Comments on: God or tongue?

By: eoin

eoin — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 02:29:31 +0000

Flowers translation of Pangur Bán , though far from word to word exact, is fantastic. Dude has got the rhythm
I love the phrase “turnng darkness into light”

By: pconroy

pconroy — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:32:15 +0000

I should add that when English linguist Robin Flower – among other things, he is known as the translator of the the 8th Century Irish poem Pangur Bán – made his monumental contribution to the Irish (aka Gaelic) language by sojourning in the Blasket Islands of the South West coast of Ireland and learning the language from the natives there and documenting its grammar and structure, as well as the cultural landscape of the islanders, he did so in the same spirit as Margaret Mead would later do among the natives of Samoa – trying to commit to paper something of the exoticness and majesty of a dying culture.
So overall, I would cast my ballot with those that see language as the sine qua non of cultural continuity rather than religion.

By: pconroy

pconroy — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:59:19 +0000

nearly dead Celtic language that was mostly revived by modern nationalists.
This is not true either for Ireland as a whole – it would only be true of the Catholic and Nationalistic enclave of West Belfast in Northern Ireland, and only then from the 1960′s onwards.
The revival of the Irish language was started at the end of the 1800′s by Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, Sean O’Casey, John Millington Synge and company – all Church of Ireland (aka Anglicans, Episcopalians), all Anglo-Irish culturally and non-Nationalist – in the sense of the IRA – all striving to foster a greater understanding and appreciation of native Irish culture among their fellow elites.

By: pconroy

pconroy — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:51:11 +0000

Austin,
I would agree totally with you – he strikes me as someone who finds it inconvenient – for whatever political axe he is trying to grind – that the Irish of today are not more like the Irish of yesteryear!

By: Austin

Austin — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:12:11 +0000

It is rare for me to comment on a blog, but this post has encouraged me to comment on not one, but two of them!
I posted over at Michael Dougherty’s blog and will repeat it here to save you from looking for it. Daniel Larison’s comments are spurious and unfounded. I would go so far as to describe them as offensively ignorant.

By: pconroy

pconroy — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:43:45 +0000

Razib said:
the most powerful locus of anti-Protestant feeling lay not amongst the Gaelic speaking Irish, but the descendants of the “Old English”/Anglo-Norman settlers
I would say that the Cambro-Normans had become Irish in every way, and were resentful of their power and elite status being usurped by English newcomers. Remember they had settled there on or about 1167, whereas the colonization of Laois-Offaly occured in 1557, almost 400 years of isolation from England and total Irish assimilation.
The FitzGerald family of County Kildare were de facto Kings of non-Pale Ireland at one point after all.

By: pconroy

pconroy — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:41:02 +0000

Eoin,
I would strongly disagree with your characterization of the Anglo-Normans – actually mostly Cambro-Normans – as being culturally English and speaking English – they weren’t and didn’t!!
Remember the old saying in Ireland that the Normans were, “More Irish than the Irish themselves” and so they were. They were few in number among a sea of Irish and almost all – starting with Strongbow – married into Irish nobility and had Irish (aka Gaelic) speaking wives. In later times, ordinances were passed by the English court forbidding Norman lords to dress in Irish attire or Irish style – especially as most had adopted the Irish custom of going bare legged and shoeless?! Even today, if one looks at a map of Ireland and also superimposes on it the areas where the most Irish of sports – Hurling – is played, you will see an almost 1-1 correspondence – this is because the Normans fostered Irish customs and pastimes among their subjects.
Among the Old English, I would include the colonists – aka planters – who made up the Laois-Offaly colony (then Queen’s County and King’s county) under Queen Mary and King Philip, who were Catholic, but English in custom and language, and also colonists in the Cork area and some in the Pale – but as you suggest they would be a small minority of the non-native Irish – the bulk of which would be Cambro-Normans.

By: chet snicker

chet snicker — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:43:43 +0000

Maybe, but Henry was also King Of Ireland at the time ( the first English King so designated, I think). And the Irish did not convert. Nor, the Old English in Ireland ( generally a group that considered themselves culturally English – and English speaking too, unlike the majority native Irish). Other factors were at work.C
my primary contention was simply that i think you were wrong to not privilege the conversion of the king of england. obviously there are complexities involved here, and the british isles is a special case (e.g., the monarchy in scotland was catholic in the form of mary queen of scots even when the populace was pushing toward protestantism). but in places like scandinavia the king basically forced protestantism on an unhappy populace. there is some of this in england as well, especially northern england. in austria the hapsburgs wore away the rather vigorous protestant discourse amongst their nobilities through the fiat of the potentate.

By: eoin

eoin — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:19:12 +0000

“i doubt that. elites mattered. the potentate above all else. the largest effect from any independent variable was probably the affiliation of the potentate.”
Maybe, but Henry was also King Of Ireland at the time ( the first English King so designated, I think). And the Irish did not convert. Nor, the Old English in Ireland ( generally a group that considered themselves culturally English – and English speaking too, unlike the majority native Irish). Other factors were at work.

By: chet snicker

chet snicker — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:03:57 +0000

The conversion of a King would probably not have been enough to convert England were it not for the fear of Spain as a Catholic power.
i doubt that. elites mattered. the potentate above all else. the largest effect from any independent variable was probably the affiliation of the potentate.

By: eoin

eoin — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:40:42 +0000

” but from what I recall the most powerful locus of anti-Protestant feeling lay not amongst the Gaelic speaking Irish, but the descendants of the “Old English”/Anglo-Norman settlers. Larison is the Ph.D. candidate in history here, he must know this? Or am I wrong?”
The most powerful feeling of anti-Catholicism from Protestant reformers was to a certain extent anti-Norman ( the name Norman was sometimes used interchangeably with Papists in early radical texts) and the Old English in Ireland were, more or less, Norman. (Norman names in Ireland are far more prevalent than Anglo-Saxon names, and we can tell when translated back into Irish).
I think this may have something to do with it ( otherwise why wouldn’t the Old English just convert, like the English did?).
I think, however, that protestantism in England, and Catholicism in Ireland were manifestations of nationalism ( or tribalism, if you prefer). The conversion of a King would probably not have been enough to convert England were it not for the fear of Spain as a Catholic power. Ireland’s identity was maintained via the refusal to reform to Protestantism, even through the penal laws. The Old English had different reasons, as I suggest, than the native Irish.
( Also Catholicism in Ireland was not really all the Roman, and replete with local syncretisms – but this may have increased it’s value as an In-Group marker).
“but there were problems because a lot of the early nationalists were secular, or Protestant in origin. But the Catholics won, and they dominated for half a century.”
Well, a lot of Republicans ( in the French revolutionary sense) were protestant – i.e. wolfe tone. These republicans were generally Presbyterians and other non-Anglican protestants*, but were allied against the Established church as they too were discriminated against by the Penal laws, thus common cause with Catholicism. Devoid of that, as we see, today and there is not much love lost between the two groups.
* Lot of these northern dissenters are the progenitors of the scots-irish in America.Quite different breed from Anglicans ( Episcopalian) here, or there.

By: manju

manju — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:03:10 +0000

It’s fairly common for the most nationalist to be the most Westernized. (Gandhi is an easy example,
What is Westernization? As far as I know, Gandhi wanted to be an English gentleman in his outlook and failed. Then in his manners and thoughts he developed a personality that was very close to stereotypical Indian prevalent at that time. But there was another person who was completely at home with stereotypical Western manners. And he was Jinna.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:12:00 +0000

It’s fairly common for the most nationalist to be the most Westernized. (Gandhi is an easy example, there are more — I recently read that for quite awhile Czech nationalist manifestos were written mostly in German). Nationalism is a western kind of idea, and often nationalists have a real contempt for the actual traditional nationals. (Geertz’s “Islam Observed” is essential if you haven’t read it, only about 100 pages).
Irish-speakers have tended to be the most backward, poor, and powerless Irish, and by the time Ireland was free, Irish Gaelic was already dwindling. Most of the famous Irish writers did not know Gaelic. (Flann O’Brien did, and he’s highly recommended, but he was hardly a nationalist, and he viciously satirized the neo-Gaelic movement in “The Poor Mouth”.)
There’s a thing in James Joyce where he finds out that a rare Irish dialect word he knows (“tundish”) is actually an old Anglo-Saxon word lost from Standard English which survived in Irish English.
It helps that Irish has a major and fairly old English-language literature, so English isn’t purely an oppressor language.
The actual Catholicness of Ireland wasn’t necessarily a political anti-English thing, it was a body of religious practices and devotions. It was more widespread and usable than Gaelic as a nationalist body of symbolism, but there were problems because a lot of the early nationalists were secular, or Protestant in origin. But the Catholics won, and they dominated for half a century.
All this subject to correction by the Irish-persons posting here.