessment. I have more than once been accused of a strange breed of diction and around-the-houses style. So my plan is to be concise, to be direct. I need to manage my wayward prose and find an appropriate style that enables, rather than distracts from the content of my argument.

Also, as the New Year dawns I find myself determined to time manage more effectively in 2012. I will pursue that perfect pie chart which will give sufficient time to work, to essential family time and social outlets. But this student is already very aware that the rest, as they say, is History...

Shay Kinsella is a PhD student at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. To join the conversation go to the forum at www.scolairestaire.com 29

Opinion

STUCK IN LIMBO Adrian Grant I, like many of my peers, am the product of a free third level education. We were the lucky ones who were in the right place at the right time. I was able to pursue the subject I loved at university without having to wonder if it would be worth the financial stress that most undergraduates will face in the coming years. After self-funding an MA, I was lucky enough to secure funding for a three year PhD programme before the effects of the crash sucked the cash out of universities in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Yes, we are the lucky ones who have a higher education under our belts. However, many of us now find ourselves in a tricky situation. We were warned by those who went before us that there were not enough academic jobs out there for all the PhD students nearing completion. That was fine, we could try to get into the academy and if it didn’t work out, we’d try our hands at something else. That luxury is now gone too. There just aren’t that many jobs out there anymore and there is huge competition for what remains. After many years of study, most of us with postgraduate degrees in humanities subjects face extended periods on the dole, minimum wage employment, unpaid internships, or emigration.

Many have already given up on finding a job related to their degree subject; or emigrated. It is almost inevitable that when a history PhD finds a steady job unrelated to their subject, their contribution to historiography will be lost. Some of us are holding on for dear life; researching, writing and filling in application after application for which we never even get the sniff of an interview. If we’re lucky enough to find a steady job, another historian bites the dust.

Maybe we’ll return to our vocation when we retire, but for now there just isn’t time to work a full time job and produce the history waiting to be written.

For those of us still hanging on, we are stuck in limbo. The future of historiography lies in technology.

The internet, digitised resources and databases are making the job much more convenient in terms of time consumption and logistics. These resources do not come for free. Online resources that are essential for historians, such as Jstor and the various newspaper archives are expensive and out of reach for the PhD in limbo. While writing our theses, we had un30

limited access to these resources. Our peers inside the academy also have unlimited access as well as the benefits that tenure brings.

The point I’m getting at is that there are many of us PhDs in limbo who desperately want to keep researching and writing. Not only do we do it out of our love for the process and the desire to contribute to historiography, Most of us aspire to gaining one of the very few university positions available. In order to be competitive, we need to publish. In order to publish, we need the online resources upon which we so heavily relied when writing our theses.

I write this piece in an attempt to encourage our universities to extend access to these resources to their alumni. The numbers applying for access would be miniscule relative to the actual size of the alumni.

Technologically speaking, this would not be a huge task. A simple associate code and password could be assigned which would allow the graduate to log on to the university library website, and therefore, the online resources.

The funding for historical research has been cut to the bone. But surely, through this small gesture, universities could greatly help alumni continue to engage in productive research without draining the budget. Copyright issues may prove to be the biggest obstacle to this idea but I think it’s worth investigating further. Perhaps a letter, signed by a few of us limbo-ers could persuade the powers that be, that this is a valid idea.

If you want to get behind this idea, get in contact with us here at Scoláire Staire.

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Technology

How to Deal with the ‘Digital Dark Age’ Kieran Fitzpatrick anticipates the challenges posed for future historians by the rapid advances in internet technology and the rise of social networking.

H

ow are historians to catalogue and recreate with a society inherently rooted in the Internet and, more specifically, social networks?

The level of involvement that the Internet now has in shaping people’s behaviour, their motivations, political standpoints and social interactions, make this question one of existential importance to the historical community. History’s reaction to the Internet is so important because the online world preScoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

sents both great possibilities and fundamental problems especially for early-career historians, who will have to deal with the Internet in some shape or form in the coming decades, regardless of their research interests.

Thus, Scoláire Staire is the correct place to engender a reaction from the young historical community and confront the issues facing the next generation of academic historians in a digital, hyper-connected world.

The quotation used in the title, the ‘digital dark age’, can be ascribed to Danny Hillis, co-chair of the board of directors at The Long Now Foundation. The logic behind Hillis’ phrase runs as follows: due to the Internet’s accelerative effect on society (on technology, culture, politics and economics to name some key examples), we are fast losing track of a collective memory, a way of storing all the ephemera of high politics, everyday life and everything in between.

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Thus, we are living the digital parallel of the ‘Dark Ages’ that existed before the proliferation of a written culture. The Foundation was formed in 1996 with a mission statement of establishing a long-term cultural institution that germinates and evolves over a ten thousand year period.

At its core, lie two objects: a ten thousand year clock and the Rosetta Disk. The former is a clock designed and placed in a mountain in western Texas so that it ticks once a year, the ‘century hand’ ticks once every hundred years and a cuckoo appears once every millennium. The latter is a three-inch diameter disk fashioned from nickel that, although only an early prototype, has fourteen thousand microscopic pages of multi-linguistic text etched onto its surface. With the aid of 500x magnification, the text is visible to the human eye and stands to remind humanity of the large number of the world’s languages that, according to the Foundation, will be eradicated over the next hundred years.

These two artefacts underpin the essence of what the Foundation stands for: an effort to offset the perceived effects of digitisation and the Internet, make a long lasting contribution to the recording of human history and create a legacy for future generations in the process. What can academic historians learn from these sentiments?

Changes Certainly, there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that the Internet is fundamentally changing historical studies in positive and negative forms. Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s creation has (or 32

should be) forcing historians to think differently about how they access source material, what that source material constitutes in a digital age and how we will go about categorizing, amongst others, videos on YouTube, wallposts on Facebook and tweets on Twitter in the coming decades and centuries. The Internet could feasibly produce future benefits for the historical community from its omnipotent presence in our world.

For example, if any of you are reading this article and would like to take a quick diversion, click on the following link:

These portions of people’s feelings towards the current prime minister, their opinions on past British administrations and their class and racial prejudices, regardless of their banality, are laid out in a clarity never before attainable in the course of human history.

http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=IbYTah uRu9o&feature=relm fu Here you have a prime example of the historical potential contained within one infinitesimal part of the Internet’s vast web: firstly, the historian has available to them a crystal clear audio-visual representation of the British Prime Minister from the year 2009, which in itself would be a valuable piece of source material for analysis.

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, below that audiovisual source are 145 pages of social commentary from a variety of age groups, social and racial demographics. YouTube, along with Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and the other social forums of the early twenty-first century, provide us with the first time in history where we can access the momentary thoughts of the ‘common’ man and woman.

So does the Internet spread democracy on an unprecedented scale? Surely with the ability to allow more people than ever before the opportunity to contribute to the public sphere, the Internet is irrefutably a democratizing force? However, some commentators have made the argument that the Internet’s supposed role as a vehicle for democracy is an empty fallacy.

Andrew Shapiro wrote in 1999 that, although the Internet denotes an unprecedented opportunity for the exchange of information, ‘… these features are shaped by malleable computer code and are subject to alteraScoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

tion, often in ways that may not be obvious to non-techies.’ Shapiro’s argument is sustainable when viewed in context of the relationship between the State and control of information, as he mentions in relation to Iran and other Middle Eastern governments. But his argument is limited due to the fact that,

over the last decade, the world has been subjected to a social networking revolution and access to the Internet has become inherent to the lives of those in the developed and developing worlds.

‘Arab Spring’ One need only reference the upheavals seen in 2011 as evidence of the Internet as a medium for agitation and attempted social change. The ongoing ‘Arab Spring’ evolved and strengthened in ferocity through the use of social media and the London riots in August proved that all Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

previous barriers (affluence, literacy, class) have been rendered null and void by the use of the Internet for the propagation of ideologies, strategies and the exacerbation of political hot potatoes. In an article for the Huffington Post, documentary film-maker Raymond Schillinger wrote that: ‘The movements throughout the Arab world appeared to have imbued social media with an irrevocable sense of legitimacy as a tool for fomenting change’. Instead of former prerequisites, such as being able to write in standard English, have access to expensive technologies (such as the printing press, for example) or be a radically-leaning member of the ‘ruling classes’ (think Henry Hunt or Theobald Wolfe Tone), the propagators of civil unrest in London, Cairo, Manchester and Tripoli were able to organise and execute social unrest through the cheap, mass-produced media of the Internet. Thus, with the eradication of these barriers to publishing thoughts and opinions in the public sphere, historians could have access to an unprecedented depth of knowledge on their given topic due to the amount of social interaction that the Internet affords society.

However, whilst the Internet represents potential opportunities to deepen historical understanding, there is a substantial caveat attached, a sizeable elephant in the room. Social networking websites could provide academic historians

with an unprecedented amount of depth for their research if it was not for the inherent transience of information contained on the Internet. In short, what the Internet giveth with one hand, it taketh away with the other. Whilst attempts have been made to mine information from social networks, these attempts have fallen foul of the Internet’s fickle ability to distort or completely remove information constantly over the course of a day, let alone a month or a year. Take for example, the social networking search engine Social Mention. Here, anybody can type in a keyword(s) and, on the face of it, useful statistics are returned to them such as how long ago those words were mentioned, which sites they were mentioned on and the frequency with which they are mentioned by people around the globe. However, dig deeper and users discover that a significant portion of the search results no longer exist beyond the line of text in the search result; the information that the search engine has picked up has, in fact, been removed and all that remains is an empty URL. This has an obvious effect on the veracity of the statistics provided by the website in conjunction with each individual search because, if the information has been removed from the page on which it was once listed, how are researchers to be certain that the figures are accurate? The problems contained in a search engine like Social Mention are a microcosm of the problematic dichotomy the Internet is for researchers in the area.

Aside from the ephemeral nature of the information it contains, the legal quagmire surrounding 33

social networks will undoubtedly stunt the Internet’s historical possibilities. As this article is being written, Facebook has been subject to another investigation into how they store and use their customers’ data. The report, originating from the office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, has told Facebook Ireland (the branch responsible for all Facebook users outside of the United States and Canada) that they must give users more control over how their data is used and delete any unwanted data sooner.

Of course, Facebook users have a right to know how their data is used and for what reasons their data is stored; that should be a basic right given to all who use social networks. However, given the research possibilities already outlined, the enforced deletion of user data and user-based control of data storage is a regressive step for researchers, as social networks become an increasingly prevalent receptacle of human interaction and behaviour. To avert this regression 34

historians, as well as their colleagues in other cognate disciplines, need to make a concerted effort to show how user data from Facebook et al can make an unprecedented difference to our understanding of humanity.

Problems Aside from the creation of these practical difficulties, the Internet also has the potential to create philosophical and theoretical problems for historians and others in social sciences and humanities. Take the issue of what undergraduates are taught to consider as history, or what is appropriate to think of as history; currently, anything less than twenty to thirty years previous to the present is seen as wandering dangerously close to political science, sociology or social psychology. However, will academic historians in the very near future, have to start thinking in less fixed terms? The posing of such a question does not necessarily mean suggesting that historians in 2012 need

to start treating 2005 as history.

Instead, perhaps there is a need to formalise the tracking and cataloguing of the ever-evolving information store contained on the Internet about everyday people’s thoughts. Previously, the reliance on hard, paper copies of correspondence (diaries, journals, newspapers, letters) had a sense of inherent longevity attached to them. Of course, there was the risk of fire, water damage, human misplacement and other factors but not the same acute transience of the digital correspondence contained in social networks. If the historical community can find a way of cataloguing the thoughts and feelings of everyday society, this opportunity represents a multiplication of social history, a ‘history from below’ writ large, that could track the waxing and waning of public opinion with depth and clarity. Such an endeavour could mean that future generations can look back to these formative years of the Internet and social networks and create a historical account with more accuracy and depth than is possible for historians currently working on the expanse of recorded history.

At present, as you read this article, academic history stands at a nexus in relation to the Internet and social networking. If properly harnessed, the potential research yield contained within social media and networking sites offers historians in the not too distant future an ability to construct a detailed, multi-faceted and comprehensive recreation of society in the early twenty-first century, a recreation that was simply impossible for their predecessors. However, in the way of that magnificent Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Will traditional archives be replaced by electronic data stored on servers (right), accessable from the office or home computer? opportunity stands both practical and philosophical obstacles that will need a concerted effort from concerned members of the global humanities and social sciences faculty to overcome.

These obstacles involve changing public attitudes to how social networks use data, harnessing a huge and ever multiplying amount of information on the human condition and being aware that the Internet is fundamentally changing how we catalogue the current so it is accessible when present becomes past.

How these obstacles are managed and the research potential of social networks harvested remains the most prominent obstacle of all and one that needs a swift and vigorous response from the historical community.

Further Reading R. Schillinger, ‘Social Media and the Arab Spring: What Have We Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Learned?’, Huffington Post, 20 September 2011.

N. Carr, The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains (New York, 2010).

A. Shapiro, ‘The Internet’, Foreign Policy, No. 115 (Summer, 1999), pp 14-27.

Kieran Fitzpatrick was born in London to Irish parents and relocated to Ireland when he was offered a place at the University of Limerick to study English and History. He is currently in the midst of a taught Masters at NUI Galway and plans to pursue a PhD in the not too distant future. His most substantial piece of research to date was concerned with the effects of the Anglo-Boer Wars on Irish nationalism during the final quarter of the nineteenth century. He is currently working on a thesis concerned with the

relationship between technology and society with a specific analysis of the effects of the telegraph’s advent on how news was reported by The Freeman’s Journal newspaper in the midnineteenth century. fitzpatrickhistory@gmail.com Join us this March in Galway at the Irish History Students’ Association (IHSA) Annual Conference. On Sunday 3 March we’ll be having an open discussion on the issues raised in this article and the broader problems and opportunities posed by technology for historians. The event will take place upstairs in the King’s Head (High Street) at 11.30am and will be followed by a walking tour of the city.

For more information see page 2 of this issue or go to www.scolairestaire.com.

See you there!

35

Paul Bew Enigma: A New Life of Charles Stewart Parnell (Gill and Macmillan, 2011, 215pps, £21.99/€24.99 HB)

development of a popular front in the early 1880s which was able to accommodate both moderates and extremists. Parnell was well aware of the dangers of engaging with the hard men, but this gave his largely constitutional movement a militant edge which ensured the emergence of a vibrant and dynamic political force in Ireland. It also prompted a reassessment of the Irish Question among the political elite at Westminster. ‘...inside the mind of a political genius’ This new work on Charles Stewart Parnell builds on the key themes which Paul Bew discussed in his 1980 work on the Irish leader. Yet, as the title of the book suggests, the author has succeeded in presenting an original interpretation of Parnell’s contribution to Irish political life. Indeed, Professor Bew has brought a further thirty years of scholarly reflection and a keen appreciation of high politics in both Ireland and Britain to this latest project.

The result is a penetrating analysis which allows the reader to delve inside the mind of a political genius.

Parnell was no intellectual, but he possessed uncanny judgement, the key attribute for any successful political leader. He relied on his instinct, and this served him brilliantly from his debut as an MP in 1875 until the divorce trial in late 1890. Perhaps more than any Irish politician of the past two centuries, Parnell’s leadership was characterised by personal pride. While this helped him to become such a formidable force, it also contributed to his spectacular fall from the summit.

Like most leaders who enjoy success, Parnell was prepared to take considerable risks during his early political career, and Bew is particularly adept at assessing Parnell’s complex relationship with Fenianism. Clearly, his flirtation with revolutionary nationalism encouraged separatist support for the Home Rule movement, and this facilitated the 36

Bew is correct to argue that only Parnell, among his contemporaries, could have led such a movement. Moreover, the author’s expertise on the land question provides a glimpse of the complex sub strata present in rural Irish society in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This made the unity achieved under the Home Rule banner all the more remarkable. Only a leader who was prepared to identify with the radical agrarian and Fenian elements could have become the symbol of unity for the disparate forces of nationalism. Although he never accepted the revolutionary premises of Fenianism, Parnell was at one with the more politically minded Fenians, who viewed the land question as the key to the national question. While he sought to mobilise tenant farmers in support of Home Rule, Parnell also believed that land reform, which Bew suggests he endorsed for personal reasons, would enable younger, more progressive (Protestant) landlords to engage with nationalism.

This desire for reconciliation, and the attempt to develop more a inclusive nationalism, is a recurring theme of the book. After the divorce case Bew describes how Parnell, now free of the shackles of Catholic nationalism, desperately tried to cling to power in the last year of his life. The author makes the bold claim that in this period Parnell performed ‘a lasting service for Irish politics’. He returned to the theme of social harmony, calling for a rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants and belatedly acknowledging, though never quite Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Review understanding, opposition to Home Rule in Ulster.

Although Parnell remains an enigma, Bew has succeeded in elegantly portraying a distinctly charismatic figure. An undisguised feeling of superiority lay at the centre of Parnell’s intimidating. smouldering personality. Professor Bew alludes to this by highlighting the comments of the Catholic Irish Lord Chief Justice, Michael Morris: ‘Parnell comes of the conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his subordinates forget it’. This is a book that will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the vagaries of political leadership. It will become essential reading for students of nationalism in Ireland.

Dr Russell Rees is the author of Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: The Development of Unionism and Nationalism.

press reports, ballads, and even a commemorative monument (in 1968 a stone column was erected in a cemetery near Ballycohey, County Tipperary to commemorate the ‘fight against landlordism’, p.

72), Curtis successfully presents the reader with an expansive canvas from which multiple perspectives of the phenomenon of eviction may be derived.

During the Victorian era evictions embodied and represented major economic, social, cultural, and political events in Ireland. As Curtis rightly points outs, although the number of recorded evictions declined from the mid-1850s, in terms of media attention and political import it was in the latter century that their significance and propaganda value came to the fore, especially after the emergence of the Irish National Land League (1879) and the Plan of Campaign during the 1880s.

While not his first foray into the field of images with previous publications such as Apes and Angels : The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (Newton Abbot : David and Charles, c1971) and Coercion and conciliation in Ireland, 1880-1892; a study in conservative unionism (Princeton, 1963) employing images aptly in order to support the text, it is in this study of eviction that Curtis extends his definition of the ‘image’ revealing the culmination of many years of work and meditation on the potential of visual, verbal, and auditory sources in historical research.

L. Perry Curtis Jr The Depiction of Eviction in Ireland, 1845-1910.

(UCD Press, 2011, 324pps, €30 PB)

Although comprised of a hefty thirteen chapters (including introduction and epilogue), forty one illustrations (plates), forty five figures, and totaling 324 pages, Curtis never overwhelms the reader due to a liberal sprinkling of carefully positioned anecdotes and examples that ultimately bring the period under study vividly to life.

Although inspiration for The Depiction of Eviction in Ireland, 1845-1910 came from a painting by Robert G. Kelly entitled An Ejectment in Ireland (A Tear and a Prayer for Erin) (1848), it would be a disserve to the wealth of ‘depictions’ employed by L. Perry Curtis Jr. to simply limit a review of the book to art. Drawing on an impressive range of visual, verbal, and auditory sources, such as illustrations of contemporary prints, paintings, photographs, memoirs, folklore, poems, novels, novellas, estate papers, government records, testimonies from ‘so-called experts on the Irish land question’,

Chapter one entitled ‘Dispossession and Irish land laws’ and chapter ten ‘Plus ça change, 1890-1900’ provide pertinent background information and appropriately set the context for the remaining chapters in the book. It is perhaps the chapters dealing specifically with pivotal moments such as the famine and the land wars that thoroughly permit an in-depth exploration of eviction and its myriad of consequences. Chapter eight - dedicated entirely to the battering ram employed by Dublin Castle during the second land war – proves insightful expanding on an article by the same author in Éire-Ireland (2007) on ‘a new and mighty weapon to overcome

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

37

resistance’ (p. 224).

The book has much to recommend it. Curtis rightly gestures towards caution with the use of primary evidence due to biases and exaggeration (p. 195).

Nowhere is this more in evident than in the discrepancies between accounts of an eviction which occurred on the Hare estate, County Limerick. In this instance, at least two wholly different versions of what transpired at Quinlan’s farm were reported in the Cork Examiner and Freeman’s Journal (p. 117).

Also, in spite of Curtis’s claim; ‘rarely did any comic note creep into evictions’ (p. 123), the entertainment factor of the book arguably emerges from an array of rather farcical moments and delightful anecdotes scattered throughout a text which could have opted for a more sombre tone. These stories disavow a portrayal of the disempowered, subjugated, morose victims of eviction and instead reveal more multifaceted and defiant personalities confronting - in their own unique and often idiosyncratic ways - whatever life threw at them.

With stories of bailiffs chasing donkeys (pp 123-24); the victory of a stalwart elderly lady from New Ross against a bailiff who in response receded to the nearest pub ‘to drown his sorrow’ with some ‘J.J.’ whiskey (p. 155 ); cannibalism (Mrs. Page accused a constable of cannibalism after he apparently bit her arm in a struggle) (p. 221); and an attempt to resist the advance of a process server and 150 police in Clare by opening two beehives ‘in the hope of driving the sheriff ’s party away, but the bees stung indiscriminately’ (p. 115). The book also contains interesting references to Maud Gonne’s anti-eviction crusade (p.

184; pp 274-75;p. 290) and the ‘Oxonian invasion’ on the Olphert estate in the late 1880s (p. 264). The indomitable presence of the Roman Catholic clergy, as both leaders and combatants throughout the eviction process, pervades the entire text although Curtis also devotes a section to such ‘fighting priests’ (p. 219). In a book founded on images and depictions thereof, it is rather disappointing that many of the illustrations are produced on such a small scale that their overall impact remains rather limited. Another minor quibble occurs early in the book where a paragraph on page nine reappears again on page ten.

Fundamentally, Curtis’ The Depiction of Eviction in Ireland, 1845-1910 relates not simply the story of tenant eviction but rather the story of perhaps the ultimate eviction in nineteenth century Irish society; the literal and psychological eviction of the landed 38

class from their positions of prestige. The shift in the mind-set of the tenantry was an important element in this eviction process buttressed significantly by the ‘New Departure’ and the status allocated to the land question within the constitutional political sphere in the latter nineteenth century.

Although simply a snap shot of snap shots of the past as any historical text is, nonetheless The Depiction of Eviction in Ireland provides a uniquely panoramic representation of the eviction process.

This first book-length study of the topic is a welcome addition to nineteenth century Irish historiography.

Curtis’s informative book, packed with a range of vivid depictions of eviction, supported by relevant estate examples, and interspersed with lively anecdotes will appeal to both academics and nineteenth century enthusiasts alike.

Joanne Mc Entee is completing doctoral research on the nineteenth century Irish landed estate, as part of the Texts, Contexts, Cultures programme in the Moore Institute, NUI Galway. This project is funded

by PRTLI 4.

Continued from p. 39 The book is billed as an introduction for the general reader and a synopsis for the specialist, and it is just that. For the reader without any background in labour history, O’Connor contextualises events quite well, and his writing style makes this an entertaining and informative read. The book also features pen portraits of over sixty leading Labour figures from lesser known people like John Doherty and Patrick O’Higgins, to more mainstream personalities like Peadar O’Donnell and Dick Spring. Labour history specialists will be enthused by the constant signposting to sources for further information in these portraits and throughout the book.

O’Connor has, once again, done Irish labour history a great service by writing this book. In his preface he points out that Irish labour history needs to develop further. Our colleagues in other countries have moved on to look at issues like working life, leisure, gender, and further to issues of race and transnational studies. Perhaps this book will inspire some to pick up the torch and take it further.

Adrian Grant is a labour historian, editor of Scoláire Staire and the author of Irish Socialist Republicanism, 1909-36 (Four Courts Press, forthcoming 2012).

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

Review

Emmet O’Connor A Labour History of Ireland, 1824-2000 (UCD Press, 2011, 329pps, €28 PB)

The first edition of Emmet O’Connor’s A Labour History of Ireland broke new ground when it was published in 1992. It was a general survey of the organisational structures, policies, leaderships and politics of the Irish Labour movement and forwarded some interesting arguments on the effects of colonisation and the under-development of Labour politics in independent Ireland. O’Connor opens this new edition by making it clear that the same themes are addressed, with more detail and an extended chronology. The analysis now extends past 1964 to 2000. Three new chapters have been added to propel this classic synopsis of labour into the field of contemporary history. The original text has also been widely restructured and rewritten, reflecting O’Connor’s further research in labour history during the intervening decades between this and the first edition of the book.

The prologue outlines the history of labour organisation in Ireland from the late twelfth century, through the urban guilds and combinations to rural peasant organisations like the Whiteboys and Defenders. O’Connor sets out the argument clearly here: Irish labour history is not just about trade unions and the industrial working class. These rural groups were labour organisations too. They would spring up to address specific issues but often addressed concerns like wage levels, tithes, rents, tolls and taxes. O’Connor states that ‘trade unionism is not a tradition, but an idea…the core tenet of its creed – collective action for the defence of common interests – was familiar to peasants as much as to artisans’ (pp. 3-4).

Another central point addressed here is the refusal of organised labour to recognise the specificities of the Irish economy in comparison to that of indusScoláire Staire JANUARY 2012

trialised Britain. Artisans supported repeal of the union in the nineteenth century because ‘the strategic interests of labour lay with self-government.

However unsatisfactory that government might be, artisans saw no future for themselves, their societies, or their jobs under London rule’ (p. 22). The Anglicisation of Ireland extended to trade unionism too and from the formation of the Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) in 1894, British labour practices were grafted onto an unsuited, de-industrialised Irish economy. The result was a weak and ineffectual Labour movement until Jim Larkin shook things up from 1907 onwards.

The chapters on the early twentieth century deal with the upheavals in the Labour movement and topics such as Larkinism, the Dublin lockout, the Easter Rising and syndicalism during the revolutionary years. The first edition examined Labour in the two new jurisdictions after the Civil War. This new edition benefits from O’Connor’s extensive research in the Russian State Archives for Social and Political History and various other pieces of new information. The arguments forwarded in the first edition remain, and the material gathered for the new edition bolsters those positions.

The three new chapters allow O’Connor to get his teeth into the major issues for Labour since 1964.

In the south - social partnership, the liberal agenda, the beginning of the Celtic tiger and the rise of alternative radicals in the 2000s. In the north the Labour Parties, socialism and the beginning of the civil rights movement, the Troubles and trade unions, the Ulster Workers’ Council strike, and the peace process to name but a few. O’Connor’s grasp of events and his ability to synopsise without losing the point is demonstrated by a great paragraph (pp.

268-269) where he charts events from the Duke Street civil rights march of 5 October 1968 to the start of the Battle of the Bogside in August 1969.

The labour element of contemporary history is underdeveloped but hopefully some will be inspired to investigate further after reading these chapters.

Continued on p. 38 39

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