Gaeltalk: Why learn Irish?

Undoubtedly literature can be a carrier of information on linguistic development as well. In a way the Irish language is so old that we have to have aspects of both, first, a linguistic history which in its early stages is backed up by some archaeological evidence and some conclusions drawn from the knowledge about the development of other languages related to Irish or better, its linguistic parents and second, a linguistic history related to definite, rich sources such as manuscripts and to events in the circumstances of the country where the language is spoken, i.e. to history itself.

Starting from the premise that Irish is one of many Indo-European languages (i.e. related to English, the Scandinavian languages, Italian, French, German, Greek, Slovenian, Serbian, Russian and even Persian) a brief look at its linguistic parents takes us back to the end of the Stoneage ca. 4000 years ago and to the area where the Indo-European parent language originated, a vast region covering eastern Europe and western Asia. The research results of famous scholars such as David Greene and Kenneth H. Jackson stand unchallenged, that Indo-European broke up then into the parents of all European languages with the exception of Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Turkish and Basque. In the words of David Greene, 'the Indo-Europeans have conquered the world linguistically'.

After the Stoneage came the Bronzeage, ca. 3000 years ago. Population movements caused different groups to move into different directions, some east, some west. The groups which moved east eventually developed Persian, Hindi and other languages spoken in northern India. The groups which moved west, i.e. into Europe, were to become the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Slavic peoples, the Germanic peoples and last but not least, the Celts, some of whom were to develop the Irish language. The parent languages were 'Pre-old Greek, Italic, Slavonic, Germanic and Celtic respectively. Pre-old Greek developed into old Greek and eventually into modern Greek.

Italic developed into Oscian, Umbrian and Latin, the parent of modern Italian and its sister languages French, Spanish, Portugese and Romanian. Slavonic developed into old forms of Russian, Slovenian, Albanian and other Balkan languages, later into their modern varieties. Germanic developed into East-Germanic or Gothic, Northern Germanic, the parent of all Scandinavian languages and Western Germanic, the parent of Anglo-Saxon, Friesian and German. Modern English is, of course, also basically a Western Germanic language but it is more influenced by Norman French, a language from another branch, than any other Germanic language.

By the beginning of the Iron Age ca. 2800 years ago we move into an era where archaeological evidence for the Celts becomes more and more plentiful. The earliest culture usually defined as Celtic is the Hallstatt culture which is named after the Austrian town of Hallstatt. This placename has a Celtic element in it, i.e. 'hall' which means 'salt'. The early Celts were great saltminers and iron-ore miners and a good few placenames in continental Europe point to this.

Archaeologists divide the Hallstatt culture into two sections, eastern Hallstatt circle and western Hallstatt circle. Moreover they divide it into an older phase which is geographically related to the eastern circle and a later phase which is geographically related to the western circle. It is in relation to the western circle and the later phase that we first get historical backup from Greek geographers writing about the Celts or 'Keltoi' as they called them. We're now in the 6th and 5th century B.C.. The Greek geographer Hecataios of Milet says that the region beyond the then Greek colony of 'Massilia' (i.e. modern-day Marseille, France) was the land of the Celts. It seems that he wanted to say that Celts lived somewhere north of the Provence.

Another, later, Greek writer, the poet Apollonios of Rhodes who wrote in the 3rd century B.C. reports in his Argonautica that one can reach the Celts if one sails up the river Rhône and crosses 'stormy lakes', probably Lake Geneva, the central Swiss lakes and Lake Constance. So we are now in the area of the later Hallstatt circle. Another Greek, the historian Herodot, who wrote in the 5th century B.C. mentions the source of the Danube (southern Germany) as being located in lands settled by Celts. Even though there are some problems with Herodot's geographical knowledge it is quite clear that most of modern-day France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and regions east of that as well as the southern half of Germany were settled by people who were called 'Celts' by outsiders. How and as what they regarded themselves we don't know, neither are we aware of any sense of political unity among the Celts.

As the Celts moved from the late Hallstatt culture into the famous La Tène Age (the main iron-age era of Celtic culture in an archaeological sense) of the European continent and the islands of Britain and Ireland (ca. 300 B.C) they probably spoke an Indo-European dialect called 'Common Celtic' which was brought from the east. One important feature of Celtic is that it shed the Indo-European p-sound. Thus what became Latin 'pater' = father became 'athair' in Irish. This dialect evolved into the continental Celtic languages one of which is known to us on the basis of some fifty inscriptions and some personal and place names, i.e. Gaulish spoken by the Gauls who fought under their leader Vercingetorix for their independence against Julius Caesar in the middle of the 1st century B.C..

In their language we come across words like 'rix' = king (Latin: rex), Irish 'rí'; 'dunon' = fort, Irish 'dún','maros' = big, Irish 'mór', 'vindos' = white, Irish 'fionn', 'uxellos' = noble, Irish 'uasal'. A common Gaulish name was 'Domnovaldus' which is the predecessor of the Irish and Scottish name Donald, or Mac Donald. Another development was the language spoken by the Galatians of the Bible (how did they get there? They were bands of warriors from Celtic lands who went to sack Delphi in Greece in 279 B.C. and went on into Asia Minor to settle down).

Celts who moved into Britain also spoke a language related to Gaulish even though Gaulish is not to be regarded as the ancestor of British but a branch which died out. This 'British' language was spoken all over the island which is now England, Scotland and Wales during the time of Roman occupation in early Christian times. It was the parent language of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Breton is spoken in northern France. It's not a direct descendant of Gaulish but was brought back from the island of Britain by refugees who fled the country under Anglo-Saxon pressure in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D.. All these languages have in common that they converted the Indo-European sound 'qu' (retained in Latin words like 'quod' = what, quinque = five) into 'p'. In modern Welsh, for example, these words appear as 'beth' (b and p are closely related) and 'pump'.

Now, there must have been an early offshoot of this Common Celtic dialect and relative of the dead Gaulish language which also shed the Indo-European 'p'-sound but did NOT convert the old 'qu' sound into a 'p' sound but kept it. The 'qu' (often shown as 'kw') just came to be represented by 'c'. This language is called 'Goidelic' (reconstructed on the basis of our knowlegde of Gaulish and Old Irish) and is the parent of Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. There is a much disputed but exciting theory by the Irish professor Tomás Ó Rathaille that the first Celts who settled in Ireland also spoke the British variety of Celtic, not the Goidelic variety. If this is so, then the Goidelic speaking people at some stage just overrun the earlier settlers and imposed their language on the country. This theory ties in with accounts of several invasions (as in the famous 'Book of Invasions') into Ireland the last of which were the 'Sons of Míl', the Gaels.

The first evidence of this mysterious parent-language of Irish is found on Ogham stones, standing stones inscribed with combinations of lines and dots representing Latin alphabet letters. These stones are particularly plentiful in the southern half of Ireland. Some stones were also found in south-west Scotland, the area first occupied by Gaels from north-east Ireland. The stones belong to the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. i.e. the beginning of the Christian era in Ireland. Linguistically, the change from Goidelic involved the loss of final and, if applicable, internal syllables, e.g. 'nertomarus' became Irish 'neartmhar' = strong. The medial 'o' and the final 'us' was shed. The Latin name for St. Patrick, Patricius, became Cothriche, shedding the final syllable 'us' and changing from 'p' to 'c' (representing old Indo-European 'qu'). Ogham script often appears on the edge of standing stones usually smaller than this one. The edge serves as a central line on which the strokes for consonants and the dots for vowels are inscribed.

Within one to two centuries of the ogham stones written documents in Irish were produced in Ireland and on the continent. The Irish language was in the process of developing its own literature from now on. Important sources for the earliest form of written Irish are the so-called glosses on the margins of Latin manuscripts. One can easily imagine an Irish scribe studying the Latin scriptures in a monastery on the European continent when looking at a Wurzburg gloss in its context: the preceding Latin text: de uobis glorior apud Macedonas...the scribe refers to 2. Corinthians 9:2: bíuu-sa oc irbáig dar far cenn-si fri Maccidóndu.

Soon saints' lives like the lives of St. Patrick and St. Columban followed in the 7th and 8th centuries. Valuable manuscripts in which texts derived from older sources were often preserved were produced before long by scribes in monasteries of the old Celtic church. (The ecclesiastical system of Rome was imposed on Ireland with the coming of the Normans in the 13th century). One such manuscript is the Book of Armagh which dates from the first half of the 9th century. This book contains a version of the Life of St. Patrick based on an earlier source. Other famous books like the Book of Dun Cow (Lebor na h-Uidre) from the 12th / 13th century and the Book of Leinster (Leabhar Laighneach) from the 12th century are, amongst others, frequently quoted sources for early Irish texts. Scholars call the very early form of the language 'archaic Irish'.

Apart from taking a liking to religious literature Irish scribes soon took a liking to nature poetry. As early as the 9th century a rhyme form was applied at times which was still used by poets in the 18th century. This form is called deibhí. Strict metrical rules called 'dán díreach' became the fashion in Irish versification as the language developed from Old Irish into Middle Irish and on into Early Modern Irish. Below we have a sample of Irish Nature Poetry from the 10th or 11th century:

It took a lot of research to determine the period of language development from 'Old Irish' to 'Middle Irish'. Highly qualified and experienced scholars have suggested varying starting and finishing dates for that period since the discussion began in the 19th century. Nowadays the following dates for the beginning and end of Middle Irish are widely accepted: 900 A.D to 1200 A.D. This period is marked by the benevolent infuence of the high-king Brian Ború who tried to encourage peace and learning according to the example of Charlemagne on the European continent some two centuries earlier. The end of the Middle Irish period coincides with the invasion of the Normans, a decisive point in the history of Ireland.

What was 'Middle Irish'? Professor David Greene in The Irish Language / An Ghaeilge (Dublin 1966) defines it in an interesting way:' "The Middle Irish period (900 - 1200) represents the struggle between the evolving speech of the people and older standards upheld by scholars who had neither the knowledge or the authority to enforce them." Famous manuscripts were compiled during the Middle Irish period, among them the Book of Kells and the Book of Glendalough (Rawlinson B502). Good evidence of how the spoken language of the people was encroaching on rigid archaic forms comes from a less famous manuscript, however: the Book of Deer from northeast Scotland.

In those days the literary language was the same all over the Gaelic world, i.e. Scotland and Ireland, but in the Book of Deer we get the first evidence that there was a difference between Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic by the middle of the 12th century. One may assume, that the spoken language of the people of Ireland was also developing into three main dialects by then: the dialect of Donegal, Ulster and North Leinster in the north and northwest; the dialect of Connaught in the west and the midlands and the dialect of South Leinster and Munster in the south and southwest. While the dialects were developing among the common people the learned classes of poets (filí) and professional scribes in Ireland and, for that matter, Scotland, could still not part with a standard language which tried to be old-fashioned.

The professional poets' job was the composition of poetry (much of it propaganda-poetry) in return for rewards and favors by his employers (usually clan chiefs) according to strict rules imposed by tradition. These rules as well as their pride of position and class consciousness nurtured the stilted literary language which emerged after the Middle Irish period and the establishment of the Normans in Ireland; it is called 'Early Modern Irish' and spans the 13th, 14th, 15th 16th centuries. During these centuries the bardic schools flourished everywhere in Ireland and the production of verse was plentiful. Prose manuscripts in which new materials as well as old texts were combined were produced by the great literary families with names like 'Mac Fhir Bhisigh, Ó Cléirigh, Ó Dálaigh, Ó Duinnín. The poets and literary families were working under the protection of powerful regional rulers and could do so as long as the social and political structures which favoured their position prevailed.

The Norman invasion doubtlessly brought lots of foreign influences. Politico-ecclesiastical hostilities occured between them and the indigenous Irish. As for the cultural differences, the Irish absorbed the new influences and turned them into an enrichment of their own culture. Some famous learned poets were of Norman stock, and it is worth mentioning Gearóid Iarla, Eochaidh Ó Heodhasa and Piaras Feirtéar. All of them seemingly enjoyed composing love poetry (dánta grá) in a relaxed verse, maybe as a past-time, allbeit that Gaeróid Iarla and Piaras Feirtéar didn't have to work as poets as they were Norman nobility. Here a stanza from a 'love poem' by Piaras Feirtéar who lived in west Kerry on the Dingle Peninsula in the 17th century when the old system was on the brink of collapse from English pressure:

Several centuries of political and cultural pressure, plantations of English and Scottish protestant settlers and land confiscations by Ireland's mighty neighbor eventually culminated in the destruction of the structures which upheld classical Irish learning. Wealthy chiefs and earls had to abdicate and submit to the crown or flee the country. The foundation of the learned classes' existence was taken away. This happened in the course of the 17th century which was traumatic for Irish history. At its beginning stands the battle of Kinsale (1601) where Lord Mountjoy defeated the Earl of Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, and his Spanish helpers. At its end stands the battle of the Boyne (1689) where William of Orange defeated James II (the VII of Scotland). In between was Cromwell's invasion of Ireland (1649). Under his command protestants came from England and were given land which formerly belonged to catholics.

It is easy to imagine the impact on the Gaelic language this must have had. Realizing the death-blow to the Gaelic world a priest from county Tipperary by the name of Seathrún Céitinn compiled a 'History of Ireland' from older sources in which he has preserved a lot of ancient stories and traditions for posterity. This prose text is a much-loved example of Early Modern Irish writing as well as a historical document in itself regarding the circumstances and reasons for its production. Céitinn was also a poet. He could compose love poetry like Pádraig Feirtéar of whom he was a contemporary but his pain over the loss of the 'old Ireland' is expressed in his most famous poem: ('Fál', genetive 'Fáil' is one of the poetic names for Ireland):

For the next century, up to the middle of the 18th century, the unjust 'penal-laws' were in force in Ireland. Their aim was to eliminate the language and even more so the catholic religion of the Irish people. The combination of economic deprivation, religious persecution and discrimination for speaking Irish certainly did the greatest damage to Irish culture so far, but amazingly even now a new class of scribes and poets as preservers of old knowledge and religious teaching emerged. Religious writers were usually priests who, due to persecution, learned or taught in Irish seminaries abroad, e.g. Louvain (Belgium) and Salamanca (Spain).

At home in Ireland the 18th century saw the rise of hedgeschool teachers who could teach the children of catholics in secret. These teachers could of course not receive regular pay for their work, so they had to earn an income through physical labor of some kind or other. Many of these teachers were gifted poets indeed. They got together in the so-called Cúirteanna Éigse (Courts of Poetic Learning) and exchanged verses they had composed.

The language was now very close to that of the people and the subjects that concerned them were religious, political, personal criticism and satire, elegies / love or praise of a woman and 'visions' or 'aislings' where Ireland appears as a woman and talks about her destiny with the poet. This type of poetry was particularly plentiful in the province of Munster and has been collected in hundreds of manuscripts. When the penal-laws were relaxed gradually during the second half of the 18th century this tradition was coming to an end but manuscripts continued to be written throughout the 19th century.

By 1798 the tide was turning completely for the catholic religion in Ireland as the foundation of the seminary of Maynooth was permitted. The amazing thing about this was that students had to study through the medium of English and went out as priests amongst their flocks, speaking in English. This was a terrible setback to the Irish language. The Irish people's faithfulness to their religion could be used to help choke the language. Economically, tenants found it more and more necessary to be able to speak English in order to make their needs known to landlords and their representatives. Even the early Irish language enthusiast archbishop Mac Hale of Co. Mayo told his flock to keep their own Irish but to learn English as well.

Probably by the early 19th century many well-meaning parents wanted their children to know English rather than Irish in the hope that they 'would make it in life'. When the English oppression stopped the needs of the Irish people had been shaped in such a way that it became necessary to know English to survive. With the foundation of the National School system in 1831 English gained further ground. Children in Irish-speaking areas had to use English in school while mostly speaking Irish at home. Parents supported this system and teachers were encouraged to impose severe punishments for speaking Irish in school.

Emigration due to famine and poverty was the next negative influence on the condition Irish. By now the Irish-speaking areas were shrinking and concentrating in western regions of the country. Sadly these were very dependent on the potato for food and thus these regions suffered terribly during the potato famine in the mid 1840s. Communities along the sea-coast had a small advantage in these difficult years as they could improve their diet with fish and shellfish.

While politics and freedom-fighting of the 'United Irishmen' and the 'Fenian movement' went on in and near the cities the Irish language with all its old treasures of poetry, prayers and traditions was to be found in the remote regions of the west, north-west and south-west. Here it was not a means of expressing anti-British feelings and exhibiting Irish nationalism but was simply the language the people had always spoken and were most comfortable with.

From then on until now the world of the Irish language has been divided: outside the areas where Irish has always been spoken naturally, the so-called 'Gaeltacht' areas, Irish is cherished by different people to different degrees for different reasons which have sprung from a love for and pride of our heritage. It is an acknowledgement of our 'irishness', a recognition of the fact expressed in the words 'tír gan teanga tír gan anam' (i.e. a country without language is a country without soul).

Since Ireland has developed a relationship with its European neighbors in the context of an economic and increasingly political union over the last 25 years or so a longing for our own native language has had a positive outcome. The desire to have their children educated through Irish even though the language is not spoken in the home has resulted in the successful establishment of Irish medium pimary and secondary schools all over the country.

State and semi-state documents and forms (application forms etc.) are available in Irish or English. More and more private companies pursue a bilingual policy to some degree, e.g. Irish / English signage in their buildings. The manifestation of our love for the Irish language ranges from the academic departments to the pre-school run through the medium of Irish; from the proud exhibition of ancient placenames to the showing off of what we call 'an cupla focal' (a person's knowledge of a few words of Irish only); from the maintenance of the governmental publishers (an Gúm) via the state-run 'committee for Irish terminology' to various institutions to support Irish language initiatives of all kinds.

The European Union recognizes Irish as Ireland's native language. I've heard a story about an Indian man who was an excellent Irish speaker. When he had to travel to Ireland he took it for granted that he had to learn the native language of that country, not knowing that he could have gotten by with English.

The Gaeltacht areas where Irish has never ceased to be spoken as a native language comprise some of the most beautiful but also challenging regions to live in. Most of them are remote and barren. They have a history of economic disadvantage and relative poverty. All areas are small and border with or are surrounded by areas where English is spoken. In modern times an increasing measure of dependence, economic and social, on these neighboring areas has given the English language great power and influence on the Gaeltachts. As well as that, the Gaeltachts are very thinly populated.

There are many empty houses which are often sold as holiday homes. Occasionally families, couples or single people choose to face the challenge of settling down in a Gaeltacht. While they bring a foreign language with them most of them make an effort to learn Irish. While a number of years ago many native Irish speakers in the Gaeltachts got into the habit of using English, there is now a growing awareness of the importance of Irish; we realize that it is, like every other language to its native speakers, not just a set of sounds but the medium and the carrier of what is indigenous to us, a part of our nature, knowledge and being.

The Irish Language - A Brief History