Gaelic Literature

I

Introduction

Gaelic Literature, literature, both oral and written, in the Gaelic languages of Ireland and Scotland. Before the development of a distinct Scottish Gaelic language in the 15th century, the literature of both countries may be considered as one.

II

Early Period

The earliest Gaelic writings were recorded in the Roman alphabet and survive in a few manuscripts of the 7th to the 10th centuries—for example, some material on the life of St Patrick included in the 9th-century illuminated gospels The Book of Armagh. The earliest datable Irish poem is Amra Choluim Chille, a eulogy praising the 6th-century saint, Colum Cille. The scarcity of literary works until the 11th century is the result of the Norse invasions of Ireland in the 8th century and the sacking of the monasteries, the centres of learning. While some manuscripts were preserved on the European continent by scholars fleeing the invaders, most of the literary works composed in this period survive, in fragments, in much later manuscripts. A characteristic form was the praise poetry composed by a professional class of bards, the filidh, in honour of their kings and chieftains. Freer, more personal poetry was written by anonymous poets, such as the one who addressed his white cat, or the writer who composed The Old Woman of Beare (9th century), an expression of longing for the pagan past. In the form of a dramatic monologue, it is one of the earliest examples of a genre popular in Gaelic poetry. The hermit monks of the early Irish Church, living on intimate terms with their environment, established the tradition of nature poetry that is one of the glories of Irish and, later, Scottish Gaelic verse. Some fine examples of this genre are from the 8th century.

III

11th to 15th Century

The great victory over the Norse in 1014 freed Ireland from their domination and was indirectly a great stimulus to literary production. In two 12th-century manuscripts known as The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of Leinster are preserved the earliest Gaelic sagas, part in prose, part in poetry, themselves remnants of a much older oral tradition, from between the 8th and 11th centuries. These sagas have been divided by modern scholars into two cycles. The Ulster, or Red Branch, Cycle is older, consisting of some 100 tales about the heroes of the kingdom of Ulster in the century before Christ, especially the warrior Cú Chulainn (Cuchulainn). Among the more notable tales are The Cattle Raid of Cooley (7th or 8th century) and the story of the tragic heroine Deirdre. The later Fenian, or Ossianic, Cycle centres about the hero Finn mac Cumhail or MacCool, a legendary chieftain and bard of the 2nd or 3rd century. Among his followers was Ossian, also a warrior bard, believed to be his son. The dominant strain of these tales, mostly in ballad form, is nostalgia for the heroic past; tinged with Christianity, they are more romantic than epic. Among the better-known stories are The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne and the lengthy Dialogue of the Old Men.

Aside from these cycles are groups of mythological tales, including a series of marvellous voyages to the Western Isles (Eilean Siar), notably The Voyage of Bran; king tales such as The Madness of Sweeney; religious prose, with much emphasis on miracles; and visions, the best known of which is The Vision of Adamnan.

In the later Middle Ages popular ballads and prose tales began to replace the formal bardic literature, and Gaelic translations made the Arthurian legends and some classical literature accessible. The advent of printing, however, which made literature available to large numbers of people in other countries, had little impact in Ireland. Bards there continued to be supported by patrons, their work copied by hand—a tradition that lasted until the early 19th century.

IV

Irish Gaelic Literature, 17th to 20th Century

Their support gone when the nobility was dispossessed during the reign of Elizabeth I, the bards themselves disappeared, and Gaelic gave way to English as the vernacular. Despite this, a good deal of prose, much of it devoted to Ireland's past, was written. Examples are The Annals of the Four Masters (1636), the history of Ireland up until 1616, by Michael O'Clery; and the History of Ireland (c. 1620) by Geoffrey Keating. At the same time, expressions of defiance of English rule began to appear in the folk poetry that circulated clandestinely. Among the most famed writers of the 17th and 18th centuries were the passionate nationalists Dáibhidh Ó Bruadair and Egan O'Rahilly, and Brian Merriman, a schoolteacher in county Clare. The latter's The Midnight Court (translated 1945), a broad satire on marriage customs, is considered the best long-sustained poem in Irish Gaelic.

Throughout the 19th century, principally because of the emigration and starvation caused by the potato famine of 1845, the Gaelic language, both written and spoken, fell into disuse; most of the Gaelic speakers were by then illiterate. Towards the end of the century efforts were made not only to restore Gaelic as a spoken language but also to stimulate the writing of literary works in Gaelic. Interest in the language was revived by the work of various societies, particularly the Gaelic League, founded in 1893, and by the works of such scholars and nationalists as Douglas Hyde, Canon Peter O'Leary, Patrick O'Conner, and Patrick Pearse. In the last decade of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries the Gaelic revival resulted in the publication of many collections of Irish folk tales and in the writing of a considerable number of plays, works of fiction, and poetry in Gaelic.

Among the numerous 20th-century lyric poets and novelists writing in Gaelic was Tomás O Crohan, who wrote The Islandman (1937; trans. 1951) about a Munster fisherman. Brendan Behan, better known for his works in English, composed The Hostage originally in Gaelic (1957; trans. 1958).