seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Irish Language


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Death of Playwright & Broadcaster Máiréad Ní Ghráda

Máiréad Ní Ghráda, poet, playwright, and broadcaster, dies on June 13, 1971. She is a tireless promoter of the Irish language and writes many educational texts, some of which are still widely used today including Progress in Irish.

Máiréad is born and raised in Kilmaley, County Clare, a Breac Ghaeltacht, with Irish speaking parents. She wins a university scholarship while attending the local Convent of Mercy School and receives a BA in English, Irish, and French and an MA in Irish from University College Dublin (UCD).

An active member of the Gaelic League and Cumann na mBan, she is imprisoned in 1920 for selling flags on behalf of the Gaelic League on Grafton Street. After a short time teaching in St. Brendan’s private school, Glenageary, County Dublin, Máiréad is employed as organiser and later as secretary to Ernest Blythe in the first Dáil Éireann and during the Irish Civil War. In 1923, she marries Richard Kissane, a civic guard (Garda Síochána). They have two sons and settle in Ranelagh, Dublin.

Beginning in 1926 she spends nine years working for 2RN (now Radió Éireann). She is the first female announcer with 2RN, engaged as Woman’s Organiser with the national radio station for many years, a job which involves programming for women and children. She is the first female announcer in Ireland and Britain, and perhaps in Europe.

Máiréad writes her first play in 1931 while teaching Irish in a domestic science college in Kilmacud. An Uacht, a one act comedy based on Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini, is produced by Michéal Mac Liammóir at the Gate Theatre (1931). Her writing for theatre includes Mícheál, 1933 (adaptation of Michael, a story by Leo Tolstoy), An Grádh agus an Garda (1937), Giolla an tSoluis (1945), Hansel & Gretel (1951), Lá Buí Bealtaine (1953), Úll glas Oíche Shamhna (1955), Ríte (1955), Súgán Sneachta (1959), Mac Uí Rudaí (1961) and Stailc Ocrais (1962). An Triail (1964) and On Trial (1965) and Breithiúnas (1968), although critical of Irish society at the time, are her greatest successes.

Her enormous contribution to Irish language theatre includes eleven original plays, more than any other playwright in Irish.


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Death of Rose Maud Young, Writer & Scholar

Rose Maud Young (Irish: Róis Ní Ógáin), writer, scholar and collector of Irish songs, best known for her work to preserve the Irish language, dies on May 28, 1947 in Cushendun, County Antrim.

Young is born in Galgorm Castle, Ballymena, County Antrim, daughter and seventh of twelve children born to Grace Charlotte Savage, and John Young who is a prosperous unionist and high sheriff. Despite his position he is a believer in tenant rights. Her younger sister is the writer Ella Young and her brother Willie Young is secretary of the Ulster Unionist League.

Young is educated by governesses until 1884 before completing training as a teacher through Cambridge University. Young also attends Gaelic League classes in 1903 in London while visiting her sister who is living in the city at the time. After visiting the Bodleian Library she becomes committed to the study of the Irish language.

In the early 1900s Young returns to Ireland and continues her study of the Irish language in Belfast at Seán Ó Catháin‘s Irish College and in County Donegal at Coláiste Uladh in Gort an Choirce. Young also stays in Dublin and becomes friends with members of the Gaelic League and meets Margaret Dobbs. Young works with Dobbs on the Feis na nGleann (The Glens Festival), a gathering dedicated to the Irish language.

Young is not involved in nationalism though she is strongly supportive of creating and maintaining a sense of “Irishness” through language and culture. She is also a friend and patron of Roger Casement. She also works with Ellen O’Brien and contributes to O’Brien’s book, The Gaelic Church. She keeps meticulous diaries and becomes interested in Rathlin Island and the Gaelic spoken there.

Rose Young is buried in the Presbyterian churchyard at Ahoghill, County Antrim.


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Birth of Brendan Kennelly, Poet & Novelist

Brendan Kennelly, Irish poet and novelist, is born in Ballylongford, County Kerry, on April 17, 1936. Now retired from teaching, he serves as Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin until 2005. Since his retirement he has been titled “Professor Emeritus” by Trinity College.

Kennelly is educated at the inter-denominational St. Ita’s College, Tarbert, County Kerry, and at Trinity College, Dublin where he edits the student literary magazine Icarus. He graduates from Trinity and writes his PhD thesis there. He also studies at Leeds University. Brendan is married for 18 years to Margaret (Peggy) O’Brien, a colleague in the English Department at Trinity College. They live together in Sandymount, Dublin, with daughter Doodle for 12 years before separating. Brendan and Peggy remain friends and Peggy is now remarried. Peggy is a published poet and Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Kennelly’s poetry can be scabrous, down-to-earth and colloquial. He avoids intellectual pretension and literary posturing, and his attitude to poetic language can be summed up in the title of one of his epic poems, “Poetry my Arse.” A 400-page long epic poem, “The Book of Judas”, published in 1991, tops the Irish best-seller list.

A prolific and fluent writer, he has more than twenty books of poetry to his credit, including My Dark Fathers(1964), Collection One: Getting Up Early (1966), Good Souls to Survive (1967), Dream of a Black Fox (1968), Love Cry(1972), The Voices (1973), Shelley in Dublin (1974), A Kind of Trust (1975), Islandman (1977), A Small Light (1979) and The House That Jack Didn’t Build (1982).

Kennelly has edited several other anthologies, including “Between Innocence and Peace: Favourite Poems of Ireland” (1993), “Ireland’s Women: Writings Past and Present, with Katie Donovan and A. Norman Jeffares” (1994), and “Dublines,” with Katie Donovan (1995).

Kennelly has also written two novels, “The Crooked Cross” (1963) and “The Florentines” (1967), and three plays in a Greek Trilogy, Antigone, Medea and The Trojan Women.

Kennelly is an Irish language speaker, and has translated Irish poems in “A Drinking Cup” (1970) and “Mary” (Dublin 1987). A selection of his collected translations is published as “Love of Ireland: Poems from the Irish” (1989).

Language is important in Kennelly’s work – in particular the vernacular of the small and isolated communities in North Kerry where he grew up, and of the Dublin streets and pubs where he becomes both roamer and raconteur for many years. Kennelly’s language is also grounded in the Irish-language poetic tradition, oral and written, which can be both satirical and salacious in its approach to human follies.

Regarding the oral tradition, Kennelly is a great reciter of verse with tremendous command and the rare ability to recall extended poems by memory, both his own work and others, and recite them on call verbatim.

Kennelly has commented on his own use of language: “Poetry is an attempt to cut through the effects of deadening familiarity and repeated, mechanical usage in order to unleash that profound vitality, to reveal that inner sparkle. In the beginning was the Word. In the end will be the Word…language is a human miracle always in danger of drowning in a sea of familiarity.”


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Founding of the Ossianic Society

The Ossianic Society, an Irish literary society, is founded in Dublin on Saint Patrick’s Day 1853, taking its name from the poetic material associated with the ancient narrator Oisín.

Founding members include John O’Daly, William Elliot Hudson, John Edward Pigot, Owen Connellan, John Windele, and William Smith O’Brien. The antiquary Standish Hayes O’Grady is a principal member and later becomes its president. By 1860 the list of subscribers numbers 746, six volumes of Transactions are produced, and the preparations for further issues are extant when it ceases operations in 1863.

The group of Irish scholars emerge from competing societies, such as the Celtic Society and the Irish Archaeological Society, focusing on the translation of Irish literature from the “Fenian period of Irish history,” specifically, the mythological works of Oisín and the Fianna, and the promotion of the Irish language. The manifesto stipulates the membership be entirely composed of Irish scholars, the intent being to distinguish itself from similar societies that cater to Anglo-Irish interests and influence. Though such societies have credible scholars as steering members, the work produced is thought to be influenced by the local ascendancy and their royal (English) patrons.

The correspondence of members of the Society reveals a fractious relationship with other important figures of the time, Eugene O’Curry and those of the Royal Irish Academy, and are often frustrated in their attempts to access early manuscripts.


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Birth of Engineer John Philip Holland

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John Philip Holland, Irish engineer who develops the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the U.S. Navy, and the first Royal Navy submarine, HMS Holland 1, is born on February 24, 1841.

Holland, the second of four siblings, all boys, is born in a coastguard cottage in Liscannor, County Clare, where his father, John Philip Holland, Sr., is a member of the British Coastguard Service. His mother, a native Irish speaker from Liscannor, Máire Ní Scannláin, is John Holland’s second wife. His first wife, Anne Foley Holland, believed to be a native of Kilkee, dies in 1835. The area is heavily Irish-speaking and Holland learns English properly only when he attends the local English-speaking St. Macreehy’s National School, and from 1858, in the Christian Brothers in Ennistymon.

Holland joins the Irish Christian Brothers in Limerick and teaches in CBS Sexton Street in Limerick and many other centres in the country, including North Monastery CBS in Cork, St. Joseph’s CBS in Drogheda, and as the first Mathematics teacher in Coláiste Rís in Dundalk. Due to ill health, he leaves the Christian Brothers in 1873 and emigrates to the United States. Initially working for an engineering firm, he returns to teaching again for an additional six years in St. John’s Catholic school in Paterson, New Jersey.

While a teacher in Cork, Holland reads an account of the battle between the ironclads USS Monitor and USS Merrimack in the Battle of Hampton Roads during the American Civil War. He realizes that the best way to attack such ships would be through an attack beneath the waterline. He draws a design, but when he attempts to obtain funding, he is turned away. After his arrival in the United States, Holland slips and falls on an icy Boston street and breaks a leg. While recuperating from the injury in a hospital, he uses his time to refine his submarine designs and is encouraged by a priest, Isaac Whelan.

In 1875, his first submarine designs are submitted for consideration by the U.S. Navy, but are turned down as unworkable. The Fenians, however, continue to fund Holland’s research and development expenses at a level that allows him to resign from his teaching post. In 1881, Fenian Ram is launched, but soon after, Holland and the Fenians part company on bad terms over the issue of payment within the Fenian organization, and between the Fenians and Holland. The submarine is now preserved at Paterson Museum in New Jersey.

Holland continues to improve his designs and works on several experimental boats, prior to his successful efforts with a privately built type, launched on May 17, 1897. This is the first submarine having power to run submerged for any considerable distance, and the first to combine electric motors for submerged travel and gasoline engines for use on the surface. The submarine is purchased by the U.S. Navy on April 11, 1900, after rigorous tests and is commissioned on October 12, 1900 as USS Holland (SS-1). Six more of her type are ordered and built at the Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The company that emerges from under these developments is called The Electric Boat Company, founded on February 7, 1899. Isaac Leopold Rice becomes the company’s first President with Elihu B. Frost acting as vice president and chief financial officer. The company eventually evolves into the major defense contractor General Dynamics.

The USS Holland design is also adopted by others, including the Royal Navy in developing the Holland-class submarine. The Imperial Japanese Navy employs a modified version of the basic design for their first five submarines, although these submarines are at least 10 feet longer at about 63 feet. These submarines are also developed at the Fore River Ship and Engine Company in Quincy, Massachusetts. Holland also designs the Holland II and Holland III prototypes. The Royal Navy ‘Holland 1’ is on display at the Submarine Museum in Gosport, England.

After spending 56 of his 73 years working with submersibles, John Philip Holland dies on August 12, 1914 in Newark, New Jersey. He is interred at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, New Jersey.


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Birth of Writer & Journalist Pádraic Ó Conaire

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Pádraic Ó Conaire, Irish writer and journalist whose production is primarily in the Irish language, is born in Galway on February 20, 1882. During his lifetime he writes 26 books, 473 stories, 237 essays, and 6 plays. His acclaimed novel Deoraíocht has been described by Angela Bourke as “the earliest example of modernist fiction in Irish.”

Ó Conaire’s father is a publican, who owns two premises in the town of Galway. His mother is Kate McDonagh. He is orphaned by the age of eleven. He spends a period living with his uncle in Garaffin, Ros Muc, Connemara. The area is in the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking area) and Ó Conaire learns to speak Irish fluently.

He emigrates to London in 1899 where he gets a job with the Board of Education and becomes involved in the work of the Gaelic League. A pioneer in the Gaelic revival in the last century, Ó Conaire and Patrick Pearse are regarded as being the two most important Irish language short story writers during the first decades of the 20th century.

Ó Conaire is married to Molly Ní Mhanais, with whom he has four children: Eileen (born February 22, 1905), Patrick (born November 3, 1906), Kathleen (born February 24, 1909, and Mary Josephine (born July 28, 1911 but dies of diphtheria in 1922).

Ó Conaire returns to Ireland in 1914, leaving his family in London. Living mostly in Galway, he earns a meagre living through writing, teaching at Gaeltacht summer schools, and as an occasional organiser for the Gaelic League.

Ó Conaire dies at the age of 46 while on a visit to Dublin in 1928 after complaining of internal pains while at the head office of the Gaelic League. His fellow poet Frederick Robert Higgins writes a celebrated Lament for Pádraic Ó Conaire.

Pádraic Ó Conaire has family still living to this day in England as well as in Galway and Canada. The Ó Conaire surname is still strong in the Ros Muc area.


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Birth of Brendan Behan, Irish Republican, Poet & Writer

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Brendan Francis Aidan Behan, Irish Republican, poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who writes in both English and Irish, is born in Dublin on February 9, 1923.

Behan is widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish writers and poets of all time. He is also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Born in Dublin into a staunchly republican family, he becomes a member of the IRA’s youth organisation Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. However, there is also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in the home, which means he is steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from an early age. Behan eventually joins the IRA at sixteen, which leads to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom. He is also imprisoned in Ireland. During this time, he takes it upon himself to study and he becomes a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, Behan moves between homes in Dublin, Kerry, and Connemara, and also resides in Paris for a time.

In 1954, Behan’s first play, The Quare Fellow, is produced in Dublin. It is well received, however, it is the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood‘s Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, that gains Behan a wider reputation. This is helped by a famous drunken interview on BBC television. In 1958, Behan’s play in the Irish language, An Giall, has its debut at Dublin’s Damer Theatre. Later, The Hostage, Behan’s English-language adaptation of An Giall, meets with great success internationally. Behan’s autobiographical novel, Borstal Boy, is published the same year and becomes a worldwide best-seller.

He marries Beatrice Ffrench-Salkeld in 1955. By early March 1964, after developing diabetes, the end is in sight. Collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar, he is transferred to the Meath Hospital in central Dublin, where he dies at the age 41 on March 20, 1964. He is given an IRA guard of honour, which escorts his coffin. It is described by several newspapers as the biggest funeral since those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.


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Opening Night of “The Playboy of the Western World”

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The Playboy of the Western World, a three-act play written by Irish playwright John Millington Synge, is first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on January 26, 1907. The play is set in Michael James Flaherty’s public house in County Mayo during the early 1900s. It tells the story of Christy Mahon, a young man running away from his farm, claiming he killed his father. The locals are more interested in vicariously enjoying his story than in condemning the immorality of his murderous deed, and in fact, Christy’s tale captures the romantic attention of the barmaid Pegeen Mike, the daughter of Flaherty. The play is best known for its use of the poetic, evocative language of Hiberno-English, heavily influenced by the Irish language, as Synge celebrates the lyrical speech of the Irish.

The Playboy Riots occur during and following the opening performance of the play. The riots are stirred up by Irish nationalists who view the contents of the play as an offence to public morals and an insult against Ireland. The riots take place in Dublin, spreading out from the Abbey Theatre, and are finally quelled by the actions of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

The fact that the play is based on a story of apparent patricide also attracts a hostile public reaction. Egged on by nationalists, including Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith, who believe that the theatre is not sufficiently political and describes the play as “a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform,” and with the pretext of a perceived slight on the virtue of Irish womanhood in the line “a drift of females standing in their shifts” (a shift being a female undergarment), a significant portion of the crowd riots, causing the remainder of the play to be acted out in dumbshow. Nevertheless, press opinion soon turns against the rioters and the protests peter out.

Years later, William Butler Yeats declares to rioters against Seán O’Casey‘s pacifist drama The Plough and the Stars, in reference to the Playboy Riots, “You have disgraced yourself again. Is this to be the recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?”

In the 1965 film Young Cassidy, a riot occurs during a play by the fictitious playwright Cassidy, following which the character W.B. Yeats refers to Synge and speaks similar words, starting with “You have disgraced yourselves again.”

The production of Synge’s play meets with more disturbances in the United States in 1911. On opening night in New York City, hecklers boo, hiss and throw vegetables and stink bombs while men scuffle in the aisles. The company is later arrested in Philadelphia and charged with putting on an immoral performance. The charges are later dismissed.


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Death of John O’Donovan, Irish Language Scholar

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John O’Donovan, Irish language scholar, dies at his residence at 36 Upper Buckingham Street in Dublin on December 10, 1861.

O’Donovan is born in County Kilkenny on July 25, 1806 and is the fourth son of Edmond O’Donovan and Eleanor Hoberlin of Rochestown. His early career is likely inspired by his uncle, Parick O’Donovan. He works for antiquarian James Hardiman researching state papers and traditional sources at the Public Records Office. He also teaches Irish to Thomas Larcom for a short period in 1828 and works for Myles John O’Reilly, a collector of Irish manuscripts.

Following the death of Edward O’Reilly in August 1830, O’Donovan is recruited to the Topographical Department of the first Ordnance Survey Ireland under George Petrie in October 1830. Apart from a brief period in 1833, he works steadily for the Survey on place-name researches until 1842, unearthing and preserving many manuscripts. After that date, O’Donovan’s work with the Survey tails off, although he is called upon from time to time to undertake place-name research on a day-to-day basis. He researches maps and manuscripts at many libraries and archives in Ireland and England, with the intent to establish the correct origin of as many of Ireland’s 63,000 townland names as possible. His letters to Larcom are regarded as an important record of the ancient lore of Ireland for those counties he documents during his years of travel throughout much of Ireland.

By 1845, O’Donovan is corresponding with the younger scholar William Reeves, and much of their correspondence to 1860 survives.

O’Donovan becomes professor of Celtic Languages at Queen’s University Belfast, and is called to the Bar in 1847. His work on linguistics is recognised in 1848 by the Royal Irish Academy, who award him their prestigious Cunningham Medal. On the recommendation of German philologist Jacob Grimm, he is elected a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Prussia in 1856.

Never in great health, he dies shortly after midnight on December 10, 1861 at his residence in Dublin. He is buried on December 13, 1861 in Glasnevin Cemetery, where his tombstone inscription has slightly incorrect dates of both birth and death.


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Execution of IRA Officer Joe McKelvey

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Joe McKelvey, Irish Republican Army (IRA) officer, is executed by firing squad along with three other Anti-Treaty militants, on December 8, 1922, during the Irish Civil War.

McKelvey is born into a nationalist family in Stewartstown, County Tyrone. He has a keen interest in the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Irish language. He studies as an accountant and gains some of the qualifications necessary for this profession, but never fully qualifies. He works for a time at the Income Tax Office on Queen’s Square in Belfast and later finds work in Belfast’s engineering industry with Mackies on Springfield Road. He joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Volunteers, which after 1919, become known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is a founding member of the O’Donovan Rossa Club, Belfast, founded in 1916 on the Falls Road. Each year the club honours him with a juvenile hurling blitz, an invitational competition which is participated in by clubs throughout Ireland.

McKelvey participates in the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) against the British, in which he commands the IRA’s Belfast Brigade. On August 22, 1920, he helps to organise the killing of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Detective Oswald Swanzy in Lisburn. The killing itself is carried out by IRA men from Cork, but McKelvey arranges a taxi to carry the assassins to and from the scene and disposes of their weapons. In reprisal for this shooting, 300 Catholic homes in Lisburn are burned out. McKelvey is forced to lie low in Dublin for some time after these events.

In March 1921, the IRA is re-organised by its leadership in Dublin into Divisions and McKelvey is appointed commander of the Third Northern Division, responsible for Belfast and the surrounding area. In May 1921, McKelvey’s command suffers a severe setback, when fifty of his best men are sent to County Cavan to train and link up with the IRA units there, only to be surrounded and captured by the British Army on Lappanduff hill on May 9. In most of Ireland, hostilities are ended with a truce declared on July 11, 1921.

McKelvey is alone among the leadership of the Belfast IRA in going against the acceptance of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Most of his comrades support Michael Collins‘ assurances that, although the Treaty accepts the partition of Northern Ireland from the rest of the country, this is only a temporary concession which will be dealt with later. McKelvey does not accept this. As a result, he leaves his command as head of the IRA Third Northern Division and joins the Anti-Treaty IRA in Dublin.

In March 1922, McKelvey participates in the anti-Treaty IRA‘s repudiation of the authority of the Dáil, the civil government of the Irish Republic declared in 1919, and is elected to the IRA Army Executive. In April 1922 he helps command the occupation of the Four Courts in defiance of the new Irish Free State. This action helps to spark the civil war between pro- and anti-Treaty factions. McKelvey is among the most hardline of the anti-Treaty republicans and briefly, in June 1922, becomes IRA Chief of Staff, replacing Liam Lynch.

On June 28, 1922, the new Irish Free State government shells the Four Courts to assert its authority over the militants defending it. The Republicans in the Four Courts surrender after two days of fighting and McKelvey is captured. He is held for the following five months in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.

On December 8, 1922, Joe McKelvey is executed by firing squad along with three other Anti-Treaty militants, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, and Richard Barrett. The executions are ordered in reprisal for the Anti-Treaty IRA’s murder of Sean Hales, a Pro-Treaty member of the Third Dáil.