Irish Literature 2014. Ioana Mohor

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Ioana aMoh horIvan

2014 2
Topics
1. TheCelticParadigmandModernIrishWriting a) BeginningsintheCelticWorld i. TheCelts ii. Celticsocietyandreligion iii. EarlyIrishliterature:talesandcycles. b) TheMythologicalCycleandItsModernReworkings i. Themythicinvasions ii. TheCelticpantheon iii. Theworldofthesidh iv. MythologicalmasksandthesidhinW.B.Yeatssearlypoetry v. FeministRevisionsofthesidh:EAVANBOLANDandNUALANIDHOMNAILL c) TheCycleOfUlsterandTheCelticHero i. Maintalesofthecycle ii. ConstructingtheCelticHero:W.B.YeatsandtheCuchulaincycleofplays: iii. Deconstructingheroism:NualaNiDhumnaillsCuchulainI d) TheCycleofMunster.FenianThemesandHeroesinMetamorphosis i. Finna,Fenianheroesandtales ii. Celticconnections:fromFeniantoAruthurianmyth iii. Rewritingtheancientavatarsstories:Ossianism;W.B.Yeats,TheWanderingsof Oisin;JamesJoyce,FinnegansWake;MikeNewell,IntotheWest e) TheKing(Historical)CycleofTales.TheBuileMotifinIrishLiterature i. BUILESUIBHNE(TheMadnessofSweeney) ii. Thebuilemotifinliterature:FlannOBrien,AtSwimTwoBirds;SeamusHeaney, SweeneyAstray 2. Conquests a) AngloNormantraditionsandtheIrishwriter: i. chansonsdesgeste:TheSongofDermotandtheEarl ii. goliardicpoems:TheLandofCockayne;TheVisionofMacConglinne iii. thedantagradha:OWomanFullofWile b) EnglishNarrativesofIreland i. Civiliansandbarbarians:EdmundSpenser,AViewonthePresentStateofIreland; ii. TheStageIrishman:WilliamShakespeare,HenryV. b) Rearticulatingthecolonialistparadigm: i. TheIrishmelodrama:DionBoucicault ii. Contemporaryrevisions:BrianFrielshistoryplay,SeamusHeaneyshistory poem 3. ColonialLiteratures a) NationalisttropesofIreland i. TheSpearBhanandthe18thcenturyaislinge
TheShanBhanBhochtandthepopularballad TheDoubleWomanTrope:W.BYeats,KathleenniHoulihan. RevisionsoftheShanBhanBhochtliterarytrope:JamesJoyce,AMother,Samuel Beckett,Murphy;TomMurphy,Bailengangaire b) TheBigHousethemeinIrishLiterature i. TheAngloIrishnovel:MariaEdgeworth,CastleRackrent,SomervilleandRoss,The RealCharlotte,ElizabethBowen,TheLastSeptember; ii. TheAngloIrishplay:W.B.Yeats,Purgatory,LennoxRobinson,TheBigHouse, KillygregsinTwilight; iii. TheCatholicNorthernplay:BrianFriel,Aristocrats. iv. TheBigHouseinthefarcicalmode:NeilJordansHighSpirits 4. SpaceandIrishLiteraryPolitics a) ThePastoralandtheAntipastoral i. CelticismandTheIrishLiteraryRevival ii. J.M.Synge:betweenpastoralandantipastoral.RiderstotheSeavs.ThePlayboyof theWesternWorld. iii. TheAbbeypeasantplay:J.B.Keane,TheField iv. PatrickMcCabesblackpastoral:TheButcherBoy. b) AnUrbanSpaceDivided i. Dublinandtheheroiccity:mythologiesof1916andW.B.YeatssEaster1916. ii. Postrevolutionarytheatricalrevisionism:SeanOCasey,TheDublinTrilogy,Denis Johnston,TheOldLadySaysNo!,BrendanBehan,TheHostage TheNortherncityandtheTroubles:BrianFriel,TheFreedomoftheCity,Bernard iii. MacLaverty,Cal. c) RemappingtheIrishspaces i. RodyDoylesDublin:TheCommitments;WhenBrendanMetTrudy ii. BeyondthetropesoftheNorthernCity:MartinMcDonaghsInBruges;Seven Psychopaths
ii. iii. iv.
Cuprins
Cuprins
Obiective. Tematica Chapter 1 - Beginnings in the Celtic World 1.1. Celtic Tribes 1.2. Celtic Society 1.3. Celtic Religion 1.4. Celtic Literature Chapter 2 - The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings 2.1. The Mythic Invasions 2.2. The Celtic Pantheon 2.3. The Milesians 2.4. The World of the Sidhe 2.5. The Sidhe in W.B. Yeatss Early Poems 2.6. The Sidhe with Contemporary Women Poets Chapter 3 - The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero 3.1. The Ulster (Red Branch ) Cycle 3.2. Emin Macha 3.3. Main Characters of the Cycle 3.4. Main Tales of the Cycle 3.4.1. The Exile of the Sons of Usneach 3.4.2. Tin B Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley) 3.4.3. Tin B Fraoch (The Cattle Raid of Fraoch) 3.5. Celtic Myth in the Theatre of Yeats: 3.5.1. The Cuchulain Cycle of Plays 3.6. De-Constructing Heroism: Nuala Ni Dhumnaills Chapter 4 - The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle) 4.1. The Fionn Cycle (Fenian, Ossianic, Munster) 4.2. Fenian Heroes and Tales 4.3. Osin in the Land of Youth 4.4. Literary Treatments of Fenian Tales and Heroes 4. 4. 1. Ossianism 4. 4. 2. W. B. Yeats, The Wanderings of Oisin 4. 4. 3. Finn Maccool, from Finnegans Wake to Joyces Finnegans Wake Chapter 5 - The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales 5.1. The Historical (King) Cycle: 5.1.1. Buile Suibhne (Frenzy of Sweeney) 5.2. Early Irish Poetry 5.3. The Suibhne Motif in Irish Literature 5.3.1. Flann OBrien (Brian Nallin) (1911-66): 5.3.1.1. At Swim-Two Birds (1939) 5.3.2. Seamus Heaney (1939 - ) 5.3.2.1. Sweeney Astray (1983) Minimal Bibliography 4 5 5 6 6 7 8 8 8 12 13 14 18 22 22 22 24 24 24 26 29 30 30 35 37 37 37 38 42 43 43 43 46 46 46 48 49 49 49 51 54 57
The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Obiective. Tematic
Obiective:

familiarizarea studentilor cu particularitatile istorico-culturale ale spatiului irlandez; evidentierea specificului celtic al traditiei literare irlandeze; depistarea traiectului temelor si motivelor literare celtice in literatura irlandeza moderna si contemporana; dezvoltarea deprinderilor cercetare individuala concretizata prin personalizarea informatiei teoretice si modelelor de analiza de text oferite in eseu.
Tipuri si modalitati de activitate didactica:

prelegere teoretica analiza de text discutie eseu.
Tematica:
Beginnings in the Celtic world: Celtic society and culture. Early Irish Literature. The Mythological Cycle. Mythological masks in W.B. Yeatss early poems. The Cycle of Ulster. Cuchulain and the Yeatsian theatre. The myth of Deirdre and Naoise in Brian Friels plays. The Cycle of Munster. From Fion to Joyces Finnegans Wake. Oisin in Yeatss vs. Paul Vincent Carrolls vision. The King Cycle of tales. The Madness of Sweeney. The Sweeney figure in Irish literature, from Flann OBrien to Seamus Heaney.
Early Irish Lyrics. The Dinnseanachas and the Irish poet. The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 1 Beginnings in the Celtic World
Chapter 1 - Beginnings in the Celtic World
Long, long ago, beyond the misty space Of twice a thousand years, In irinn old there dwelt a mighty race, Taller than Roman spears. Like oaks and towers They had a giant grace, With feet as fleet as deers'... With winds and waves they made their settling-place. ("The Celts", by Thomas d'Arcy McGee)
1.1. Celtic Tribes

The Celts are a grouping of Indo-European peoples recognized as speaking one or another dialect of a common Celtic language. Correspondingly, the classification of the Celtic peoples takes into consideration the linguistic factor: Continental Celtic Gaullish (unknown number of dialects) Celto-Iberian Lepontic Insular Celtic P-Celtic(Brythonic) Welsh Cornish Breton Q-Celtic(Goidelic) Irish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic Manx Around 800 B.C., Ireland was settled by a Q-Celtic people, the Gaels, who spread through the whole island. In the course of the next centuries, a number of historical provinces came into being: a) b) c) d) e) Ulster (Ulaid), in the north of Ireland; Munster (Mumu), in the south of Ireland; Connacht (Connachta), in the west of Ireland; Leinster (Laigin), in the east of Ireland; Meath (Mide), the residence of Irelands High Kings, in the middle, with Tara as its capital.
The Hill of Tara, known as "Teamhair", was once the ancient seat of power in Ireland 142 kings are said to have reigned here in prehistoric and historic times. In ancient Irish religion and mythology Tara was the sacred place of 6 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 1 Beginnings in the Celtic World dwelling for the gods. Saint Patrick is said to have come to Tara to confront the ancient religion of the pagans at its most powerful site.
1.2. Celtic Society

The following attributes characteristic of the Celtic social organisation point to the Celts as being an archetypal Indo-European people: Tribal: the greatest political unit is the tribe (tuath), led by a king (r) Familiar: kinship groups form the basis of the tribe Hierarchical (Celtic society is divided into three main classes): Equites: warrior aristocracy Druides: the learned class (draoi, fl, breitheamb, seanchadh) Plebs: the body of freemen, smiths, leeches and small farmers Pastoral: the Celts had no towns in the modern understanding of the term, their hill-forts were of primarily military significance. Cattle-raising was regarded as a superior form of social activity, while farming was relegated to the plebs.
1.3. Celtic Religion

The religion of the Celts exhibits the following characteristics: The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 7
Chapter 1 Beginnings in the Celtic World Pantheism: the Celts believed in the consciousness of all things. This explains their worship of trees, water, stones (La Fil), or the various animal cults (boars, fish, bulls, birds etc.) Metempsychosis: the souls were immortal, they could migrate from the human world to the Otherworld (e.g. Tr-na-n-og); they could dwell within other creatures and objects (shape-changing) Polytheism: divine organisation mirrors that of the Celtic society; Celtic gods and goddesses belong to a particular tribe, which is based on kinship relations.
1.4. Celtic Literature

The learned class of the Celtic society are the creators of the early Irish literary texts, which, until the coming of Christianity in the 5th century, are transmitted by means of an oral tradition. This oral character of Irish literature is reflected in the division of the whole corpus of early Irish literary texts according to the tale-type to which they belong (as evidenced in their titles): Togla (destructions) Tna (cattle-raids) Tochmarca (wooings) Fessa (feasts) Aislinga (visions) Aitheda (elopments Serca (loves) Aided (violent deaths) Catha (battles) Immrama (voyages) Dinnseanchas (tales of place names) After the arrival of Christianity and the adaptation of the Latin alphabet to the Irish language, the tales are collected and incorporated into four main cycles, namely: Mythological Ulster (The Red Branch) Finn (Fenian, Munster) King (historical)
Task:
Write a 4000-word essay on Cultural Landmarks of the Celtic World.
Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings
Chapter 2 - The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings

2.1. The Mythic Invasions
Though all the tales included in the existing corpus of early Irish literary texts display a strong mythological component, by a process of exclusion the mythological cycle includes only those stories that intend to provide a mythical history of the occupation of Ireland, previous to the arrival of the Gaels. Most of these texts are preserved in a 12th century manuscript known as Lebor Gabla renn (Book of Invasions of Ireland). According to this manuscript, the main settlers of Ireland are: Cesair (granddaughter of Noah) and Fintan Mac Bochra. They were the first to invade Ireland at the time of the Flood. The Partholanians (named after their leader Partholan, son of Sera, who was the king of Greece) arrived 312 years after Cesair and her followers. They encountered the Fomorians (a race of ugly, misshapen giants, who lived on Tory Island), whom they managed to defeat. The Nemedians (followers of Nemed, a descendant of Japheth) arrived from Spain 30 years after the extinction of the Partholonians from pestilence. They were attacked by the Fomorians, and the few survivors fled to Greece. The Firbolgs (descendants of the Nemedians) returned to Ireland 230 years later, but their power in Ireland only lasted for 37 years before the Tuatha D Danann arrived.
2.2. The Celtic Pantheon

The Tuatha D Danann is the tribe of the Irish gods who conquer and settle Ireland. Here follows an extract from Mary Heaneys Over Nine Waves, in which their arrival is described:
Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings
THE TUATHA DE DANAAN

LONG AGO the Tuatha De Danaan came to Ireland in a great fleet of ships to take the land from the Fir Bolgs who lived there. These newcomers were the People of the Goddess Danu and their men of learning possessed great powers and were revered as if they were gods. They were accomplished in the various arts of druidry, namely magic, prophesy and occult lore. They had learnt their druidic skills in Falias, Gorias, Findias and Murias, the four cities of the northern islands. When they reached Ireland and landed on the western shore, they set fire to their boats so that there would be no turning back. The smoke from the burning boats darkened the sun and filled the land for three days, and the Fir Bolgs thought the Tuatha De Danaan had arrived in a magic mist. The invaders brought with them the four great treasures of their tribe. From Falias they brought Lia Fail, the Stone of Destiny. They brought it to Tara and it screamed when a rightful king of Ireland sat on it. From Gorias they brought Lughs spear. Anyone who held it was invincible in battle. From Findias they brought Nuadas irresistible sword. No one could escape it once it was unsheathed. From Murias they brought the Dagdas cauldron. No one ever left it hungry. Nuada was the king of the Tuatha De Danaan and he led them against the Fir Bolgs. They fought a fierce battle on the Plain of Moytura, the first one the Tuatha De Danaan fought in a pace of that name. Thousands of the Fir Bolgs were killed, a hundred thousand in all, and among them their king, Eochai Mac Erc. Many of the Tuatha De Danaan died too, and their king, Nuada, had his arm severed from his body in the fight. In the end the Tuatha De Danaan overcame the Fir Bolgs and routed them until only a handful of them survived. These survivors boarded their ships and set sail to the far-scattered islands around Ireland. When the Fir Bolgs had fled, the Tuatha De Danaan took over the country and went with their treasures to Tara to establish themselves as masters of the island. But another struggle lay ahead. Though they had defeated the Fir Bolgs, a more powerful enemy awaited them. These were the Formorians, a demon-like race who lived in the islands to which the Fir Bolgs had fled. (from Marie Heaney, Over Nine Waves, London, Faber and Faber, 1994.)
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Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings The Tuatha D Danann are the tribe of the Goddess Dana (or Danu), a mother-goddess signifying fertility and plenty, married to the god Bile (or Belenos), a sky-centred deity. The father to most of the gods of the tribe is the Dagda, the good God in the Celtic sense of good at anything. A figure of immense power, he is often pictured as a rustic old man, clothed in garb, and possessing three magical objects: a gigantic club (with which he can both kill enemies and cure friends), a cauldron that never gets exhausted, a harp that plays by itself. The Dagda is the father of Ogma (the Irish god of eloquence), and Brigid (or the "Fiery Arrow or Power".) Brigid is a Celtic three-fold goddess. Her three aspects are (1) Fire of Inspiration as patroness of poetry, (2) Fire of the Hearth, as patroness of healing and fertility, and (3) Fire of the Forge, as patroness of smithcraft and martial arts. She is mother to the craftsmen. Through the goddess Boann (whose spirit lives within the Boyne river and is goddess of poetic inspiration and powerful spiritual insight) the Dagda fathered Aengus (Oengus) Og, the Celtic god of youth and love, described in the following terms by the Irish poet A.E.: ". . . An energy or love or eternal desire has gone forth which seeks through a myriad forms of illusion for the infinite being it has left. It is Angus the Young, an eternal joy becoming love, a love changing into desire, and leading on to earthly passion and forgetfulness of its own divinity. The eternal joy becomes love when it has first merged itself in form and images of a divine beauty that dance before it and lure it from afar. This is the first manifested world, the Tr nan g or World of Immortal Youth. The love is changed into desire as it is drawn deeper into nature, and this desire builds up the Mid-world or World of the Waters. And, lastly, as it lays hold of the earthly symbol of its desire it becomes on Earth that passion which is spiritual death . . . One of the most beautiful lyrical tales in the cycle, Aislinge Oengusa (The Vision of Aengus) recounts how Aengus, in a dream, has the vision of a beautiful girl, who prompts a quest that will take years until he will find her shape-changed in a bird. Manannn MacLir is the god of the oceans, who lives in Tr-na-n-og (The Land of Eternal Youth) and is married to the beautiful goddess Fand, whose name is translated as The Pearl of Beauty. Stories of rebirth and the Otherworld are associated with him, while his name is commemorated in that of the Isle of Man. Manannns father, Lir, was an Irish god who dwelt on the cliffs of Antrim. One story in the cycle (The Story of the Children of Lir) recounts the tribulations of his other four children who were transformed into swans by an evil step-mother, and endured cruel hardship for many centuries until restored to their human shape. This story, among others, were translated in English by Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) in a collection of Irish myths entitled Gods and Fighting Men:
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Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings The Fate of the Children of Lir Then Lir came to the edge of the lake, and he took notice of the swans having the voice of living people, and he asked them why was it they had that voice. I will tell you that, Lir, said Fionnuala. We are your own four children, that are after being destroyed by your wife and by the sister of our own mother, through the dint of her jealousy. Is there any way to put you into your own shapes again? said Lir. there is no way, said Fionnuala, for all the men of the world could not help us till we have gone through our time, and that will not be, she said, till the end of nine hundred years. When Lir and his people heard that, they gave out three great heavy shouts of grief and sorrow and crying. Is there a mind with you, said Lir, to come to us on the land, since you have your own sense and your memory yet? We have not the power, said Fionnuala, to live with any person at all from this time; but we have our language, the Irish, and we have the power to sing sweet music, and it is enough to satisfy the whole race of men to be listening to that music. And let you stop here tonight, she said, and we will be making music for you. So Lir and his people stopped there listening to the music of the swans, and they slept there quietly that night. And Lir rose up early on the morning of the morrow and he made this complaint: It is time to go from this place. I do not sleep though I am in my lying down. To be parted from my dear children, it is that is tormenting my heart. It is a bad net I put over you, bringing Aoife, daughter of Oilell of Aran, to the house. I would never have followed that advice if I had known what it would bring upon me. O Fionnuala, and comely Conn, O Aodh, O Fiachra of the beautiful arms; it is not ready I am to go away from you, from the border of the harbour where you are. Then Lir went on to the palace of Bodb Dearg, and there was a welcome before him there; and he got a reproach from Bodb Dearg for not bringing his children along with him. My grief! said Lir. It is not I that would not bring my children along with me; it was Aoife there beyond, your own foster-child and the sister of their mother, that put them in the shape of four swans on Loch Dairbhreach, in the sight of the whole of the men of Ireland; but they have their sense with them yet, and their reason, and their voice, and their Irish. Bodb Dearg gave a great start when he heard that, and he knew what Lir said was true, and he gave a very sharp reproach to Aoife, and he said: This treachery will be worse for yourself in the end, Aoife, than to the children of Lir. And what shape would you yourself think worst of being in? he said. I would think worst of being a witch of the air, she said. It is into that shape I will put you now, said Bodb. And with that he struck her with a Druid wand, and she was turned into a witch of the air there and then, and she went away on the wind in that shape, and she is in it yet, and will be in it to the end of life and time. 12 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings Cath Maige Tuired (The Battle of the Plain of Tuired) is the best-known tale of the cycle, dealing specifically with the climactic battle between the Tuatha and the Fomori. The God Lugh assumes the leadership of the tutha and leads them to victory after he himself kills Balor of the Evil Eye, the most formidable of the fomori. Lugh becomes thus a divine archetype of kingship, while he is also the Samildnach (the many-gifted one), mastering all the arts and the crafts, moving between all the activities of society and be patron of each one. The Irish female deities usually indicate sexuality and fertility, with powerful magical and warlike connotations. There are five goddesses identified with war, and inspiring battle madness. The Morrgan ("terror" or "phantom queen") is the greatest of them, being associated with war and death on the battlefield, sometime appearing in the form of a carrion crow. Other goddesses of war are the Badb (fury), Dea (the hateful one) Nemain (frenzy), while Macha (who is also goddess of the horses) is also included here. Another triad is formed by the goddesses identified with the sovranty and spirit of Ireland, represented as three sisters, Eire, Banba and Fotla. Some of these deities attracted singular worship, associated with the festivals that marked the Celtic year: Samhain: celebrated around 31 October, it began the Celtic year. It was a time when the veil between this world and the Otherworld was thought to be so thin that the dead could return to warm themselves at the hearths of the living, and some of the living - especially poets were able to enter the Otherworld through the doorways of the sidhe, such as that at the Hill of Tara in Ireland. Imbolc (or Oimelc) celebrated at lambing time, around 31 January, it marked the beginning of the end of winter. Women met to celebrate the return of the maiden aspect of the Goddess Brigid. Beltain, celebrated around 1 May, was a fire festival sacred to the god Belenos, the Shining One. Cattle were let out of winter quarters and driven between two fires in a ritual cleansing ceremony that may have had practical purposes too. It was a time for feasts and fairs and for the mating of animals. Lughnasadh was a summer festival lasting for two weeks that fell around 31 July. It was said to have been introduced to Ireland by the god Lugh, and so was sacred to this god. This festival was celebrated with competitions of skill, including horse-racing (perhaps this is why the festival was also linked to the goddess Macha)
2.3. The Milesians

The last invaders of Ireland, who overthrew the power of the Celtic gods, were the Milesians, whom many view as the forefathers of the Gaels. According to the Book of Invasions, the Milesians were the sons of Ml Espine (Miled), whose ancestors had originally come from Scythia, but had then settled in Spain. Amergin (a warrior and a bard) was the leader of the invasion. His first words upon landing were the poem that is known today as the "Song of Amergin":
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Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings The Song of Amergin I am a stag: of seven times, I am a flood: across a plain, I am a wind: on a deep lake, I am a tear: the Sun lets fall, I am a hawk: above the hill, I am a thorn: beneath the nail I am a wonder: among flowers, I am a wizard: who but I Sets the cool head aflame with smoke? I am a spear: that rears for blood, I am a salmon: in a pool, I am a lure: from paradise, I am a hill: where poets walk, I am a boar: ruthless and red, I am a breaker: threatening doom, I am a tide: that drags to death, I am an infant: who but I Peeps from the unhewn dolmen arch? I am the womb: of every holt, I am the blaze: on every hill I am the queen: of every hive I am the shield: for every head, I am the grave: of every hope. (Transl. by Robert Graves) The three sister goddesses of the D Danann, Banba, Fodla and Eriu, asked the Milesians to name Ireland after one of them. It was Eriu who won the honour. Ireland became known as Erin or Erinn. The Tuatha D Danann, though defeated, did not leave Erin, but continued to live there, with their conquerors. Manannan (in other accounts, the Dagda) placed a powerful spell of invisibility over the many parts of Ireland; magical palaces were hidden under the mound. The places were called Sidh or Sidhe. The Tuatha D Danann became spirit people, or fairies.
2.4. The World of the Sdhe

After their being defeated by the Milesians, the Danaan were allotted spiritual Ireland. They became spirit people, inhabiting the sdhe (another name for the Otherworld), which was associated with barrows, tumuli, mounds, hills. This new habitat led to another name for the Danaan, aes sdhe (people of the Sdh) or fairy people. Some important figures emerging in Irish fairy lore are: The Bean Sdhe (woman of the hills): a female fairy attached to a particular family. She had the function of keening like a mortal woman when a family member died. 14 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings Leprechaun: a diminutive guardian of a hidden treasure (origin: Lughchromain little stooping Lugh) Puca (Puck):a supernatural animal who took people for nightmarish rides; a mischievous spirit who led travellers astray. Slua Sdhe: the fairy host who travel through the air at night, and are known to 'take' mortals with them on their journeys.
2.5. The Sidhe in W. B. Yeatss Early Poems

Poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure, W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was born to an Anglo-Irish Protestant family, but turned into a committed Irish nationalist, becoming thus the primary driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival a movement which stimulated new appreciation of traditional Irish literature, encouraging the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from English culture. Yeats was also co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, another great symbol of the literary revival, which served as the stage for many new Irish writers and playwrights of the time. After the establishment of the Irish Free State, Yeats was appointed to the first Irish Senate Seanad ireann in 1922 and re-appointed in 1925. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation". With regard to his poetic output, this corresponds to three main phases: The first phase is associated with the Irish Revival of the 1890s which brought about an upsurge of interest in Celtic myth and legend. This allowed Yeats, as well as other writers, to bring mythical motifs and figures into their works as symbols and expressions of Irishness past and present. Collections: The Wanderings of Osin and Other Poems (1889) The Countess Kathleen and Other Legends and Lyrics (1892) The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) In the Seven Woods (1903) The poetry of Yeatss mid-career is dominated by his commitment to Irish nationalism. Hence the poems employ a simpler and more accessible style. They are more public and concerned with the politics of the modern Irish state. Collections: The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) Responsibilities (1914) The Wilde Swans at Coole (1919) Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) Yeatss later poetry is less public and more personal. The poems are characterised by a mature lyricism, exploring contrasts between the physical and spiritual dimensions of life, between sensuality and rationalism, between turbulence and calm, which inform Yeatss theories of contraries and of the progression which can result from reconciling them. Collections: The Tower (1928) The Winding Star (1933) 15 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings Parnells Funeral and Other Poems (1935) Last Poems and Two Plays (1939) It is the early poems that Yeats draws heavily on Irish myth, employing mythological figures and mythic motifs alongside with theories drawn from occult writings (in which he was also interested.) Though dissimilar at a first glance, the two areas bear comparison in several aspects: The natural (world in time, manifestation) as opposed to the supernatural (that which is beyond manifestation); Metaphysical content; The exile, the quest, the voyage: symbols of the spirits journey from life to death. On the basis of these, Yeats constructs his own system of opposites, which may be seen to inform his poetry: The Sdhe Spirit Imagination Eternal Immortal Id Water & air Night The natural world Matter Reason Ephemeral Mortal Ego Earth Day
Though opposed, points of contact may be established between the two realms, which are associated with states that may be labelled as inbetween: Shores, lakes, islands Twilight, dawn Dreams, visions In The Stolen Child (a poem based on Irish legend) the faeries beguile a child (presumably in a dream) to come away with them. The Stolen Child Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flappy herons wake 16 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings The drowsy water-rats; There weve hid our faery vats, Full of berries And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim grey sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand. [. . .] Away with us hes going, The solemn-eyed: Hell hear no more the lowing Of the calves on the warm hillside Or the kettle on the hob Sing peace into his breast, Or see the brown mice bob Round and round the oatmeal-chest. For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For a world more full of weeping than he can understand. Such points of contact between the two worlds allow for visionary states, able to produce artistic creation. But, usually, this involves a great cost: the dreamers (like the one in The Man Who Dreamed of Fairyland) remain caught in-between the two, never allowed to find comfort in this life, for their thoughts are constantly turned to the world of the imagination, or spirit. The Man who Dreamed of Faeryland He stood among a crowd at Drumahair; His heart hung all upon a silken dress, And he had known at last some tenderness, Before earth took him to her stony care; But when a man poured fish into a pile, It seemed they raised their little silver heads, And sang what gold morning or evening sheds Upon a woven world-forgotten isle The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
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Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings Where people love beside the ravelled seas; That Time can never mar a lovers vows Under that woven changeless roof of boughs: The singing shook him out of his new ease. He wandered by the sands of Lissadell; His mind ran all on money cares and fears, And he had known at last some prudent years Before they heaped his grave under the hill; But while he passed before a plashy place, A lug-worm with its grey and muddy mouth Sang that somewhere to north or west or south There dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle race Under the golden or the silver skies; That if a dancer stayed his hungry foot It seemed the sun and moon were in the fruit: And at that singing he was no more wise. He mused beside the well of Scanavin, He mused upon his mockers: without fail His sudden vengeance were a country tale, When earthly night had drunk his body in; But one small knot-grass growing by the pool Sang where - unnecessary cruel voice Old silence bids its chosen race rejoice, Whatever ravelled waters rise and fall Or stormy silver fret the gold of day, And midnight there enfold them like a fleece And lover there by lover be at peace. The tale drove his angry mood away. He slept under the hill of Lugnagall; And might have known at last unhaunted sleep Under that cold and vapour-turbaned steep, Now that the earth had taken man and all: Did not the worms that spired about his bones Proclaim with that unwearied, reedy cry That God has laid His fingers on the sky, That, from those fingers, glittering summer runs Upon the dancer by the dreamless wave. Why should those lovers that no lovers miss Dream, until God burn Nature with a kiss? The man has found no comfort in the grave. In The Song of the Wandering Aengus Yeats re-works Aislinge Oengusa. Adopting the mythological mask of the Irish god of love and youth, the poet expresses the same predicament of the dreamer, who has a vision of the sidhe in the form of a beautiful girl, a symbol of the perfection of the imaginative world.
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Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings The Song of the Wandering Aengus I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire aflame, But something rustled on the floor, And some one called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
2.6. The Sidhe with Contemporary Women Poets

If Irish ancestral culture allowed room for the exercise of an autonomous female creative potential, such as evidenced in Myth: Dana, Brigid, Eire Folklore: Cailleach Beare (the Hag of Beare) Society: bean fle (woman poet) through the medieval to modern periods women are gradually excluded from the social, political and cultural spheres, being relegated to the domestic sphere. Proof may be found in different areas, such as: Proverbs and formulaic expressions (e.g. the three worst curses that can befall a village are: to have a wet thatcher, a heavy sower and a woman poet.) Religious constructs: the Virgin (Mother of God), Mother Ireland Literary tradition (dominated by male poets, who employ women simply as symbols or motifs in their texts, denying them their complexity.) Contemporary women poets (Eavan Boland, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Eillen Ni Chuilleanain, Eithne Strong, Medb McGuckian) are committed to the 3 Rs of Irish feminist writing: to resist and revise reductive images and perceptions of women and The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 19
Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings to revive /re-posses energies related to creativity, fertility and self-sufficiency which some connect to the Celtic ideals of womanhood. Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (1952-) is one of the most popular of contemporary Irish poets. Writing in Irish her work draws upon themes of ancient Irish folklore and mythology, combined with contemporary themes of femininity, sexuality, and culture. As she herself confesses: Irish is a language of enormous elasticity and emotional sensitivity; of quick and hilarious banter and a welter of references both historical and mythological; it is an instrument of imaginative depth and scope, which has been tempered by the community for generations until it can pick up and sing out every hint of emotional modulation that can occur between people. Her collections include An Dealg Droighin (1981); Far Suaithinseach (1984); Rogha Dnta/Selected Poems (1986, 1988, 1990); Pharoh's Daughter (1990), and Feis (1991). In Swept Away, the fairy woman becomes the carrier of a powerful female energy, able to subvert and transform the traditional representations of the feminine: SWEPT AWAY (FUADACH) The fairy woman marched right into my poem. She didnt close the door. She didnt ask. I was too polite to throw her out so I decided to act all nice: Stay, if youre in a hurry, and of course you are. Sit up to the fire; eat; have a drink. Mind you, if I were in your house the way youre in mine Id go home right away, but never mind: stay. So she did. She got up and started doing housework. She made the beds, washed the dishes. Put the dirty clothes in the machine. When my husband came home for his tea, he didnt notice she wasnt me. But Im in the fairy field in everlasting dark. I/m freezing, with only the mist to cover me. And if he wants me back The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
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Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings heres what he must do: get a fine big ploughshare and butter it well, then make it red-hot in the fire.
Then go to the bed where that bitch is lying and let her have it! Push it into her face, burn her and scorch her, and all the time shes going, Ill be coming. All the time shes going, Ill be coming. The daughter of an Irish diplomat Eavan Boland (1944-) spent much of her youth living in London and New York City. One of Ireland's few recognized women poets, Boland addresses broad issues of Irish national identity as well as the specific issues confronting women and mothers in a culture that has traditionally ignored their experiences. As she herself has stated, As an Irish woman poet I have very little precedent. There were none in the 19th century or early part of the 20th century. You didnt have a thriving sense of the witness of the lived life of women poets, and what you did have was a very compelling and at time oppressive relationship between Irish poetry and the national tradition. In Bolands view we all [women] exist in a mesh, web, labyrinth of associations we ourselves are constructed by the construct images are not ornaments, they are truths. Her collections of poems include In Her Own Image (1980), Night Feed (1982), Outside History (1990), In a Time of Violence (1994). She has also written a prose memoir, Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (1995). In The Woman Turns herself Into A Fish, Boland engages directly with Yeatss The Song of the Wondering Aengus, re-writing the mermaid image: The Woman Turns Herself into a Fish its done: I turn, I flab upward blub-lipped, hipless and I am sexless shed of ecstasy, a pale The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 21
Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings swimmer sequin-skinned, pealing eggs screamlessly in seaweed. Its what I set my heart on. Yet ruddering and muscling in the sunless tons of new freedoms still I feel a chill pull, a brightening, a light, a light and how in my loomy cold, my greens still she moons in me.
Task:
Choose one of the following topics to develop into a 4000-word essay of the argumentative type: 1. The Celtic Pantheon in its Indo-European Context. 2. The World of the Sidhe with W.B. Yeats and Nuala NiDhumnaill. 3. The Dreamers Mermaid or the Mermaids Dream? (The Song of the Wandering Aengus vs. The Woman Turns Herself Into a Fish)
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Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero
Chapter 3 - The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero
3.1. The Ulster (Red Branch ) Cycle

The cycle of Ulster contains a group of heroic tales relating to the Ulaid and their military order known as the House of the Red Branch. The main part of the Ulaid Cycle is set during the reigns of Conchobar in Ulaid (Ulster) and Queen Medb in Connacht (Connaught). The cycle centers on the greatest hero in Celtic myths, C Chulainn (Cu Chulainn or Cuchulain). The Ulaid Cycle is supposed to be contemporary to Christ (1st century BC) since Conchobar's death coincides with the day of Christs crucifixion. Thomas Kinsella, in the Introduction to his translation of The Cattle Raid of Cooley, asserts the following: The origins of the Tain are far more ancient than these manuscripts [8th century manuscripts in which it was preserved]. The language of the earliest form of the story is dated to the eighth century, but some of the verse passages may be two centuries older and it is held by most Celtic scholars that the Ulster cycle, with the rest of early Irish literature, must have had a long oral existence before it received a literary shape, and a few traces of Christian colour, at the hands of the monastic scribes. As to the background of the Tain the Ulster cycle was traditionally believed to refer to the time of Christ. This might seem to be supported by the similarity between the barbaric world of the stories, uninfluenced by Greece or Rome, and the La Tene Iron age civilisation of Gaul and Britain. The Tain and certain descriptions of Gaulish society by Classical authors have many details in common: in warfare alone, the individual weapons, the boastfulness and courage of the warriors, the practices of cattle-raiding, chariot-fighting and beheading.
3. 2. Emain Macha is the seat of power in Ulaid (Ulster), situated near modern Armagh. The dun (hill-fort) was named after the Red Queen Macha, said to be its founder. Macha had used her brooch to mark the boundary of her capital, so the name Emain Macha could mean the "Brooch of Macha". Macha was identified as the Irish goddess of fertility, war and of horses, being one of the aspects of Morrgan. She was portrayed as red goddess, either because she was dressed in red or that she had red hair. She reappeared in the Ulaid Cycle as wife of Crunnchu and was associated with the curse placed upon the men of Ulster. In this version, Emain Macha means "The Twins of Macha", such as asserted in one tale of the dinnseachas type, entitled the Pangs of Ulster.
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Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero THE PANGS OF ULSTER There was a very rich landlord in Ulster, Crunniuc mac Agnomain. He lived in a lonely place in the mountains with all his sons. His wife was dead. Once, as he was alone in the house, he saw a woman coming toward him there, and she was a fine woman in his eyes. She settled down and began working at once, as though she were well used to the house. When night came, she put everything in order without being asked. Then she slept with Crunniuc. She stayed with him for along while afterward, and there was never a lack of food or clothes or anything else under her care. Soon a fair was held in Ulster. Everyone in Ulster, men and women, boys and girs, went to the fair. Crunniuc set out for the fair with the rest, in his best clothes and in great vigour. It would be as well not to grow too boastful or careless in anything you say, the woman said to him. /that isnt likely, he said. The fair was held. At the end of the days, the kings chariot was bought onto the field. His chariot and horses won. The crowd said that nothing could beat those horses. My wife is faster, Crunniuc said. He was taken immediately before the king and the woman was sent for. She said to the messenger: It would be a heavy burden for me to go and free him now. I am full with child. Burden? the messenger said. He will die unless you come. She went to the fair, and her pangs gripped her. She called out to the crowd: A mother bore each one of you! Help me! Wait till my child is born. But she couldnt move them. Very well, she said. A long lasting evil will come out of this on the whole of Ulster. What is your name? the king asked. My name, and the name of my offspring, she said, will be given to this place. I am Macha, daughter of Sainrith mac Imbaith. Then she raced the chariot. As the chariot reached the end of the field, she gave birth alongside it. She bore twins, a son a nd a daughter. The name Emain Macha, the Twins of Macha, comes from this. As she gave birth she creamed out that all who heard that scream would suffer from the same pangs for five days and four nights in their times of greatest difficulty. This affliction ever afterward, seized all the men of Ulster who were there that day, and nine generations after them. Five days and four nights, or five nights and four days the pangs lasted. For nine generations any Ulsterman in those pangs had no more strength than a woman on the bed of labour. Only three classes of people were free from the pangs of Ulster: the young boys of Ulster, the women, and Cuchulainn.
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Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero
3.3. Main characters of the Cycle

Conchobar MacNessa was the son of Ness, or Nessa and Fachtna Fthach, a giant and king of Ulster. Fachtna was either the brother or halfbrother of Fergus Mac Roich. In a more popular version, Conchobar's father was Cathbad, the ard-druid (high druid) of Ulster, who later became Conchobar's adviser. During his reign, Ulster prospered. Conchobar established a military order of elite warriors called the Red Branch. His uncle, Fergus served as captain of the Red Branch, and with his teaching, he produced the greatest warriors of Ulster, Conall Cernach and Cu Chulainn. Conchobar had many wives, including Medb (Maeve), who fleed to Connacht to become his mortal enemy. Medb (Maeve) had actually come from the province of Leinster. Her father was Eochaid Feidlech, king of Tara. Like her three sisters, she was at one time married to Conchobar Mac Nessa, king of Ulster. She left Conchobar and became Conchobar's chief enemy throughout the rest of her life. In Connacht she had three different husbands, who each became king of the province. As such, Medb represents the Sovereignity of Connacht. The best known of her husbands was Ailill Mac Mata. Medb had many children, most of them by Ailill. Apart from her Finnabair and several other daughters, she also had seven sons, all of them with the name Maine. Medb had many lovers, but Fergus Mac Rioch was the best known and was seen as her most frequent lover. C Chulainn (Cuchulain) is the greatest hero of the Ulster Cycle. Cuchulain was the son of Deichtine and the sun god, Lugh Lamfada. Though Lugh was his father, he called himself C Chulainn Mac Sualtam, after his stepfather, who was the brother of Fergus Mac Roich. Cuchulain was also grandson of the great druid Cathbad. Cuchulain was called Stanta at birth. His name was to change to C Chulainn ("Hound of Culann) when, still a boy, he killed a great hound belonging to Culann, Conchobars master-smith.
3.4. Main Tales of the Cycle

3. 4. 1. The Exile of the Sons of Usneach The tale of Deirdre and Naosi, son of Uisnech, is the most famous Irish romance. This romance of a love triangle was to influence other tales, such as The Pursuit of Diarmait and Grainne of the Fenian Cycle and the legend of Tristan. It also holds Conchobar responsible for the defection of Fergus and 3000 other warriors, including his own son, Cormac, to Ulster's traditional enemy Connacht, when he had the sons of Uisnech put to death. THE EXILE OF THE SONS OF USNACH The Ulaid feasted one day in the house of Fedlimid, the chronicler of King Conchobar, and as the feast came to an end, a girl-child was born to the wife of Fedlimid; and a druid prophesied about her future. [Her name is to be Deirdre. The child will grow to be a woman of The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 25
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero wonderful beauty and will cause enmity and trouble and will depart out of the kingdom. Many will die on account of her.] The Ulaid proposed to kill the child at once and so avoid the curse. But Conchobar ordered that she be spared and reared apart, hidden from mens eyes; and that he himself would take her for his wife. So Deirdre was entrusted to foster-parents and was reared in a dwelling apart. A wise woman, Leborcham, was the only other person allowed to see her. Once the girls foster-father was flaying a calf outside in the snow in winter to cook it for her, and she saw a raven drinking the blood in the snow. Then she said to Leborcham, Fair would be man upon whom those three colours should be: his hair like the raven, and his cheek like the blood, and his body like the snow. Grace and prosperity to you! said leborcham. He is not far from you, inside close by: Naoisi the son of Usnach. I shall not be well, said she, until I see him. Once that same Naoisi was on the rampart of the fort sounding his cry. And sweet was the cry of the sons of Usnach. Every cow and every beast that would hear it used to give two-thirds excess of milk. For every man who heard it, it was enough of peace and entertainment. Good was their valour too. Though the whole province of the Ulaid should be around them in one place, if the three of them stood back to back, they would not overcome them, for the excellence of their defence. They were as swift as hounds at the hunt. They used to kill deer by their speed. When Naoisi was there outside, soon she went out to him, as though to go past him, and did not recognise him. Fair is the heifer that goes past me, said he. Heifers must grow big where there are no bulls, said she. You have the bull of the province, said he, the king of the Ulaid. I would choose between you, said she, and I would take a young bull like you. No! said he. Then she sprang toward him and caught his ears. Here are two ears of shame and mockery, said she, unless you take me with you. Naoisi sounded his cry, and the Ulstermen sprang up as they heard it, and the sons of Usnach, his two brothers, went out to restrain and warn him. But his honour was challenged. We shall go into another country, said he. There is not a king in Ireland that will not make us welcome. That night they set out with 150 warriors and 150 women and 150 hounds, and Deirdre was with them. Conchobar pursued them with plots and treachery, and they fled to Scotland. And they took service with the king of Scotland and built a house around Deirdre so that they should not be killed on account of her. One day the steward saw her and told the king of her beauty, so that he demanded her for wife; and the sons of Usnach had to flee and take refuge on an island in the sea. Then Conchobar invited them back and sent Fergus as a surety; but when they came to Emain, Naoisi and his followers were killed, and Deirdre was brought to Conchobar, and her hands were bound behind her back. When Fergus and Cormac heard of this treachery, they came and did great deed: three hundred of the Ulaid were killed, and women were killed, and Emain was burnt by Fergus. And Fergus and Cormac went 26 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero to the court of Ailill and Maeve, and for sixteen years the Ulaid had no peace. But Deirdre was for a year with Conchobar, and she never smiled or raised her head from her knee.[. . .] And when Conchobar was comforting her she used to say: Conchobar, what are you doing? You have caused me sorrows and tears. As long as I live, I shall not love you. What was dearest to me under heaven, and what was most beloved, you have taken from me, - a great wrong - so that I shall not see him till I die. Two bright cheeks, red lips, eyebrows black as a chafer, pearly teeth bright with the noble colour of snow. Do not break my heart. Soon I shall die. Grief is stronger than the sea, if you could understand it, Conchobar. What do you hate most of what you see? said Conchobar. You, she said, and Eogan son of Dubhthach. you shall be a year with Eogan, said Conchobar. He gave her to Eogan. They went next day to the assembly of Macha. She was behind Eogan in the chariot. She had prophesied that she would not see two husbands on earth together. Well, Deirdre, said Conchobar. You look like a sheep between two rams, between Eogan and me. There was a big rock in front of her. She thrust her head against the rock, so that it shattered her head, and she died. That is the exile of the Sons of Usnach, and the exile of Fergus and the Tragic Death of the sons of Usnach and of Deirdre. Finit. Amen. Finit. Summary by Myles Dillon 3. 4. 2. Tin B Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley) Tin B Cuailnge is the best known and longest tale of the cycle (closest to an Old Irish epic.) Main plot concerns the invasion of Ulster by the army of Connacht led by Medb who wants to capture the Brown Bull of Cooley. As the Ulsterman are debilitated by the curse of Macha, Cuchulain (who is exempt from it) defeats Medbs army single-handed. Though the Brown Bull is captured and sent to Cruachain, he kills the White Bull of Connacht but dies of exhaustion after galloping back to Ulster with his rival on his back. There follows a summary of this tale: TAIN BO CUAILNGE Once when their royal bed had been made ready for Ailill and Maeve they conversed as they lay on the pillows. It is a true saying, girl, said Ailill, that the wife of a good man is well off. It is true, said the girl. Why do you say so? Because, said Ailill, you are better off today than the day I wed you. I was well off without you, said Maeve. I had not heard or known it, said Ailill, but that you were an heiress and that your nearest neighbours were robbing and plundering you. That was not so, said Maeve, for my father, Eochu Feidlech son of The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 27
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero Finn, was high king of Ireland. And she went on to boast of her riches, and he of his. Their treasures were brought before them, and it appeared that Maeve had possessions equal to those of Ailill, save for a splendid bull, Whitehorn, which had belonged to Maeves herd but had wandered into the herd of Ailill because it would not remain in a womans possession. All her wealth seemed to Maeve not worth a penny, since she had no bull equal to that of Ailill. She learned that there was one as good in the province of Ulster in the cantred of Cuailnge, and she sent messengers to ask a loan of it for a year, promising a rich reward. If the reward was not enough, she would even grant the owner the enjoyment of her love. The messengers returned without the bull and reported the owners refusal. There is no need to smooth over difficulties, said Maeve, for I knew that it would not be given freely until it was taken by force, and so it will be taken. Maeve summoned the armies of Connacht and Cormac son of Conchobar and Fergus son of Roech, who were in exile from Ulster at the time, and set out to carry off the precious bull. Before the expedition started, she consulted her druid for a prophesy. He told her that she at least would return alive. Then she met a mysterious prophetess who rode on the shaft of a chariot, weaving a fringe with a gold staff, and she asked her to prophesy. The woman answered, I see crimson upon them, I see red. Four times Maeve appealed against this oracle, but each time the answer was the same; and the prophetess then chanted a poem in which she foretold the deeds of Cuchulainn. On the first day the army advanced from Cruachan as far as Cuil Silinni, and the tents were pitched. Ailills tent was on the right wing of the army. The tent of Fergus was next, and beside it was the tent of Cormac, son of Conchobar. To the left of Ailill was the tent of Maeve and next to hers that of Findabair, her daughter. [...] Fergus was appointed to guide the army, for the expedition was a revenge for him. He had been King of Ulster for seven years and had gone into exile when the sons of Usnach were killed in violation of his guaranty and protection. And so he marched in front. But he felt a pang of longing for Ulster and led the army astray northward and southward while he sent warnings to the Ulstermen. But the Ulstermen had been stricken with a mysterious sickness which afflicted them in times of danger, the result of a curse laid upon them by Macha, a fairy whom they had wronged. Cuchulainn and his father, Sualtam, were exempt from the curse, and they set out to oppose the enemy. They arrived at Ard Cuillenn, and Cuchulainn told his father to go back and warn the Ulstermen to depart from the open plains into the woods and valleys. He cut an oak sapling with a single stroke, and, using one arm, one leg, and one eye, he made it into a hoop, wrote an ogam on it, and fixed it around a stone pillar. Then he departed to keep a tryst with a girl south of Tara. The Connacht army reached Ard Cuillenn and saw the ogam. Fergus interpreted it for them. Any man who advanced farther that night, unless he made a hoop in the same way, would be slain by Cuchulainn before morning. Ailill decided to turn aside into the forest for the night. In the morning Cuchulainn returned from his tryst and found the army at Turloch Caille Moire, north of Cnogba na Rig. There 28 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero he cut off the fork of a tree with a single stroke and cast it into the earth from his chariot, so that two-thirds of the stem was buried in the earth. He came upon two Connaught warriors and beheaded them and their charioteers. He set their heads upon the branches of the tree-fork and turned their horses back toward the camp, the chariots bearing the headless bodies of the men. [. . . ] The Man who did this deed, Fergus said, is Cuchulainn. It is he who struck the branch from its base with a single stroke, and killed the four as swiftly as they were killed, and who came to the border with only his charioteer. What sort of man, Aillil said, is this Hound of Ulster we hear tell of? How old is this remarkable person? It is soon told, Fergus said. In his fifth year he went to study the arts and the crafts of War with Scathach, and courted Emer. In his eight year he took up the arms. At present he is in his seventeenth year. Is he the hardest they have in Ulster? Maeve said. Yes, the hardest of all, Fergus said. Youll find no harder warrior against you - no point more sharp, more swift, more slashing; no raven more flesh-ravenous, no hand more daft, no fighter more fierce, no one of his own age one third as good, no lion more ferocious; no barrier in battle, no hard hammer, no gate of battle, no soldiers doom, no hinderer of hosts, more fine. Youll find no one there to measure him - for youth or vigour, for apparel, horror or eloquence; for splendour, fame or form, for voice or strength or sternness, for cleverness, courage or blows in battle; for fire or gury, victory, doom, or turmoil; for stalking, scheming or slaughter in the hunt; for swiftness, alertness or wilderness; and no one with the battlefeat nine men on each point - none like Cuchulainn. On the next day the army moved eastward, and Cuchulainn went to meet them. He surprised Orlam son of Ailill and Maeve and killed him, and the next day he killed three more with their charioteers. The army advanced and devastated the plains of Bregia and Muirthemne, and Fergus warned them to beware of Cuchulainns vengeance. They went on into Cuailnge and reached the river Glaiss Cruind, but it rose against them so that they could not cross. A hundred chariots were swept into the sea. Cuchulainn followed hard upon them seeking battle, and he killed a hundred men. Maeve called upon her own people to oppose him in equal combat. Not I, not I! said each one from where he stood. My people owe no victim, and if one were owing I would not go against Cuchulainn, for it is not easy to fight with him. That night a hundred warriors died of fright at the sound of Cuchulainns weapons. Maeve sent a messenger to summon Cuchulainn to a parley with her and Fergus, but he would accept no conditions; and for the next three days the army lay without pitching their tents and without feasting or music, and Cuchulainn killed a hundred men each night. The messenger was sent again to ask for terms, and he refused all that were proposed. There was one condition that he would accept, but he would not himself declare it. Fergus was able to tell that Cuchulainn would agree to single combat with a warrior each day, if the army would advance only while the combat lasted and would halt when the warrior had been killed until another was found. Maeve The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 29
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero decided to accept the proposal, because it would be better to lose one man every day than a hundred every night. [. . .] Meanwhile Maeve turned northward to Dun Sobairche, and Cuchulainn followed her. He turned back to protect his own territory and found Buide son of Ban Blai, with twenty-four followers, driving the Brown Bull of Cuailnge, which they had found in Glenn na Samisce in Sliab Cuilinn. The bull was accompanied by twenty-four of his cows. Cuchulainn challenged Buide and killed him, but, while they were exchanging casts of their spears, the great bull was driven off, and that was the greatest grief and dismay and confusion that Cuchulainn suffered on that hosting. Maeve plundered Dun Sobairche, and then after six weeks the four provinces of Ireland with Ailill and Maeve and those who had captured the bull came into camp together. [. . .] In the morning, when the sun was up, the Ulstermen attacked, and the men of Ireland [the Connaught army] came to meet them. Three times the Men of Ireland broke through northward and each time they were driven back. The Conchobar himself went into the field, where the enemy had been advancing, and found Fergus opposed to him. They fought shield to shield, and Fergus struck three mighty blows upon the shield of Conchobar so that it screamed aloud. But, remembering that he was an Ulsterman, he turned his anger against the hills, and three hills were shorn of their tops by his sword. Cuchulainn heard the scream of Conchobars magic shield where he lay prostrate from his wounds. He rose up in heroic frenzy and seized no mere weapons but his war-chariot, body and wheels, to wield against the enemy. Fergus had promised, if ever he and Cuchulainn should meet in the battle, that he would retreat before him. When Cuchulainn now came against him, he led his company out of the fight, and the Leinstermen and Munstermen followed them, so that only Ailill and Maeve and their sons with nine battalions remained in the field. At noon Cuchulainn came into the battle. At sunset he had defeated the last battalion, and of his chariot there remained a few ribs of the body and a few spokes of the wheels. Meanwhile, Maeve had sent the Brown Bull of Cuailnge to Cruachan, so that he at least should come there, whoever else might fail to come. Then she appealed the Cuchulainn to spare her army until it should go westward past Ath Mor, and he consented. [. . .] When the Brown Bull came to Cruachan, he uttered three mighty bellows, and the Whitehorned Bull heard that and came to fight him. All who had returned from the battle came to watch the bull-fight. They watched until night fell, and when night fell they could only listen to the great noise of the fight. The bulls travelled all over Ireland during the night, and in the morning the Brown Bull was seen going past Cruachan with the Whitehorned Bull on his horns. He galloped back to Ulster, scattering fragments of the dead bulls flesh from his horns on the way, and when he came to the border of Cuailnge, his heart broke, and he died. Summary by Myles Dillon 3.4.3. Tin B Fraoch (The Cattle Raid of Fraoch) Tin B Fraoch is the second most popular cattle raid tale in Old Irish literature. 30 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero Its first part, in which Medb plots the death of Fraoch (a young Connach warrior who has fallen in love with Finnabair) forcing him fight a monster who dwells in a lake, has echoes in the anglo-saxon poem of Beowulf. After killing the monster, Fraoch marries Finnabair, and the second part of the tale recounts how both she and his cattle herds are kidnapped and carried off from Connacht.
3.5. Celtic Myth in the Theatre of W.B. Yeats

3.5.1. The Cuchulain Cycle of Plays Cuchulain appears as the main hero in 5 plays written by William Butler Yeats from 1902 to 1938. In these plays Yeats blends elements of Irish myth made available to him through the translations of the Tan, and Lady Augusta Gregorys Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902), with his personal symbolism that carries forward the oppositions between the real and the spirit world evolved in his poems. In their chronological order, the Cuchulain plays are: 3.5.1.1. On Bailes Strand (1904) 3.5.1.2. The Green Helmet (1910) 3.5.1.3. At the Hawks Well (1916) 3.5.1.4. The Only Jealousy of Emer (1916) 3.5.1.5. The Death of Cuchulain (1938) At the Hawks Well Sources: Macgnmartha/boyhood deeds, narrated by Fergus in the Tan; Tochmarc Emire (the Courtship of Emer). Cuchulain overhears from Cathbad that the youth who take up arms that day would become the greatest warrior in Ireland; his life would be most glorious, but short. He makes his choice immediately and asks the king to let him take up arms like a man. Cuchulain receives his training first under Fergus and then under Scathach, a famous warrior woman from the Land of Shadow (island of Skye). While in Scotland, he has to fight Scathachs sister, Aife, whom he finally manages to defeat. Becoming her lover, he begets Aife a son, Connla. Play: Cuchulain, as a Young Man, arrives at a Well, whose waters are said to give immortality. An Old Man, who has spent 50 years waiting for the chance of drinking from its waters, urges him to join him, for else his life will be spent in ceaseless warfare. Cuchulain decides to pursue the Hawk guardian of the well, and in doing so he embraces his heroic destiny. The Green Helmet Source: Fledd Bricrenn (Bricrius Feast) Bricriu, a mischief-maker, invites the warriors of Ireland to a feast, where he maliciously exploits the contention that the choicest portion of meat is given to the greatest hero. Cuchulain, Conall Cernach and Laegaire Buadach claim the title in turn. To decide which of these warriors is the greatest, a giant or demon, named Uath (Horror) appears and challenges them into a beheading game. Only Cuchulain accepts the challenge and beheads the giant, to be then proclaimed by Uath the greatest champion in Ireland. Play: Cuchulain makes a sacrificial gesture in offering himself to the Red Man from the sea (Manannan in disguise) to kill.
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Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero On Bailes Strand Source: Aided Oenfhir Aife (Violent Death of Aifes Son) Before the birth of his son, Cuchulain placed a geis upon him: Connla was to never reveal his name to any man; he was to fight any man who impeded his path. When Connla grew into a young man, he set out for Emain Macha in search of his father. There he encountered many warriors of the Red Branch, but refused to give each warrior his name, and he either wounded or killed them. Finally Conchobar send Cuchulain against the boy, and, though warned by Emer that the young man was possibly his son by Aife, his duty to his king forced him fight and kill Connla. Play: Reluctantly, Cuchulain swears loyalty to Conchobar and is forbidden by him to befriend an unknown young man sent by Aife. After learning that the youth he killed was his own son, Cuchulain dies fighting the waves, mistaken their foam for Conchobars crown. A Blind Man and a Fool act as chorus, framing the main action of the play. ON BAILES STRAND (1901, P.1904) FOOL: What a clever man you are though you are blind! Theres nobody with two eyes in his head that is as clever as you are. Who but you could have though that the henwife sleeps every day a little at noon? I would never be able to steal anything if you didnt tell me where to look for it. And what a good cook you are! You take the fowl out of my hands after I have stolen it and plucked it, and you put it into the big pot at the fire there, and I can go out and run races with the witches at the edge of the waves and get an appetite, and when Ive got it, theres the hen waiting inside for me, done to the turn. BLIND MAN [who is feeling about with his stick]: Done to the turn. FOOL [putting his arm round Blind Mans neck]: Come now, Ill have a leg and youll have a leg, and well draw lots for the wish-bone. Ill be praising you while youre eating it, for your good plans and for your good cooking. Theres nobody in the world like you, Blind Man. Come, come. Wait a minute. O shouldnt have closed the door. There are some that look for me, and I wouldnt like them not to find me. Boann herself out of the river and Fand out of the deep sea. Witches they are, and they come by in the wind, and they cry, Give a kiss, Fool, give a kiss, thats what they cry. Thats wide enough. All the witches can come in now. I wouldnt have them beat at the door and say, Where is the Fool? Why has he put a lock on the door? Maybe theyll hear the bubbling of the pot and come in and sit on the ground. But we wont give them any of the fowl. Let them go back to the sea, let them go back to the sea. BLIND MAN [feeling legs of big chair with his hand] Ah! [Then, in a louder voice as he feels the back of it]. Ah - ah FOOL: Why do you say Ah - ah? BLIND MAN: I know the big chair. It is to-day the High King Conchubar is coming. They have brought out this chair. He is going to be Cuchulains master in earnest from this day out. It is that hes coming for. FOOL: He must be a great man to be Cuchulains master. 32 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero BLIND MAN: So he is. He is a great man. He is over all the rest of the kings of Ireland. FOOL: Cuchulains master! I thought Cuchulain could do anything he liked. BLIND MAN: So he did, so he did. But he ran too wild, and Conchubar is coming to-day to put an oath upon him that will stop his rambling and make him as biddable as a housedog and keep him always at his hand. He will sit in this chair and put the oath upon him. FOOL: How will he do that? BLIND MAN: You have no wits to understand such things. [The Blind Man has got into the chair]. He will sit up in this chair and hell say: Take the oath, Cuchulain. I bid you take the oath. Do as I tell you. What are your wits compared with mine, and what are your riches compared with mine? And what sons have you to pay your debts and to put a stone over you when you die? Take the oath, I tell you. Take a strong oath. FOOL [crumpling himself up and whining]: I will not. Ill take no oath. I want my dinner. BLIND MAN: Hush, hush! It is not done yet. FOOL: You said it was done to a turn. BLIND MAN: Did I, now? Well, it might be done, and not done. The wings might be white, but the legs might be red. The flesh might stick hard to the bones and not come away in the teeth. But, believe me, Fool, it will be well done before you put your teeth in it. FOOL: My teeth are growing long with the hunger. BLIND MAN: Ill tell you a story - the kings have story-tellers while they are waiting for their dinner - I will tell you a story with a fight in it, a story with a champion in it, and a ship and a queens son that has his mind set on killing somebody that you and I know. FOOL: Who is that? Who is he coming to kill? BLIND MAN: Wait, now, till you hear. When you were stealing the fowl, I was lying in a hole in the sand, and I heard three men coming with a shuffling sort of noise. They were wounded and groaning. FOOL: Go on. Tell me about the fight. BLIND MAN: There had been a fight, a great fight, a tremendous great fight. A youg man had landed on the shore, the guardians of the shore had asked his name, and he had refused to tell it, and he had killed one, and others had run away. FOOL: Thats enough. Come on now to the fowl. I wish it was bigger. I wish it was as big as a goose. BLIND MAN: Hush! I havent told you all. I know who that young man is. I heard the men who were running away say he had red hair, that he had come from Aoifes country, that he was going to kill Cuchulain. II. CUCHULAIN: Because I have killed men without your bidding And have rewarded others at my own leisure, Because of half a score of trifling thing, Youd lay this oath upon me , and now - and now The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 33
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero you add another pebble to the heap, And I must be your man, wellnigh your bondsman, Because a youngster out of Aoifes country Has found the shore ill-guarded. CONCHUBAR: He came to land While you were somewhere out of sight and hearing, Hunting or dancing with your wild companions. CUCHULAIN: He can be driven out. Ill not be bound. Ill dance or hunt, or quarrel or make love, Wherever and whenever Ive a mind to. If time had not put water in your blood, You never would have thought it. CONCHUBAR:I would leave A strong and settle country to my children. CUCHULAIN: And I must be obedient in all things; Give up my will to yours; go where you please; Come when you call; sit at the council board Among the unshapely bodies of old men; I whose mere name has kept this country safe, I that in early days have driven out Maeve of Cruachan and the northern pirates, The hundred kings of Sorcha, and the kings Out of the Garden in the East of the World. Must I, that held you on the throne when all Had pulled you from it, swear obedience As if I were some cattle-raising king? Are my shins specked with the heat of the fire, Or have my hands not skill but to make figures Upon the ashes with a stick? Am I So slack and idle and I need a whip Before I serve you? CONCHUBAR: No, no whip, Cuchulain, But every day my children come and say: This man is growing harder to endure. How can we be at safety with this man That nobody can buy or bid or bind? We shall be at his mercy when you are gone; He burns the earth as if he were a fire, And time can never touch him. CUCHULAIN: And so the tale Grows finer yet; and I am to obey Whatever child you set upon the throne, As if it were yourself! CONCHUBAR: Most certainly. I am High King, my son shall be High King; And you for all the wildness of your blood, And though your father came out of the sun, Are but a little king and weigh but light In anything that touches government, If put in balance with my children. CUCHULAIN: Its well that we should speak out minds out plainly, For when we die we shall be spoken of In many countries. We in our young days 34 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero Have seen the heavens like a burning cloud Brooding upon the world, and being more Than men can be now that clouds lifted up, We should be the more truthful. Conchubar, I do not like your children - they have no pith, No marrow in their bones, and will lie soft Where you and I lie hard. [ . . . ] IV. FOOL: He is going up to King Conchubar. They are all about the young man. No, no, he is standing still. There is a great wave going to break, and he is looking at it. Ah! Now he is running down to the sea, but he is holding up his sword as if he were going into a fight. [pause]. Well struck! Well struck! BLIND MAN: What is he doing now? FOOL: O! he is fighting the waves! BLIND MAN: He sees kind Conchubars crown on every one of them. FOOL: There, he has struck at a big one! He has struck the crown off it; he has made the foam fly. There again, another big one! BLIN MAN: Where are the kings? What are the kings doing? FOOL: They are shouting and running down to the shore, and the people are running out of the houses. They are all running. BLIND MAN: You say they are running out of the houses? There will be nobody left in the houses. Listen, Fool! FOOL: There, he is down! He is up again. He is going out in the deep water. There is a big wave. It has gone over him. I cannot see him now. He has killed kings and giants, but the waves have mastered him, the waves have mastered him! BLIND MAN: Come here, Fool! Fool: The waves have mastered him. BLIND MAN: Come here! FOOL: The waves have mastered him. BLIND MAN: Come here, I say. FOOL [coming towards him, but looking backwards towards the door]: What is it? BLIND MAN: There will be nobody in the houses. Come this way; come quickly! The ovens will be full. We will put our hands into the ovens. [They go out]. The Only Jealousy Of Emer Sources: Serglige con Chulainn (Cuchulains Illness) and Oenet Emire (The Jealousy of Emer) When cuchulain tries to kill two magical birds, he is horsewhipped in a dream by two women of the sdh. He spends a year in a coma at Emain Macha, until , in a further vision, he is told that Fand needs him to fight off three demons who besieged her palace. Cuchulain enters the Otherworld, defeats the demons, and spends a month in Fands loving arms. When he returns to the surface, he promises to meet Fand again. Emer plans to kill Fand at the meeting-place, but instead each woman offers to surrender her love. Fand leaves, but all three are distraught until Manannan uses his magic cloak to cast a spell of oblivion upon them. The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 35
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero Play: Yeats exploits the dramatic potential of the love triangle, adding a new character, Eithne Inguba, Cuchulains young mistress. While Emer renounces Cuchulain in order to save him from Fand (who wants to take him to the Otherworld), Eithne seemingly wins him back to life and to herself. The Death Of Cuchulain Source: Aided Chon Culainn (The Violent Death Of Cuchulain) Cuchulain meets his death on the plain of Mag Muirthemne, as ordained by Morrigan. As in the Tan, he contends alone against the enemies of Ulster. Pierced by a spear in the fighting, he fastens himself to a pillar-stone, so that he may die standing up. When a raven settles on his shoulder, it is taken as a sign he is dead, and his enemies behead him. Play: Though in legend Cuchulain is said to die young, here he has aged with the poet. The Morrigan gets Eithne Inguba to falsify a message from Emer, so that Cuchulain leaves to fight against Medbs army, who has attacked Ulster again. He is wounded six times in battle. Aife appears and ties him to a stake, ready to avenge upon him the death of Connla. But it is not her, but the Blind Man (from On Bailes Strand) who beheads the hero, having been promised 12 pennies by a big man. Cuchulains mode of dying becomes an indictment of the modern materialist society which no longer treasures heroes and artists alike.
3.6. De-Constructing Heroism: Nuala N Dhomhnaill

C Chulainn I from Selected Poems, 1988
Small dark rigid man C Chulainn who still lacks a lump on your shoulder who spent your first nine months in a cave swimming in your mothers fluid. Grave hunter whod satisfy no woman saying your father never went to a small seaside town like Ballybuion never made arms and instruments of war to give you so you could leap from the womb three minutes after the conception your hand full of spears holding five shields it is not we who injured you. 36 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero We also came my ladies, out of wombs and the danger yet remains morning noon and evening that the ground will open and opened to us all will be Brufon na hAlmhaine Br na Binne or Teach Da Deige with its seven doors and hot cauldrons. Dont threat us again with your youth again small poor dark man C Chulainn.
Task
Choose from one of the following topics to develop into a 4000-word essay of the argumentative type: 1. Tain Bo Cualgne and the Celtic Framework. 2. Constructing and De-constructing Mythic Heroism: representations of Cuchulain in Tain Bo Cualgne , W. B. Yeatss Cuchulain plays and Nuala NiDhumnaills Chuchulain I.
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Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle)
Chapter 4 - The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle)
4.1. The Fionn Cycle (Fenian, Ossianic, Munster)

The Fionn Cycle contains a group of tales developed in Munster and Leinster and dating to the 3rd century A.D. Most stories centre on the exploits of the mythical hero Fionn mac Cumhaill, his son Oisn, and other famous members of the fian (warrior-band) of Fionn, collectively known as the Fianna, who hunt, fight, conduct raids, and live an open-air nomadic life. This set of literary conventions reflects a feature of early Irish society in that such bands of warriors did live outside the structures of that society while retaining links with it. Another characteristic is its frequent celebration of the beauty of nature, evoked in vivid language.
4.2. Fenian Heroes and Tales

Fionn mac Cumhaill is the leader of the Fianna under the High King Cormac mac Airt, Fionn was to some extent an outlaw; yet he was also a poet, diviner, and sage, and, therefore, endowed with traditional, and, in early Ireland, institutional attributes. His father, Cumhall, had led, in his turn, the Tara fian, while his mother, Muirne (Muireann) was the daughter of the druid Tadg, said to be descending from the Danann. As such, his parentage combined warrior and visionary elements. As well as being endowed with physical courage, Fionn possesses a gift of special insight which he can summon by biting his finger. According to one account of his origin, his finger was injured when a fairy woman caught it in the door of the fairy-fort at Femun. In folklore the injury is caused by Fionns burning his thumb on the Salmon of Knowledge from the Boyne, which he is cooking for Finnegas, his druid teacher. Thereafter he finds himself inspired with imbas (great knowledge), which also brings him the gift of poetry. His famous hounds, Bran and Sceolang, are said to be his cousins (Muirnes sister having been turned into an animal during her pregnancy.) Among his romances, the most famous is the one with the goddess Sadb, the mother of Osin, who came to him in the form of a deer. In The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grinne, Fionn appears as a vindictive and jealous older man, initially threatened by the youthful lover, but eventually getting his bride back. When Cormacs son succeeds to the thrown, he declares war on the Fianna. At the battle of Gabhra (Cath Gabhra), Oscar (Fionns grandson) and many of the Fianna are killed. Afterwards, Osin is lured away to Tir-na-nOg by Niamh, Manannans daughter, where he spends 300 years until returning to Ireland.
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Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle)
4.3. Oisin in the Land of Youth (From the Finn Cycle)

Hundreds of years after Finn and his companions had died, Saint Patrick came to Ireland bringing the Christian religion with him. He had heard many stories about the adventures of the Fianna and he was interested in these old heroes whom the people spoke about as if they were gods. Their story was written into the very landscape of Ireland; hills and woods resounded with their legends, rivers and valleys bore their names, dozens marked their graves. One day a feeble, blind old man was brought to Patrick. His body was weak and wasted but his spirit was strong. Patrick preached the new doctrines to him but the old warrior scorned the newcomers and their rituals and in defiant response sand the praises of the Fianna, their code of honour and their way of life. He said he was Oisin, the son of Finn himself. Patrick doubted the old mans word since Finn had been dead for longer than the span of any human life. So to convince the saint that his claim was true, Oisin, last of the Fianna, told his story. After the battle of Gowra, the last battle the Fianna fought, Oisin, Finn and a handful of survivors went south to Lough Lene in Kerry, a favourite haunt of theirs in happier times. They were dispirited because they knew their day was over. They had all fought many battles in their time, but this last battle had brought them total defeat and bitter losses. Many of their companions had been killed at Gowra, among them the bravest warrior of the Fianna, Oisins own son, Oscar. When Finn, the baule-hardened old veteran, had seen his favourite grandson lying dead on the field, he had turned his back to his troops and wept. Only once before had the Fianna seen their leader cry and that was at the death of his staghound Bran. Around Lough Lene the woods were fresh and green and the early mists of a May morning were beginning to lift when Finn and his followers set out with their dogs to hunt. The beauty of the countryside and the prospect of the chase revived their spirits a little as they followed the hounds through the woods. Suddenly a young hornless deer broke cover and bounded through the forest with the dogs in full cry at its heels. The Fianna followed them, rejuvenated by the familiar excitement of the chase. They were stopped in their tracks by the sight of a lovely young woman galloping towards them on a supple, nimble white horse. She was so beautiful she seemed like a vision. She wore a crown and her hair hung in shining, golden loops down over her shoulders. Her long, lustrous cloak, glinting with gold-embroidered stars, hung down over the silk trapping of her horse. Her eyes were as clear and blue as the May sky above the forest and they sparkled like dew on the morning grass. Her skin glowed white and pink and her mouth seemed as sweet as honeyed wine. Her horse was saddled and shod with gold and there was a silver wreath around his head. No one had seen a better animal. The woman reined in her horse and came up to where Finn stood, moon-struck and silent. Ive travelled a great distance to find you, she said, and Finn found his voice. Who are you and where have you come from? he asked. Tell us your name and the name of your kingdom. I am called Niamh of the Golden Hair and my father is the king of Tir na n-Og, the Land of Youth, the girl replied.
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Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle) Then tell us, Princess Niamh, why have you left a country like that and crossed the sea to come to us? Has your husband forsaken you or has some other tragedy brought you here? My husband didnt leave me, she answered, for Ive never had a husband. Many men in my own country wanted to marry me, but I wouldnt look at any of them because I loved your son. Finn started in surprise. You love one of my sons? Which of my sons do you love, Niamh? And tell me why your mind settled on him? he asked. Oisin is the champion Im talking about, replied Niamh. Reports of his handsome looks and sweet nature reached as far as the Land of Youth. So I decided to come and find him. Oisin had been silent all this time, dazzled by the beautiful girl and when he heard her name him as the man she loved he trembled from head to toe. But he recovered himself and went over to the princess and took her hand in his. You are the most beautiful woman in the world and I would choose you above all others. I will gladly marry you! Come away with me, Oisin! Niamh whispered. Come back with me to the Land of Youth. It is the most beautiful country under the sun. You will never fall ill or grow old there. In my country you will never die. Trees grow tall there and treed bend low with fruit. The land thaws with honey and wine, as much as you could ever want. In Tir na n-Og you will sit at feasts and games with plenty of music for you, plenty of wine. You will get gold and jewels, more than you could imagine. And a hundred swords, a hundred silk tunics, a hundred swift bay horses, a hundred keen hunting dogs. The King of the Ever Young will place a crown on your head, a crown that he has never given to anyone else, and it will protect you from every danger. You will get a hundred cows, a hundred calves, and a hundred sheep with golden wool. You will get a hundred of the most beautiful jewels youve ever seen and a hundred arrows. A hundred young women will sing to you and a hundred of the bravest, young warriors will obey your command. As well as all of this, you will get beauty, strength and power. And me for your wife. Oh, Niamh, I could never refuse you anything you ask and I will gladly go with you to the Land of Youth! Oisin cried and he jumped up on the horse behind her. With Niamh cradled between his arms he took the reins in his hands and the horse started forwards. Go slowly, Oisin, till we reach the shore! Niamh said. When Finn saw his son being borne away from him, he let out three loud, sorrowful shots. Oh, Oisin, my son, he cried out, why are you leaving me? I will never see you again. Youre leaving me here heartbroken for I know well never meet again! Oisin stopped and embraced his father and said goodbye to all his friends. With tears streaming down his face he took a last look at them as they stood on the shore. He saw the defeat and sorrow on his fathers face and the sadness of his friends. He remembered his days together with them all in the excitement of the hunt and the heat of battle. Then the white horse shook its mane, gave three shrill neighs and leapt forward, plunging into the sea. The waves opened before Niamh and Oisin and dosed behind them as they passed. As they travelled across the sea, wonderful sight appeared to them on every side. They passed cities, courts and castles, white-washed bawns and forts, painted summerhouses and stately palaces. A young fawn rushed past, a white dog with scarlet ears racing after it. A beautiful young woman on a bay horse galloped by on the crests of the waves, carrying a golden apple in 40 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle) her right hand. Behind her, mounted on a white horse, rode a young prince, handsome and richly dressed with a gold-bladed sword in his hand. Oisin looked in awe at this handsome couple but when he asked Niamh who they were, she replied that they were insignificant compared to the inhabitants of the Land of Youth. Ahead of them and visible from afar, a shining palace came into view. Its delicate, marble facade shone in the sun. Thats the most beautiful palace I have ever see! Oisin exclaimed. What country are we in now and who is the king? This is the Land of Virtue and that is the palace of Fomor, a giant, Niamh replied. The daughter of the king of the Land of Life is the queen. She was abducted from her own country by Fomor and he keeps her a prisoner here. She has put a geis on him that he may not marry her until a champion has challenged him to single combat. But a prisoner she remains for no one wants to fight the giant. Niamh, the story youve told me is sad, even though your voice is music in my ears, Oisin said. Ill go to the fortress and try to overcome the giant and set the queen free. They turned the horse towards the white palace and when they arrived there they were welcomed by a woman almost as beautiful as Niamh herself. She brought them to a room where thy sat on golden chairs and ate and drank of the best. When the feast was over, the queen told the story of her captivity and as tears coursed down her cheeks she told them that until the giant was overcome she could never return home. Dry your eyes, Oisin told her. Ill challenge the giant. Im not afraid of him! Either Ill kill him or Ill fight till he kills me. At that moment Fomor approached the castle. He was huge and ugly and he carried a load of deerskins on his back and an iron bar in his hand. He saw Oisin and Niamh but did not acknowledge their presence. He looked into the face of his prisoner and straight away he knew that she had told her story to the visitors. With a loud, angry shout he challenged Oisin to fight. For three days and three nights they struggled and fought but, as powerful as Fomor was, Oisin overpowered him in the end and cut off his head. The two women gave three triumphant cheers when they saw the giant felled. When they saw that Oisin was badly injured and too exhausted to walk unaided, they took him gently between them and helped him back to the fortress. The queen put ointments and herbs on his wounds and in a very short time Oisin had recovered his health and spirits. They buried the giant and raised his flag over the grave and caned his name in ogham script in stone. Then they feasted till they were full and slept till dawn in the feather beds that were prepared for them. The morning sun awoke them and Niamh told Oisin they must continue on their journey to Tir na n-Og. The queen of the Land of Virtue was sad to see them go, and indeed they were sad to leave her, but she was free now to return home, so they said goodbye to her and that was the last they saw of her. They mounted the white horse and he galloped away as boisterously as a March wind roaring across a mountain summit. Suddenly the sky darkened, the wind rose and the sea was lit up by angry flashes of light. Niamh and Oisin rode steadily through the tempest, looking up at the pillars of clouds blotting out the sun until the wind dropped and the storm died down. Then, ahead of them, they saw the most delightful country, bathed in sunshine, spread out in all its splendour. Set amid the smooth rich plains was a majestic fortress that shone like a prism in the sun. The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 41
Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle) Surrounding it were airy halls and summerhouses built with great artistry and inlaid with precious stones. As Niamh and Oisin approached the fortress a troop of a hundred of the most famous champions came out to meet them. This land is the most beautiful place I have ever see! Oisin exclaimed. Have we arrived at the Land of Youth? Indeed we have. This is Tir na n_og, Niamh replied. I told you the truth when I told you how beautiful it was. Everything I promised you, you will receive. As Niamh spoke a hundred beautiful young women came to meet them, dressed in silk and heavy gold brocade, and they welcomed the couple to Tir na n-Og. A huge glittering crowd then approached with the king and queen at their head. When Oisin and Niamh met the royal party, the king took Oisin by the hand and welcomed him. Then he turned towards the crowd and said. This is Oisin, Finns son, who is to be married to my beloved daughter, Niamh of the Golden Hair. He turned to Oisin. Youre welcome to this happy country, Oisin! Here you will have a long and happy life and you will never grow old. Everything you ever dreamt of is waiting for you here. I promise you that all I say is true for I am the king of Tir na n-Og. This is my queen and this is my daughter Niamh, the Golden-haired, who crossed the sea to find you and bring you back here so that you could be together for ever. Oisin thanked the king and queen and a wedding feast was prepared for Oisin and Niamh. The festivities lasted for ten days and ten nights. Niamh and Oisin lived happily in the Land of Youth and had three children. Niamh named the boys Finn and Oscar after Oisins father and son. Oisin gave his daughter a name that suited her loving nature and her lovely face; he named her Plur na mBan, the Flower of Women. Three hundred years went by, though to Oisin they seemed as short as three. He began to get homesick for Ireland and longed to see Finn and his friends, so he asked Niamh and her father to allow his to return home. The king consented but Niamh was perturbed by his request. I cant refuse you though I wish you had never asked, Oisin! she said. Im afraid that if you go youll never return. Oisin tried to comfort his wife. Dont be distressed, Niamh! he said. Our white horse knows the way. Hell bring me back safely! So Niamh consented, but she gave Oisin a most solemn warning. listen to me well, Oisin, she implored him, and remember what Im saying. If you dismount from the horse you will not be able to return to this happy country. I tell you again, if your foot as much as touches the ground, you will be lost for ever to the Land of Youth. Then Niamh began to sob and wail in great distress. Oisin, for the third time I warn you: do not set foot on the soil of Ireland or you can never come back to me again! Everything is changed there. You will not see Finn or the Fianna, you will find only a crowd of monks and holy men. Oisin tried to console her but Niamh was inconsolable and pulled and clutched at her long hair in her distress. He said goodbye to his children and as he stood by the white horse Niamh came up to him and kissed him. Oh, Oisin, here is a last kiss for you! You will never come back to me or to the Land of Youth. Oisin mounted his horse and turning his back on the Land of Youth, set out for Ireland. The horse took him away from Tir na n_og as swiftly as it had brought Niamh and him there three hundred years before. Oisin arrived in Ireland in high spirits, as strong and powerful a champion as he had ever been, and set out at once to find the Fianna. He 42 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle) travelled over the familiar terrain but saw no trace of any of his friends. Instead he saw a crowd of men and women approaching from the west. He drew in his horse and, at the sight of Oisin, the crowd stopped too. They addressed him courteously, but they kept on staring at him, astonished at his appearance and his great size. When Oisin told them he was looking for Finn MacCumhaill and asked of his whereabouts the people were even more surprised. Weve heard of Finn and the Fianna, they told him. The stories about him say that there never was anyone to match him in character, behaviour or build. There are so many stories that we could not even start to tell them to you! When Oisin heard this a tide of weariness and sadness washed over him and he realized that Finn and his companions were dead. Straight away he set out for Almu, the headquarters of the Fianna in the plains of Leinster. But when he got there, there was no trace of the strong, shining white fort. There was only a bare hill overgrown with ragwort, chickweed and nettles. Oisin was heartbroken at the sight of that desolate place. He went from one of Finns haunts to another but they were all deserted. He scoured the countryside but there was no trace of his companions anywhere. As he passed through Wicklow, through Glenasmole, the Valley of the Thrushes, he saw three hundred or more people crowding the glen. When they saw Oisin approach on his horse one of them shouted out, Come over here and help us! You are much stronger than we are! Oisin came closer and saw that the men were trying to lift a vast marble flagstone. The weight of the stone was so great that the men underneath could not support it and were being crushed by the load. Some were down already. Again the leader shouted desperately to Oisin, Come quickly and help us to lift the slab or all these men will be crushed to death! Oisin looked down in disbelief at the crowd of men beneath him who were so puny and weak that they were unable to lift the flagstone. He leaned out of the saddle and, taking the marble slab in his hands, he raised it with all his strength and flung it away and the men underneath it were freed. But the slab was so heavy and the exertion so great that the golden girth round the horses belly snapped and Oisin was pulled out of the saddle. He had to jump to the ground to save himself and the horse bolted the instant its riders feet touched the ground. Oisin stood upright for a moment, towering over the gathering. Then, as the horrified crowd watched, the tall young warrior, who had been stronger than all of them, sank slowly to the ground. His powerful body withered and shrank, his skin sagged into wrinkles and folds and the sight left his clouded eyes. Hopeless and helpless, he lay at their feet, a bewildered blind old man. (from Marie Heaney, OVER NINE WAVES, Faber and Faber, 1994)
Accounts of Fionns death vary, but in folk tradition he is still alive (sleeping in a cave), ready to help Ireland in times of need. The cycle has been Christianized, and some stories present the meeting of Osin and other survivors of the Fianna with St. Patrick, the warriors lamenting the abeyance of heroic conduct in Christian Ireland.
4.4. Literary Treatments of Fenian Tales and Heroes

The stories included in the Fionn Cycle as well as the Fenian heroes like Fionn, Oisin and Oscar have inspired many generation of writers. The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 43
Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle) 4. 4. 1. Ossianism The Scott James MacPherson is among the first to have revived the figure of Oisin under the guise of Ossian, an ancient Caledonian bard, whose poems he claimed to have discovered and then translated into English with the publication of: Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and Translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language (1760); Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books (1762) Temora (1763) Ossianism had a massive cultural impact during the 18th and 19th centuries. Napoleon carried a copy into battle; Goethe translated parts of it, and one of Ingres' most romantic and moody paintings, the Dream of Ossian was based on it. 4. 4. 2. W. B. Yeats, The Wanderings of Oisin W.B. Yeats reworked the tale of Oisin in the Land of Youth in his first long narrative poem entitled The Wanderings of Osin (1889). Written in the form of a dialogue between the aged fenian hero and St. Patrick, held traditionally to have converted Ireland to Christianity, the poem relates Oisins threehundred years sojourn in the immortal islands of the Sidhe, spent hunting, dancing, and feasting in the company of Niamh, the fairy daughter of the seagod Manannan. 4. 4. 3. Finn Maccool, from Finnegans Wake to Joyces Finnegans Wake Nevertheless, the most famous literary treatment of Fionn himself is found in James Joyces Finnegans Wake (1939) Finnegans Wake is a modernist novel, written in a highly innovative dream language combining multilingual puns with the stream of consciousness developed in Ulysses. The title is taken from a popular ballad about Tim Finnegan, a drunken hodcarrier, who dies in a fall from a ladder and is revived with a splash of whiskey at his wake. FINNEGANS WAKE Tim Finnegan livd in Walkin Street a gentleman Irish mighty odd. He had a tongue both rich and sweet, an to rise in the world he carried a hod. Now Tim had a sort of a tipplin way, with the love of the liquor he was born, An to help him on with his work each day hed a drop of the craythur evry morn. Chorus: Whack fol de dah, dance to your partner Welt the flure yer trotters shake Wasnt it the truth I told you, Lots of fun at Finnegans wake. One morning Tim was rather full, 44 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle) His head fell heavy which made him shake, He fell from the ladder and broke his skull, So they carried him home his corpse to wake. They rolled him up in a nice clean sheet And laid him out upon the bed, With a gallon of whiskey at his feet, And a barrel of porter at his head. His friends assembled at the wake, And Mrs. Finnegan called for lunch, First they brought in tay and cake, The pipes, tobacco, and whiskey punch. Miss Biddy OBrien began to cry, Such a neat clean corpse, did you ever see, Arrah, Tim avourneen, why did you die? Ah, hould your gab, said Paddy McGee. Then Biddy OConnor took up the job, Biddy, says she, youre wrong, Im sure, But Biddy gave her a belt in the gob, And left her sprawling on the floor; Oh, then the war did soon enrage; Twas woman to woman and man to man, Shillelagh law did all engage, And a row and a ruction soon began. Then Micky Maloney raised his head, When a noggin of whiskey flew at him, It missed and falling on the bed, The liquor scattered over Tim; Bedad he revives, see how he rises, And Timothy rising from the bed, Says, Whirl your liquor round like blazes, Thanam on dhoul, do ye think Im dead?
It further relates to Fionn mac Cumhaill who, having passed away (Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie?), will inevitably return (Mister Finn, youre going to be Mister Finnagain! Its structure is governed by Giambattista Vicos division of human history into three ages (divine, heroic, and human), to which Joyce added a section called the Ricorso, emphasizing the Neapolitan philosophers cyclical conception. It also systematically reflects Giordano Brunos theory that everything in nature is realized through interaction with its opposite. It also connects to modern psychology, the novel enacting the processes of the sleeping mind in keeping with Joyces description of it as the dream of Fionn lying in death beside the Liffey. The main characters of the novel are: Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE) (Father) Ana Livia Plurabelle (ALP) (Mother) Shem the Penman and Shaun the Post (Sons) The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 45
Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle) Issy (Daughter) These are not so much members of a particular family, but representatives of a kinship system repeating itself afresh in all times and places. They appear under different personal and impersonal forms throughout the text, also serving as underlying symbols for male and female in a world of flux. The narrative line consists of a series of situations primarily relating to the sexual life of the Earwicker family. HCE perpetrates a sexual misdemeanour in the Phoenix Park, and becomes the victim of a scadalmongering. ALP defends him in a letter written by Shem and carried by Shaun. The boys endlessly contend for Issys favours. HCE grows old and impotent, is buried and revives. Aged ALP prepares to return as her daughter Issy to catch his eye again. In testimony of this cyclic conception, the novel starts in the middle of a sentence and ends with its beginning: Finnegans Wake (1939) riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Sir Tristram, violer damores, frover the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe minor to wielderfight his penisolate war, nor had topsawyers rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens Countrys gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time, nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauf-tauf thuartpeatrick, not yet, though vennissoon after, had a kidscad buttened a bland old isaac, not yet, though alls fair in vanessy, were sosie sesters wroth with thone nathandjoe. Not a peck of pas malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by archlight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. The fall (bababadalgharagharaghtakmminorronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhhounawskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is related early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of himself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepoindandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy. [. . .] A way a lone a last a loved a long the
Task
Consider one of the following topics to develop into a full-length essay: 1. Celtic Connections: from the Finn to the Arthurian cycle of tales. 2. Irish Heroes in Joycean Metamorphosis: Fion MacCumhail, Tim Finnegan and Finnegans Wake
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Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales
Chapter 5 - The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales

5.1. The Historical (King) Cycle
The Historical Cycle includes a group of early Irish tales composed between the 9th and 12th centuries. They deal with persons and events of the early historical period from the 6th to the 8th centuries. They are often concerned with kingship, dynastic conflicts and battles. Though history is present in the background of all stories, romance, mythology and magic continue to play an important part. 5.1.1. Buile Suibhne (Frenzy of Sweeney) The most famous tale in the cycle is Buile Suibhne, which recounts the tribulations of the Mad King Sweeney. Suibne, originally a vigorous ruler and a great warrior, is drive mad by the sound of battle, as consequence of a curse imposed on him by a cleric named Rnn. He takes to the wilderness, where he spends may years naked or very sparsely clothed, living in tree-tops, bemoaning his fate, and celebrating nature in haunting lyrical verse. Finally, having travelled much of Ireland, he arrives at a small religious community, where St. Moling welcomes him and, after Suibne is killed by one of the servants, buries the madman in consecrated ground. BUILE SUIBHNE [THE MADNESS/FRENZY OF SWEENEY] Suibhne son of Colman was king of Dal nAraide. One day St. Ronan was marking the boundaries of a church in that country, and Suibhne heard the sound of his bell. Then his people told him that the saint was establishing a church in his territory, he set out in anger to expel the cleric. His wife Eorann sought to restrain him and caught the border of his cloak, but he rushed naked from the house, leaving the cloak in her hands. Ronan was chanting the Office when Suibhne came up, and the king seized the psalter and threw it into the lake. He then laid hands on the saint and was dragging him away, when a messenger arrived from Congal Claen to summon him to the battle of Moira. Suibhne departed with the messenger, leaving Ronan sorrowful. Next day an otter from the lake restored the psalter to the saint unharmed. Ronan gave thanks to God and cursed the king, wishing that he might wander naked through the world as he had come naked into his presence. Ronan went to Moira to make peace between Domnall and Congal Claen, but without success. He and his clerics sprinkled holy water on the armies, but when they sprinkled in on Suibhne, he slew one of the clerics with a spear and made a second cast at Ronan himself. The second spear broke against the saints bell, and the shaft flew into the air. Ronan cursed Suibhne, wishing that he might fly through the air like the shaft of his spear and that he might die of a spar cast like the cleric whom he had slain. Thereafter, when the battle was joined, the armies on both sides raised three mighty shouts. Suibhne was terrified by the clamour. His weapons fell from his hands. He was seized with trembling and fled in a frenzy like a bird of the air. His feet rarely touched the ground in his flight, and at last he The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 47
Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales settled upon a yew tree far from the battle field. There he was discovered by a kinsman, Aongus the Fat, who had fled the field after the victory of Domnall. Aongus sought to persuade Suibhne to join him, but Suibhne flew away like a bird and came to Tir Conaill, where he perched on a tree near the church called Cill Riagain. It happened that the victorious army of Domnall had encamped there after the battle. Domnall recognised him and lamented his misfortune. Suibhne fled again and was for a long time travelling through Ireland till he came to Glenn Bolcain. It was there that the madmen used to abide when their year of frenzy was over, for that valley is always a place of great delight to madmen. Glenn Bolcain has four gaps to the wind and a lovely fragrant wood and clean-bordered wells and cool springs, and a sandy stream of clear water with green cress and long waving brooklime on its surface. For seven years, Suibhne wandered throughout Ireland, and then he returned to Glenn Bolcain. There Loingsechan came to seek him and found the footprints of Suibhne near the river where he came to eat watercress, He slept one night in a hut and Suibhne came near and heard him snore. And he uttered a lay: The man by the wall snores: I dare not sleep like that. For seven years since that Tuesday at Moira I have not slept for a moment. [. . .] The cress of the well of Druim Cirb is my meal at terce. My face betrays it. Truly I am Suibhne the Madman. [. . .] Though I live from hill to hill on the mountain above the valley of yews, alas! That I was not left to lie with Congal Claen. [. . .] Green cress and a drink of clear water is my fare. I do not smile. This is not the fate of the man by the wall. [. . .] [. . .]At last Suibhne came to the monastery of St. Mo ling. Mo Ling made him welcome and bade him return from his wanderings every evening so that his history might be written, for it was destined that his story should be written there and that he should receive a Christian burial. Mo Ling bade his cook give supper to Suibhne, and, wherever he travelled during the day, he would return at night. The cook would thrust her foot into some cowdung and fill the hole with milk, and Suibhne would lie down to drink. But the cooks husband, who was a herdsman, grew jealous of this attention by his wife, and he slew Suibhne with a spear as he lay drinking the milk one evening. Before his death he confessed his sins and received the body of Christ and was anointed. [The conversation of Suibhne, Mo Ling and Mongan the herdsman is recorded in a poem of twenty-six quatrains, in which Suibhne says: Sweeter to me once that the sound of a bell beside me was the song of a blackbird on the mountain and the belling of the stag in a storm. Sweeter to me once than the voice of a lovely woman beside me was the voice of the mountain grouse at dawn. Sweeter to me once was the cry of wolves than the voice of a cleric within bleating and whining. Though you like to drink your ale in taverns with honour, I would rather drink water from my hand taken from the well by stealth. Though sweet to you yonder in the church the smooth words of your students, sweeter to me the noble chant of the hounds of Glenn Bolcain.]
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Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales Then Suibhne swooned, and Mo Ling and his cleric brought each a stone for his monument, and Mo Ling said: Here is the tomb of Suibhne. His memory grieves my heart. Dear to me for the love of him is every place the holy madman frequented. [. . .] Dear to me each cool stream on which the green cress grew, dear each well of clear water, for Suibhne used to visit them. If the King of the stars allows it, arise and go with me. Give me, O heart, thy hand, and come from the tomb. Sweet to me was the conversation of Suibhne: long shall I remember it. I pray to the chaste King of heaven over his grave and tomb. Suibhne arose out of his swoon, and Mo Ling took him by the hand, and they went together to the door of the church. And Suibhne leaned against the doorpost and gave a great sigh, and his spirit went to heaven, and he was buried with honour by Mo Ling. Summary by Miles Dillon
5.2. Early Irish Poetry

The lyrical passages contained in the story and attributed to the mad King display similar characteristics with early Irish poems, which are characterised by Kuno Meyer, in his Introduction to the Ancient Irish Poetry, in the following terms: In nature poetry the Gaelic muse may vie with that of any other nation. Indeed, these poems occupy a unique position in the literature of the world. To seek out and watch and love Nature, in its tiniest phenomena as in its grandest, was given to no people so early and so fully as to the Celt. Many hundreds of Gaelic and Welsh poems testify to this fact. It is a characteristic of these poems that in none of them do we get an elaborate or sustained description of any scene or scenery, but rather a succession of pictures and images which the poet, like an impressionist, calls up before us by light and skilful touches. Like the Japanese, the Celts were always quick to take an artistic hint; they avoid the obvious and the commonplace; the half-said thing to them is dearest. THE BLACKBIRD BY BELFAST LOCH The small bird hang lets a trill son; from bright tip of yellow bill The shrill chord by Loch Lee of blackbird goodness from yellow tree. The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing THE SCRIBE IN THE WOODS Over me green branches A blackbird leads the loud Above my pen-lined booklet I hear a fluting bird-throng The cuckoo pipes a clear call Its dun cloak hid in deep dell: Praise to God for this That in woodland I write well. 49
THE SHIELDING IN THE WOOD I have a shielding in the wood None knows it safe my God: An ash-tree on the higher side, a hazel-bush beyond, A huge old tree encompasses it . . . Swarms of bees and chafers, little musicians of the wood, A gentle chorus: Wild geese and ducks, shortly before summers end, The music of the dark torrent . . . The voice of the wind against the branchy wood Upon the deep-blue sky: Falls of the river, the note of the swan, Delicious music . . .
5.3. The Suibhne Motif in Irish Literature

Through the story of his wanderings physical and mental Suibhne became the principal Irish exponent of the legend of the Wild Man. Many of the motifs attached to him are associated with rites of passage and the transition from one state to another. Through its overt religious symbolism, the story is historically rooted in the clash between pre-Christian and Christian customs and values, and, by extrapolation, tradition vs. modernity, past vs.present, nature vs. culture, the individual and the state. Another motif relates to the state of frenzy and the world of vision entailed by it (the frenzy unlocks the gifts of poetry ad seership.) The Suibne story continues to inspire Irish writers, notably Flan OBrien in AtSwim-Two-Birds (1939) and Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray (1982) 5.3.1. Brian O'Nolan (Brian Nallin) (1911 66) Brian ONolan is best known for his novels An Bal Bocht, At Swim-TwoBirds and The Third Policeman written under the nom de plume Flann O'Brien. He also wrote many satirical columns in the Irish Times under the name Myles na gCopaleen. Other pseudonyms he used were: John James Doe, George Knowall, Brother Barnabas, and the Great Count O'Blather. 5.3.1.1. At Swim-Two Birds (1939) The novel is narrated by a college student who never goes to class. Instead, he spends his time carousing with friends and smoking cigarettes (in bed, while wearing a single suit of clothes). The student begins to write a novel about an Irish novelist, Dermot Trellis, who has a limited imagination and borrows characters from the existing pool of literary stereotypes: cowboys from American westerns, a Good Fairy and a pookah, and figures of Irish legend like Finn MacCool and the mad King Sweeney. Along with these characters there is a more banal cast, namely Antony and Sheila Lamont, Paul Shanahan, John Furriskey, and Peggy. Trellis falls in love with Sheila Lamont, summons her to his room and seduces her. This seduction results in the birth of a child, whose upbringing is controlled by the pookah. The 50 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales characters in the authors proposed novel, meanwhile, dislike their narrative and convince Trelliss child to write a novel about his novelist, in which the author is to be tortured to death. Just at this point, the college student passes his exams, and At Swim-Two-Birds ends.
from AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS (1939) I withdrew my elbow and fell back again as if exhausted by my effort. My talk had been forced, couched in the accent of the lower or working-classes. Under the cover of the bed-clothes I poked idly with a pencil at my navel. Brinsley was at the window, giving chuckles out. Nature of chuckles: Quiet, private, averted. What are you laughing at? I said. You and your book and your porter, he said. Did you read that stuff about Finn, I said, that stuff I gave you? Oh, yes, he said, that was the pigs whiskers. That was funny all right. This I found a pleasing eulogy. The God-big Finn. Brinsley turned from the window and asked me for a cigarette. I took out my butt or half-spent cigarette and showed it in the hollow of my hand. That is all I have, I said, affecting a pathos in my voice. By God, youre the queer bloody man, he said. He then brought from his own pocket a box of the twenty denomination, lighting one for each of us. There are two ways to make big money, he said, to write a book or to make a book. It happened that this remark provoked between us a discussion on the subject of Literature - great authors living and dead, and character of modern poetry, the predilections of publishers and the importance of being at all times occupied with literary activities of a spare-time or recreative character. My dim room rang with the iron of fine words and the names of great Russian masters were articulated with fastidious intonation. Witticisms were canvassed, depending for their utility on a knowledge of the French language as spoken in medieval times. Psycho-analysis was mentioned - with, however, a somewhat little touch. I then tendered an explanation spontaneous and unsolicited concerning my own work, affording an insight as to its aesthetic, its daemon, its argument, its sorrow and its joy, its darkness, its sun-twinkle clearness. Nature of explanation offered: It was stated that while the novel and the play were both pleasing intellectual exercises, the novel was inferior to the play inasmuch as it lacked the outward accidents of illusion, frequently inducing the reader to be outwitted in a shabby fashion and caused to experience a real concern for the fortunes of illusory characters. The play was consumed in wholesome fashion by large masses in places of public resort; the novel was self-administered in private. The novel, in the hands of un unscrupulous writer, could be despotic. In reply to an inquiry, it was explained that a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity. It was undemocratic to compel characters to be uniformly good or bad or poor or rich. Each should be allowed a private life, self-determination and a decent standard of The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 51
Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales living. This would make for self-respect, contentment and better service. It would be incorrect to say that it would lead to chaos. Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before - usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimbleriggers and persons of inferior education from understanding contemporary literature. Conclusion of explanation. That is all my bum, said Brinsley. But taking precise typescript from beneath the book that was at my side, I explained to him my literary intentions in considerable detail - now reading, now discoursing, oratio recta and oratio obliqua. [direct speech and indirect speech] [. . . ] After a prolonged travel and a searching in the skies, Sweeny arrived at nightfall at the shore of the widespread Loch Ree his resting-place being the fork of the tree of Tiobradan for that night. It snowed on his tree that night, the snow being the worst of all the other snows he had endured since the feather grew on his body, and he was constrained to the recital of these following verses. Terrible is my plight this night the pure air has pierced my body, lacerated feet, my cheek is green O Mighty God, it is my due. It is bad living without a house, Peerless Christ, it is a piteous life! A filling of green-tufted fine cresses a drink of cold water from a clear rile Stumbling out of the withered tree-tops walking the furze - it is truth wolves for company, man-shunning, running with the red stag through fields. If the evil hag had not invoked Christ against me that I should perform leaps for her amusement, I would not have relapsed into madness, said Sweeny. Come here, said Lamont, whats this about jumps? Hopping around, you know, said Furriskey. The story, said learned Shanahan in a learned explanatory manner, is about this fellow Sweeny that argued the toss with the clergy and came off second-best at the wind-up. There was a curse - a malediction - put down in the book against him. The upshot is that your man becomes a bloody bird. I see, said Lamont. 5.3.2. Seamus Heaney (1939-) Heaney was born into a nationalist Irish Catholic family at Mossbawn, in a rural area thirty miles to the north-west of Belfast. 52 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales His main collections of poetry are: Death of a Naturalist (1966) Door into the Dark (1969) Wintering Out (1972) North (1975) Field Work (1979) Sweeney Astray: A Version From the Irish (1983) Station Island (1984) The Haw Lantern (1987) Seeing Things (1991) The Midnight Verdict (1993) The Spirit Level (1996) Heaney's work is often set in rural Londonderry, the county of his childhood. Hints of sectarian violence can be found in many of his poems, even works that on the surface appear to deal with something else. Like the Troubles themselves, Heaney's work is deeply associated with the lessons of history, sometimes even prehistory. Under the influence of P.V. Globs The Bog People which dealt with the discovery of well-preserved Iron Age bodies in the Danish bogs, many of which seemed to have been ritually sacrificed to earth deities, Heaney evolved the bog myth to distance the sectarian killings in modern Ulster through their analogues of 2000 years ago. In Punishment, for example, the body of a young Danish woman accused of adultery and sacrificed to the land in an ancient fertility ritual prompts him meditate on tribal revenge and justice, finding its modern counterpart in the shaved and tarred heads of young Irish women humiliated by the I.R.A. for fraternizing with British soldiers. PUNISHMENT (from North, 1975) I can feel the tug of the halter at the nape of her neck, the wind on her naked front. It blows her nipples to amber beads, it shakes the frail rigging of her ribs. I can see her drowned body in the bog, the weighing stone, the floating rods and boughs. Under which at first she was a barked sapling that is dug up oak-bone, brain-firkin: her shaved head like a stubble of black corn, her blindfold a soiled bandage, The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 53
Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales her noose a ring to store the memories of love. Little adulteress, before they punish you you were flaxen-haired, undernourished, and your tar-black face was beautiful. My poor scapegoat, I almost love you but would have cast, I know, the stones of silence. I am the artful voyeur of your brains exposed and darkened combs, your muscles webbing and all your numbered bones: I who have stood dumb when your betraying sisters, cauled in tar, wept by the railings, who would connive in civilized outrage yet understand the exact and tribal, intimate revenge. Nevertheless, if the bog myth distances contemporary violence through an objective correlative, it also aestheticises it through Heaneys art. Being accused of having become an anthropologist of ritual violence, Heaney decided that investing poetry with the burden of political meaning meant to frustrate its flight. While he himself withdrew from the politically embittered North to Wicklow, in the Republic, his subsequent poems revel in the condition of exile as a necessary one for a poet who acknowledges the priority of his artistic vocation over the constraints of the political world. In Exposure the speaker is an inner migr, who has given up history as a bad job: EXPOSURE It is December in Wicklow: Alders dripping, birches Inheriting the last light, The ash tree cold to look at. A comet that was lost Should be visible at sunset, Those million tons of light 54 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips, And I sometimes see a falling star. If I could come on meteorite! Instead I walk through damp leaves, Husks, the spent flukes of autumn, Imagining a hero On some muddy compound, His gift like a slingstone Whirled for the desperate. How did I end up like this? I often think of my friends Beautiful prismatic counselling And the anvil brains of some who hate me As I sit weighing and weighing My responsible tristia. For what? For the ear? For the people? For what is said behind-backs? Rain comes down through the alders, its low conductive voices Mutter about let-downs and erosions And yet each drop recalls The diamond absolutes. I am neither internee nor informer; An inner migr, grown long-haired And thoughtful; a wood-kerne Escaped from the massacre, Taking protective colouring From bole and bark, feeling Every wind that blows; Who, blowing up these sparks For their meagre heat, have missed The once-in-a-lifetime portent, The comets pulsing rose. 5.3.2.1. Sweeney Astray (1983) In 1983 Heaney undertook a full-scale translation of Buile Suibhne as Sweeney Astray, finding in the figure of the ancient king an analogue for himself as an artist who has chosen to flee from the constraints of the tribe in order to find release into imaginative freedom. SWEENEY ASTRAY God of heaven! Why did I go battling out that famous Tuesday to end up changes into Mad Sweeney, The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing 55
Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales roosting alone up in the ivy? From the well of Drum Cirb, watercress supplies my bite and sup at terce; its juices that have greened my chin are Sweeneys markings and birth-stain. And the manhunt is an expiation. Mad Sweeney is on the run and sleeps curled beneath a rag under the shadow of Slieve leaguelong cut off from the happy time when I lived apart, an honoured name; long exiled from those rushy hillsides, far from my home among the reeds. I give thanks to the King above whose harshness only proves His love which was outraged by my offence and shaped my new shape for my sins a shape that flutters from the ivy to shiver under a winter sky, to go drenched in teems of rain and crouch under thunderstorms. Though I still have life, haunting deep in the yew glen, climbing mountain slopes, I would swoop places with Congal Claon, stretched on his back among the slain. My life is steady lamentation that the roof over my head has gone, that I go in rags, starved and mad, brought to this by the power of God. It was sheer madness to imagine any life outside Glen BolcainGlen Bolcain, my pillow and hearts ease my Eden thick with apple trees. What does he know, the man at the wall, how Sweeney survived his downfall? Going stooped through the long grass. A sup of water. Watercress. Summering where herons stalk. Wintering out among wolf-packs. Plumed in twigs that green and fall. What does he know, the man at the wall? I who once camped among mad friends 56 The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing
Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales in Bolcain, that happy glen of winds and wind-borne echoes, live miserable Beyond the dreams of the man at the wall. In 1995 Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
Task
Consider one of the following topics to develop into a full-length critical essay: 1. Mad King Sweeney and the Buile Motif in Irish Literature 2. At-Swim-Two-Birds and Sweeney Astray: Two Versions of Buile Sweeney. 3. The Matter of Ireland and Heaneys Ars Poetica: Punishment vs. Exposure..
57
Minimal Bibliography:
1. Berresford-Ellis, Peter, DICTIONARY OF CELTIC MYTHOLOGY, Constable, 1991. 2. Crotty, Patrick (ed.) MODERN IRISH POETRY. AN ANTHOLOGY, Lagan Press, 1993. 3. Kiberd, Declan, INVENTING IRELAND: The Literature of the Modern Nation, Vintage, 1998. 4. LANDMARKS OF IRISH DRAMA, Methuen, 1996. 5. Mohor-Ivan, Ioana REPRESENTATIONS OF IRISHNESS: CULTURE, THEATRE AND BRIAN FRIELS REVISIONIST STAGE, EDP, 2004. 6. Moody, T.W. (ed.) THE COURSE OF IRISH HISTORY, Mercier Press, 1994. 7. Welch, Robert (ed.) THE OXFORD COMPANION TO IRISH LITERATURE, Oxford UP, 1996.
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TOPICS
Introduction: The Matter of Ireland Part One: Colonial themes and the politics of representation
Conquests (1): The Anglo-Norman Legacy in Irish Culture Conquests (2): Englands Other. Inscribing and Re-inscribing Irelands Story Colonialism and the Nationalist Imaginary
Part Two: Space and nation in literary representation

The Big House Theme in Irish Literature The Pastoral in Irish Literature. The City in Irish Literature
Minimal Bibliography Annexes
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INTRODUCTION THE MATTER OF IRELAND1

The first contacts established between the English state and Ireland occurred at the end of the 12th century, when Dermot, the exiled king of Leinster, asked the Norman lords of South Wales to help him regain his kingdom. Yet, once in Ireland, the Normans turned into conquistadors, occupying and colonising a region around Dublin, the Pale, and subsequently trying to advance westwards. As a result of this first wave of English colonists, a three-fold division of the island was established, consisting in: the Pale (that region where English law was administered as in an English shire), the West (an area peopled by purely Celtic tribes, ruled by their Irish chiefs), and tracts of mixed control in-between (with Anglo-Irish barons ruling over the native population). These first colonists and their descendants were largely absorbed in the Celtic atmosphere around them, many intermarrying with the native populations and adopting the local customs. Later, after the Reformation, they chose to remain within the Catholic Church, being called Old English in order to differentiate them from the fresher waves of Protestant conquerors. Yet, throughout the Middle Ages, Ireland itself remained independent of English royal control, for, though the English kings called themselves Lords of Ireland and claimed, at times, sovereignity over it, in practice no troops were effectively sent there to actually conquer and govern the island. The policy of real conquest and colonisation was undertaken by the English state during Elizabeth Is and James Is reigns, and was largely prompted by Englands turn to Protestantism during the 16th century. Within the new religious discourse, Catholic Ireland was no longer a place to be ignored, but a possible security threat as the Irish could be now used by the Catholic powers of the day (the Spaniards in particular) to attack England. The fact that Ireland was becoming the danger point in Elizabeths dominions was confirmed in 1588 when the Pope himself planned to attack England by sending armed troops bearing his commission to Ireland, even if the English captured and massacred them at Smerwick, prompting the Queen to undertake its conquest. As G. M. Trevelyan notes, Ireland was attacked with great brutality and colonised in the same way that America was at the time, as both represented two new fields, of equal importance and attraction, where private fortunes could be made, public service rendered to the Queen, and the cause of true religion upheld against the Pope and the Spaniards 2 .
The following is extracted from Ioana Mohor-Ivan, Glimpses of Britain: a cultural studies perspective, Bucuresti, Editura didactica si pedagogica, 2004. 2 G. M. Trevelyan, A Short History of England, Penguin, 1979, pp. 62-3
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The island was first subjugated military, and, after the defeat of the rising of the Northern earls 3 , Ireland was colonised, mainly in Ulster, as the best land the country possessed. But, despite the efforts undertaken by the English state in order to persuade people to emigrate to Ireland, the largest part of the colonists establishing James Is Plantation of Ulster in 1608 were Scots from the neighbouring coast, carrying with them their extreme version of Protestantism. The next important moment within the history of Anglo-Irish relationships occurred during the 17th century Civil Wars in England, that confirmed once again for the English that Ireland did represent a security threat for their state. As the Catholic Irish registered their support on the Kings side, at the end of the war Cromwell took full revenge on them, sending his troops to reconquer Ireland as the first step in the reconstitution of the British Empire. It was rendered easier for Cromwell and his army because the Protestants over there, whatever their political allegiance, tended to rally round him as the champion of their race and creed 4 , while the Irish resistance became racial and Catholic instead of Royalist. After the fall of Drogheda had broken the back of resistance in the East, Cromwell went home, leaving the rest of the army carry on, in an atrocious way, the guerrilla war in the West. The subsequent land settlement completed the transference of the soil from Irish to British proprietors, aiming to fulfil a three-fold objective: to pay off in Irish land the soldiers who had fought, to render the English hold secure against another rebellion like that of 1641 5 , and lastly to extirpate Catholicism, by trying to push the whole indigenous population to the west of the river Shannon, to Cannaught, a region that invokes a deep primitive Gaelic feeling, but is economically very poor 6 . The most important outcome of the Cromwellian policy was the fact that Ulster had now to face its own set of problems deriving from the large-scale settlements of Scots in Down, Antrim and Derry. The Cromwellian conquest also led to the downfall of the Old English interest in Ireland. The real beneficiaries were the New English planters of pre-1641, now styling themselves as Old Protestants 7 to distinguish themselves from the Baptists and Quakers (the New Protestants) of the Cromwellian army. Another key-date in the history of Irelands colonisation is the year 1689, when the Catholic King James II was deposed by the English Parliament in favour of the Protestant William of Orange. A year later, James II landed in Ireland, aided by French money, troops and generals, trying to complete the conquest of a land where already three-fourth of its population obeyed him. In response to this action, the Protestants in the north proclaimed William king and fortified Derry, enduring
In 1607 the last of the Northern earls, Hugh ONeill, earl of Ulster, departed from Ireland, exiling himself in Italy. This event has come to be called The Flight of the Earls, signifying the moment when the Gaelic rule comes to an end in Ireland. 4 G.M.Trevelyan, op. cit., pp. 79-81. 5 In 1641 Sir Phelim ONeill led an insurrection against the Ulster Plantation. 6 Although the idea of driving the whole Catholic population beyond the Shannon was entertained, eventually only the landlords suffered this fate. 7 Hugh Kearney, The British Isles. A History of Four Nations, Cambridge UP, 1989.
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the famous Catholic siege of 169o until William landed in Ireland and released the town. The decisive battle was fought at the Boyne on the 12 July 1690, upon two quarrels. It was the struggle of the Anglo-Scots against the Catholic Irish for the leadership of Ireland, but also the struggle of Britain and her European allies to prevent a Jacobite restoration in England, and the consequent domination of the world by the French monarchy 8 . The presence, on both sides of the river, of regiments from the continent represented the international issues at stake. The outcome of that battle decided the future of Ireland for the next two centuries, bringing the defeat of the native Irish and the final eclipse of the culture of the Old English, but it also saved Protestantism in Europe and enabled the British Empire to launch forth on its career of expansion overseas. The defeated Catholic forces retreated to Limerick which, in its turn, was forced to withstand a Protestant siege and finally surrender in 1691, the year that also witnessed the renaming of Derry to Londonderry (a victory has to be enunciated in different ways). The 17th century and its events provide the focus for the most politically charged folk festivals for both Protestants and Catholics alike. In August and December, the siege of Derry is commemorated by the Apprentice Boys March 9 , while the Battle of Boyne is celebrated on the 12 July by Protestant Orange Lodge marches that commemorate the defeat of James II. With equal intensity of recollection, the defence of Limerick and its defeat has also been turned into a celebratory event by the Nationalist rhetoric, as the moment when the brave and gallant defenders of Ireland were eventually defeated, and Patrick Sarsfield, the hero of the Limerick siege, has entered the Catholic pantheon of heroes withstanding oppression. The restored English rule in Ireland reflected very little tolerance to any groups outside the Established Anglican Church. The penal code placed the Catholics in Ireland under every political and social disadvantage and pursued and persecuted their leaders, while, at the same time, Anglican intolerance refused political equality, and for some time even religious freedom, to Presbyterians as well. At the same time, the decrees of the English Parliament were ruining the Irish Trade, halting the economical development of a country which was now freezing into a three-fold cultural pattern that was to persist throughout the next century: a Protestant land-owning Ascendancy in the East (smallest in number, but enjoying the greatest political power and closely involved with affairs in England); a Presbyterian culture in Ulster (socially dominant in Antrim and Down, but not well represented elsewhere, and preserving close links with Scotland); and the Catholic majority to be found in all the four provinces, ultimately merging the Gaelic and the Old English cultures through its sense of a common Catholicism 10 .
G.M.Trevelyan, op. cit. A group of apprentice boys closed the gates of Derry against the wish of its governor and resisted James IIs siege until Williams troops arrived. 10 Hugh Kearney, op. cit.
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At the end of the 18th century Ireland was affected by the two great revolutions that are part of the world history, the American Independence War and the French Revolution, which stirred up once again the factions involved. Yet, in the first instance, the initiative was not Catholic and Gaelic, but Protestant and Liberal, a movement calling itself The Volunteers, led largely by landlords, prepared to defend the country against a French invasion, on condition that the English government abolished all Irelands commercial disabilities and granted the formal independence of its Parliament from British control. In 1791, a much more radical political society was formed in Dublin and Belfast with members of the newly-expanding Protestant urban middle-class, which claimed to be non-sectarian and rationalist under the influence of French political thought. This society of The United Irishmen sought to forge an alliance with leaders of the Catholic community in order to demand the widening of the franchise and to put an end to the political and civil disabilities of the Presbyterians and Catholics. Suppressed in 1794, the Societys demands grew more radical, as it operated underground, and eventually republican, entering an alliance with the French forces with the aim of concerting a French invasion with an Irish insurrection. In reaction against The United Irishmen society, in 1795 the landlords placed themselves at the head of a Church and King society, the Orange Order, an exclusively Protestant society which was formalised with quasi-Masonic ritual in 1797 when lodges were formed. In 1798 the United Irishmen rose in revolt, led by Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmett, hoping to unite the religions of Ireland in arms against Englands domination and establish a United Independent Ireland (in the fashion of The United States of America). The rebellion was put down by the British and the Orange Order loyalists, and sectarian hostility led to atrocious reprisals being taken against the insurrectionists and the native population. The memories of 98 became a heirloom of hatred, cherished in every cottage, and renewed by successive generations of nationalists. The rebellion of 1798 also led the British government conclude that a union of Ireland with Britain was a necessity, as the only method of permanently restoring order and justice, in spite of the opposition of the Protestant Ascendancy. In 1800, the Act of Union abolished the parliament in Dublin and secured the incorporation of Ireland within the British State. It was an act which also listed the support of the Catholic population who was hoping now for an improvement of their condition. But even if the act provided for Irish representation in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, in effect only the Anglican interest was represented at Westminster as Irish Catholic MPs were not admitted. The Union had the result of bringing the complexity of Irish society and politics into the heart of Westminster, and also provided the outlet for Irish immigration to England. It also brought the Industrial Revolution to the North of Ireland, with the result that the gulf between the North and the South was enlarged, and the balance of power shifted within the Ascendancy in favour of the industrially-expanding North, while the economic backwater of the South was left
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in the hands of the Catholic urban and rural middle-class. It was from the ranks of the latter one that the charismatic leader, Daniel OConnor, rose to fight for the Catholic emancipation, forcing the British government to pass the Bill in 1828. A final outcome of the union was that the old animosities between the Anglican and Presbyterian Protestants died out in the North in an environment of industrialisation and revived Catholicism. Towards the middle of the 19th century, the Great Potato Famine that struck Ireland in 1846 enhanced once again the division between the Catholic and Protestant cultures, due to their contrasting experiences. While the North of the country was mostly spared by the failure of the potato crops (the main element of popular diet was oats), the Catholic South of small farming and labouring classes, heavily dependent upon the potato, was decimated by starvation and disease. By 1847 large numbers of small farmers were obliged to emigrate to the United States of America, forming the basis of a very powerful pressure group in the years to come, while by 1851 statistics showed that Ireland had lost one quarter of its population, either by emigration or by death, a social tragedy that had its greatest impact on the Catholic poor. This sudden drop in population, which was not reversed in subsequent decades, also led to a complex series of economic, social and cultural accommodations in the South. As the numbers of the landless labourers and their families drastically declined, they ceased to exert the same degree of influence that they had wielded before the Famine. At the same time this event made possible for the Irish tenant farmers to consolidate and extend landholdings after the Famine, transmitting family wealth from generation to generation through a set of practices termed familism 11 . As a result, a distinct culture emerged in the later 19th century, the culture of the Irish tenant farmers (marked by late marriage and strict sexual taboos), the most numerous class at the time which also defined the characteristics of the people-nation. By contrast, in the north more sexual permissiveness was allowed in rural society, and the labourers also survived as an important segment of the population. By the mid-1860s, a period of comparative political tranquillity ended abruptly with the advent of Fenianism, when the issue of the long-term future of AngloIrish relations came again to the fore. Fenians was the alternative, popular name for the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret revolutionary organisation, founded in 1858, inspired by the advanced nationalism of the Italian nationalistic movement of Mazzini. Its intention of establishing an Irish republic by force, led the Fenians start bombing activity in the Autumn of 1865, and even if the movement ultimately failed, the execution of some of its leaders in Manchester 12 helped the publicity of the Fenian cause within Catholic opinion.
Familism consisted of a number of procedures used to control access to marriage, including the imposition and perpetuation of strict codes of behaviour between men and women, general endorsement of celibacy outside marriage and postponement of marriage in farmers families until the chosen heir was allowed by the father to take possession of the farm. 12 The so-called Manchester Martyrs
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In the 1880s a first nationalist party emerged, being concerned in the beginning with a campaign - in the wake of the agrarian crisis of 1879 - to resist landlord seizure of tenants land for non-payment of rents. Being founded in 1879 under the name of The Irish Land League by a Fenian, Michael Davitt, it was taken over by Charles Stewart Parnell who used its cause as platform to become the leader of a group of Irish MPs pressing for the Home Rule bill for Ireland. The national demand for self-government proved so deeply implanted in the mind of the Irish that it survived not only the fall and death of Parnell, but the subsequent removal of the land grievance - the man and the question which had first given it power -, dominating the British politics until the beginning of the First World War. Meanwhile, after the fall of Parnells parliamentary, its followers reunited within a new shell organisation, the United Irish League, and the political landscape was further complicated by the emergence of other groups struggling for hegemony, such as the Gaelic League 13 and later, in 1908, the Sinn Fein, a party that united a number of smaller groups to campaign for Irish independence. In reaction to this growing nationalism, the Orange Order opposition to an independent and united Ireland intensified and before the outbreak of the First World War Ireland was on the brinks of a civil war, with both sides illegally armed and the drilling of the Ulster Volunteers in the North answered by similar demonstrations in the south. When the war broke out, even if conscription was not applied in Ireland, most Ulster Volunteers and Irish National Volunteers joined the British army, while the Fenian linked organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, disapproving of Irish support for England, decided that a new insurrection was to take place in Ireland before the end of the war. The outcome was the Easter rebellion of 1916. It was not so much the rebellion of the Easter week that completed the change in the attitude of the Irish people generally as its aftermath, for the government made the mistake of shooting the rebels, one by one, even the seriously injured ones, and of arresting and executing people who had no involvement in the rising. This led to a complete reversal of the Irish opinion which turned its sympathies from the Irish parliamentary party and, in a wave of national anger, gave its approval to Sinn Fein, which won the general elections in 1918. The victorious Sinn Fein pledged itself to the Irish republic and proceeded to put into operation a policy of passive resistance to continued British rule, refusing to send its members to occupy their places at Westminster. The outcome of this measure was the Anglo-Irish war from early 1919 to July 1921, or the troubles as the people euphemistically called it. It was a struggle characterised by guerrilla warfare, ambushes, raids on police barracks, and planned assassinations on the one side; and reprisals, the shooting-up and burning-up of towns, executions and terrorising on the other. Eventually public opinion in America and in Britain demanded a truce, which was arranged in July 1921, followed by the signing of a treaty five months later that conceded dominion status to the twenty counties that formed the Irish Free State, while the six Protestant
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an organisation founded in 1893 to promote the restoration of the Irish language.
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counties of Ulster remained within the British Union, with a Home Rule Parliament of their own. 14 Northern Ireland had been brought into existence, but its future was far from assured. The act of 1920 had set up a state in which about one third of the population was bitterly hostile. Some took part in an attempt to overthrow it by force, others adopted an attitude of non-cooperation, enabling thus the unionists to appropriate loyalty and good citizenship to themselves and identify Catholicism with hostility to the state. Events in the rest of Ireland during these years also helped to keep alive old issues in the north. The dismantling of the Anglo-Irish Treaty after 1932, the new Irish constitution of 1937, and the policy of raising the partition question on every possible occasion heartened the nationalists but confirmed the unionists in their resolve that Ulsters position within the United Kingdom and the Empire must remain unchanged. Eires neutrality in the Second World War was the final proof of how far the paths of the two Irish governments had diverged 15 . More than this, the cultures of the two communities were also divergent, with a minimum of social contact established between them: each had its own churches, schools, newspapers and forms of recreation. For one community, soccer and rugby were appropriate games, while for the other Gaelic football and hurling were national sports. In mixed rural areas, a complex and subtle system of relationships came into existence in which both sides were taking great pains to avoid causing offence. From time to time, IRA, a legacy from the days of Fenianism, attempted offensive operations to overthrow partition. The old issues survived into the post-war age as well. A new campaign of violence was carried on from 1956 to 1962. There were occasions when nationalist demonstrations were broken up by the police. Nationalists continued to complain of discrimination in the distribution of houses and jobs, the enforcement of law and order and the drawing of electoral boundaries. Unionists retorted that Catholics were disloyal to the state and used occasional royal visits to reaffirm their loyalty to Britain. 16 Yet, the 1960s were years of change for both communities, North and South. In the Republic change was above all economic and social. A new government brought along the shift from conservatism to innovation, paving the way for the expansion of education and beginning the erosion of the rural political and cultural domination. In Northern Ireland, change was most obviously political, but important social and economic changes occurred as well. Due to the general benefits brought by the implantation of the British Welfare State in Northern Ireland, an articulate middle-class had risen within the Catholic community, more prepared than its predecessors to acquiesce in the constitutional status quo, provided Catholics
Donald McCartney, From Parnell to Pearse (1891-1921), in The Course of Irish History, Mercier Press, 1994, pp 307-310. 15 J.L.McCracken, Northern Ireland, 1921-66, in The Course of Irish History, op. cit., pp 316-322. 16 idem
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received a fair deal within it. A sign of the new mood of the catholic community was the growth of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, founded in 1967. This body, unlike previous organisations, did not challenge the existence of the Northern Ireland state, but demanded merely the ending of abuses within it. From August 1968, marches and demonstrations in support of this objective were held in various towns, but the police and the Protestant right wing saw this development as a new attempt to undermine the state so that successive demonstrations were broken up by police and harassed by Protestant extremists. A year later disorder had reached such a height with Protestant mobs launching savage attacks on Catholic areas of west Belfast that the Northern Irish government was obliged to request the British government to send in troops to restore order. But the crisis deepened as in the 1970s IRA appeared on the scene of battle, reorganised as the Provisional IRA and reverted to nationalist military traditions and with the first IRA victims the government lost control of its own Army who turned against nationalists. The politics of internment 17 which was subsequently applied only helped to increase the level of violence, so that in 1972 the British government decided to suspend the Northern Ireland government and introduce direct rule from Westminster 18 . From 1972 to the present day all attempts to deal with the Troubles in Ireland 19 have offered only momentary respite from the embittered clash between the two communities, as the sharp divergence between unionist and nationalist aspirations has remained. Northern Ireland is still an extremely parochial place where matters of life and death have forced people to fall back on their own resources and close ranks, a place where identity has always been conceived in antithetical pairs, Catholic/Protestant, Republican/Unionist, Irish/Scot or AngloIrish, and where conflict is still based on an atavistic claim to territory on both sides. Northern Ireland has remained a place where history and its versions play a central role in shaping the attitudes of the two groups involved in this intricate drama, as each community has its different interpretation of more remote or more recent events that would legitimate its claims. Nationalist history classically portrays an opposition between Britain and Ireland, planter and Gael as that between oppressor and oppressed, the central events of this historical narrative being the successive invasions of Ireland in the 16th and 17th century, undertaken with great ferocity, entitling the Irish to a catalogue of grievances whose rhetorical force derives from the reciprocity principle: their moral advantage against the putative descendants of oppressors. On the other hand, Protestant history celebrates 17th century events as those which allowed the defence of civilisation, freedom and true religion, as well as the establishment of a Protestant Ascendancy, while for rhetorical purposes the more recent history (from the 1920s onwards) is employed as a catalogue of grievances against the Catholics who have failed to accept the will of the majority and subverted the state using violent means.
the holding without trial of suspected terrorists J.H.White, Ireland, 1966-82, in The Course of Irish History, op.cit., pp342-347 passim. 19 the 1985 Anglo-Irish treaty, the 1994 peace-process
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To this it adds a folk history, feelings handed down from generation to generation, always pointing to the goodness of us versus the badness of them, which is culturally ingrained and genetically transmitted, plus a personal history for everybody has his own memories of fathers and ancestors who have been cast as martyrs in this drama. As recent events have demonstrated, the peace-process proved to be only a fragile mutual cease-fire, the two communities continuing to step on each others feet persistently. The only hope for a true lasting peace would be for the reason of living to triumph over the law of the dead.
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CHAPTER 1 Conquests:
THE ANGLO-NORMAN LEGACY IN IRISH CULTURE
After the death of the famous High King Brian Boru in 1014, Ireland was at almost constant civil war for two centuries. The various families which ruled Ireland's four provinces were constantly fighting with one another for control of all of Ireland. At that time Ireland was like a federal kingdom, with five provinces (Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connaught along with Meath, which was the seat of the High King) each ruled by kings who were all supposed to be loyal to the High King of Ireland.
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1.1.
The Norman Invasion

1152 1155 1166 1169 1171 1199 1366 Dermot Mac Murrough, King of Leinster, abducts ORourkes wife, Dervorgilla The Pope gives Ireland by papal Bull to Henry II Rory OConor and oRourke attack Dermot, forcing him to take refuge in Aquitaine. A Norman army, led by Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke (Strongbow) lands in Ireland. Following Dermots death, Strongbow assumes the office of King of Leinster On Johns ascension to the English throne, the second phase of the Norman conquest is innitiated. The Statutes of Kilkenny acknowledge the Irish Revival of the 14th c.
In the mid-1100's, two competing Irish Kings, Dermot MacMurrough of Leinster and Rory OConnor of Connacht, feuded over the high kingship of Ireland. Upon OConnors victory, MacMurrough was sent into exile. He sought aid from Henry II, King of England, and invited the Anglo-Norman Earl of Pembroke, subsequently known as Strongbow, to invade part of Ireland and help him subdue his rival. Strongbow conquered much of the east, including Waterford, Wexford, and Dublin. Henry II wanted to insure that his lords did not set up an independent, rival kingdom in Ireland; hence Henry subsequently claimed the conquered lands as English domains. When OConnor formally submitted to Henry in 1175 (thereby becoming the last High King in Irish history), the English conquest of Ireland (and the first holding in the future British Empire) had begun. During the next two centuries English occupation in Ireland consolidated itself, and the English married and mingled with the "native" Irish to form the Old Anglo-Irish or Old English, the elite ruling class who constituted the great earldoms of the 14th century. Though English by descent, this class soon considered itself Irish, so much so that an anxiety arose among the English about the "gaelicization" of the AngloIrish, resulting in the passage of the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366.
1.2.
Norman Cultural Influences
o Within the Pale feudal estates are evolved. Gradually English civil government established in Ireland: exchequer, chancery, courts of justice, division into counties, parliament (Anglo-Irish only). During this time the great Old English (Anglo-Norman) familiesFitzgerald, de Burgh, Butler form their power, and the Old Irish KingsOConnor, OBrien, and ONeillstill retain much of their ancient kingdoms. o Southern varieties of English are introduced within the Pale. These mediaeval varieties of Hiberno-English become the language of commerce and administration, and still survive in rural Wexford and the north of Dublin.
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o After the plantations of the 16th and 17th century, northern dialects of English and Inglis (dialect of the Scottish lowlands) are introduced in Ireland, forming the basis of modern Hiberno-English.
1.3.
Anglo-Norman Literary Productions
1.3.1. Chansons des geste: The Song of Dermot and the Earl
Chansons de geste (Old French for "songs of heroic deeds) are the epic poetry that appears at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, nearly a hundred years before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the troubadours and the earliest verse romances. Composed in Old French, and made up of strophes of varying length linked by assonance - apparently intended for oral performance by jongleurs - the chansons de geste narrate legendary incidents (sometimes based on real events) in the history of France in the eighth and ninth centuries, the age of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, with emphasis on their combats against the Moors and Saracens. The Song of Dermot and the Earl, is a chanson de geste, composed in the mid-thirteenth century, and assigned to Morice Regan, secretary to Dermot MacMurrough. The Song records Dermots journey to enlist the Norman support for regaining his kingdom, and the victory of Strongbow, followed by the latters subsequent marriage to Aoife, Dermots daughter.
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THE SONG OF DERMOT AND THE EARL (c.1200-25)
Quant dermod, li reis vaillant, Al rei henri par deuant Esteit uenus a cele fiez, Par deuant li rei engleis, Mult le salue curteisement, Bien ebel deuant la gent: Icil deu ke meint en haut Reis henri, vus ward e saut, E vu donge ensement Quer e curage e talent Ma hunte uenger e ma peine, Que fet me hunte le men demeine!() (When Dermot, the valiant king, before King Henry had come at this time, before the English king, very courteously he saluted him fairly and finely before his men: May God who dwells on high guard and save you, King Henry, and give you also heart and courage and will to avenge my shame and my misfortune that my own people have brought upon me! Hear, noble King Henry, whence I was born, of what country. Of Ireland I was born a lord, in Ireland a king; but wrongfully my own people have cast me out of my kingdom. To you I come to make my claim, good sire, in the presence of the barons of your empire. Your liege man I shall become henceforth all the days of my life, on condition that you be my helper so that I do not lose at all: you I shall acknowledge as sire and lord, in the presence of your barons and lords. Then the king promised him, the powerful king of England, that wilfully would he help him as soon as he should be able.) Li quens al hort iert bacheler. Femme naueit ne mullier, Si entent del rei dermot Que sa fille doner lui uolt Par si que od lui uenist E sa terre lui conquist.() (The earl at this time was a bachelor. He had neither spouse nor wife. When he hears from King Dermot that he was willing to give him his daughter on condition that he would come with him and subdue his land for him, the earl replies before his men: Rich king, hearken unto me. Here I assure you loyally that I shall assuredly come to you. But I should wish in these matters to crave licence of the English king, for he is the lord of my landed estate; wherefore I cannot go from his territory without obtaining licence in this way. The king assured the earl that he would give him his daughter when he would come to his aid to Ireland with his barons. When they had concluded this accord, the king turned straight towards Wales and never ceased journeying there until he came to St. Davids)
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Historical characters:
Diarmait Mac Murchada (also known as Diarmait na nGall, "Dermot of the Foreigners"), anglicized as Dermot MacMurrough (died 1 May 1171) is often considered to have been the most notorious traitor in Irish history. Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (1130 20 April 1176), known as Strongbow, was the son of Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Pembroke and Isabel de Beaumont. De Clare was a Cambro-Norman lord notable for beginning the Norman conquest of Ireland. Derbforgaill , Anglicised as Dervorgilla, (1108-1193) was a daughter of Murchad Ua Maeleachlainn, king of Meath. She is famously known as the "Helen of Ireland" as her abduction from her husband Tigernn Ua Ruairc by Diarmait Mac Murchada in 1152 played some part in bringing the AngloNormans to Irish shores, although this is a role that has often been greatly exaggerated and often misinterpreted. Unlike many other women, she is mentioned no less than five times in contemporary annals: her abduction by Diarmait in 1152 (Annals of Clonmacnoise), her donation to the Cistercian abbey of Mellifont of altar cloths, a gold chalice, and 60 ounces of gold during the consecration ceremony in 1157 (Annals of the Four Masters); her completion of the Nuns' Church at Clonmacnoise in 1167 (Annals of the Four Masters); her retirement to Mellifont in 1186 (Annals of Ulster, Annals of Loch Ce); and her death in Mellifont in 1193 (Annals of Ulster, Annals of the Four Masters).
Modern treatments of Dermot and Dervorgillas story:

Augusta Gregory, Dervorgilla (1907): 20 years after the events, Dervorgilla has retired to the Abbey of Mellinfont, spending her declining years in pray, self-denial and good works. But the news of the casual slaughter of the Irish by the Normans prove that her acts of charity are but a futile attempt to allay her sense of guilt. W.B. Yeats, The Dreaming of the Bones (1919): A rebel soldier who has taken part in the Easter Rising flees to Corcomroe Abbey, where he encounters the ghosts of Dermot and Dervorgilla, who beg him to absolve them of their guilt. The soldier refuses, renewing the curse: My curse upon all that brought in the Gall Upon Dermots call, and on Dervorgilla!
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1.3.2. Goliardic poems: The Land of Cockayne

The Goliards were a group of clergy who wrote bibulous, satirical Latin poetry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They were mainly clerical students at the universities of France, Germany, Italy, and England who protested the growing contradictions within the Church, such as the failure of the crusades and financial abuses, expressing themselves through song, poetry and performance. The Land of Cockayne (c. 1340)
Fur in see bi west Spayngne Is a lond ihote Cokaygne. er nis lond vnd' heuen riche Of wel, of godnis, hit iliche. o3 Paradis be miri and bri3t, Cokaygn is of fairir si3t. What is er in Paradis Bot grasse and flure and grene ris? ()I Cokaigne is met and drink Wivte care, how, and swink; e met is trie, e drink is clere, To none, russin, and sopper. Far in the sea to the west of Spain There is a land that we call Cokaygne; Under God's heaven no other land Such wealth and goodness has in hand Though paradise be merry and bright, Cokaygne is yet a fairer sight. For what is there in paradise But grass and flowers and green rice? () In Cokayne there is food and drink Without care, anxiety and labor. The food is excellent, the drink is splendid, At dinner, snack time, and supper.
This poem survives in only one manuscript, Harley MS 913, British Library, London. Probably compiled in Ireland in the early-mid 1300s, The Land of Cokaygne is not an isolated poem; its fictional and parodic otherworld belongs to a tradition of poems dealing with an imaginary paradise where leisure rules and food is readily available. Classical: going back to Lucian's True History, a Greek work of the second century AD, that describes a comical paradise full of food, drink, and loose women.
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Christian: descriptions of both Heaven and the garden of Eden (which was seen as a real, though remote, place on earth). Believed visited by Alexander the Great, it often was placed far to the East. Goliardic: one Latin poem of the twelfth century (Carmina Burana 222) is spoken by an abbas Cucaniensis, an 'abbot of Cockaygne' who presides over drinking and gambling, and the descriptions of the two abbeys in Cockaygne, which invert the usual norms of religious life.
Pieter Brugel the Elder, The Land of Cockayne, 1567
The fantastic descriptions of plenteous food may be compared to those in The Vision of MacConglinne, a parody of the medieval vision and voyage tales, which also mocks the conventions of heroic literature and the institutions of Church and State. Influenced by goliardic satire, the tale was composed in the 12th century.
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1.3.3. The Danta Gradha: O Woman Full of Wile

The Danta Gradha is an Irish adaptation of the Courtly love poetry. Courtly love was a medieval European conception of ennobling love which found its genesis in the ducal and princely courts in southern France at the end of the eleventh century. In essence, courtly love was a contradictory experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment, "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and self-disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent." Gerald Fitzgerald, the 4th Earl of Desmond (1333-1398) was the first to adapt the courtly love tradition of the Norman French to the Irish. In the poetry of courtly love, the love of woman is exalted, a redemptive force for both the lover and his beloved. Gerald's poem is a rebuttal of the fierce clerical misogyny that was prevalent in the Middle Ages: Woe to him who slanders women. Scorning them is no right thing. All the blame they've ever had is undeserved, of that I'm sure . . . He draws on the older, Celtic tradition, in which women were held in high esteem. Sweet their speech and neat their voices, They are a sort I dearly love . . . Geoffrey Keating (Seathrn Citinn) (c. 1580-1644) was a renowned priest, poet, prose-writer, and scholar. It is thought that in his youth he studied at a bardic school in South Tipperary, close to his birthplace. In common with many of his educated Catholic contemporaries, he went abroad to pursue his philosophical and theological training as a priest. Keating's most significant work, Foras Feasa ar irinn, a history of Ireland from the creation of the world to the coming of the Normans in the twelfth century, was completed about 1634. His poem O Woman Full of Wile is one of the finest examples of the Irish Danta Gradha.
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O WOMAN FULL OF WILE
O woman full of wile, Keep from me thy hand: I am not a man of the flesh, Tho thou be sick for my love. See how my hair is grey! See how my body is powerless! See how my blood hath ebbed! For what is thy desire? Do not think me besotted: Bend not again thy head, Let our love be without act Forever, O slender witch. Take thy mouth from my mouth, Graver the matter so; Let us not be skin to skin: From heat cometh will. Tis thy curling ringleted hair, Thy grey eye bright as dew, Thy lovely round white breast, That draw the desire of eyes. Every deed but the deed of the flesh And to lie in thy bed of sleep Would I do for thy love, O woman full of wile! Trans. Padraic Pearse
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CHAPTER 2 CONQUESTS:
ENGLANDS OTHER: INSCRIBING AND RE-INSCRIBING IRELANDS STORY 2.1. Plantations
1509 Henry VIII succeeds to the throne of England 1534 The English Reformation 1551 Henry VIII is declared King of Ireland, leading to his policy of surrender and regrant 1558 Accession of Elizabeth I 1580 The Munster rebellion is crushed by the English 1586 Plantation of Munster 1588 Defeat of Spanish Armada 1595 Hugh ONeills rebellion 1599 Essex in Ireland as Lord Deputy 1601 Battle of Kinsale 1607 Flight of the Earls 1608 James Is accession. Plantation of Ulster 1641 Irish rebellion 1649 Cromwell begins his Irish campaign after the Kings execution 1654 Cromwellian Plantation
The Reformation and the declaration by Henry VIII in 1534 that England would no longer acknowledge the Catholic Church led to the establishing of the Church of England or Anglican Church, thereby making England a Protestant nation. The native Irish, and many of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, refused to follow this split from Rome, and so the division between Irish and English became also a division between Catholic and Protestant. This split created turmoil in both English and Irish politics throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, as Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587) restored Catholicism, and Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) then restored Protestantism. Under Elizabeths rule, the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were passed, making the Anglican Church the "official" Irish Church (now called "the Church of Ireland"), enforcing strict Anglican rule, and suppressing the rights and privileges of Catholics. Such policies resulted in several rebellions in the late 16th century by great Irish and Anglo-Irish aristocratic families, all of which were put down by the English. Finally in 1607 the Earls of Tyrone (Hugh O'Neill) and Tyrconnell (Rory O'Donnell), the last of the native Irish aristocracy--fled the country for the continent. This "Flight of the Earls" becomes a paradigm in Irish thought for the abandonment of the country by the very leaders who needed to save it. The Munster Plantation (colonised by English Anglicans in the second half of the 16th century) was followed at the beginning of the 17th century by the Ulster
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Plantation, when mainly Scottish Presbyterians flocked to the North of Ireland. These colonists came partly to escape England, where the official Anglican Church persecuted the more radical sects of Protestantism. Gradually these radical Protestants, called "dissenters," would present a third term in Anglo-Irish politics, along with native Irish Catholics and ruling British Anglicans.
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2.2.
English Narratives of Ireland
2.2.1. Colonial Discourse

Discourse (Michel Foucault): groupings of statements, utterances enacted within a social context, determined by this social context and contributing to its continuing existence. Colonial discourse: language in which colonial thinking was expressed; literary and non-literary texts produced within the period and context of colonialism about the colonised society. In Orientalism, Edward Said describes the discursive features of the 19thcentury body of knowledge on the Orient, produced by scholars, travel writers, poets, or novelists. The Orient was thus produced as a repository of Western knowledge, not a society and culture functioning on its own terms: The Orient was almost an European invention . . . one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Produced in relation to the West, the Orient was described in terms of the way it differed from it, being represented as the Other to the civilised image of the West. Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis--vis the orient, translated into his text; this location includes the kind of narrative voice he adopts, the type of structure he builds, the kind of images, themes, motifs that circulate in his text - all of which adds up to deliberate ways of addressing the reader, containing the Other, and finally representing it or speaking on its behalf. Colonial oppositions:
The West Colonist Self Civilisation Modernity The Orient Colonised Other Barbarism Backwardness
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The colonised countries become objects of knowledge; The colonised become stereotyped: the docile Hindu, the sneaky Arab; They are labelled as backward, primitive (i.e. existing on a different time-scale); The use of ethno-graphic present freezes their society at the time of its observation; The use of the 3rd person singular reduces the colonised to a single specimen; Negativity: idle, weak, corrupt, etc.
2.2.2. Othering Ireland

If Ireland had never existed, the English would have invented it; and since it never existed in English eyes as anything more than a patch-work-quilt of warring fiefdoms, their leaders occupied the neighbouring island and called it Ireland. . . Ireland was soon patented as not-England, a place whose peoples were, in various ways, the very antitheses of their new rulers . . . These rulers began to control the developing debate; and it was to be their version of things which would enter universal history. At the outset they had no justification other than superior force and cohesive organisation. Later an identity was proposed for the natives which cast them as foils to the occupiers. (Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, Vintage, 1996, p. 9)
2.2.2.1. Civilians vs. Barbarians Anglo-Irish Chronicles: a body of political writings about Ireland produced
during the 16th and 17th centuries, which were primarily concerned with justifications for the expropriation of the country by the English crown, commonly recycling prejudices and misconceptions that compared the Irish to other uncivilised races in different historical and geographical contexts. Fynes Moryson (1556-1630): English traveller and writer, Moryson became in 1600 secretary to Sir Charles Blount, lord-deputy of Ireland. In 1617 he published an account of his travels and of his experiences in Ireland, (where he had witnessed O'Neill's rebellion) in a voluminous work entitled An Itinerary.Another part of the Itinerary was republished in 1735 with the title History of Ireland 1599-1603, with a short Narrative of the State of the Kingdom from 1169. John Derricke: English engraver who accompanied Sir Henry Sidney on campaigns against Hugh ONeill in the 1570s. His detailed and skilfully composed woodcuts in The Image of Ireland with A Discovery of Woodkarne (1581) depict contemporary scenes in camp and battle, with illustrations of Irish plundering from an English standpoint.
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(The feast of an Irish nobleman from Derrickes Image) Sir John Davies (1569-1626) English poet and lawyer, Davies became in 1603 attorney general in Ireland. Davies was very much committed to reform not just in the law but in religious affairs too, aiming to banish the catholic clergy from Ireland and for enforcing church attendances. He also became heavily involved in government efforts to establish the plantation of Ulster. In 1610 he wrote the Discoverie of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued (pub.1612), a well-written account of the constitutional standing of Ireland. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599): One of the most famous English Renaissance poets and Poet Laureate, Spenser went to Ireland in the 1570s , probably in the service of the newly appointed lord deputy, Arthur Grey. From 1579 to 1580, he served with the English forces during the rebellions in Munster. After the defeat of the rebels he was awarded lands in County Cork. Among his acquaintances in the area was the poet Walter Raleigh, also a fellow colonist. In the early 1590s Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled, A View of the Present State of Ireland. Due to its inflammatory content, the pamphlet remained in manuscript form until its publication in print in the mid-seventeenth century. The text argued that Ireland would never be totally 'pacified' by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, if necessary by violence.
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From A VIEW ON THE PRESENT STATE OF IRELAND (1596)

EUDOXUS: What is this that ye say of so many as remain English of them? Why are not they that were once English abiding English still? IRENIUS: No, for the most part of them are degenerated and grown almost Irish, yea and more malicious to the English that the very Irish themselves. EUDOXUS: What hear I? And is it possible that an Englishman brought up naturally in such sweet civility as England affords could find such liking in that barbarous rudeness that he should forget his own nature and forgo his own nation? How may this be, or what, I pray you, may be the cause hereof? IRENIUS: Surely nothing but the first evil ordinance and institution of that commonwealth. But thereof now is here no fit place to speak, lest by the occasion thereof offering matter of a long discourse, we might be drawn from this that we have in hand, namely the handling of abuses in the customs of Ireland. (. . . ) IRENIUS: . . . My reason is, for that those which will afterwards remain without are stout and obstinate rebels, such as will never be made dutiful and obedient, nor brought to labour or civil conversation, having once tasted that licentious life, and being acquainted with spoil and outrages will ever after be ready for the like occasions, so as there is no hope of their amendment or recovery, and therefore needful to be cut off. EUDOXUS: The end I assure me will be very short and much sooner than can be in so great a trouble (as it seemeth) hoped for. Although there should none of them fall by the sword, nor be slain by the soldier, yet thus being kept for manurance, and their cattle from running abroad by this hard restraint, they would quickly consume themselves and devour one another. The proof whereof I saw sufficiently ensampled in those late wars in Munster, for notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to so wonderful wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came, creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them. They looked anatomies of death, they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves, they did eat of the dead carrions, happy were they could find them, yea and one another soon after in so much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves. And if they find a plot of water cress or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal, that in short space there were none almost left and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast. Yet sure in all that war there perished not many by the sword, but all by the extremity of famine, which they themselves had wrought.
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CIVILISATION PROTESTANTISM ORDER RESTRAINT REASON
Irish Literature
BARBARISM CATHOLICISM LAWLESSNESS VIOLENCE IRRATIONALITY
This image of the barbaric, uncivilised, inferior Irish was to stuck in the English mind and to be retorted to whenever civil unrest, religious violence or political risings in Ireland made the issue of the Anglo-Irish relation come to the fore. Towards the end of the 19th century, a period marked by the intensification of nationalist rebellions in Ireland, the Victorian press and the iconographic productions of the time that consistently presented the Simianised terrorist or the quaint Paddy as stereotypes of the Irish person.
The simianisation of the Irish was also informed by other discourses of the time that inscribed them as members of a second-order race in relation to the first-order English: the discourse of anthropology was spawning, at some of its wildest extremities, the notion of the Irish as a race of covert blacks; scientific anthropology was advancing the idea that the Irish mind was ineluctably criminal, showing constant disrespect for the English law, debates on Darwinism placed the Irish closer to apes on the evolutionary ladder.
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2.2.2.2. The Stage Irishman

A term for stereotypical Irish characters on the English-language stage from the 17th century. As a product of colonialism, the first stage Irishman reflected a desire to stigmatise the Irish as savages or anathemise them as traitors. Later versions sought to provide amusement to English audiences by exaggerating the traits which differentiated the Irish from the English. Irishmen on the stage, prior to the foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre of 1898 tend to fall into one or other of two categories - one, the lazy, crafty, and (in all probability) inebriated buffoon who nonetheless has the gift of good humour and a nimble way with words. . . ; the other the braggart (also partial to a dhrop of the besht) who is likely to be s soldier or ex-soldier, boasting of having seen a great deal of the world when he has probably been no further from his own country than some English barracks and camp. (Fitz-simons 1983: 94) He [the Stage Irishman] has an atrocious Irish brogue, makes perpetual jokes, blunders and bulls in speaking, and never fails to utter, by way of Hibernian seasoning, some wild screech or oath of Gaelic origin at every third word: he has an unsurpassable gift of blarney and cadges for tips and free drinks. His hair is of a fiery rea; he is rosy-cheeked, massive and whiskey-loving. His face is one of simian bestiality, with an expression of diabolical archness written all over it.. . . His main characteristics . . . are his swagger, his boisterousness and his pugnacy. (Maurice Bourgeois, q. in Styan 1991)
William Shakespeare, Henry V

Also known as The Cronicle History of Henry the fifth, it is a play by William Shakespeare (thought to date from 1599) based on the life of King Henry V of England. It deals with the events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War. The play can be seen as a glorification of nationalistic pride and conquest, with the Chorus, Archbishop of Canterbury, Fluellen, and Henry himself all being prime examples. The play is connected to the English military ventures in Ireland that were important at the time of the play's writing, notably the Earl of Essex's attempted suppression of revolts in Ireland, since the Chorus directly refers to Essex's military triumphs in the fifth act. . . . the General of our gracious Empress As in good time he may - from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broachd on his sword, How many would the peaceful city quit To welcome him! . . . (V.1. 30-34)
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The Irish Captain Macmorris is considered to be the prototype for the Stage Irishman. HENRY V, ACT III, SCENE 2
Enter Fluellen, Gower following GOWER Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to the mines. The Duke of Goucester would speak with you. FLUELLEN To the mines? Tell you the Duke, it is not so good to come to the mines, for, look you, the mines is not according to the disciplines of the war. The concavities of it is not sufficient; for, look you, thathversary, you may discuss unto the Duke, look you, is digt himself four yard under the countermines. By Cheshu, I thin a will plow up all, if there is not better directions. GOWER The Duke of Gloucester, to whom the order of the siege is given, is altogether directed by an Irishman, a very valiant gentleman, Ifaith. FLUELLEN It is Captain Macmorris, is it not? GOWER I think it be. FLUELLEN By Cheshu, he is an ass, as in the world; I will verify as much in his beard. He has no more directions in the true disciplines of the wars, look you, of the Roman disciplines, than is a puppy-dog. Enter Captain Macmorris and Captain Jamy GOWER Here a comes, and the Scots captain, Captain Jamy, with him. FLUELLEN Captain Jamy is a marvellous falorous gentleman, that is certain, and of great expedition and knowledge in thauchient wars, upon my particular knowledge of his directions. By Cheshu, he will maintain his arguments as well as any military man in the world, in the disciplines of the pristine wars of the Romans. JAMY I say gud-day, Captain Fluellen. FLUELLEN Good-een to your worship, good Captain James. GOWER How now, Captain Macmorris, have you quit the mines? Have the pioneers given oer? MACMORRIS By Chrish, la, tish ill done! The work ish give over, the trompet sound the retreat. By my hand I swear, and my fathers soul, the work ish ill done: it is give over. I would have blowed up the town, so Crish save ma, la, in an hour. O, tish ill done, tish ill done - by my hand, tish ill done! FLUELLEN Captain Macmorris, I beseech you now, will you voutsafe me, look you, a few disputations with you, as partly touching or concerning the disciplines of the war, the Roman wars, in the way of argument, look you, and friendly communication? - partly to satisfy my opinion, and partly for the satisfaction, look you, of my mind, - as touching the direction of the military discipline, that is the point. JAMY It sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captens, bath, and I sall quit you with gud leve, as I may pick occasion: that sall I, marry. MACMORRIS It is no time to discourse, so Crish save me! The day is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the King, and the Dukes - it is not
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time to discourse, the town is beseeched, and the trumpet call us to the breach, and we talk, and, be Chrish, do nothing; tis shame for us all: so God sa me, tis shame to stand still, it is shame, by my hand - and there is throats to be cut, and works to be done, and there ish nothing done, so Chrish sa me, la! JAMY By the mess, ere theise eyes of mine take themselves to slomber, ayll de gud service, or ayll lig Ithgrund for it, ay, or go to death! And qyll pqyt as valorously as I may, that sall I suerly do, that is the breff and the long. Marry, I wad full fain hear some question tween you tway. FLUELLEN Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nation MACMORRIS Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation? FLUELLEN Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant, Captain Macmorris, peradventure I shall think you do not use me with that affability as in discretion you ought to use me, look you, being as good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of war, and in the derivation of my birth, and in other particularities. MACMORRIS I do not know you so good a man as myself. So Chrish save me, I will cut off your head. GOWER Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other. JAMY Ah, thats a foul fault! (A parley is sounded) GOWER The town sounds a parley. FLUELLEN Captain Macmorris, when there is more better opportunity to be required, look you, I will be so bold as to tell you, I know the disciplines of war; and there is an end. (Exeunt)
English / Irish Polarities

KING MASTER KNOWLEDGE RESTRAINT ENGLISH SUPERIORITY BUFOON SERVANT IGNORANCE BOASTFULNESS HIBERNO ENGLISH INFERIORITY
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2.3.
Re-writing Irelands Story
A recurrent strategy of Anglo-Irish dramatists was to subvert the stereotype by enabling their Irish characters to defeat with comical aplomb the ruses of English tricksters who try to gull them. E.g.: George Farquhar (c. 1677-1707): The Twin Rivals Thomas Sheridan (1719 1788): The Brave Irishman Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816): The Rivals
2.3.2.
The Irish Melodrama
In the 19th century, Irish melodrama brought further changes to the clich.
The Comic Melodrama

The comic melodrama transforms the stage Irishman into an intelligent and witty rustic who becomes an agent of mediation between Englishness and Irishness. actor, and producer, began his remarkable career in 1841 with the successful production of his own London Assurance and continued virtually unabated until his death in 1890. As a playwright, he embraced varied genres: historical romance (Louis XI), domestic plays (Dot -an adaptation of Dicken's The Cricket in the Hearth-), when Irish plays ( Arrah na Pogue, The Shaughraun and Robert Emmet), American plays (The Octoroon), detective plays (Mercy Dodd or Presumptive Evidence), farces (Forbidden Fruit). He also wrote the acting version of Rip Van Winkle.
Dion Boucicault
(1820-1890): playwright,
The Irish Trilogy (The Colleen Bawn, Arrah-na-Pogue, The Shaughraun)

The Colleen Bawn: The play is focused on the story of the beautiful but untutored country girl, Eily OConnor, whom her gentleman lover (Cregan) wants to kill in order to avoid a misalliance. Myles-naGoppaleen (Boucicaults modified stage-Irishman) is an engaging rustic who foils the murder attempt and makes Cregan accept Eily as his bride. Arrah-na-Pogue: Beamish MacCoul, a United Irishmen rebel, has returned from exile in France to organise an insurrection, and also marry Fanny Power. He hides in the cottage of his foster-sister, Arrah-na-Pogue, but is discovered there on the eve of her wedding to Shaun the Post. To save his bride, Shaun takes the blame upon himself and is thus taken to Dublin to be sentenced to death by a court martial. Fanny, Beamish and his rival, colonel OGrady, rush to
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Dublin to save Shauns life and a benevolent Secretary of State settles their differences and grants Shaun a last-minute reprieve. The Shaughraun: The play is a political melodrama in which Boucicaults sympathetic version of the stage-Irishman has advanced to the title role. Conn the Shaughraun, a good-hearted wanderer, has helped an ex-Fenian rebel, Robert Ffolliott, escape from Australia. With the help of Harvey Duff, traitor and police spy, Robert is arrested by the English Captain Molineaux. When Duff and the villain Kinchela stage an escape for the prisoner in order to shoot him on the run, Conn takes his place and is apparently killed. A pardon for the Fenians arrives in time to secure the happy ending, with Conn turning well and alive, and Molineaux marrying Roberts sister, Claire.
Myles na Copaleen, Shaun the Post, Conn the Shaughraun

Though they still wear some of the traditional traits of the dramatic type, being cast as comic rustics who display a propensity for banter and blarney and still put their lips to the jug with some regularity, Boucicaults Stage Irishmen are far removed from the extreme silhouette of the figure of ridicule, emerging as more than stereotypical drunken sots to take an active, at times courageous part in the social, economic and political conflicts of their world. Endowed with bravery, loyalty and wit, they overcome all obstacles / adversaries and finally become agents of reconciliation between opposing parties: landlord/peasant; English/Irish.
The Historical Melodrama

It celebrates heroic events in the nationalist version of Irish history (e.g. the United Irishmens rebellion, Fenianism.) In this, it reverts to the myth of the national hero, attempting to construct an Irishness marked by such qualities as manliness, selfreliance, combativeness, patriotism, and, more importantly, antagonism towards the British rule. Plays: D. Boucicault: Robert Emmett (1884) J. W. Whitbread: Wolfe Tone (1898); The Ulster Hero (1903)
Given the power of the heroic myth, the patriotism of the title characters transgresses any religious, ethnic and social cleavages between themselves and the other ranks of nationalist Ireland, and Protestant and Catholic, intellectual and peasant, rich and poor become one in their affection for their country and in pledging all their efforts against England.
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Tensions between England and Ireland intensify, because evil is entirely projected upon stage villains, who, in contradistinction to the comic melodrama, become increasingly politicised, typically featuring native informers operating under the direction of reprehensible British officers. Their function is to account for the failure of the heroes enterprises solely in terms of someone elses moral failings, highlighting thus the latters status as martyred victims of both tyranny from without and treachery from within. SHAUGHRAUN COMEDY SERVANT BENIGN CLEVER WIT PEASANT LOYALTY MEDIATION RUSTIC PASTORAL HISTORICAL HERO TRAGEDY MASTER ALTRUISTIC INTELLIGENT ELOQUENCE ARISTOCRAT NATIONALISM INDEPENDENCE MARTIAL CIVILISATION
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2.3.2. Contemporary Revisions of Historical Narratives a) Seamus Heaney: Traditions.

Seamus Heaney (1939 - ) was born into a nationalist Irish Catholic family at Mossbawn, in a rural area thirty miles to the north-west of Belfast. His work is often set in rural Londonderry, the county of his childhood. Hints of sectarian violence can be found in many of his poems, even works that on the surface appear to deal with something else. Like the Troubles themselves, Heaney's work is deeply associated with the lessons of history, sometimes even prehistory. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature
TRADITIONS I
Our guttural muse was bulled long ago by the alliterative tradition, her uvula grows vestigial, forgotten like the coccyx or a Brigids Cross yellowing in some outhouse while custom, that most sovereign mistress, beds us down into the British Isles. We are to be proud of our Elizabethan English: varsity, for example, is grass-roots stuff with us; we deem or we allow when we suppose and some cherished archaisms are correct Shakespearean. Nor to speak of the furled consonants of the lowlanders shuttling obstinately between bawn and mossland.
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III
Irish Literature
MacMorris, gallivanting round the Globe, whinged to courtier and groundling who had heard of us as going very bare of learning, as wild as hares, as anatomies of death: What ish my nation? And sensibly, though so much later, the wandering Bloom replied, Ireland, said Bloom, I was born here. Ireland.
b) Brian Friel: Making History

Brian Friel (1929 - ): born in a Catholic family, in Omagh, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, Brian Friel is one of Ireland's most prominent playwrights. Though his father was a teacher, his grandparents were illiterate peasants from County Donegal whose first language was Irish. Thus his own family exemplifies the divisions between traditional and modern Ulster and Ireland, a recurring theme for Friel. Donegal, where he moved in 1969, is another influence that features strongly in Friel's life and work. Many of his plays are set in fictional Ballybeg, a remote part of Donegal. In 1980, Friel helped found the Field Day Theatre Company which is committed to the search for "a middle ground between the country's entrenched positions" to help the Irish explore new identities for themselves. Making History (1988) dramatizes the writing of Irish history as well as the historical events themselves before and after the Battle of Kinsale (1601). Its main hero is the historical persona of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, the leader of the last Gaelic rebellion against the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland. This figure has accrued contradictory meanings from the late 16th-century onwards. Vilified in Anglo-Irish chronicles as traitor and rebel, he was construed as a mythic hero by the nationalist discourse. Given the persistence of this ambiguity in colonial writings, Brian Friel attempts to dismantle traditional representations of the Ulster chieftain, re-constructing him in accordance to a post-colonial agenda. Making History employs intertextuality in order to question the mechanics of historical definition through which previous texts like Peter Lombards De Regno Hiberniae Commentarius (1632), which promoted ONeill as the leader of a European counter-Reformation, the Anglo-Irish Chronicles who viewed him as an Irish barbarian, or Shakespeares Henry V that transformed him into a stage Irishman have fixed men and events in their official readings.
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MAKING HISTORY , FABER AND FABER, 1989

LOMBARD: I dont believe that a period of history - a given space of time - my life - your life -that it contains within it one true interpretation just waiting to be mined. But I do believe that it may contain within it several possible narratives: the life of Hugh ONeill can be told in many different ways. And those ways are determined by the needs and the demands and the expectations of different people and different eras. What do they want to hear? How do they want it told? [. . .] (pp.15-16)
ONEILL: This is my last battle, Peter. LOMBARD: Battle? What battle? ONEILL: That [book]. LOMBARD: What are you talking about? ONEILL: That thing there. LOMBARD: Your history? ONEILL: Your history. Im an old man. I have no position, no power, no money. No, Im not whingeing - Im not pleading. But Im telling you that Im going to fight you on that and Im going to win. [. . . ] LOMBARD: Hold on now -wait -wait- wait - wait. Just tell me one thing. Is this book some kind of a malign scheme? Am I doing something reprehensible? ONEILL: you are going to embalm me in - in - in a florid lie. LOMBARD: Will I lie, Hugh? ONEILL: I need the truth, Peter. Thats all thats left. The schemer, the leader, the liar, the statesman, the lecher, the patriot, the drunk, the soured, bitter migr - put it all in, Peter. Record the whole life - thats what you said yourself. [. . . ] LOMBARD: Let me explain what my outline is. May I? Please? And if you object to it - or any detail in it - Ill rewrite the whole thing in any way you want. That is a solemn promise. Can I be fairer than that? Now. I start with your birth and your noble genealogy and I look briefly at those formative years when you were fostered with the OQuinns and the OHagans and received your early education from the bards and the poets. I then move ONEILL: England. LOMBARD: Whats that? ONEILL: I spent nine years in England with Leicester and Sidney. LOMBARD: You did indeed. I have all the material here. We then look at the years when you consolidated your position as the pre-eminent Gaelic ruler in the country, and that leads to those early intimations you must have had of an emerging nation state. And now we come to the first of the key events: that September when all the people of Ulster came together at the crowning stone at Tullyhogue outside Dungannon, and the golden slipper is thrown over your head and
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fastened to your foot, and the white staff in placed in your right arm, and the True Bell of St Patrick peals out across the land, and you are proclaimed . . . The ONeill. ONEILL: That was a political ploy. LOMBARD: It may have been that, too. ONEILL: The very next month I begged Elizabeth for pardon. LOMBARD: But an occasion of enormous symbolic importance for your people - six hundred and thirty continuous years of ONeill hegemony. Right, I then move on to that special relationship between yourself and Hugh ODonnell; the patient forging of the links with Spain and Rome; the uniting of the whole Ulster into one great dynasty that finally inspired all the Gaelic chieftains to come together under your leadership. And suddenly the nation state was becoming a reality. [. . . ] Now, the second key event: the Nine Years War between yourself and England culminating in the legendary battle of Kinsale and the crushing of the most magnificent Gaelic army ever assembled. ONEILL: They routed us in less than an hour, Peter. Isnt that the point of Kinsale? LOMBARD: You lost a battle - that has to be said. But the telling of it can still be a triumph. ONEILL: Kinsale was a disgrace. Mountjoy routed us. We ran away like rats. LOMBARD: And again thats not the point. ONEILL: Youre not listening to me now. We disgraced ourselves at Kinsale. LOMBARD: And then I come to my third and final key point; and Im calling this section - Im rather proud of the title - Ive named it The Flight of the Earls. That has a ring to it, too, hasnt it? That tragic but magnificent exodus of the Gaelic aristocracy ONEILL: Peter LOMBARD: When the leaders of the ancient civilisation took boat from Rathmullan that September evening and set sail for Europe ONEILL: As we pulled out from Rathmullan the McSwineys stoned us from the shore! LOMBARD: Then their journey across Europe when every crowned head welcomed and fted them. And then the final coming to rest. Here. In Rome. ONEILL: And the six years after Kinsale - before the Flight of the Earls arent they going to be recorded? When I lived like a criminal, skulking round the countryside - my countryside! - hiding from the English, from the Upstarts, from the Old English, but most assiduously hiding from my brother Gaels who couldnt wait to strip me of every blade of grass I ever owned. And then when I could endure that humiliation no longer, I ran away! If these were my people then to hell with my people! The Flight of the Earls - you make it sound like a lap of honour. We ran away just as we ran away at Kinsale. We were going to look after our own skins! Thats why we took boat from Rathmullan. Thats why the great ONeill is here - at rest - here - in Rome. Because we ran away. [. . .] Those are the
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facts. There us no way you can make unpalatable facts palatable. And your point - just what is your point, Peter? [. . .] LOMBARD: Thats exactly what my point is. People think they want to know the fact; they think they believe in some sort of empirical truth, but what they really want is a story. And thats what this will be: the events of your life categorised and classified and then structured as you would structure any story. No, no, Im not talking about falsifying, about lying, for heavens sake. Im simply talking about making a pattern. Thats what Im doing with all this stuff offering a cohesion to that random catalogue of deliberate achievement and sheer accident that constitutes your life. And that cohesion will be a narrative that people will read and be satisfied by. And that narrative will be as true and as objective as I can make it with the help of the Holy Spirit. Would it be profane to suggest that that was the method the Four Evangelists used? - took the haphazard events in Christs life and shaped them into a story, into four complementary stories. And those stories are true stories. And we believe them. We call them gospel, Hugh, dont we? (He laughs suddenly and heartily) Would you look at that man! Why are you so miserable about? This of this [book]as an act of pietas. Ireland is reduced as it has never been reduced before - we are talking about a colonised people on the brink of extinction. This isnt the time for a critical assessment of your ploys and your disgraces and your betrayal - thats the stuff of another history for another time. Now is the time for a hero. Now is the time for a heroic literature. So Im offering Gaelic Ireland two things. Im offering them this narrative that has the elements of myth. And Im offering them Hugh ONeill as a national hero. A hero and the story of a hero [. . .](pp 63-67)
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CHAPTER 3 COLONIALISM AND THE NATIONALIST

IMAGINARY 3.1. Colonial Identities
Cultural identity: a group sharing a relatively common way of life Colonial identity: a cultural identity shaped by the new environment of colonialism
1689 James II lands at Kinsale. The siege of Derry (The Apprenticeboys March). 1690 William III lands at Carrickfergus. Battle of the Boyne (12 July). 1690-91The siege of Limmerick (Patrick Sarsfield). 1695 Penal Laws restrict Catholic rights. Scots Presbyterians are also disabled. 1715 &1745 Jacobite risings in Scotland. 1776 American Declaration of Independence 1789 Fall of Bastille. 1791 United Irishmen founded in Belfast. 1795 Foundation of Orange Order. 1798 United Irishmens Rebellion helped by French troops (Wolfe Tone). 1800 Act of Union 1803 Rising of Robert Emmet 1829 Catholic Emancipation (Daniel OConnell) 1845-49The Great Potato Famine
Cultural groups:
Protestant Ascendancy: elite group, landowners, loyal to Britain. Ulster Presbyterians: politically and economically disabled, retained links with Scotland. Catholic majority: spread throughout the four provinces and including the Old English (via a common Catholicism.) Largely deprived of leadership and religiously, politically and economically disabled by the Penal Acts, they have the least influence.
Each facet of the complex process linked to the development of a colonial identity is correspondingly expressed in the culture of the given group: History: Nationalist vs. Unionist versions Literature: Nationalist vs. Protestant identitary tropes
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3.2. Nationalist Literary Tropes: Woman as Nation

If the colonial discourse is based on a binary model of thought predicated upon the basic opposition established between self and other, in terms of gender, the colonial project has often been metaphorically constructed as the attempt of the male colonizer to subdue and penetrate the female territory of the colonized people[1]. Very often, the western imagination has translated the conquered territories of India or Africa, for example, into images of exotic women, seductive, seducible, and ultimately at the mercy of the masculine forces competing for domination over them[2]. In response to this colonial feminization, the colonized have attempted to produce a reverse discourse of overdetermined masculity[3], in which the land becomes a mother forced into penury by foreign invaders[4], requiring her sons to fight the oppressors in order to restore her former possessions. Ireland, though placed in the paradoxical position of being at once Western and a colony, has not escaped being culturally cast as other and female in both colonial and countercolonial contexts. As such, in the principal discourses of Irish nationalism, the two main feminine figurations for Ireland were: the Spar-bhean (literally meaning a sky-woman), a beautiful maiden queen in search for a redeemer for her occupied nation, or as the Sean Bhean Bocht (the Poor Old Woman), a sorrowful mother summoning her sons to protect and defend her homestead.
3.2.1. Celtic Matriarchs

Yet both figures claim their ancestry in the distant Gaelic tradition, where Celtic mythology features a number of formidable divine matriarchs who stand, at times, as female personifications of Ireland. Starting with the mythic Danu the mother goddess of the Tuatha de Danaan, the divine race of Irish myth -, some of the attributes of this archetypal female agency are further embodied across a range of goddesses associated with the sovereignty and prosperity of the land (Eriu, Banbha and Fodla), with sexual potency, war and death (Mrrigan, Babh and Macha), or with the landscape itself, as in the popular tradition of Cailleach Beara (the Old Woman of Beara, one of the great peninsulas of the South-West Irish coast), a queen who supposedly lived seven lifetimes, each time with a new husband. If early Irish literary texts of the vision type present future kings of Ireland having their claims to the land legitimated through prophetic encounters with one such sovereignty goddess, the Irish folklore rescripts the narrative of the legitimacy theme by turning the Old Woman of Beara into a shape-shifting hag who displays youthful loveliness to the rightful king.
3.2.2. The Spear-Bhean and the 18th century aisling

Nevertheless, in the context of a colonized Ireland, where the Gaelic culture and the clan system were inevitably broken, the nature and identity of the true king become problematic. After the Williamite War and the enactment of the Penal Laws, native Irish poetry of grows increasingly political in character, though hiding its
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expectation of political deliverance in what seemed like harmless love songs [11] which rework the conventions of the Gaelic vision tale. Thus the eighteenthcentury aisling (vision) poem repeatedly looked outside the country for liberation and the true sovereign, evoking the former sovereignty goddess into the image of a willing [and] defenceless spirbhean [sic] or sky-woman, who would only recover her happiness when a young liberator would come to her defence. [12]
Aogan O Rathaille (c. 1675-1729): Gile na Gile (Brightness Most Bright) (c. 1709)
BRIGHTNESS MOST BRIGHT (GILE NA GILE) The brightness of Brightness I saw in a lonely path, Crystal of crystal, her blue eyes tinged with green, Melody of melody, her speech not more with age, The ruddy and white appeared in her glowing cheeks. Plaiting of plaiting in every hair of her yellow locks, That robbed the earth of its brilliancy by their full sweeping, An ornament brighter than glass on her swelling breast, Which was fashioned at her creation in the world above. A tale of knowledge she told me, all lonely as she was News of the return of HIM to the place which is his by kingly descent, News of the destruction of the bands who expelled him, And other tidings which, through sheer fear, I will not put in my lays. Oh, folly of follies for me to go up close to her! By the captive I was bound fast a captive; As I implored the Son of Mary of aid me, she bounded from me, And the maiden went off in a flash to the fairy mansion of Luachair. I rush in mad race running with a bounding heart, Through margins of a morass, through meads, through a barren moorland. I reach the strong mansion - the way I came I know not That dwelling of dwellings, reared by wizard sorcery. They burst into laughter, mockingly - a troop of wizards And a band of maidens, trim, with plaited locks; In the bondage of fetters they put me without much respite, While to my maiden clung a clumsy, lubberly clown. I told her then, in words the sincerest, How it will became her to be united to an awkward, sorry churl, While the fairest thrice over of all the Scotic race Was waiting to receive her as his beauteous bride. As she hears my voice she weeps through wounded pride, The streams run down plenteously from her glowing cheeks, She sends me with a guide for my safe conduct from the mansion, She is the Brightness of Brightness I saw upon a lonely path.
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In a late eighteenth-century text composed by the blind poet Liam O hIfearnain this female persona of Ireland is specifically named Caitlin ni Uallachain (Cathleen ni Houlihan), and identified both with the sovereignty of Ireland and with the Blessed Virgin, a cluster of associations that will be carried over by subsequent invocations of Ireland under a female aspect [13]. Such associations inform James Clarence Mangans (1803-49) My Dark Rosaleen (1846). MY DARK ROSALEEN
O my Dark Rosaleen, Do not sigh, do not weep! The priests are on the ocean green, They march along the Deep. Theres wine . . . from the royal Pope Upon the ocean green; And Spanish ale shall give you hope, My Dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, Shall give you health, and help, and hope, My Dark Rosaleen. Over hills and through dales Have I roamed for your sake; All yesterday I sailed with sails On river and on lake. The Erne . . . at its highest flood I dashed across unseen, For there was lightning in my blood, My Dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! Oh! There was lightning in my blood, Red lightning lightened through my blood, My Dark Rosaleen! All day long in unrest To and fro do I move The very soul within my breast Is wasted for you, love! The heart . . . in my bosom faints To think of you, my Queen, My life of life, my saint of saints, My Dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! To hear your sweet and sad complaints, My life, my love, my saint of saints, My Dark Rosaleen! Woe and pain, pain and woe, Are my lot night and noon, To see your bright face clouded so, Like to the mournful moon.
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But yet . . . will I rear your throne Again in golden sheen; Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone, My Dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! Tis you shall have the golden throne, Tis you shall reign and reign alone, My Dark Rosaleen! Over dews, over sands Will I fly for your weal; Your holy delicate white hands Shall girdle me with steel. At home . . . in your emerald bowers, From mornings dawn till een. Youll pray for me, my flower of flowers, My Dark Rosaleen! My fond Rosaleen! Youll think of me through daylights hours, My virgin flower, my flower of flowers, My Dark Rosaleen. I could scale the blue air, I could plough the high hills, Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer, To heal your many ills! And one . . . beamy smile from you Would float like light between My toils and me, my own, my true, My Dark Rosaleen! My fond Rosaleen! Would give me life and soul anew, A second life, a soul anew, My Dark Rosaleen! O! the Erne shall run red With redundance of blood, The earth shall rock beneath your tread, And flames wrap hill and wood, And gun-peal and slogan cry, Wake many a glen serene, Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, My Dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! The Judgement Hour must first be nigh, Ere you can fade, ere you can die, My Dark Rosaleen!
Irish Literature
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3.2.3. The sean bhean bhocht and the popular ballad

In their turn, the popular ballads of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries blend the traditions of the Old Woman of Beara with those of the goddesses of war and death, which stand for the darker side of the Celtic matriarch. Their favourite trope becomes thus the Sean Bhean Bocht, an idealised persona of the land who suffers historic wrongs, and, Kali-like, requires the sacrifice of successive generations of sons in the hope that the recurring heroic failures to eject the invader will finally prove successful. Richard Kearney has suggested that the Sean Bhean Bocht has been turned into an emblem of Irish nationalism because it is closely linked to its sacrificial mythology in which the blood sacrifice of the heroes is needed to free and redeem Ireland, at the same time in which these heroic sacrificial martyrs are rewarded by being remembered for ever [14]. Moreover, this nationalist sacrificial mythology can be further tied to pagan concepts of seasonal rejuvenation and the sacrificial aspects of Christianity in the Crucifixion and tradition of martyrdom [15].
THE WEARIN OF THE GREEN
Oh, Paddy dear! an did ye hear the news thats goin round? The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground. No more St. Patricks Day well keep, his colour cant be seen, For theres a cruel law agin the wearin o the green! I met wid Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand. And he asaid, Hows poor Ould Ireland, and how does she stand? Shes the most distressful country that iver yet was seen, For theyre hangin men and women there for wearin o the green. An if the color we must wear is Englands cruel red, Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed; Then pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod, And never fear, twill take root there, tho under foot tis trod! When law can stop the blades of grass from growing as they grow, And when the leaves in summer-time their color dare not show, Then I will change the color, too, I wear in my caubeen, But till that day, praise God, Ill stick to wearin o the green.
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3.2.4. Cathleen Ni Houlihan

William Butler Yeatss Cathleen Ni Houlihan, the play written in 1902, epitomizes this tradition, constituting a mythic nexus for personifications of Ireland. The play makes use of what Valente calls the double-woman trope (i.e. the combination of the Spar-bhean and the Sean Bhean Bocht who is both young and old, mother and bride, sexual and pure) in order to create its dynamic tension. Located with naturalistic precision in 1798, the time of the historical French landing at Killala, which signalled the beginning of the United Irishmen Rebellion, the play is set in the cottage of the Gillane family, where the eldest son, Michael, is about to be married the next day. An old woman arrives who, taken for a beggar at first, starts to bemoan that she has been set wandering by too many strangers in the house, who took from her four beautiful green fields[17] and then tells of the sacrifices young men have made for her across the ages. Mesmerized by her words, Michael decides to forsake his family and bride in order to go off to fight in the brewing insurrection, and, as the son leaves, the old woman offers no doubt as to what his fate will be.
W.B. YEATS CATHLEEN NI HOOLIHAN (1902)
PERSONS IN THE PLAY: PETER GILLANE MICHAEL GILLANE (his son, going to be married) PATRICK GILLANE (a lad of 12, Michaels brother) BRIDGET GILLANE (Peters wife) DELIA CAHEL (engaged to Michael) THE POOR OLD WOMAN NEIGHBOURS Interior of a cottage close to Killala, in 1798. Bridget is standing at a table undoing a parcel. Peter is sitting at one side of the fire, Patrick at the other. [. . . ] Bridget: Do you see anything? Michael: I see an old woman coming up the path. Bridget: Who is it, I wonder? Michael: I dont think its one of the neighbours, but she has her cloak over her face. Bridget: Maybe its the same woman Patrick saw a while ago. It might be some poor woman heard we were making ready for the wedding, and came to look for her share. Peter: I may as well put the money out of sight. Theres no use leaving it out for every stranger to look at. Michael: There she is, father! [An old woman passes the window slowly. She looks at Michael as she passes.] Id sooner a stranger not to come to the house the night before the wedding. [. . .]
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[The old woman comes in, Michael stands aside to make way for her.] Old Woman: God save all here! Peter: God save you kindly. Old Woman: You have good shelter here. Peter: You are welcome to whatever shelter we have. Bridget: Sit down there by the fire and welcome. Old Woman [warming her hands]: Theres a hard wind outside. [Michael watches her curiously from the door. Peter comes over to the table.] Peter: Have you travelled far to-day? Old Woman: I have travelled far, very far; there are few have travelled so far as myself Peter: it is a pity, indeed, for any person to have no place of their own. Old Woman: That is true for you, indeed, and it is long I am on the road since I first went wondering. It is seldom I have any rest. [. . .] Bridget: What was it put you astray? Old Woman: Too many strangers in the house Bridget: Indeed you look as if you had had your share of trouble. Old Woman: I have had trouble, indeed. Bridget: What was it put the trouble on you? Old Woman: My land was taken from me. Peter: Was it much land they took from you? Old Woman: My four beautiful green fields. [. . .] Bridget[to the old woman]: Will you have a drink of milk? Old Woman: It is not food or drink that I want. Peter[offering the shilling]: Here is something for you. Old Woman: That is not that I want. It is not silver I want. Peter: What is it you would be asking for? Old Woman: If anyone would give me help, he must give me himself, he must give me all. Michael: Have you no man of your own, maam? Old Woman: I have not. With all the lovers that brought me their love, I never set out the bed for any. Michael: Are you lonely going the roads, maam? Old Woman: I have my thoughts and I have my hopes. Michael: What hopes have you to hold to? Old Woman: The hope of getting my beautiful fields back again, the hope of putting the strangers out of my house. Michael: What way will you do that, maam? Old Woman: I have good friends that will help me. They are gathering to help me now. I am not afraid. If they are put down to-day, they will get the upper-hand to-morrow. [She gets up.] I must be going to meet my friends. They are coming to help me, and I must be there to welcome them. I must call the neighbours together to welcome them. Michael: I will go with you Bridget: It is not her friends you have to go and welcome, Michael; it is the girl coming into the house you have to welcome. You have plenty to do; it is food and drink you have to bring to the house. [. . .]
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Peter[to Bridget]: Who is she, do you think, at all? Bridget: You did not tell us your name yet, maam. Old Woman: Some call me The Poor Old Woman, and there are some that call me Cathleen ny Hoolihan. Peter: I think I knew someone of that name once. Who was it, I wonder? It must have been someone I knew when I was a boy. No, no, I remember I heard it in a song. Old Woman [who is standing in the doorway]: They are wondering that there were songs made for me; there have been many songs made for me. I heard one on the wind this morning. [She sings.] [. . .] Michael: I do not know what that song means; but tell me something I can do for you. Old Woman: Come over to me, Michael. [. . .][She goes out. Her voice is heard outside, singing.] They shall be remembered for ever; They shall be alive for ever; They shall be speaking for ever; The people shall hear them for ever. [. . . ] [Michael breaks away from Delia and goes towards the neighbours at the door.] Michael: Come, we have no time to lose; we must follow her. [Michael and the neighbours go out.] Peter [laying his hand on Patricks arm]: Did you see an old woman going down the path? Patrick: I did not; but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen. THE END
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3.3. Deconstructing the Woman-Nation trope

While essentially a colonial by-product, the figure of Cathleen has "congealed into republican rhetoric," [21], and the woman-nation equation has carried over into the post-colonial imagination, where such traditional feminine figures of the nation have been reduced to a metaphor for national identity and a powerful interpellative figure in the nationalist struggle for the state[22]. As Fleming remarks, any feminine national icons, while seeming to empower women, actually displace them outside history into the realm of myth. This effectively re-inscribes the woman as devoid of agency[23]. No wonder then that Cathleen has become an extremely problematic symbol not only in contemporary Irish literary and cultural studies, but also for the writers who attempt to reproduce such symbolic figures of women in their work. The trope is thus deconstructed in a series of texts that include James Joyces short-story A Mother (included in his Dubliners, 1905), Samuel Becketts Miss Counihan, the Irish mistress of the title character of his novel Murphy (1938), or contemporary plays like Brian Friels Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) and Tom Murphys Bailengangaire (1985).
James Joyce, A Mother (1905)

An inexperienced Dublin impresario named Mr. Holohan arranges with Mrs. Kearney for her daughter Kathleen to accompany on the piano the singers at a series of four concerts. When the first three concerts are sparsely attended, Mrs. Kearney demands payment for all the performances before the fourth show, delaying the start of that evenings entertainment. Finally, Mrs. Kearney refuses to let Kathleen play during the second half of the concert because she has not been paid the entire promised fee. A burlesque novel which presents the story of an impecunious Irishman living in London. Moving between Ireland and England, the novel is caustically satirical at the expense of the Irish Free State: the astrologer Murphy consults is famous 'throughout civilised world and Irish Free State'; among the posse of Irish people who pursue the protagonist, the insatiable Miss Counihan, his former mistress, is high-breasted and high-buttocked, and 'quite exceptionally anthropoid for an Irish girl, while Neary is a natonalist mystic who smashes his head against the buttocks of Cuchullains statue in Dublin. Set in a rotting thatched cottage, with a bed placed centre stage, it focuses on Mommo, the senile grandmother, who tries to recount to her granddaughters, Mary and Dolly, the story of a long-ago laughing competition, without ever ending it. The smoldering rivalries between the two sisters act as a catalyst that force Mommo to finish her story, with the painful recognition that the laughing contest, won by her husband coincided with the death of the couples son.
Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)
Tom Murphy, Bailengangaire (1985)
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CHAPTER 4 PROTESTANT LITERARY TROPES:

THE BIG HOUSE THEME IN IRISH LITERATURE
1704: The Sacramental Test Act, making political office and membership in municipal corporations available only to those who receive communion according to the Church of Ireland (excluding both Roman Catholics and Protestant dissidents); penal laws reduce Catholic landowners; English trade laws restrict Irish export & trade industries. The Protestant Ascendancy begins. 1720: The Declaratory Act gave to the British Parliament legislative jurisdiction over Irish affairs, the authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland. 1767-1722: Lord Townsend establishes a resident Lord Lieutenant-ship in Ireland, as direct representative of Royal English power in Irish government 1778: First Protestant Volunteer Force forms, a national volunteer army formed by, and for the defense of, the Protestant Ascendancy. Their threat, combined with the crisis in America, leads to removal of most restrictions on Irish trade. 1782 The Constitution of 1782: a series of concessions to the Irish Parliament, including repeal of Declaratory Act, initiated largely due to British concern over the revolutions in France and America 1782-1800Grattan's Parliament: under leadership of Henry Grattan, the Irish Parliament holds its greatest legislative independence. Irish economic revival follows. As English and Anglo-Irish aristocracy settle in Ireland, the splendor of Georgian Dublin reaches its height
4.1. The Protestant Ascendancy

Protestant Ascendancy is a term used to refer to the Anglican (not radical Protestant) descendants of English colonists, who, during the 18th century, had become firmly established as the great land-owning families throughout, particularly, the eastern half of Ireland, and were determined to sustain their social, political and economic power over the land. The confidence of the Ascendancy was manifested towards the end of the 18th century by its adoption of a nationalist Irish, though still exclusively Protestant, identity. (e.g. the formation of Henry Grattans Patriot Party in 1760). Among the achievements of this ruling class are: Trinity College established as their seat of learning; the Irish Parliament in Dublin (the only independent Parliament in any British colony in the entire empire); and Dublin, the center of the Protestant power, turned into a true capital. Eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish intellectuals, such as George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift or Oliver Goldsmith, came to stand for a cast of Irish mind [Foster, 249] flourishing among this class who increasingly felt that their fortunes were linked with those of their adoptive country, upon which they were
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economically dependant, a feeling solidified by various resentments against their constitutional and career dependence upon England 20 .
4.2. Landmarks of Historical Decline

1801: The Act of Union - passed partly in response to a perception that the 1798 rebellion and the subsequent bloodshed had been provoked by the misrule of the Ascendancy - abolished the Irish Parliament. This was followed by economic decline in Ireland, and widespread emigration of the ruling class to the new centre of power in London, which led to the phenomenon of the absentee landlord. 1829: The eventual arrival of Catholic emancipation (a relief act enabling Catholics to enter parliament, belong to any corporation and hold higher offices in state) meant that the Ascendancy now faced competition from prosperous Catholics in parliament and the various professions. 1845-9: The Great Famine (subsequent failures of the potato crop for three out of four years resulted in the death of as many as 1,000,000 Irish from disease and starvation, while another 2,000,000 had to emigrate, largely to the United States) magnified the festering sense of native grievance. The popular perception of the Ascendancy became one of an absentee landlord shipping food to England while the population starved. 1850-80: The emergence of secret and open societies such as the Tenant League or the Land League challenged the economic position of many landlords, often making rents uncollectable. 1880s-1900s: The Land War saw a mass mobilisation of tenant farmers against the landlord class. A series of Land Acts allowed tenants to take ownership of the land. At around the same time, the political power of the Ascendancy passed to a largely Catholic and middle class Irish nationalist movement. 1918-1923: During the Anglo-Irish War and the subsequent Irish Civil War, many stately homes of the old landed class were burned down by the Irish Republican Army, who identified them with what they saw as the continuing domination of Britain over Ireland.
Following the 1801 Act of Union, when England took direct control over the island, the dominant pattern of Irish political life will show the gradual decline of the Protestant Ascendancy against the emboldening of the growing Catholic middle and lower classes. Ever since the time of Jonathan Swift there had been a pressure on the AngloIrish to throw in their lot with the nativesOver the century and a half which followed it became more and more clear that a strange reciprocity bound members of the ascendancy to those peasants with whom they shared the Irish predicament. Many decent landlords genuinely cared for their tenants and felt responsible for their fate: that care was often returned with a
20
Prominent Ascendancy writers include: o Edmund Burke (1729-97): political philosopher o George Berkeley (1685-1753): empiricist o Oliver Goldsmith (?1730-74): novelist, poet, playwright o Jonathan Swift (1667 1745): satirist, poet, essayist
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mixture of affection and awe. Others were negligent and some cruelly exploitative: but these attitudes served only to emphasize the kindness of the better sortWhen the doom of the big house was sealed by the Land Acts, Shaw was not the only commentator to wonder whether the lot of landless labourer would prove happier under peasant proprietors than it had under paternalistic landlords (Kiberd:1996,67)
4.3. The Big House: from cultural construct to literary theme

As a historical structure, the Big House made its appearance into the Irish landscape during the last decades of the twelfth century, when Richard of Clare, known as Strongbow, invaded Ireland and helped thus the first wave of English colonizers to establish themselves in the area known as the Irish Pale. As the English military, administrative and political domination extended throughout the subsequent centuries, the defensive aspects of the high-walled Anglo-Norman tower-houses were gradually lost [16, 24] and, by the eighteenth-century, when the Big House reached its heyday, a whole new class of Anglo-Irish landlords vied to outdo one another in the building of lavish countryside estates and gardens designed in newly-popular Palladian style, characterized by grace, understated decorative elements, and use of classical orders. While the Irish Big Houses are increasingly valued today for their architectural significance and have been recognized as an important part of Irish heritage, they are also cultural constructs, which, according to Jacqueline Genet, contain the myth of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy by offering an explanation of that class, its style and manners, [setting] out its relations with its environment and culture, and [plotting] its eventual disintegration and decomposition [12, ix].
4.3.1. Cutural Myth

Feeling themselves entitled to candidate for the appellation of Irishness, the Anglo-Irish had to work up their own set of representations. In so doing, they turned to the space of the Big House in order to provide themselves with their own myth of rootedness. This myth was sustained by two aspects. The first one, totally oblivious to the harsh realities outside the demesne walls, pointed to an idyll of social and political harmony where the affinity between paternalistic Protestant landlords and childlike Catholic peasants expressed itself in what John Corner and Sylvia Harvey term as its aristocratic, which provides the focus for a mythology of the social order which is one of the most established in national ideology - that of the country house, with its serenity, family continuities and apparently unlegislated harmony of environmental and human relationships [5, 52]. The second one mythologised the Big House as an Apollonian ideal of civilization and order [6, 158], investing it with the sense of a cultural continuum able to preserve the values of that eighteenth-century spiritual lite, made up of literary figures and intellectuals like Swift, Goldsmith, Burke or Berkeley, whose writings witnessed to similar elements of classicism, discipline and restraint. This mythical space became then the fictional frame within which the Anglo-Irish, that
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group labeled by Declan Kiberd as a hyphenated people, forever English in Ireland, forever Irish in England [14, 367], tried to invent an ideal self which could live on the hyphen between Anglo and Irish[14, 368]. But the famines of the nineteenth-century and the subsequent Land Acts which conceded large parts of Anglo-Irish domains to the tenantry spelled the end of the great estates and of the families who owned them [16, 27]. The decline was even more dramatic in the first decades of the twentieth-century, thus recorded by Terence Brown in his historical account of the social changes undergone by postrevolutionary Ireland: The period 1911-26 saw indeed a striking decline of about one-third in the Protestant population of the south of Ireland as a whole which must be accounted for not only by the lamentable losses endured by Protestant Ireland in the Great War but by the large numbers of landed families, Protestant professional men, former members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, civil servants and Protestant small farmers, who felt that the new Ireland was unlikely to provide a satisfactory home for themselves or their offspring. [2, 116] Curiously enough, as Guy Fehlman notices, it was not until it was on the verge of total disappearance that the Big House became a major theme in Irish literature. Until then, its economic, social, political and legal implications in Irish life had been too overwhelming to be transferred to fiction [9, 16].
(Edgeworthstown House, built in 1672 by Richard Edgeworth. It had small windows, low wainscoted rooms and heavy cornices. The house was much enlarged and modernised after 1770 by Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the inventor and father of Maria Edgeworth.)
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4.3.2. Literary Theme

As setting, theme or character, the Big House resurfaces as a recurrent and popular motif in Irish literature to the extent that, in Neill Corcorans opinion, it has become a significant sub-genre in Irish writing[4, 32]. Maria Edgeworths Castle Rackrent, published in 1800, is generally considered to inaugurate not only the conventions of the Big House fiction summarized by Kersti Tarien Powell in terms of the dilapidated house, the rise and fall of the gentrified family, the irresponsible absentee landlords, and the rise of the (frequently militant, and therefore threatening) peasant class [20, 115] but also to anticipate the social phenomenon related to the dramatic dislocation of the Ascendancy class, the demise of the Big House world. Primarily related to the Anglo-Irish novelistic tradition, the theme is present in Somerville and Rosss The Big House at Inver (1925), Elizabeth Bowens The Last September (1929), or Joyce Carys Castle Corner (1938), among other works whose fictional representations of this figurative space evoke elegiac nostalgia for the lost days of Ascendancy grandeur and spirit. ANGLO-IRISH LITERATURE: term used to describe Irish writing in English, which helps to distinguish this tradition from English literature and literature in Gaelic (applied mostly to Protestant Ascendancy writers). THE BIG HOUSE: A recurrent theme in Anglo-Irish Literature, referring to the big houses of the ascendancy, and reflecting the anxieties and uncertainties of this Protestant landowning class in their decline, from the early 19th century, through Catholic Emancipation, the Famine, the Land League, and the growth of modern militant Irish nationalism, to the founding of the Irish State. It appears mainly in the novel, but also in poetry, drama and memoir. Conventions: - the decaying house and declining gentry family; - the improvident, often absentee, landlord; - the rise of a predatory middle class seeking to wrest power from landowners.
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4.3.2.1. Big House Novels Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849): Castle Rackrent (1800)
o Thady Quirk, an old steward, narrates the eccentricities and excesses of three generations of landowning Rackrents, until Thadys own son, Jason, gains possession of the estate by loans and litigation.
From CASTLE RACKRENT
Monday Morning. Having, out of friendship for the family, upon whose estate, praised be Heaven! I and mine have lived rent-free, time out of mind, voluntarily undertaken to publish the Memoirs of the Rackrent Family, I think it my duty to say a few words, in the first place, concerning myself. My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I have always been known by no ther than honest Thady - afterward, in the time of Sir Murtagh, deceased, I remember to hear them calling me old Thady and now Im come to poor Thady; for I wear a long great coat winter and summer, which is very handy, as I never put my arms into the sleeves; they are as good as new, though come Holantide next Ive had it these seven years; it holds on by a single button round my neck, cloak fashion. To look at me, you would hardly think poor Thady was the father of attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman and never minds what poor Thady says, and having better than fifteen hundred a year, landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady; but I wash my hands of his doings, and as I have lived so will I die, true and loyal to the family. The family of the Rackrents is, I am proud to say, one of the most ancient in the kingdom. (. . .) Sir Tallyhoo only never gave a gate upon it, it being his maxim that a car was the best gate. Poor gentleman! He lost a fine hunter and his life, at last, by it, all in one days hunt. But I ought to bless that day, for the estate came straight into the family, upon one condition, which Sir Patrick OShaughlin at the time took sadly to heart, they say, but thought better of it afterwards, seeing how large a stake depended upon it, that he should, by act of parliament, take and bear the surname and arms of Rackrent. Now it was that the world was to see what was in Sir Patrick. On coming into the estate, he gave the finest entertainment ever was heard of in the country; not a man could stand after supper but Sir Patrick himself, who could sit out the best man in Ireland, let alone the three kingdoms itself. (. . .) Sir Patrick died that night: just as the company rose to drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was carried off: they sat it out, and were surprised, on inquiry, in the morning, to find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick. Never did any gentleman live and die more beloved in the country by rich and poor. His funeral was such a one as was never known before or since in the country! (. . .)But whod have thought it? Just as all was going on right, through his own town they were passing, when the body was seized for debt - a rescue was apprehended from the mob; but the heir who attended the funeral was against that, for the fear of consequences, seeing that those villains who came to serve acted under the disguise of the law: so, to be sure, the law must take its course, and little
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gain had the creditors for their pains. First and foremost, they had the curses of the country: and Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the new heir, in the next place, on account of this affront to the body, refused to pay a shilling of the debts, in which he was countenanced by all the best gentlemen of property, and others of his acquaintance; Sir Murtagh alleging in all companies, that he all along meant to pay his fathers debts of honour, but the moment the law was taken of him, there was an end of honour to be sure. It was whispered (but none but the enemis of the family believe it), that this was all a sham seizure to get quit of the debts, which he had bound himself to pay in honour.
Sommerville and Ross [Edith Somerville (1858-1949)and Violet Martin (1862-1915)]: The Real Charlotte (1894)
Charlotte, an intelligent but plain-looking middle-class Protestant of 40, wants to make her way up the social scale in the village of Lismoyle by marrying her pretty cousin Francie Fitzpatrick to Christopher Dysart, son and heir of the local ascendancy family in Bruff Castle. At the same time, Charlotte tries to win the Dysarts land agent Roddy Lambert for herself, using prospects of property as the main enticement. Her plan fails on both fronts when Francie falls in love with a member of the garrison in town, and, when he jilts her, marries the infatuated Lambert. THE REAL CHARLOTTE
Well, your ladyship, she said, in the bluff, hearty voice which she felt accorded best with the theory of herself that she had built up in Lady Dysarts mind, Ill head a forlorn hope to the bottom of the lake for you, and welcome; but for the honour of the house, you might give me a cup otay first! Charlotte had many tones of voice, according with the many facets of her character, and when she wished to be playful she affected a vigorous brogue, not perhaps being aware that her own accent scarcely admitted of being strengthened. This refinement of humour was probably wasted on Lady Dysart. () He had the saving, or perhaps fatal power of seeing his own handiwork with as unflattering an eye as he saw other peoples. He had no confidence in anything about himself except his critical ability, and he did not satisfy that, his tentative essays in painting died an early death. It was the same with everything else. His fastidious dislike of doing a thing indifferently was probably a form of conceit: it brought about him a kind of deadlock. () Wheres Charlotte Mullen, till I tell her to her face that I know her plots and her thricks? Tis to say that to her I came here, and to tell her twas she lent money to Peter Joyce that was grazing my farm, and refused it to him secondly, the way hes go bankrupt on me, and shes to have my farm and my house that my grandfather built, thinking to even herself with the rest of the gentry . . .
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Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973): The Last September (1929)

o Set in the Naylors big house, Danielstown, it explores their niece Lois Farquahars emotional and sexual awakening against the background of the Anglo-Irish War in 1920.
THE LAST SEPTEMBER
She shut her eyes and tried - as sometimes when she was seasick, locked in misery between Holyhead and Kingstown - to be enclosed in a nonentity, in some ideal no-place, perfect and clear as a bubble. () And she could not try to explain . . . how after every return - awakening, even, from sleep or preoccupation - she and those home surroundings further penetrated each other mutually in the discovery of a lack. () He had seemed amazed at her being young when he wasnt. She could not hope to explain that her youth seemed to her rather theatrical and that she was only young in that way because people expected it. She had never refused a role . . . She could not hope to assure him she was enjoying anything he had missed, that she was now convinced and anxious but intended to be quite certain, by the time she was his age, that she had once been happy. For to explain this - were explanation possible to so courteous, ironical and unfriendly a listener - would, she felt, be disloyal to herself, to Gerald, to an illusion both were called upon to maintain. () It must be because of Ireland he was in such a hurry . . . She could not conceive of her country emotionally . . . His intentions burned on the dark an almost invisible trail; he might well have been a murderer he seemed so inspired.
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4.3.2.2. Poetry W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) : Coole Park 1929; Coole Park and Ballylee 1931
COOLE PARK
I meditate upon a swallows flight, Upon an aged woman and her house, A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night Although that western cloud is luminous, Great works constructed there in natures spite For scholars and for poets after us, Thoughts long knitted into a single thought, A dance-like glory that those walls begot.
There Hyde before he had beaten into prose That noble blade the Muses buckled on, There one that ruffled in a many pose For all his timid heart, there that slow man, That meditative man, John Synge, and those Impetuous men, Shawe-Taylor and Hugh Lane, Found pride established in humility, A scene well Set and excellent company.
They came like swallows and like swallows went, And yet a womans powerful character Could keep a Swallow to its first intent; And half a dozen in formation there, That seemed to whirl upon a compass-point, Found certainty upon the dreaming air, The intellectual sweetness of those lines That cut through time or cross it withershins.
Here, traveller, scholar, poet, take your stand When all those rooms and passages are gone, When nettles wave upon a shapeless mound And saplings root among the broken stone, And dedicate - eyes bent upon the ground, Back turned upon the brightness of the sun And all that sensuality of the shade A moments memory to that laurelled head.
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COOLE AND BALLYLEE Under my window-ledge the waters race Otters below and moor-hens on the top, Run for a mile undimmed in Heavens face Then darkening through dark Rafterys cellar drop, Run underground, rise in a rocky place In Coole demesne, and there to finish up Spread to a lake and drop into a hole. Whats water but the generated soul? Upon the border of that lakes a wood Now all dry sticks under a wintry sun, And in a copse of beeches there I stood, For Natures pulled her tragic buskin on And all rants a mirror of my mood: At sudden thunder of the mounting swan I turned about and looked where branches break The glittering reaches of the flooded lake. Another emblem there! That stormy white But seems a concentration on the sky; And, like the soul, it sails into the sight And in the mornings gone, no man knows why; And is so lovely that it sets to right What knowledge or its lack had set awry, So arrogantly pure, a child might think It can be murdered with a spot of ink. Sound of a stick upon the floor, a sound From somebody that toils from chair to chair; Beloved books that famous hands have bound, Old marble heads, old pictures everywhere; Great rooms where travelled men and children found Content or joy; a last inheritor Where none has reigned that lacked a name and fame Or out of folly into folly came. A spot whereon the founders lived and died Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees, Or gardens rich in memory glorified Marriages, alliances and families, And every brides ambition satisfied. Where fashion or mere fantasy decrees We shift about - all that great glory spent Like some poor Arab tribesman and his tent. We were the last romantics - chose for theme Traditional sanctity and loveliness; Whatevers written in what poets name The book of the people; whatever most can bless The mind of man or elevate a rhyme; But all is changes, that high horse riderless, Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.
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4.3.2.3. Drama Lennox Robbinson (1886-1958): The Big House (1926), (Killycregs in Twilight (1937)
o The Big House offers four scenes from the recent life of a Big House family, the Alcocks of Ballydonal House in County Cork, which span the years 1918 and 1923, the period which witnessed to the fall of the old order and the inevitable decline of the Big House in Irish life and culture. At the beginning of the play, the myths of the Ascendancy sustain both the appearance of the house, with its impressive Georgian architecture and large, comfortable rooms described as containing the vestigial of generations [21, 139] and the beliefs that underpin St Leger Alcocks quasi-feudal utopianism, which makes him revel in the privileged position of Ballydonal as symbol of the Anglo-Irish culture in the community and in his own role as paterfamilias to the surrounding peasant villagers. But, through the course of the play, the individual members of the family as well as the house and the myths sustaining it are besieged by history: the two sons, sent to fight in the Great War under the English flag, are both killed on the front, while at home, the villagers, whom the family attempted to defend against the Black and Tans, turn against their Protestant neighbours. Betrayed from within, the house is attacked by the Irregulars for favouring the Free State government and burnt to the ground.
W.B. Yeats: Purgatory (1938)

o An old peddler and his 16-year-old son return to the ruined big house where the father was conceived. The old man relates how his mother married a drunken stable-hand who wasted her inheritance, eventually burning the house down. At the age of 16 the peddler, hating his father who had kept him ignorant and made him coarse, killed him on the night of the fire. The ghost of the stablehand and his bride now re-enact the peddlers conception, and in an attempt to exorcise guilt and remorse, he stabs his own son with the knife he used on his father. To his horror the hoof-beats start again, as the ghosts live through their passion and their suffering once more.
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PURGATORY OLD MAN. But there are some That do not care whats gone, whats left: The souls in Purgatory that come back To habitations and familiar spots. BOY. Your wits are out again. OLD MAN. Re-live Their transgressions, and that not once But many times; they know at last The consequence of those transgressions Whether upon others or upon themselves; Upon others, others may bring help, For when the consequence is at an end The dream must end; if upon themselves, There is no help but in themselves And in the mercy of God. BOY. I have had enough! Talk to the jackdaws, if talk you must. OLD MAN. Stop! Sit there upon that stone. That is the house where I was born. ( . . .) OLD MAN. Looked at him and married him, And he squandered everything she had. She never knew the worst, because She died in giving birth to me, But now she knows it all, being dead. Great people lived and died in this house; Magistrates, colonels, members of Parliament, Captains and Governors, and long ago Men that had fought at Aughrim and the Boyne. Some that had gone on Government work To London or to India came home to die, Or came from London every spring To look at the may-blossom in the park. They had loved the trees that he cut down To pay what he had lost at cards Or spent on horses, drink and women; Had loved the house, had loved all The intricate passages of the house, But he killed the house; to kill a house Where great men grew up, married, died, I here declare a capital offence. (. . .)
Listen to the hoof-beats! Listen, listen!
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BOY. I cannot hear a sound. OLD MAN. Beat! Beat! This night is the anniversary Of my mothers wedding night, Or of the night wherein I was begotten. My father is riding from the public-house, A whiskey-bottle under his arm. [A window is lit showing a young girl.] ( . . .) OLD MAN: Do not let him touch you! It is not true that drunken men cannot beget, And if he touch he must beget And you must bear his murderer. Deaf! Both deaf! If I should throw A stick or a stone they would not hear; And thats proof my wits are out. (...) Come back! Come back! And so you thought to slip away, My bag of money between your fingers, And that I could not talk and see! You have been rummaging in the pack. ( . . .) BOY. What if I killed you? You killed my grand-dad, Because you were young and he was old. Now I am young and you are old. (...) OLD MAN. That beast there would know nothing, being nothing, If I should kill a man under the window He would not even turn his head. [He stabs the boy.] My father and my son on the same jack-knife! That finishes - there -there - there[He stabs again and again. The window grows dark.] (. . .) Dear mother, the window is dark again, But you are in the light because I finished all that consequence. I killed that lad because had he grown up He would have struck a womans fancy, Begot and passed pollution on. (...) Hoof-beats! Dear God, How quickly it returns - beat - beat -! Her mind cannot hold up that dream. Twice a murderer and all for nothing, And she must animate that dead night Not once but many times! ( . . .)
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Samuel Beckett (1906-1989): A Piece of Monologue (1979)

o The lonely speakers memories recall familiar pictures of the Protestant Ascendancy, now dead and gone.
A PIECE OF MONOLOGUE
Covered with pictures once. Pictures of . . . he all but said of loved ones. . . . Down one after another. Gone. Torn to shreds and scattered. . . . Over the years. Years of nights. . . . So stands there facing blank wall. Dying on. No more no less. () Grey light. Rain pelting. Umbrellas round a grave. Seen from above. Streaming black canopies. Black ditch beneath. Rain bubbling in the black mud. Empty for the moment. That place beneath. Which . . . he all but said which loved one? . . . Coffin out of frame. Whose? Fade. Gone. Move on to other matters. Try to move on. To other matters. () Thirty thousand nights of ghosts beyond. Beyond that black beyond. Ghost light. Ghost nights. Ghost rooms. Ghost graves. Ghost . . . he all but said ghost loved ones. Waiting on the rip words. Stands there staring beyond at that black veil lips quivering to half-heard words. Treating of other matters. . . . Never but the one matter. The dead and gone. The dying and the going.
Brian Friel (1929 - ): Aristocrats (1979)

o Friels play permutes a Catholic family into a big house setting, in order to chronicle its disintegration at a reunion in Ballybeg Hall. The wedding of the youngest daughter Claire to a small local greengrocer coincides with the death of the patriarch of the family, District Justice ODonnell, who has oppressed his children in his need for absolute authority. Eamon, married into the family, is aware of the decline and is the only one to experience a sense of loss, as the play moves slowly and lyrically towards an extended scene of Chekhovian leavetaking where the members of the family say goodbye to each other and to their past.
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CHAPTER 5 THE PASTORAL IN IRISH LITERATURE

5.1. POLITICAL NATIONALISM
1848 the Young Irelanders, a splinter group from O'Connell's repeal association, attempt a failed insurrection 1858 the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret insurrectionary group, is formed out of the Fenian Movement, under the leadership of James Stephens; it attempts a failed insurrection in 1867. 1870 the Home Government Association, soon to become the Home Rule League, is founded by Isaac Butt 1875 Charles Stewart Parnell enters parliament; he soon assumes leadership of the Home Rule League from Butt 1886 the first Home Rule bill is defeated in parliament 1889 Parnell is named co-respondent in OShea divorce petition, leading to his split with catholic clergy and condemnation by British public. 1893 the second Home Rule bill is defeated in parliament; the Gaelic league is founded by Douglas Hyde
5.2.
CULTURAL NATIONALISM: main premises

The essential, spiritual life of a people subsists in its culture; Language bears the gifts of the past into the present and supplies a living link with a racial spirituality, expressed in legends, literature and songs. Irish independence is translated in terms of the countrys distinctive cultural inheritance (i.e. Celtic).
5.3.
THE PASTORAL MODE:

Archetypal human response to the countryside, viewed either as a mythic Golden Age, or as rural simplicity and morality to be contrasted to the present urban existence. If the Anglophone view has invariably constructed the Irish identity as the negative term of the basic opposition established between barbarism and civilisation, the native representational range for Irishness has mainly nurtured on the pastoral, and rural Ireland, variously seen as Romantic Golden Age or peasant community has been discursively used to signify the nation.
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5.4.
CELTICISM:
Cultural discourse on the Irish identity, emerging in the second half of the 19th century, influenced by Matthew Arnolds lectures collected and published as On the Study of Celtic Literature (1876) 5.4.1. Matthew Arnold (1822 1888): poet and cultural critic. His principal writings are: in poetry, Poems (1853), containing "Sohrab and Rustum," and "The Scholar Gypsy;" Poems, 2nd Series (1855), containing "Balder Dead;" Merope (1858); New Poems (1867), containing "Thyrsis," "A Southern Night," "Rugby Chapel," "The Weary Titan," and his masterpiece, "Dover Beach." in prose, On Translating Homer (1861 and 1862), On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867), Essays in Celtic Literature (1868), Essays in Criticism, 2nd Series (1888), Culture and Anarchy (1869), Literature and Dogma (1873), God and the Bible (1875), Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877), Mixed Essays (1879), Irish Essays (1882), and Discourses in America (1885). He also wrote some works on the state of education in mainland Europe.
5.4.2. On the Study of Celtic Literature (1876) is influenced by the thesis propounded by Ernest Renan in his Posie des Races Celtique, which, drawing on contemporary philological discourses, had advanced the notion of the Celt as the producer of civility and culture within the mutually interdependent Indo-European family of races, Matthew Arnold developed this view in the context of British cultural imperialism, paying thus the Celtic world the first valuable compliment it had received from an English source in several hundred years 21 . Indeed, the Englishmans work sets out to provide a list of attributes pertaining to the Celtic race, emphasising the qualities of melancholy, other-worldliness, indifference to fact, bravery in defeat, sensitivity to verbal and musical magic, but his intention is far from being that of outlining these virtues as the basis of a separate Celtic culture and, consequently, power. Careful to put a politically independent future for the Celts beyond the bounds of possibility, Arnold argues that it is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales and Ireland can at this day hope to count for much 22 , because, having ineffectualness and selfwill for its defect 23 , it lacks the capacity for political self-government: the skillful and resolute application of means to ends which is needed both to make progress in material civilisation and also to form powerful states, is just hat the Celt has least turn for . . . as in material civilisation he has been ineffectual, so has the Celt been ineffectual in politics 24 .
John V. Kelleher, Matthew Arnold and the Celtic Revival, in Perspectives in Criticism, edited by Harry Levin, Chicago, 1971, p. 197. 22 Quoted from D. Cairns and S. Richards, op. cit., pp. 46-47. 23 Quoted from J.V. Kelleher, op. cit., p. 210. 24 Ibid.
21
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Arnolds aim is ultimately that of getting his fellow Englishmen accept that an invigorated British culture may stem only of the blending of the positive aspects of Saxon common sense and steadfastness 25 with Celtic sensibility, which would provide the only antidote to what he calls the Philistinism of modern economic society: . . . we may use German faithfulness to Nature to give us science and to free us from insolence and self-will; we may use the Celtic quickness of perception to give us delicacy and to free us from hardness and Philistinism 26 . As Cairns and Richards note, the importance of Arnolds study resides with the fact that the critic managed to produce a context for the cultural incorporation of the Celts which flattered them into accepting a subsidiary position for themselves vis-vis the English 27 , the recognition of the values of their cultural products being a healing measure in Anglo-Irish relations on the cultural plane. More than this, due to the fact that the sensibility of the Celtic nature, its nervous exaltation, have something feminine in them, and the Celt is peculiarly disposed to feel the spell of the feminine idiosyncrasy 28 , the centrality of the Celts within the British culture was guaranteed through this resort to the categories of sexuality - by the needs of the masculine Saxons. According to Seamus Deane, one major outcome of the English critics study was that of introducing the Celtic idea as a differentiating fact between Ireland and England, managing to give this word a political resonance it has not yet entirely lost. 29 Consequently, it was accepted that the Celtic spirit was utterly different from the Saxon one, and Spensers dichotomy between the English order and the Irish lawlessness was re-written as that between Saxon pragmatism and Celtic spirituality:
5.4.3 Celt / Saxon dichotomies:
ENGLISH Saxon material reasoned realist objective scientific modern masculine
IRISH Celt spiritual emotional idealist visionary mystic primitive feminine
The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, edited by Robert Welch, Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1996, p. 21. 26 Quoted from D. Cairns and S. Richards, op. cit., p. 47. 27 Ibid., p. 49. 28 Ibid., p. 48. 29 Seamus Deane, Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature, London: Faber and Faber, 1985.
25
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5.5.
GAEL-ICISM:
o Cultural discourse emerging in opposition to Celtism o Promoted by the members of the Gaelic League o Irish identity based on the Gael: masculine, warrior-like, antagonistic to the Anglo-Saxon. o Institutions like the Gaelic Athletic Association (founded in 1884 as a powerful rural network emphasising physical training), or the Gaelic League (established nine years later and mainly dedicated to the revival of the Gaelic language) promoted a definition of Irishness based on the Gael, seen as masculine, warrior-like, and, consequently, antagonistic to the Anglo-Saxon. Consequently the Gaeltacht people of the rural west were turned into the ideal of Irishness, becoming endowed with every virtue known to Gaelic civilisation. o On the other hand, this Gaelic idea of Irishness soon came to fuse with the other important discourse shaping rural Ireland, namely familism 30 .
5.5.1. FAMILISM:
The Great Potato Famine which had struck Ireland in 1846, had led to a sudden drop in population among the rural Catholic class 31 , and, as a consequence, during the latter half of the 19th century, the Irish countryside underwent a complex series of economic, social and cultural accommodations with the new circumstances brought by the simplification of rural social relations, caused by the decline in number and importance of the landless labourers, and the rise in prominence of the tenant farmers, who became the most numerous class in the land. These social changes found a counterpart in the distinct culture which this class evolved in response to these novel social and economic factors, marked by a series of practices and procedures, collectively termed familism, which the tenant-farmers used in order to consolidate, extend and transmit family holdings from generation to generation. Among these practices, Cairns and Richards note: . . . a number of procedures to control access to marriage, including the imposition and perpetuation of strict codes of behaviour between men and women, general endorsement of celibacy outside marriage and postponement of marriage in farmers families until the chosen heir was allowed by the father to take possession of the farm [ . . . ]the spread of matchmaking as a preliminary to marriage; pressure on surplus sons and daughters to emigrate; pressure on them to observe strict chastity and not,
See D. Cairns and S. Richards, op. cit., Chapters 3 and 4. According to Hugh Kearney (The British Isles: A History of Four Nations, Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1989), the Famine enhanced once more the differences between the Irish Catholic south and the mainly Scots Presbyterian north, due to their contrasting experiences. While the northern rural areas, were the main element of popular diet was oats, were spared in the main by the failure of the potato crops, the southern ones of small farming and labouring classes, heavily dependant on the potato, were decimated by starvation and disease. By 1847 large numbers of small farmers were obliged to emigrate to the United States, while by 1851 statistics showed that Ireland had lost one quarter of its population, either by emigration or by death, a social tragedy that had its greatest impact on the Catholic poor.
30 31
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through following their own desires, to risk the transmission of the farm under unfavourable circumstances through a msalliance . . . 32 The codes of belief and behaviour upon which familism rested, particularly the regulation of sexuality, and unquestioned patriarchal authority 33 , were also discursively controlled by Catholicism, hence the merging of the two provided the additional marks of identity to the Gaelic Irishness. Thus, while retaining what were perceived as positive characteristics of Celticism, such as the assumed spirituality and anti-materialism of the Irish, the rural definition of Irishness deployed linguistic, religious and moral categories not only as criteria of national identity, but also as a code for anti-Englishness 34 . In this view, anything English could not be but a corrupting influence on the Gaelic mentality. Declan Kiberd in his study of modern Irish literature and culture, Inventing Ireland, shows how this definition of Irishness mainly aimed at projecting the country as not-England, where anything English was ipso facto not for the Irish [. . . ], but any valued cultural possessions of the English were shown to have their Gaelic equivalents 35 .
5.5.2. GAEL / SAXON DICHOTOMIES:
IRISH Gael Irish language Brehon law Gaelic football Catholic moral manly rural
ENGLISH Saxon English language* English law* soccer* Protestant corrupt effeminate urban
D. Cairns and S. Richards, op. cit., pp. 42-43. Ibid., p. 60. 34 R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 1600-1972, London: Penguin Books, 1989, p. 449. 35 Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, London: Vintage, 1996, p. 151. * These categories are presented in Kiberds study as instances of national parallelism
32 33
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5.6.
THE IRISH LITERARY REVIVAL
o The Irish Literary Revival stimulated new appreciation of traditional Irish literature. The movement also encouraged the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from English culture. This was, in part, due to the political need for an individual Irish identity. An important symbol of the literary revival became the Abbey Theatre, which served as the stage for many new Irish writers and playwrights of the time. o It was influenced by both celticism and gaelicism.
5.6.1. Main representatives: 5.6.1.1. W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

Poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure, Yeats was born to an Anglo-Irish Protestant family, but turned into a committed Irish nationalist, becoming thus the primary driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival a movement which stimulated new appreciation of traditional Irish literature, encouraging the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from English culture.Yeats was also co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, another great symbol of the literary revival, which served as the stage for many new Irish writers and playwrights of the time. After the establishment of the Irish Free State, Yeats was appointed to the first Irish Senate Seanad ireann in 1922 and re-appointed in 1925. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".
Introduction to Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry(1888) These folk-tales are full of simplicity and musical occurences, for they are the literature of a class for whom every incident in the old rut of birth, love, pain and death has cropped up unchanged for centuries; who have steeped everything in the heart: to whom everything is a symbol. They have the spade over which man has leant from the beginning. The people of the cities have the machine, which is prose and a parvenue.
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from Manifesto for the establishing of the Irish Literary Theatre (1897) We propose to have performed in the spring of every year certain Celtic and Irish plays, which whatever be their degree of excellence, will be written with a high ambition, and so to build up a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature. We hope to find in Ireland an uncorrupted and imaginative audience, trained to listen by its passion for oratory, and believe that our desire to bring upon the stage the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland will ensure for us a tolerant welcome, and that freedom of expression which is not found in the theatre in England, and without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed. We sill show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and easy sentiment, as it has been represented, but the home of an ancient idealism.
5.6.1.2. Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852-1932):

With William Butler Yeats and others, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. She also produced a number of books of retellings of stories from Irish mythology. However, Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her driving force of the Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park, County Galway served as an important meeting place for the leading Revival figures and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as her creative writings were.
5.6.1.3. Douglas Hyde (1860-1949) (Irish: Dubhghlas de hde)

Hyde was an Anglo-Irish scholar of the Irish language and founder of the Gaelic League. His famous pamphlet, The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland, argued that Ireland should follow her own traditions in language, literature and even in dress. He also wrote one-act plays in the Irish language which were staged by the Irish Literary Theatre and then by the Abbey. He also served as the first President of Ireland from 1938 to 1945.
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from THE NECESSITY FOR DE-ANGLICISING IRELAND (1892) When we speak of The necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation, we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English. (. . .) I shall endeavour to show that this failure of the Irish people in recent times has been largely brought about by the race diverging during this century from the right path, and ceasing to be Irish without becoming English. I shall attempt to show that with the bulk of the people this change took place quite recently, much more recently than most people imagine, and is, in fact, still going on. I should also like to call attention to the illogical position of men who drop their language to speak English, of men who translate their euphonious Irish names in English monosyllables, of men who read English books, and know nothing about Gaelic literature, nevertheless protesting as a matter of sentiment that they hate the country which at every hands turn they rush to imitate.(..) What we must endeavour to never forget is this, that the Ireland of today is the descendant of the Ireland of the seventh century, then the school of Europe and the torch of learning.(. . .) What the battleaxe of the Dane, the sword of the Norman, the wile of the Saxon were unable to perform, we have accomplished ourselves. We have at last broken the continuity of Irish life, and just at the moment when the Celtic race is presumably about to largely recover possession of its own country, it finds itself deprived and striped of its Celtic characteristics, cut off from the past, yet scarcely in touch with the present. It has lost since the beginning of this century almost all that connected it with the era of Cuchullain and of Ossian, that connected it with the Christianisers of Europe, that connected it with Brian Boru and the heroes of Clontarf, with the ONeills and ODonnells, with Rory OMoore, with the Wild Geese, and even to some extent with the men of 98. It has lost all that they had - language, traditions, music, genius and ideas.
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5. 7. J.M. Synge (1871 1909)

Dramatist, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore, Synge was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre. Although he came from a middle-class Protestant background, Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the world of the Irish-speaking peasants of rural Ireland (Gaeltacht) and with what he saw as the essential paganism of their world view. He suffered from Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer that was untreatable at the time and died just weeks short of his 38th birthday. from the Preface to The Tinkers Wedding: Of the things which nourish the imagination humour is one of the most needful, and it is dangerous to limit or destroy it. Baudelaire calls laughter the greatest sign of the Satanic element in man; and where a country loses its humour, as some towns in Ireland are doing, there will be morbidity of mind, as Baudelaires mind was morbid. In the greater part of Ireland, however, the whole people, from the tinkers to the clergy, have still a life, and a view of life that are rich and genial and humorous. I do not think that these country people, who have so much humour themselves, will mind being laughed at without malice, as the people in every country have been laughed at in their own comedies.
5.7.1. Plays:
5.7.1.1. In the Shadow of the Glen (1902): Nora Burke is married to Dan, a sheep farmer many years her elder, and they live in the last cottage at the head of a long glen in County Wicklow. Dan shams his death because he suspects Nora to be a bad wife. A passing Tramp begs shelter from the wet night and the woman lets him in, but then she leaves the Tramp alone in order to call to a young neighbouring sheep farmer, Michael Dara. Once she is gone, Dan Burke sits up. He shares his suspicions and his schemes with the Tramp and assumes his sham death-pose before Nora and Michael enter. Michael is hatching plans for Dans legacy and Noras thoughts are taking on an unexpected dark complexion, when the old man rises up and banishes his wife from the house. The Tramp takes up her cause, soothing her with fine words to win her over to a life on the road. They leave together, while Dan and Michael compliment each other over whiskey. Riders to the Sea (1904): a one-act play which tells of an old woman, Maurya, who has lost her husband and five of her six fishermen sons to the sea, and who earnestly begs the last Bartley not to undertake a treacherous crossing to sell a pig on the mainland. When Bartleys body is returned, dripping in a sailcloth, the old woman transcends her agony by accepting her loss.
5.7.1.2.
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RIDERS TO THE SEA

CHARACTERS: MAURYA (an old woman); BARTLEY (her son); CATHLEEN (her daughter);NORA (a younger daughter);MEN and WOMEN. SCENE. An island off the West of Ireland. (Cottage kitchen, with nets, oil-skins, spinning wheel, some new boards standing by the wall, etc. Cathleen, a girl of about twenty, finishes kneading cake, and puts it down in the pot-oven by the fire; then wipes her hands, and begins to spin at the wheel. Nora, a young girl, puts her head in at the door.) NORA (in a low voice): Where is she? CATHLEEN: Shes lying down, God help her, and may be sleeping, if shes able. (NORA comes in softly, and takes a bundle from under her shawl.) CATHLEEN (spinning the wheel rapidly): What is it you have? NORA: The young priest is after bringing them. Its a shirt and a plain stocking were got off a drowned man in Donegal. (CATHLEEN stops her wheel with a sudden movement, and leans out to listen.) NORA: Were to find out if its Michaels they are, some time herself will be looking by the sea. CATHLEEN: How would they be Michaels, Nora. How would he go the length of that way to the far north? NORA: The young priest says hes known the like of it. If its Michaels they are says he, you can tell herself hes got a clean burial by the grace of God, and if theyre not his, let no one say a word about them, for shell be getting her death, says he, with crying and lamenting.(The door which NORA half closed is blown open by a gust of wind.) CATHLEEN (looking out anxiously): Did you ask him would he stop Bartley going this day with the horses to the Galway fair? NORA: I wont stop him, says he, but let you not be afraid. Herself does say prayers half through the night, and the Almighty God wont leave her destitute, says he, with no son living. CATHLEEN: Is the sea bad by the white rocks, Nora? NORA: Middling bad, God help us. Theres a great roaring in the west, and its worse itll be getting when the tides turned to the wind. (She goes ever to the table with the bundle.) Shall I open it now? CATHLEEN: Maybe shed wake up on us, and come in before wed done. (Coming to the table.) Its a long time well be, and the two of us crying. NORA (goes to the inner door and listens): Shes moving about on the bed. Shell be coming in a minute. CATHLEEN: Give me the ladder, and Ill put them up in the turf-loft, the way she wont know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns shell be going down to see would he be floating from the east.(They put the ladder against the gable of the chimney; CATHLEEN goes up a few steps and hides the bundle in the turf-loft. MAURYA comes from the inner room.)
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MARYA (looking up at CATHLEEN and speaking querulously): Isnt it turf enough you have for this day and evening? CATHLEEN: Theres a cake baking at the fire for a short space (throwing down the turf) and Bartley will want it when the tide turns if he goes to Connemara. (NORA picks up the turf and puts it round the pot-oven.) (......) MAURYA: I went down to the spring well, and I stood there saying a prayer to myself. Then Bartley came along, and he riding on the red mare with the grey pony behind him. (She puts up her hands, as if to hide something from her eyes.) The Son of God spare us, Nora! CATHLEEN: What is it you seen. MAURYA: I seen Michael himself. CATHLEEN (speaking softly): You did not, mother; It wasnt Michael you seen, for his body is after being found in the far north, and hes got a clean burial by the grace of God. MAURYA (a little defiantly): Im after seeing him this day, and he riding and galloping. Bartley came first on the red mare; and I tried to say God speed you, but something choked the words in my throat. He went by quickly; and the blessing of God on you, says he, and I could say nothing. I looked up the, and I crying, at the grey pony, and there was Michael upon it - with fine clothes on him, and new shoes on his feet. CATHLEEN (begins to keen): Its destroyed we are from this day. Its destroyed, surely. NORA: Didnt the young priest say the Almighty God wouldnt leave her destitute with no son living? MAURYA (in a low voice, but clearly): Its little the like of him knows of the sea . . . . Bartley will be lost now, and let you call in Eamon and make me a good coffin out of the white boards, for I wont live after them. Ive had a husband, and a husbands father, and six sons in this house - six fine men, though it was a hard birth I had with every one of them and they coming to the world - and some of them were found and some of them were not found, but theyre gone now the lot of them. . . . There were Stephen, and Shawn, were lost in the great wind, and found after in the Bay of Gregory of the Golden Mouth, and carried up the two of them on the one plank, and in by that door.(She pauses for a moment, the girls start as if they heard something through the door that is half open behind them.) NORA (in a whisper): Did you hear that, Cathleen? Did you hear a noise in the north-east? CATHLEEN (in a whisper): Theres some one after crying out by the seashore. MAURYA (continues without hearing anything): There was Sheamus and his father, and his own father again, were lost in a dark night, and not a stick or sign was seen of them when the sun went up. There was Patch after was drowned out of a curagh that turned over. I was sitting here with Bartley, and he a baby, lying on my two knees, and
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I seen two women, and three women, and four women coming in, and they crossing themselves, and not saying a word. I looked out then, and there were men coming after them, and they holding a thing in the half of a red sail, and water dripping out of it - it was a dry day, Nora - and leaving a track to the door. (She pauses again with her hand stretched out towards the door. It opens softly and old women begin to come in, crossing themselves on the threshold, and kneeling down in front of the stage with red petticoats over their heads.) MAURYA (half in a dream, to CATHLEEN): Is it Patch, or Michael, or what is it at all? CATHLEEN: Michael is after being found in the far north, and when he is found there how could he be here in this place? MAURYA: There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea, and what way would they know if it was Michael they had, or another man like him, for when a man is nine days in the sea, and the wind blowing, its hard set his own mother would be to say what man was it. CATHLEEN: It is Michael, God spare him, for theyre after sending us a bit of his clothes from the far north. (She reaches out and hands MAURYA the clothes that belonged to Michael. MAURYA stands up slowly and takes them in her hands. NORA looks out.) NORA: Theyre carrying a thing among them and theres water dripping out of it and leaving a track by the big stones. CATHLEEN (in a whisper to the women who have come in): Is it Bartley it is? ONE OF THE WOMEN: It is surely, God rest his soul. (Two younger WOMEN come in and pull out the table. Then men carry in the body of Bartley, laid on a plank, with a bit of sail over it, and lay it on the table.) CATHLEEN (to the women, as they are doing so): What way was he drowned? ONE OF THE WOMEN: The grey pony knocked him into the sea, and he was washed out . . . . .
5.7.1.3.
The Well of the Saints ( 1905): Martin and Mary Doul, two blind beggars have been led to believe that they are beautiful by the lies of the townsfolk, when in fact they are old and ugly. A saint restores their sight with water drawn from a well in a place across a bit of the sea, where there is an island. They are now able-bodied, and must hire themselves out for manual labour to survive. Martin goes to work for Timmy the smith and tries to seduce his betrothed, Molly, but she viciously rejects him, and Timmy sends him away. Blindness descends on them once more, the saint goes to restore their sight a second time. The couple refuse the cure this time, decided to embrace a life on the roads, having seen the ill-will of those around them. The Tinkers Wedding (1906)
5.7.1.4.
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The Playboy of the Western World (1907): it tells how Christy Mahon arrives in a Co. Mayo village and wins the hearts of the local women by boasting that he has killed his father. His prowess at the local sports confirms him in the role of a hero and as fitting mate for Pegeen Mike, daughter of Michael James (Flaherty), a widower who owns the country pub where Christy stays. Christy woos Pegeen Mike away from her cousin, Shawn Keogh, a pathetic, priest-fearing peasant, by his fine talk and athletic feats. When the supposedly murdered father enters the scene, the community turn upon their hero, despite his offer to slay his da a second time. Escaping from their clutches, he tames his father, and the two leave the stage, disdainful of the gullible Mayo peasants. Christy, the servile son, has been transformed into a figure of power and dignity by this rite of passage, and Pegeen Mike is left to lament her loss of the only playboy of the western world. The play was condemned by nationalists as a travesty of western Irish life which evoked a peasantry of alcoholics and ineffectual fantasists rather than a people ready to assume the responsibilities of self-government. FROM THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD (1907)
. . . not a play with a purpose in the modern sense of the world, but although parts of it are, or are meant to be extravagant comedy, still a great deal more that is behind it is perfectly serious when looked at in a certain light. . . There are, it may be hinted, several sides to The Playboy. 1) Christie [twisting round on her with a sharp cry of horror]: Dont strike me. I killed my poor father, Tuesday was a week, for doing the like of that. Pegeen [with blank amazement]: Is it killed your father? Christie [subsiding] With the help of God I did, surely, and that the Holy Immaculate Mother may intercede for his soul. Philly [retreating with Jimmy]: Theres a daring fellow. Jimmy: Oh. Glory be to God! Michael [with great respect] That was a hanging crime, mister honey. You should have had good reasons for doing the like of that. Christie [in a very reasonable tone]: He was a dirty man, God forgive him, and he getting old and crusty, the way I couldnt put up with him at all. Pegeen: And you shot him dead? [. . .] Christie: I did not, then. I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it on the ridge of his skull, and he went down at my feet like an empty sack, and never let a grunt or groan from him at all. 2) Christie: . . .Well, thisd be a fine place to be my whole life talking out with swearing Christians, in place of my old dogs and cats; and I stalking around, smoking my pipe and drinking my fill, and never a days work but drawing a cork an odd time, or wiping a glass, or rinsing out a shiny tumbler for a decent man. [He takes the
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looking-glass from the wall and puts it on the back of a chair; then sits down in front of it and begins washing his face]. Didnt I know rightly, I was handsome, though it was the divils own mirror we had beyond, would twist a squint across an angels brow; and Ill be growing fine from this day, the way Ill have a soft lovely skin on me and wont be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung. [. . .]
3) Christie [impressively]: With that sun came out between the cloud and the hill, and it shining green on my face. God have mercy on your soul, says he, lifting a scythe. Or on your own, says I, raising the loy. Susan: Thats a grand story. Honor: He tells it lovely. Christie [flattered and confident, waving bone]: He gave a drive with the scythe, and I gave a lep to the east. Then I turned around with back to the north, and I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet. [He raises the chicken bone to his Adams apple.] Girls [together]: Well, youre a marvel! Oh, God bless you! Youre the lad, surely! 4) Christie [to Pegeen]: And what is it youll say to me, and I after doing it this time in the face of all? Pegeen: Ill say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but whats a squabble in your back yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that theres a gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed. [. . .] Christie: Youre blowing for to torture me. [His voice rising and growing stronger]. Thats your kind, is it? Then let the lot of you be wary, for, if Ive had to face the gallows, Ill have a gay march down, I tell you, and shed the blood of some of you before I die.[. . .]If I can wring a neck among you, Ill have a royal judgement looking on the trembling jury in the courts of law. And wont there be crying out in Mayo the day Ill stretch upon the rope, with ladies in their silks and satins snivelling in their lacy kerchiefs, and they rhyming songs and ballads on the terror of my fate? 5) Christie: Ten thousand blessings upon all thats here, for youve turned me a likely gaffer in the end of all, the way Ill go romancing through a romping lifetime from this hour to the dawning of the Judgement Day.
5.7.1.6.
Deirdre (1910)
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5.8.
THE PEASANT PLAY:

o A dramatic subgenre established during the 20th century on the Abbey stage; o A play focusing on peasant characters, depicting their lives, habits and customs in a manner true to life; o Characteristic features: peasant cottage setting; peasant life themes (rural marriage, habits and ownership of lands, emigration.)
Rural Ireland started to display gloomier contours once Padraic Colum, Lennox Robinson and T. C. Murray changed the peasant plays focus on the seamy side of the farmers lives: agrarian disputes, the fight for landownership, conflicts between fathers and sons, the unhappiness of matches made to conform to the dictates of familism. Where Synge exploited the image of the Irish tramp as a symbol of imagination and freedom, Colums Broken Soil (1903), revised as The Fiddlers House (1907) showed his audiences the real cost involved in having one in the family. Con Hourican, an instinctive artist and wanderer brings his daughters endless worry, shame and poverty, driving Mairie into a loveless marriage in order to save her family. The Land (1905), set at the end of the Land Wars, dealt with the generational conflicts between Murtagh Cosgar and his son, Mat, over the value of the old rural way of life. Pressed by the ambitious school-teacher Ellen Douras to seek his fortune by emigrating to America such as all of his elder brothers had attempted, Mat left behind the land for which his father had fought so hard to keep intact. Like the previous play, The Land embodied a theme of intimate and recognisable social significance in its real setting, and though love was presented as a disruptive force, it was not improper. Moreover, it raised the question of the worth of the fields won after the Land War in the changing conditions of the countryside where the fittest chose emigration, while the relatively dull and unenterprising Sally Cosgar and Cornelius Duras remained behind to marry and succeed their parents. It was this latter version of the peasant play which became the popular genre of the Irish theatre after the Independence. Theatre as a means for the selfexpression of a rural society had followed the social changes underwent by the class representing it. If, in the beginning of the dramatic movement, the peasants had been discovered as a kind of primordial rural society, untouched by modern forms of life, as landowners and citizens of an independent nation they could no longer play this role. While the pastoral idyll became the focus of satire in plays such as Denis Johnstons The Moon in the Yellow River (1931), the traditional subjects and style of the peasant play remained in the limelight of the Abbey stage helped by successive playwrights like George Shiels, Bryan MacMahon, Tom Coffey, John Murphy, or John B Keane. Shiels The Rugged Path (1940) introduced the audience into a peasant cottage setting provided with electric light and a radio, a metaphor for progress which is set into violent contrast to the traditional notions of law and order based on colonialist conditions marked by the Irish tolerance for lawlessness and contempt for the informer. The members of the Tansey family become the microcosm within which the play explores the two contrasting
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attitudes related to rural violence, exemplified by the wild Dolises from the mountains who terrorise the local farmers and kill an old man for two pounds. While the older generation are afraid to accuse them partly because of their fear of retribution and partly because of the old prejudice against informing, the younger ones decide to give evidence against the Dolis, embarking thus on the rugged path of change and confrontation. John Murphys The Country Boy (1959) picked up the thread of the story from where The Land had left it by focussing on the figure of the returned emigrant, the homecomer who, having left his parents farm and established himself in a non-farming society could be contrasted to the peasants. Where Colums play looked at the causes leading to the rural exodus, Murphys The Country Boy treats emigration as an individual and not a social problem. Eddie Maher, having left fifteen years ago for America, returns home for a vacation with his American wife Julia to find his younger brother Curly planning to emigrate for much the same reasons like his own: their father, the voice of an unyielding past is obstinate in his intention not to turn over the control of the farm to his son. Nevertheless, the old Maher does not stand for the abuse of patriarchy, but for the values of rural existence and even the flaw in his character, his contrariness, is finally revealed as a virtue: it is the test of Curlys resolution, for he must prove mature and self-willed enough not to be afraid of his fathers anger before he can take over the farm. Moreover, the simple rural virtues of the native place are set in contrast to the flimsiness of Eddies and Julias make-believe: the first trying to hide his story of failure under an air of snobbery and a trunk filled with the American homecomers symbols of prosperity, the latter disguising her lower-class origin and proletarian status under the mask of the tourist, always comparing Ireland to America in a condescending manner. The plays nostalgic stance towards rurality as an embodiment of what T.K. Whitaker calls a sort of Paradise Lost 36 ensures the happy ending whereby exposure to his forsaken roots in the country prompt Eddie undergo a recognition crises with a purging effect that enables him to reconcile with his situation and admit its truth in front of his family, helping thus Curly learn the lesson and remain by the farm. Keanes Many Young Men of Twenty (1961) is an angry response to the same phenomenon which reached some of its highest rates at the end of the fifties. The play, set in a country pub where the emigrants gather for a last drink before their departure, one of the characters protests against the political establishment for their neglect of this human tragedy. The Field (1965) treats a similar theme like that of Shiels The Rugged Path, with the action being set in motion by a dispute over land and money, followed by The Bull McCabes murder of his rival and his terrorising of his neighbours against informing. But, unlike in Shield where the farmers eventually testify against the murderer, in The Field the villagers do not inform, justice is not done, and the picture of the rural world is harsh and joyless. In other plays like The Year of the Hiker (1963) and Big Maggie (1969) Keane addressed the theme of the sexual repression with deep roots in the cultural and religious definitions of rurality, making a strong case for the joys of sex and the evil of its suppression.
36 T.K. Whitaker, Economic Development 1958-1985 in Kieran A. Kennedy (ed.), Ireland in Transition, Cork and Dublin: Mercier, 1986, p. 10.
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5.9.
THE BLACK PASTORAL
Black pastoral: works which self-consciously invert the earlier idealizations of life in the west of Ireland by presenting it as brutal and unidyllic (Nicholas Grene)
5.9.1. Patrick McCabe (1950 - )

Patrick McCabe is a writer of mostly dark and violent novels of contemporary, often small-town, Ireland. His novels include The Butcher Boy (1992) and Breakfast onPluto (1998), both shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and adapted into films by the Irish director Neil Jordan. He has also written a children's book (The Adventures of Shay Mouse) and several radio plays broadcast by the RT and the BBC Radio 4.
5.9.1.1. The Butcher Boy (1992)

Written in a hybrid of first-person narrative and stream of consciousness, with little punctuation and no separation of dialogue and thought, the novel is set in a small town in Ireland in the late 1950s. It tells the story of Francis 'Francie' Brady, a schoolboy who retreats into a violent fantasy world as his troubled home life (with a suicidal mother, frequently abused both verbally and physically by the husband, and a bitter alcoholic father) collapses. Becoming obsessed with the sanctimonious Mrs. Nudgent who once claimed that the Brady family were a bunch of pigs, Francie eventually kills her, with the butchers bolt gun he has taken from the abattoir where he works.
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CHAPTER 6 THE CITY IN IRISH LITERATURE

6.1. Political context:
1905 Sinn Fein ("ourselves alone"), a radical nationalist group, is formed by Arthur Griffith 1912-1913 The Home Rule bill is passed in the House of Commons. In response, the Ulster Volunteers (Protestant military force) and then the Irish Volunteers (Catholic military force--soon to become the Irish Republican Army) form; Civil War seems imminent, when World War I begins, and both Nationalists and Unionists agree to suspend the conflict. 1913 The labor movement, led by James Connolly, stage a series of effective strikes in the cities; the strikes are violently put down, but Connolly had managed to connect the plight of urban workers with that of the rural tenants in opposition to British rule. 1916 The Easter Rising: Catholic insurgents seize central areas of Dublin, and proclaim a provisional government; fighting lasts for one week before insurgents are forced to surrender; all but one of the leaders (Eamon de Valera) are executed, to increasing public and international outrage. 1918 Sinn Fein wins the parliamentary elections. De Valera takes over presidency of Sinn Fein from Griffith, establishes new provisional government; the Irish Republican Army forms, begins guerilla warfare campaign against British soldiers; most Irish police resign, replaced by British recruits referred to as the Black and Tans. The fighting is fierce, covert, bitter, and cruel on all sides. 1919-1921 Anglo-Irish War: armed conflict between British forces and Irish Nationalists 1921 The Anglo-Irish treaty establishes two self-governing areas, Northern Ireland (the six counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone) and Southern Ireland (called the Irish Free State) 1922-23 Civil War in Irish Free State between supporters of the treaty (Nationals or Free State troops), led by Griffith and Michael Collins, and opposition, led by de Valera (Irregulars). Armed struggle ends in 1923, and the Irish Free State begins its rule. In Northern Ireland, the Protestant majority succeeds in suppressing the armed rebellions of the Catholic minority; they institute legal, political, and police restrictions assuring Protestant control of virtually every level of government. A bitter hatred and pattern of violence is established in the North that remains to this day.
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(The Declaration of Independence drafted by Patrick Pearse in 1916)
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6.2.
Perceptions of the urban space:
The definition of Irishness, as it was concocted both at the political and cultural level at the end of the 19th century, may be seen as an attempt to fix the two categories of rural versus urban Ireland into a taxonomic relationship assigning priority to the countryside over the city. While rural Ireland was discursively used to represent the national essence, an oppositional un-Irishness became crystallised in the materialist, modern, industrialist and party-biased values of England and the city alike. With independence and the division of the country at the birth of the state, the antithesis was internalised in the opposing stances towards the two different political territories, metonymically represented through the same space of the city. On the one hand, republican Dublin, stamped in public memory as an exemplar of heroic nationalism associated with the 1916 Easter Rising, was perceived as intrinsic to Irishness. On the other hand, the northern Belfast, the only large industrial centre in the island and the home of a large ScotsIrish Presbyterian minority stern in displaying its Unionist sense of identity, became fatally marked off as Irelands Other.
THE ALIEN CITY Belfast Unionist Industry Protestant Materialist Entrepreneurial Decadent English
THE HEROIC CITY Dublin Nationalist Revolution Catholic Idealist Sacrificial Moral Irish
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6.3. The heroic city 6.3.1. W.B. Yeatss Easter 1916.

I HAVE met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking take or a gibe To please a companion Around the fire at the club Being certain that they and I But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. That womans days were spent In ignorant good-will, Her nights in argument Until her voice grew shrill. What voice more sweet than hers When, young and beautiful, She rode to harriers? This man had kept a school, And rode our winged horse; This other his helper and friend Was coming into his force; He might have won fame in the end, So sensitive his nature seemed, So daring and sweet his thought. This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vainglorious lout. He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart, Yet I number him in the song; He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.
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Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream. The horse that comes from the road, The rider, the birds that range From cloud to tumbling cloud, Minute by minute they change; A shadow of cloud on the stream Changes minute by minute; A horse-hoof slides on the brim, And a horse plashes within it; The long-legged moor-hens dive, And hens to moor-cocks call; Minute by minute they live: The stones in the midst of all. Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? That is Heavens part, our part To murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child When sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild. What is it but nightfall? No, no, not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.
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6.3.2. Post-Revolutionary Revisionism

Playwrights like Sean OCasey, Denis Johnston and Brendan Behan engaged in a postrevolutionary theatrical revisionism (Grene: 2002, 137) aimed at redrawing the nationalist map of the heroic Dublin. With the one notable exception provided by OCaseys Dublin trilogy (staged at the Abbey), such plays were also to find alternative venues of production, provided by the small art-house theatres of Dublin.
6.3.2.1. Sean OCasey (1880-1964), The Dublin Trilogy

o The Shadow of A Gunman (1923) o Juno and the Paycock (1924) o The Plough and the Stars (1926) OCaseys Dublin trilogy engages with the episodes of recent nationalist history (the 1916 Easter Rising, the 1919-21 War of Independence and the Civil War of 1922-23) with the aim of revising cherished loci of the republican tradition, especially its much revered myth of the hero-martyr. On his stage such heroes will no longer hold the lime-light, but, by contrary, they will be either peripheral to the action or cast as mere shadows, emphasising thus their imaginary status. In their place, the ordinary, unimportant people will be shown struggling to steer the course of their lives through the chaotic and violent background of the national struggle. Most of these characters will be eventually drawn into the maelstrom and crushed by the impersonal forces of international hatred (Edwards: 1979, 231), though they too are responsible for their fate: due to their own pettiness, selfishness, cowardice, or vanity, but mostly by allowing themselves to be governed by illusion. Once shadows are believed in they are no longer insubstantial but acquire an ominous physicality which will prove fatal for the dreamer. o In The Shadow of A Gunman Minnie Powell is attracted to the idea of a gunman, the hero of the nationalist myth, so Donal Davoren accepts the persona of a gunman in hiding in order to secure her admiration. Once he becomes a shadow of a gunman the engine of the play is set in motion: Minnie falls in love with an imaginary hero and not a real person, and lets herself be governed by an illusion which will eventually destroy her. Trying to save her heros life when a suitcase full of bombs, planted by the real gunman, are discovered in Davorens room, Minnie removes it, but is herself arrested by the Black and Tans, and killed when trying to escape. Minnie has glorified the gun and the gun finally kills her. Hero-worshipping has proved a dangerous illusion: Minnie has died for a shadow, which makes her sacrifice futile. Moreover, her death was not only pointless, but also unnecessary because Minnie is killed by mistake, when the lorry taking her away for questioning is ambushed by the IRA, and, trying to jump off, she is shot in the confusion.
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Seumas: I wish to God it was all over. The country is gone mad. Instead of counting their beads now theyre countin bullets; their Hail Marys and Paternosters are burstin bombs burstin bombs, an the rattle of machine guns; petrol is their holy water; their Mass is a burnin building; their De Profundis is The Soldiers Son, an their Creed is, I believe in the gun almighty, maker of heaven an earth - an its all for the glory o God an the honour o Ireland. Davoren: I remember the time when you yourself believed in nothing but the gun. Seumas: Ay, when there wasnt a gun in the country; Ive a different opinion now when theres nothin but guns in the country o In Juno and the Paycock The Boyles also believe in a shadow: the legacy which they are to inherit is actually an illusion, arising from the misinterpretation of a relatives will. But this legacy is also a metaphor for the newly won national sovereignty (Innes: 1990, 83), with the imagined rise and real fall of the Boyles paralleling the disparity between revolutionary ideal and embittering actuality. In the same way in which the material expectations aroused by the will be contrasted to the familys being irrevocably reduced into debt and poverty, nationalist idealism will be juxtaposed against the fate of the Boyles children: Johnny, the son crippled by a bullet during the Easter Rising, will be executed by his former comrades; Mary, left pregnant and deserted by her lover, as well as by her morally-outraged father, will be forced to leave the home. Nevertheless, while Junos departure at the end of the play may be seen to carry with it, despite Johnnys death, the promise of new life in her unborn grandchild, no such emblematic hope will be afforded to Jack Boyle, left to face the terrible reality that, in fact, th whole whorls in a terr ible state of chassis (OCasey: 1985, 101). Juno: . . . What was the pain I suffered, Johnny, bringin you into the world to carry you to your craddle, to the pains Ill suffer carryin you out o the world to bring you to you grave! Mother o God, Mother o God, have pity on us all! Blessed Virgin, where were you when me darlin son was riddled with bullets? Sacred Heart o Jesus, take away our hearts o stone, and give us hearts o flesh! Take away this murdherin hate, an give us Thine own eternal love! o In The Plough and the Stars the shadow is the Speaker, who, in the second act, is silhouetted outside the window of the public house where most of his tenement dwellers are gathered. The voice preaches the sanctity of hate and the redemption of bloodshed, the words being culled by OCasey from a
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number of Pearses actual writings. Against these awesome, rousing words is juxtaposed the informal life of the pub, engaged in comical, mundane activities, which, nevertheless, concretise the dialectic between vibrant life and the heroic death preached by the Speaker. As shadow, the voice is insubstantial for the existence of the pub-denizens, but once believed in, its voluptuous vision of death turns into terrifying actuality. The real deaths which occur onstage, both of the warriors like Clitheroe, Brennan and Langan, and of the by-standers like Bessie Burgess and Noras unborn child exhibit the distance between the emotive rhetoric of nationalism and what it leads to in terms of its human cost. VOICE: Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood. . .There are many things more horrible that bloodshed and slavery is one of them! . . . The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields. Heroism has come back to the earth. . . When war comes to Ireland she must welcome it as she would welcome the Angel of God! CAPT. BRENNAN [catching up The Plough and the Stars] Imprisonment for th independence of Ireland! LIEUT. LANGDON [catching up the Tri-colour]. Wounds for th Independence of Ireland! CLITHEROE: Death for th Independence of Ireland! THE THREE [together]: So help us God!
6.3.2.2. Denis Johnston (1901-1984)

The Old Lady Says 'No!' (1929) The Moon in the Yellow River (1931) A Bride for the Unicorn (1933) Storm Song (1934) Blind Man's Buff (1936) (with Ernst Toller) The Golden Cuckoo (1939) The Dreaming Dust (1940) A Fourth for Bridge (1948) The Scythe and the Sunset (1958)
The same gap between illusion and reality lies at the centre of Denis Johnstons The Old Lady Says No!, a play written in 1926, but first produced in 1929 at the Gate Theatre, following its rejection by the Abbey. Using an expressionistic technique of collage, the play aims to juxtapose the complexities and complacencies of the Irish Free State, metonymically rendered through the urban experience of his contemporary Dublin, against the revolutionary imaginings of a Robert Emmet. The play begins thus as a sentimental re-creation of Irelands heroic past with a playlet staging Robert Emmets unsuccessful rising of 1803 and his love for Sarah
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Curran. But the actor in the play is knocked out and has a nightmare about being the real Emmet wandering round 1920s Dublin, and struggling to give coherence to the bewildering scenes he encounters. At one point the crowd becomes menacing, questioning his identity and threatening him. Emmet, excited, gets hold of a revolver which goes off and a young man whom he has shot apparently dies interminably. The other death Emmet has to confront in the play is the historical gratuitous slaughter of Lord Kilwarden for which the bitter figure of Grattan blames the heros followers. Grattan accuses Emmet of prolonging the cult of bloodshed endemic in Irish history: Oh, it is an easy thing to draw a sword and raise a barricade. It saves working, it saves waiting. It saves everything but blood. And blood is the cheapest thing the good god has made (Johnston: 1988, 375). As with the murder of the young man, Emmet is forced to face the unintended violent consequences of his romantic ideals. Johnstons image of the mythical heromartyr is emblematically that of a somnambulist and an actor, a two-fold shadow facing a de-glorified society achieved with so much human blood. But, significantly, towards the end of the play, Emmet comes to see that he is but a playactor, free to rebel and repudiate the tradition of violence that history has assigned to him. Flinging away his sword, he forgives the strumpet city Dublin, metonymy for Ireland (Murray: 2000, 124), and, instead of delivering the famous historical speech from the dock, he adds: There now. Let my epitaph be written (Johnston: 1988, 421), before lying down in his previous state of concussion. This is a recognition that words can alter the shape of history and a plea to abandon traditional pieties in favour of new, revised and enabling alternatives.
6.3.2.3. Brendan Behan (Breandn Beachin) (1923 - 1964)

The Quare Fellow (1954) An Giall (1958), The Hostage (1958) Richard's Cork Leg (1972)
Brendan Behans The Hostage, performed in 1958 as An Giall at the Pike Theatre, is written in the context of the renewed IRA border campaigns in the 1950s, questioning the revolution for what its history did to make Irish politics a muddle. The song which celebrates Michael Collins sums up the political dilemma entailed in the split between the Laughing Boys ideal of a free Ireland and the reality of the partially fulfilled republican project, the legacy of which materialised in the obstinate movement to continue the quixotic struggle for Irelands total liberation from English control (Murray: 2000, 150). The Hostage is set in an old house, once a Republican sanctuary, now a brothel, which is owned by Monsewer, a Gaelicspeaking English aristocrat and also a convert to Irish nationalism. As Pat, a former IRA member who runs the place, says: He was born an Englishman, remained one for years . . .He had every class of comfort until one day he discovered he was an Irishman..(Behan: 1962, 14-5) The absurdity of this situation sets the note for Behans mockery of the Irish political fanaticism. The new I.R.A campaign is seen as part of Monsewers lunacy which makes him plan battles fought long ago
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against enemies long since dead (Behan: 1962, 6), while he also engineers a scheme to get hold of a British hostage in order to forestall the execution of an IRA man in Belfast. Leslie, the English soldier who ends up in the brothel, gradually gets the affection of its occupiers and develops a romantic relationship with Teresa, the Irish servant-girl. Nevertheless, since the IRA youth has been hanged, Leslies fate seems sealed, but his death comes accidentally, at the end of the play, being shot in the confusion of a police raid. As in Minnies case, nobody knows who has killed Leslie: probably the IRA, as Minnie was probably shot by the Auxiliaries, but in both cases the odds speak also for the other side, and Behan leaves the question open to any of the two alternatives: Its no ones fault. Nobody meant to kill him.(Behan: 1962, 108)
6.4.
The Troubles and the Northern City
6.4.1. Political Context

1968 Riots in Londonderry in October between Catholics demanding increased civil rights and Protestants seeking to maintain their political superiority. 1969 Great Britain pushes for reform in Northern Ireland; extremists of both sides (Unionist and Republican) intensify fighting in August, and British troops are deployed to restore order. 1970-71 The I.R.A. resumes activities with renewed vigor, firmly establishing itself in the Catholic districts of Londonderry and Belfast and titling itself the "Provisional I.R.A." They conduct a guerilla war against the Ulster police (Royal Ulster Constabulary), the Ulster volunteer army (UVA), and the British army. 1972 British soldiers kill 13 Catholic civilians on 30 January (Bloody Sunday) in Londonderry; the Northern Ireland constitution is suspended, and government transferred directly to London; Provisional I.R.A. kills 19 and wounds 130 in Belfast bombings on 21 July (Bloody Friday). 1979 Provisional I.R.A. kill 18 British soldiers in Co. Down, and assassinate Lord Mountbatten in the Republic. 1981 Series of hunger strikes in Maze prison by Catholic prisoners to protest living conditions, culminating in death of Bobby Sands after a 66-day strike. 1983 Provisional I.R.A. kill 5 and injure 80 in Christmas bombing in London. 1985 The Anglo-Irish agreement is signed between Great Britain and Eire in effort to work out Northern Ireland conflict. 1998 Easter Agreement signed on April 10, setting up provisions for cease-fire and joint government of Northern Ireland among Protestants, Catholics, and the Irish Republic. Three months after the Agreement is ratified, bombs erupt in Omagh, Northern Ireland, killing 29 and injuring hundreds more - the single greatest loss of life since "the troubles" began.
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6.4.2. Staging the Troubles

Since 1970 dozens of plays dealing with various aspects of the troubles in Ulster have been written, developing into what D. S. Maxwell considers to represent a subgenre of modern Irish drama (Maxwell: 1990). With the actuality of violence, an insoluble conflict emerged once the sense of difference translated now on one side into a sense of superiority and on the other into a sense of grievance (Murray: 2000, 187). This inevitably led to a revival of Irish nationalism in ways which harked back to the early decades of the century in its persistent belief in the unfinished nature of the Irish revolution. As such, both Protestant and Catholic playwrights often find a common ground in aligning themselves to the postrevolutionary theatrical revisionism of OCasey, Johnston or Behan as one dramatic option through which the present turmoil may be artistically framed.
(Belfast murals: Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Red Hand of Ulster vs. Bobby Sands, IRA martyr)
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6.4.2.1. Brian Friel, The Freedom of the City (1973)

Although set in 1979, the play recalls Bloody Sunday in Derry, 1972, and the ensuing Widgery Report that exonerated the British soldiers of guilt. When an unauthorised civil-rights march is dispersed by CS gas, three demonstrators take refuge in the Mayors Parlour in Derrys Guildhall. Lily, Skinner, and Michael represent a cross-section of the Catholic population of Derry. In the public world outside, rumour and romantic nationalism inflate the trio into armed terrorists and freedom fighters, and when they try to leave the building with hands above their heads they are shot dead by British soldiers. Parallel to this, a tribunal examines the events and exonerates the security forces. In another strand, Dr Dodds, a sociologist, lectures the audience directly on the subculture of poverty, while intermittent scenes provide brief comment on the influence of the media and the clergy. . In opposition to the abstract and inflexible figures which represent the official world, Friel turns to the naturalist mode to delineate his central trio in fundamentally humanistic terms, as confused, frightened but also high-spirited human beings, who, like OCasey humble innocents, are caught in the crossfire of powerful partisan forces. LILY: At this minute Mickey Teague, the milkman, is shouting up from the road, I know youre there, lily Doherty. Come down and pay me for the six weeks you owe me. And the chairmans sitting at the fire, like a wee thin saint with his finger in his mouth and the comics up to his nose and hoping to God Ill remember to bring him home five fags. And below us Celia Cunninghams about half-full now and crying about the sweepstake ticket she bought and lost when she was fifteen. And above us Dickie Devines groping under the bed for his trombone and he doesnt know that Annie pawned it on Wednesday for the wanes bus fares and hes going to beat the tar out of her when she tells him. And down the passage aul Andy Boyles lying in bed because he has no coat. [ . . . ] I was at the back of the crowd, beside wee Johnny Duffy - you know the window cleaner - Johnny the Tumbler - and Im telling him what the speakers is saying cos he hears hardly anything now since he fell off the ladder last time. And Im just after telling him The streets is ours and nobodys going to move us when I turn round and Jesus, Mary and Joseph theres this big Saracen right behind me. Of course, I took to my heels. And when I look back theres Johnny the Tumbler standing there with his fists in the air and him shouting, The streets is ours and nobodys going to move us. MICHAEL: It was a good, disciplined, responsible march. And thats what we must show them - that were responsible and respectable; and theyll come to respect what were campaigning for. [. . .] a decent job, a decent place to live, a decent town to bring up your children in, [. . .] fair play. . .so
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that no matter what our religion is, no matter what our politics is, we have the same chances and the same opportunities as the next fella. SKINNER: . . .Because you live with eleven kids and a sick husband in two rooms that arent fit for animals. Because you exist on a state subsistence thats about enough to keep you alive but too small to fire your guts. Because you know your children are caught in the same morass. Because for the first time in your life you grumbled and someone else grumbled and someone else, and you heard each other, and became aware that there were hundreds, thousands, millions of us all over the world, and in a vague groping way you were outraged. Thats all its all about, Lilly. It has nothing to do with doctors and accountants and teachers and dignity and boy scout honour. Its about us - the poor - the majority - stirring in our sleep. LILY: . . .its for him I go all the civil rights marches. Isnt that stupid? You and him [Michael] and everybody else marching and protesting about sensible things like politics and stuff and me in the middle of you all, marching for Declan. Isnt that the stupidest thing you ever heard? MICHAEL: I knew they werent going to shoot. Shooting belonged to a totally different order of things. And then the Guildhall Square exploded and I knew a terrible mistake had been made. And I became very agitated, not because I was dying, but that this terrible mistake be recognized and acknowledged. . . LILY: And in the silence before my body disintegrated in a purple convulsion, I thought I glimpsed a tiny truth: that life had eluded me because never once in my forty-three years had an experience, an event, even a small unimportant happening been isolated, and assessed and articulated. . . SKINNER: And as we stood on the Guildhall steps, two thoughts raced through my mind: how seriously they took us and how unpardonably casual we were about them; and that to match their seriousness would demand a total dedication, a solemnity as formal as theirs.
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6.4.3. Writing the Troubles 6.4.3.1. Bernard MacLaverty (1942-)

Novelist and short-story writer, Bernard MacLaverty was born and lived in Belfast until 1975 when he moved to Scotland, where, for some years, he became writer-inresidence at the University of Aberdeen. He has published extensively and has also adapted his fiction for other media (radio, television, cinema.) Published works: Secrets & Other Stories (1977) Lamb (1980) A Time to Dance & Other Stories (1982) Cal (1983) The Great Profundo & Other Stories (1987) Walking the Dog & Other Stories (1994) Grace Notes (1997) The Anatomy School (2001) Matters of Life & Death & Other Stories (2006)
Cal (1983) focuses on the psychological torment and political victimhood of Cal
McCluskey, a young working-class Catholic living in a Protestant housing estate in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. He is drawn into the Provisional IRA by Crilly, a former school friend, who pressurises him into being the getaway driver in the assassination of Robert Morton, a reserve policeman in the mainly Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary. Cals feelings of guilt and self-loathing which stem from this event are intensified by his romantic attraction to Mortons Catholic widow, Marcella, with whom he develops a doomed relationship. Unable to confess his crime to Marcella or extricate himself from the clutches of Crilly and the local IRA commander, Skeffington, Cal broods relentlessly on his shame and abjection. His torment deepens when he and his father are burned out of their home by Loyalist paramilitaries, after which Cal moves to an abandoned cottage on the Morton farm, where he is employed as a labourer. Here his tortured affair with Marcella develops in secret, though any hope of them building a new life together is soon shattered when Cal sees Crilly planting a bomb in the library where Marcella works. The novels climax is swift and sudden. After Crilly and Skeffington are apprehended by the police, Cal informs the authorities about the bomb and then returns to Marcella to await passively his own arrest on Christmas Eve. MacLaverty adapted Cal for the screen in 1984. The film starred Helen Mirren and John Lynch.
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Minimal Bibliography
Bradshaw, Brenna, Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (eds.), REPRESENTING IRELAND: LITERATURE AND THE ORIGINS OF CONFLICT, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Brady, Ciaran, Mary ODowd and Brian Walker (eds.), ULSTER: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, foreword by J. C. Beckett, London: B .T. Batsford, 1989. Brophy, James D. and Raymond J. Porter, CONTEMPORARY IRISH WRITING, Boston: Iona College Press, Twayne Publishers, 1983. Brown, Terence IRELANDS LITERATURE, Mercier Press, 1992. Cairns, David and Shaun Richards, WRITING IRELAND: COLONIALISM, NATIONALISM AND CULTURE, Manchester, Manchester UP, 1988. Crotty, Patrick (ed.) MODERN IRISH POETRY. AN ANTHOLOGY, Lagan Press, 1993. Deane, Seamus, A SHORT HISTORY OF IRISH LITERATURE, London et al.: Hutchinson; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986. Deane, Seamus, CELTIC REVIVALS: ESSAYS IN MODERN IRISH LITERATURE, 1880-1980, London: Faber and Faber, 1985. Foster, John Wilson, COLONIAL CONSEQUENCES: ESSAYS IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE, Mullingar: The Lilliput Press, 1991. IRISH
Gibbons, Luke, TRANSFORMATIONS IN IRISH CULTURE, Cork: Cork University Press; Field Day, 1996. Grene, Nicholas, THE POLITICS OF IRISH DRAMA: PLAYS IN CONTEXT FROM BOUCICAULT TO FRIEL, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Kenneally, Michael (ed.), IRISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1992 Kiberd, Declan INVENTING IRELAND: The Literature of the Modern Nation, Vintage, 1998. LANDMARKS OF IRISH DRAMA, Methuen, 1996. Mohor-Ivan, Ioana REPRESENTATIONS OF IRISHNESS: CULTURE, THEATRE AND BRIAN FRIELS REVISIONIST STAGE, EDP, 2004. Moody, T.W. (ed.) THE COURSE OF IRISH HISTORY, Mercier Press, 1994. NATIONALISM, COLONIALISM AND LITERATURE, with an introduction by Seamus Deane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. Vance, Norman, IRISH LITERATURE: A SOCIAL HISTORY, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Welch, Robert (ed.) THE OXFORD COMPANION TO IRISH LITERATURE, Oxford UP, 1996.
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ANNEX 1 INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS & TEXTS (Recommended for individual research)

1. The Land of Cockayne 2. Geoffrey Keating, O Woman Full of Wile 3. Edmund Spenser, A View on the Present State of Ireland 4. William Shakespeare, Henry V 5. Dion Boucicault, The Irish Trilogy (Arrah-na Pogue, The Colleen Bawn, the Shaughraun) 6. The Quiet Man (directed by Boris Ford) 7. Brian Friel, Making History 8. Seamus Heaney, Traditions, Oceans Love to Ireland 9. James Clarence Mangan, My Dark Rosaleen 10. W. B. Yeats, Kathleen Ni Houlihan 11. James Joyce, A Mother (from The Dubliners) 12. Samuel Beckett, Murphy 13. Dancing at Lughnasa (film or play) 14. Thomas Murphy, Bailegangaire 15. Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent 16. Lennox Robinson, Killycregs in Twilight 17. W.B. Yeats, Purgatory 18. Jennifer Johnston, How Many Miles to Babylon?, The Invisible Worm (tranl. into Romanian as Casa de vara) 19. Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September 20. The Last September (film) 21. The Real Charlotte (BBC series) 22. High Spirits (film, directed by Neil Jordan) 23. J.M. Synge, In the Shadow of the Glen, Riders to the Sea, The Well of the Saints, The Playboy of the Western World 24. The Field (film)
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Ioana Mohor-Ivan 25. Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy 26. The Butcher Boy (film, directed by Neil Jordan) 27. W.B.Yeats, Easter 1916
Irish Literature
28. Sean OCasey, The Dublin Trilogy (In the Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars) 29. Denis Johnston, The Old Lady Says No! 30. Brian Friel, The Freedom of the City 31. Bernard MacLaverty, Cal
32. Cal (film) 33. Martin McDonagh, In Bruges (film)
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ANNEX 2 Pronunciation Guide

(long), as in "aught;" a (short), as in "hot." c with slender vowels (e, i), as in "king;" never as s. c with broad vowels (a, o, u), as in "car;" never as s. ch with slender vowels (e, i), as in German "Ich;" never as in "church." ch with broad vowels (a, o, u), as in German "Buch;" never as in "church." d with slender vowels (e, i), as in French "dieu." d with broad vowels (a, o, u), as in "thy." (long), as in ale; e (short), as in "bet." g with slender vowels (e, i), as in "give;" never as j. g with broad vowels (a, o, u), as in "go;" never as j. gh with slender vowels (e, i) is slender ch voiced. gh with broad vowels (a, o, u) is broad ch voiced. (long), as in "feel;" i (short), as in it. mh and bh intervocalic with slender vowels, as v. mh and bh intervocalic with broad vowels, as w. (long), as in "note;" o (short), as in "done." s with slender vowels (e, i), as in "shine," never as z. s with broad vowels (a, o, u), as s. t with slender vowels (e, i), as in "tin." t with broad vowels (a, o, u), as in "threw." th, like h. (long), as in "pool;" u (short), as in "full." The remaining consonants are pronounced almost as in English
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Ioana Mohor-Ivan ANNEX 3
Irish Literature
Brief Chronology of Historical Events

c. 6000 BC c. 400 BC 432 AD 795 1006 1169 1541 1586 1595-1601 1607 1609 1641-1646 1649-1654 1689 1690 1695 1791 1795 1798 1800 1803 1829 1845 1848 1858 1867 1879 1800 1893 1899 1913 1916 1919-1921 1922 1937 1948 1968 1972 1985 1994
probable date of first human settlements in Ireland possible date of arrival of Celts traditional date of the beginning of St Patricks mission first raids of Viking invasion Brian Boraime recognised as high king Norman invasion begins Declaration Act, Henry VIII is declared King of Ireland Plantation of Munster Hugh ONeill, Earl of Tyrone, heads rebellion Flight of the Earls Plantation of Ulster Irish Catholic Rebellions Cromwellian campaigns and Plantation James II lands at Kinsale. Williamite War begins. Battle of the Boyne Penal Laws restrict Catholic rights United Irishmen founded in Belfast Foundation of Orange Order United Irishmens Rebellion Act of Union Rising of Robert Emmet Catholic Emancipation (Daniel OConnell) First year of the Great Famine Young Ireland Rising Irish Republican Brotherhood founded Fenian Rebellion; Manchester Martyrs Michael Davitt founds the Land League. Parnell elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party Gael League founded Opening season of the Irish Literary Theatre Ulster Volunteers, Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army The Easter Rising Anglo-Irish War Irish Free State established. Civil War begins De Valeras Constitution Irish Free State declares itself a republic Beginning of the Troubles Bloody Sunday in Derry. Direct Rule imposed in N.I. Anglo-Irish Agreement IRA and Loyalist ceasefires
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ii. iii. iv.

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Tipuri si modalitati de activitate didactica:

Chapter 1 Beginnings in the Celtic World

Chapter 1 - Beginnings in the Celtic World

1.1. Celtic Tribes

1.2. Celtic Society

1.3. Celtic Religion

1.4. Celtic Literature

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings

Chapter 2 - The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings

2.2. The Celtic Pantheon

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Chapter 2 The Mythological Cycle and Its Modern Reworkings

THE TUATHA DE DANAAN

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

2.3. The Milesians

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

2.4. The World of the Sdhe

2.5. The Sidhe in W. B. Yeatss Early Poems

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

2.6. The Sidhe with Contemporary Women Poets

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero

Chapter 3 - The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero

3.1. The Ulster (Red Branch ) Cycle

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Chapter 3 The Ulster Cycle and the Celtic Hero

3.3. Main characters of the Cycle

3.4. Main Tales of the Cycle

3.5. Celtic Myth in the Theatre of W.B. Yeats

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

3.6. De-Constructing Heroism: Nuala N Dhomhnaill

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle)

Chapter 4 - The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle)

4.1. The Fionn Cycle (Fenian, Ossianic, Munster)

4.2. Fenian Heroes and Tales

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Chapter 4 The Cycle of Munster (the Finn Cycle)

4.3. Oisin in the Land of Youth (From the Finn Cycle)

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

4.4. Literary Treatments of Fenian Tales and Heroes

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales

Chapter 5 - The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

5.2. Early Irish Poetry

Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales

5.3. The Suibhne Motif in Irish Literature

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Chapter 5 The King (Historical) Cycle of Tales

The Celtic Paradigm in Modern Irish Writing

Part Two: Space and nation in literary representation

Minimal Bibliography Annexes

INTRODUCTION THE MATTER OF IRELAND1

an organisation founded in 1893 to promote the restoration of the Irish language.

The Norman Invasion

Norman Cultural Influences