The Stuarts (1600 –1700)
4.2 The shape of the language (1600–1700)
4.2.1 Late Modern Irish (LMI)
The Early Modern phase is usually said to come to an end between and
. The reason that this date has been selected is that a gradual change can be observed in the language found in written records after. This is mainly due to the change in poetic practice described in section.., whereby the old syllabic metres were replaced by stressed ones. These stressed metres reflected more faithfully the pronunciation of the time than the Bardic ones had done.
Take these lines from a poem written about:
() Do lag mo chreat gan neart mná seolta,
gan bhrí gan mheabhair gan ghreann gan fhónamh.
Adhbhar maoithe scaoileadh an sceóil sin, cás gan leigheas is adhnadh tóirse.
[It weakened my frame so that I hadn’t the strength of a woman in labour, deprived of vigour, sense, joy, or worth. The broadcasting of this story is a source of sadness, a plight without cure, and kindling of sorrow.]
(de Brún et al.: ) In l., we find the word meabhair ‘sense’. In a Bardic poem, this would have been pronounced as two syllables, /mavir/. However, in the metre of the seventeenth century, there has to be an assonance or vowel-rhyme between it and the word greann ‘joy’, which only has one syllable. We know from twentieth-century Irish that meabhair and greann rhyme, both being pro-nounced with a vowel like English /ow/: /miowr/, /grown/. The conclusion we can draw is that this change in meabhair, from two syllables to one, and from the vowel /a/ to /ow/, had already taken place in the seventeenth century. In the same way, in l. above, leigheas ‘cure’ rhymes with the first syllable of adhnadh‘kindling’, both being pronounced like /ai/ in the English word like:
/lais/, /aina/. In Bardic poetry, though, leigheas would have had two syllables, /leghas/. The <a> in thefirst syllable of adhnadh would have been pronounced /a/ not /ai/, and the <dh> in adhnadh would have been pronounced like the first sound in British English that.
The poetry of this period is useful, then, as it reveals changes that had taken place in the spoken language but which are not reflected in spelling: only the rhymes tell us what the pronunciation would have been. After, scribes begin to write more and more as they speak, although they try to follow the old spelling as far as possible. For this reason, from the beginning of the seven-teenth century onwards we can form some picture of Irish dialects. Before this, as we saw, there was one standard written language for Ireland and Gaelic
THE SHAPE OF THE LANGUAGE(–)
Scotland. After, various regions were gradually to go their own way, as it were, which led to the rise of different dialects.
It would be wrong to think that there was a sudden overnight change, whereby a single, totally homogenous language broke up into widely diverging dialects. The writers of Irish were conservative, and still tried to imitate the writers of the past. Some of them continued to use forms of the language that had long become obsolete, because they felt that they were more prestigious.
This tendency is very noticeable in prose tales written in seventeenth-century manuscripts. While it is true that Irish developed some new forms of literary narrative in this era, such as the satire and morality tale, there is a preponder-ance of rompreponder-ance tales in the surviving manuscripts. These rompreponder-ance tales were written down in the seventeenth century, but they display archaic features from earlier eras. It is debatable to what extent we are justified in referring to these as compositions of the period–, especially since they are based on earlier exemplars.
Other genres were intended for a wider, more popular audience. Religious works, such as sermons or translations of theological tracts, are abundantly represented in this era. These works were probably intended to be read aloud to large audiences. The language in them represents a high register, but is firmly grounded in the Irish of the day, not of the past. The texts contain numerous references to contemporary events, and also large numbers of new loan-words or coinings. The editor of one such text, Párliament na mBan [The parliament of women] (PB), written about, describes the language in it in the following words:
The Irish of Párliament na mBan is interesting, for it represents a stage of development intermediate between Early Modern Irish and current Cork Irish . . . The developments which had taken place in the spoken language during the preceding centuries are reflected to a considerable extent in Párliament na mBan, and indeed, we may feel sure that apart from the points I have already mentioned, the Irish . . . is very little removed from the Irish spoken in County Cork at the end of the seventeenth century.
(Ó Cuív: xxxi) We can illustrate the change from EMI to LMI by comparing PB with a text belonging to the same genre, Desiderius (O’Rahilly ) (Des). The latter was published in, and represents a much more conservative strain of Irish than does PB. The following two examples are illustrative of this conservatism.
In EMI, the noun corp‘body’ had a special form curp, which was used after certain prepositions, e.g ar churp ‘on a body’. In the later language, this distinction has been lost, with the basic form corp being used after preposi-tions: ar chorp. The text of Des contains examples of both the old and new forms. In PB, on the other hand, the older curp has been replaced everywhere
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by the basic form after prepositions, as in twentieth-century Irish; we onlyfind forms like ar a chorp‘on his body’ (Ó Cuív : ).
The second example relates to verbs. In section.., we saw that in EMI the present tense of the verb ends in -(a)idh when the subject is he/she, e.g.
molaidh ‘he/she praises’. In twentieth-century Irish, on the other hand, the verb ends in-(e)ann followed by sé/sí, e.g. molann sé/sí ‘he/she praises’. Des only contains verbs with the-(a)idh ending like molaidh. In PB, on the other hand, we onlyfind modern forms like molann sé/sí.
Just how tricky and complicated the dating of language in this period is can be illustrated by the different manuscript versions of PB. There is another version of PB besides the one from; the second manuscript dates from
. Despite the fact that the second version is more recent than the first, the language in it is older and more artificial. In contrast to the earlier version, wefind here the ending -(a)idh for the third-person sg of the present tense of the verb, e.g. cuiridh‘he/she puts’.
One reason why written records from onwards are so valuable is that Irish was still spoken all over the island, including the province of Leinster in the eastern part of the country. By the time scholars began collecting speci-mens of spoken Irish around, there was hardly any Irish left in Leinster.
Thus, with the aid of texts from LMI, scholars have been able to reconstruct a pretty accurate picture of the Irish spoken in areas where it has been long dead.
4.2.2 Borrowing and code-switching
We have already noted the spread of English and bilingualism in the seven-teenth century. Not surprisingly, then, we alsofind English making its presence felt in the Irish records of the time.
The poets and literati werefirmly opposed to the new language and all it stood for. Nevertheless, their writings are liberally sprinkled with borrowings from English. One area where there was extensive borrowing was legal termi-nology, which was to be expected, given that English common law was being imposed all over the country. The following extract may serve as an example of the introduction of English, Latin, and French legal terms into Irish texts:
() Is docht na dlithe do rinneadh dár ngéarghoin:
siosúin cúirte is téarmaí daora, wardship livery is Cúirt Exchéquer, cíos coláisde in nomine poenae;
greenwax, capias, writ, replévin, bannaí, fíneáil, díotáil éigcirt, provost, soffré, portré, méara,
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sirriam, sionascáil, marascáil chlaona.
Dlí beag eile do rinneadh do Ghaeulaibh, surrender ar a gceart do dhéanamh.
[Severe are the laws which were made to heavily wound us: court sessions and harsh terms, wardship livery and Exchequer Court, greenwax, capias, writ, replevin, bail,fining, wrongful indicting, provost, suffrain, portreeve, mayor, sheriff, seneschal, crooked marshals. Another little law that was enacted for the Gaels, to surrender their rights.]
(O’ Rahilly : – ) As Mac Mathúna () remarks, passages like the above display varying degrees of integration of English words into the borrowing language. Some, like siosúin‘sessions’, look like ordinary Irish words. English /s/ has been replaced by Irish /sh/, as regularly happens in borrowings from English to Irish, and the new word has been assigned to the group of nouns whose plural is formed by adding
<i> to the singular: siosún (sg), siosúin (pl). This is a case of total integration.
On the other hand, some items are left in their English guise, words like greenwax, writ, provost, surrender. This last option is a case of code-switching.
Sometimes the code-switching is more extensive, with whole phrases of English being placed in a text side by side with the Irish. Here are some lines from a different poem, describing the events taking place during and after the Cromwellian pacification of Ireland:
() Transport, transplant, mo mheabhair ar Bhéarla [is what I understand of English.]
Shoot him, kill him, strip him, tear him, A tory, hack him, hang him, rebel, a rogue, a thief, a priest, a papist.
(O’Rahilly : ) In this poem the framework is Irish, but whole passages of English have been inserted into it. As we will see in the next chapter, code-switching was to become even more common in the following century.
4.3 Conclusion
The historical background to this chapter were the turbulent events which led to Ireland being totally subjugated to English rule. Not surprisingly, this military and political conquest was accompanied by social and linguistic change. As a result, English language and culture spread all over the country.
Up to, English and Irish occupied more or less separate geographical and intellectual domains. One could live one’s life through the medium of Irish
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without having to bother too much about the existence of English, any more than an Irish person in the twenty-first century worries too much about the influence of French on his life. After nobody, not even the inhabitants of the remotest island off the west coast of Ireland, could ignore the presence of English.
At the beginning of Tudor rule, language and ethnic identity were closely intertwined. While it is true that the Old English were a mixed group, contain-ing both Irish and English speakers, members of the Gaelic families spoke almost exclusively Irish. By that situation had changed completely.
English was now a badge not of ethnic but of social identity. It was spoken by the Protestant Ascendancy and the townspeople, which is not surprising, but it was also spoken by the Catholic landowners and middle classes, and even the common people were taking an interest in it. This in turn meant that the Irish language was increasingly coming under its influence.
Further reading
For Stuart Ireland, see Mac Curtain (: –).
For general surveys of language and literature–, see Ó Cuív () and Mac Craith (). Ó Háinle () deals with new forms of prose fiction in the seventeenth century.
Cunningham () is a monograph on the historian Geoffrey Keating and the context in which he was writing. Ó Buachalla (: –) is an exhaustive study of the reaction of the Gaelic literati to the Stuart monarchs of the seventeenth century and the key events that accompanied their reigns. It explores in depth many of the themes touched upon in this chapter, such as the connection between religion and identity, or the work of historians like Keating and the Four Masters.
Ó Doibhlin () is a collection of extracts from texts written in the years
–. These include many classics of Irish literature like Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (Comyn and Dinneen–), or various poems lamenting the downfall of the old Gaelic order. Ó Doibhlin () covers the period
–, which witnessed the final conquest of Ireland. It contains poems from important literaryfigures like Dáibhí Ó Bruadair, which rail against the incursion of the English settlers and their impact on Gaelic culture.
Smyth () explores the effect of colonization and plantation on the phy-sical landscape, and also its impact on social, economic, and cultural life. The author’s use of statistics and maps makes this an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this era.
Mac Giolla Chríost (: –) describes the linguistic changes which overtook Ireland in the seventeenth century. He provides a clear summary
FURTHER READING
of the spread of English in various parts of Ireland. Smyth (: –) provides a detailed account of the geographical distribution of English and Irish on the basis of such tools as the poll-tax of , the depositions of witnesses to the Ulster rebellion, and the evidence of English and Scottish surnames.
For source documents relating to language in Stuart Ireland, see Crowley (: –).
For language attitudes in the Stuart era, see Mac Mathúna (: –).
For the reaction of the poets to linguistic and cultural change, see Leersen (a: –).
For the translation of Irish antiquarian texts into English, see Cunningham and Gillespie (). For the translation of the Old Testament into Irish, see Williams (: –); McCaughey (); and Caball ().
For Irish scholarship on the Continent, see Leersen (a: –); Mac Craith (: –); Jennings (); and Cunningham and Gillespie ().
For Neo-Latin writings in this period, see Millett () and Harris and Sidwell ().
For the development of LMI and the emergence of dialects, see Williams (). This contains a useful map showing the three main dialects which began to make themselves visible in this period. A further advantage is that the presentation is not over-technical.
For borrowing and code-switching in this period, see Mac Mathúna (:
–).
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