Irish English Part 2 doc

32 History I: The coming of the English stake in a fence. In the post-invasion period it denoted the part of Ireland which was firmly under English (and Anglo-Norman) control beyond which the native Irish lived. Its actual size varied, reaching a maximum in the fourteenth century when it covered an area from Drogheda north of Dublin to at least Waterford in the south south-east and included some of the midlands (Meath) and south midlands (parts of Tipperary). With the resurgence of Gaelic influence in Ire- land in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Pale shrank (Palmer 2000: 41). However, with the settlements (plantations, Andrews 2000)inthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the English presence spread gradually throughout the entire countryside and the term ‘Pale’ lost its relevance. The phrase beyond the pale ‘socially unacceptable’ suggests that those inside the Pale in the late medieval period regarded the natives outside as unruly and uncivilised. Within the boundaries of the Pale the political influence of England never ceased to exist. This is basically the reason for the continuous existence of English in Dublin: in the history of Ireland the English language has maintained the strongest influence in those areas where English political influence has been mostly keenly felt. After the twelfth century settlements spread to other cities, e.g. in the south (Cork) and in the west (Limerick and Galway). The impact on rural Ireland (T. Barry 2000a) was slight. This is of importance when considering the linguis- tic status of English vis- ` a-vis Irish in the late Middle Ages. English was not a dominant language at this stage (as it was to become in the early modern period). Indeed English competed with Anglo-Norman in medieval Ireland and both of these definitely interacted with the quantitatively more significant Irish language. An ever increasing assimilation of the original settlers by the native Irish occurred in the post-invasion period. This assimilation had two main reasons. Forone thing the English settlers of this early, pre-Reformation time were of course Catholic and for another the connections with England were in fact quite loose. Those adventurers who had sought land and political influence in Ireland evinced only nominal allegiance to the English crown. They had become to a large extent independent in Ireland (Moody and Martin 1967: 133ff.). Indeed one can interpret the visits of English kings in Ireland, such as that of Henry in Dublin in the late twelfth century, as a scarcely concealed attempt to assert the influence of the English court in a colony which did not lay undue emphasis on crown loyalty. In later centuries other monarchs were to follow suit. Thus John came to Ireland in 1210 and Richard II twice, in 1394 and 1399. Each of these visits was intended to serve the purpose of constraining the power of the ostensibly English nobility. With the severing of ties with England the original English naturally drew closer to the native Irish. This development explains the decline of English in Ireland in the late four- teenth and fifteenth centuries. Especially after the adoption of Protestantism by the English government, initiated by the ‘Reformation Parliament’ (1529–36) of Henry VIII, the English settlers in Ireland, ‘Old English’ as they are often termed, felt cut off andidentifiedthemselves increasingly withthenative Catholic 2.1 External developments 33 population. The fortunes of the English language were at their lowest in the first half of the sixteenth century (Moody and Martin 1967: 158ff.). ..       The history of English in Ireland is not that of a simple substitution of Irish by English. When the Anglo-Normans and English arrived in Ireland the linguistic situation in Ireland was quite homogeneous. In the ninth century Ireland had been ravaged by Scandinavians just like most of northern Britain. The latter, however, settled down in the following three centuries. The decisive battle against the Scandinavians (Clontarf, 1014) is taken to represent on the one hand the final break with Denmark and Norway, and on the other to have resulted in the complete assimilation of the remaining Scandinavians with the native Irish population, much as happened in other countries, such as large parts of northern Britain and northern France. At the time of the English invasion one can assume, in contradistinction to various older authors such as Curtis (1919: 234), that the heterogeneity which existed was more demographic than linguistic. Old Norse had indeed an effect on Irish, particularly in the field of lexis (see Sommerfelt in ´ OCu ´ ıv 1975; Geipel 1971: 56ff.), but there is no evidence that a bilingual situation obtained any longer in late twelfth-century Ireland. As one would expect from the status of the Anglo-Normans in England and from the attested names of the warlords who came to Ireland in the late twelfth century, these Anglo-Normans were the leaders among the new settlers. The English were mainly their servants, a fact which points to the relatively low status of the language at this time. As in England, the ruling classes and the higher positions in the clergy were occupied by Normans soon after the invasion. Their language was introduced with them and established itself in the towns. Evidence for this is offered by such works as The Song of Dermot and the Earl and The Entrenchment of New Ross in Anglo-Norman as well as contemporary references to spoken Anglo-Norman in court proceedings from Kilkenny (Cahill 1938: 160f.). Anglo-Norman seems to have been maintained in the cities well into the fourteenth century as the famous Statutes of Kilkenny (1366) attest (Lydon 1973: 94ff.; Crowley 2000: 14–16). These were composed in Anglo- Norman and admonished both the French-speaking lords and the native Irish population to speak English. The statutes were not repealed until the end of the fifteenth century but they were never effective. The large number of Anglo- Norman loanwords in Irish (Risk 1971: 586ff.), which entered the language in the period after the invasion, testifies to the existence of Anglo-Norman and the robustness of its position from the late twelfth to the fourteenth century (Hickey 1997b). In fact as a language of law it was used up to the fifteenth century, as evidenced by the Acts of Parliament of 1472 which were in Anglo-Norman. The strength of the Irish language can be recognised from various comments and descriptions of the early period. For instance, Irish was allowed in court proceedings according to the municipal archives of Waterford (1492–3) in those 34 History I: The coming of the English cases where one of the litigants was Irish. This would be unthinkable from the seventeenth century onwards when Irish was banned from public life. Still more indicative of the vitality of Irish is the account from the sixteenth century of the proclamation of a bill in the Dublin parliament (1541) which officially declared the assumption of the title of King of Ireland by Henry VIII (Dolan 1991: 143). 2 The parliament was attended by the representatives of the major Norman families of Ireland, but of these only the Earl of Ormond was able to understand the English text and apparently translated it into Irish for the rest of the attending Norman nobility (Hayes-McCoy 1967). Needless to say, the English viewed this situation with deep suspicion and the lord chancellor William Gerrard commented unfavourably in 1578 on the use of Irish by the English ‘even in Dublin’, and regarded the habits and the customs of the Irish as detrimental to the character of the English. Furthermore, since the Reformation, Irishness was directly linked to popery. Accordingly, the Irish and the (Catholic) Old English were viewed with growing concern. ..     The view of Ireland which prevailed in the Tudor period (1485–1603) was one of a country peopled by primitive tribes, permanently involved in internecine strife. There is undoubtedly some truth in this view: family and neighbourhood hostilities have always been characteristic of Irish life. The English stance was clear from the beginning: the salvation of the Irish lay in the imposition of English government and public order. Only this could guarantee a stable state of affairs. Added to this was the desire to impose Protestantism as the state religion of England on the popish Irish. The self-righteousness of the English attitude in this period is perhaps difficult to appreciate for present-day observers with an awareness of ethnic individuality and claims to independence. But the unquestioned conviction that English rule was divinely inspired, and the only option for the ‘wild Irish’, is one which permeates English writings on matters Irish from this period. One of the more representative authors and major poets of the time, Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–99), is no exception in this respect. 3 Historians vary in their interpretation of Tudor and later Elizabethan atti- tudes towards the Irish. In her discussion of the matter, Palmer (2000: 15f.) notes 2 Henry VIII became King of Ireland in 1541. Before that Ireland had technically been a ‘lordship’ of the English crown (Foster 1988: 3), though various laws severely curtailed the parliamentary freedom of the Irish. The most notorious of these was Poynings’ Law, introduced by Sir Edward Poynings in 1494, which specified that meetings of the Irish parliament had to be sanctioned by the Council in Ireland (headed by the king’s deputy) and by the king with the Council in England. This was later regarded as one of the main fetters in the Irish struggle for independence. 3 Spenser’s views are to be found in AView of the Present State of Ireland (Canny 2001: 42–55), a dialogue between proponents of strict and of liberal policies in Ireland which was written in the 1590s. There is disagreement among historians in their assessment of Spenser, some seeing him as a proponent of English colonial policy and others regarding him as an advocate of an ideal and liberal pastoral society (Rankin 2005). 2.1 External developments 35 that some believe the early modern English stance towards Ireland was part of a‘Renaissance anthropology’ which saw the Irish as inherently inferior because they were outside the realm of civilisation and ordered government. Other his- torians see the attitude towards the Irish as more pragmatic, determined by Protestantism, the state religion of England by then, and by the need to tame the unruly neighbours to the west who were a constant source of rebellion. Given the Reformation, the Tudors were particularly concerned with the anglicisation of the inhabitants of Ireland (of whatever origin). Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth I inherited this concern from her father. Initially, her attitude to the Irish would appear to have been reasonably conciliatory: it is even reported that she expressed the wish to understand Irish. In keeping with the aims of the Reformation, Elizabeth decided to have the Bible translated; she provided a press with an Irish font to print it and commissioned Irish bishops to organise the work (though these were later chided for not moving this project forward speedily enough). The press supplied by Elizabeth was first used for poetry in 1571 but it was not until almost thirty years later in 1602–3 that the New Testament was printed in Dublin by one Se ´ an Francke. The task of translation would not have presented insuperable difficulties given the presence of Irish scholars in Dublin and the favour or at least tolerance many of them enjoyed at the hands of the English. Indeed the vibrancy of intellectual life in Dublin is attested by the founding of Trinity College Dublin as a university in 1592 by Elizabeth I, albeit solely for the benefit of the Protestant classes. 2.1.3.1 The Munster plantation Of all the events which affected Ireland in the Tudor era, it is the organised settlement of the Irish landscape which was to have the greatest consequence in terms of anglicisation. These settlements are known collectively as ‘plantations’ and were carefully planned (Foster 1988: 59–78; MacCurtain 1972: 89ff.; see Dudley Edwards with Hourican 2005: 158 for maps). The practical success of plantations depended on a number of factors and there were many setbacks. But in the long run they were responsible for the establishment of a large-scale English presence throughout the country. The first plantations originated in the period from 1549 to 1557 (Moody and Martin 1967: 189ff.) when the two counties Offaly and Laois (read: [li ʃ]) 4 in the centre of the country were settled (Duffy et al. 1997: 58f.). Apart from a few cases of private initiatives, the plantations in Ireland were affairs devised and sanctioned by the English government. In terms of size and scope, two can be highlighted. The first is the Munster plantation and the second is the Ulster plantation, which will be dealt with below (see section 3.1.2). 4 These counties were formerly called King’s and Queen’s County respectively (Lalor 2003: 815f. and 609f.). 36 History I: The coming of the English The prerequisites for the plantations were provided by Henry VIII who was the first English king to lay a practical claim to all of Ireland (Bardon 1996: 45). The old distinction between the English within the Pale and the Irish beyond was to be abolished and English rule was to apply to the entire island. The trigger for the plantations was the confiscation of lands after the defeat of the Earl of Desmond in north Munster (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 16ff.). With this defeat a large amount of land (some 300,000 acres, Duffy et al. 1997: 58) fell to the government and it was decided to settle English on the escheated land (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 29f.). The system provided for the establishment of seignories, land units allotted to Englishmen who were to assume a leading role in recruiting further English settlers on the land. These people came to be termed ‘undertakers’ and the number of settlers was stipulated for each unit of land (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 30f.). In 1586 land in Munster was divided into seignories of 12,000, 8,000, 6,000 and 4,000 acres. On the largest seignory an undertaker had to plant ninety-one families including his own. The tenants were also subdivided: freeholders obtained 300 acres each, farmers 400 acres, copyholders 100 acres, the rest being at the discretion of the undertaker. A seven-year time schedule was assumed for the realisation of a seignory; in the case of the Munster plantation of 1586 the task was to have been completed by 1593 (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 30f.). Certain other provisions were made, for instance for the defence of the lands. By and large the native Irish were excluded from tenancy on seignories, but the Old English were not, as land could be granted to ‘such as be descended from Englishmen’. Among the English who came to Ireland at this time was the poet Edmund Spenser who was appointed secretary in 1580 to the then governor of Ireland, Lord Grey de Wilton. Spenser was allotted land in Munster (north Co. Cork). However, his efforts did not bear fruit; his own castle being burnt down in 1598 ayear before his death. The Munster plantation was beset by certain difficulties from the start. Many of the English who moved to the province in 1586–92 (Moody and Martin 1967:190) assimilated to the local Irish. Furthermore, many of the undertak- ers failed to carry out their commitments so that the plantation finally failed in 1598 (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 119). Historians mention that there may have been other extenuating reasons, which McCarthy-Morrogh attempts to identify, but the net result is that the English population in Munster did not increase appreciably in the late 1580s and the 1590s. The estimated 4,000 newcomers – spread across four counties: north Kerry, Limerick, north and north-east Cork, west Waterford (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 130) – would not have had a signifi- cant effect on the nature of English in the province. Of course, the major reason for the failure of the plantation of Munster was the rebellion of 1598 (Canny 2001: 162). This uprising, along with the Spanish intervention on the side of the Irish under Hugh O’Neill, was a cause of serious concern to the Elizabethan administration which saw the real likelihood of a collapse of the English presence in Ireland (Canny 2001: 165). 2.1 External developments 37 Despite the immediate negative outcome of the Munster plantation, it was shown that plantation could be made to work and that a society within a society was possible if enough precautions against attack and disruption were taken. With the defeat of the Irish in 1601, the framework for later plantations was laid, amuch firmer one in which military threat from the Irish was less. ..    For the history of English in Ireland, the sixteenth century represents a break in its development. Politically, it was marked by increasing separatist activities on the part of the Irish (of native and/or original English/Norman stock) which ended in the final victory over the Irish by English forces at the Battle of Kinsale (Co. Cork) in 1601. The subsequent departure from (the north of) Ireland by native leaders in 1607 – known somewhat romantically as the Flight of the Earls (Byrne 2004: 123) – left a political vacuum which was filled energetically by the English. 5 Plantations were undertaken in the first years of the seventeenth century throughout the country. The early decades saw further settlements of English people in Munster, for instance in south-west Cork (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 151). But the largest and most successful settlements were in Ulster (Canny 2001: 165–242). These will be dealt with below in section 3.1.2.With regard to the south of the country, further developments were to have a negative effect on the Irish presence in the countryside and to increase the number of English there. Cromwell’s transplantation policy (see section 2.1.4.2 below) was to push the Irish further west and the reallocation of freed lands to those loyal to the crown – overwhelmingly English settlers – led to increasing anglicisation. 2.1.4.1 Language of the planters The language of the planters in the seventeenth century came under the influence of the native Irish quite quickly, if representations such as Swift’s Dialogue in the Hipernian Stile (Bliss 1976: 557, 1977b) can be regarded as genuine. But the lin- guistic group which would have been responsible for the transfer characteristics of Irish into English is the large section of the Irish-speaking community which switched from Irish to English between the seventeenth and the nineteenth cen- turies. There were different reasons for this language shift. On the one hand the Penal Laws (Byrne 2004: 230f.) imposed draconian punishment on the use and practice of Irish. But on the other hand large sections of the native population 5 The Flight of the Earls in 1607 has a parallel in the exile of Sarsfield, a military leader in Limerick, and the Wild Geese in 1691 because the treaty of Limerick, which he had negotiated with William III, was not respected by the English parliament. More than 10,000 soldiers are reputed to have emigrated to the continent, mainly to Catholic France, rather than face their uncertain fate in Ireland after military defeat. 38 History I: The coming of the English changed over to English of their own accord because of the social advantages to be gained from a knowledge of the language. The role of the planters in the genesis of Irish English can be considered minimal, not least because they were numerically much less significant in this context than the native Irish. 6 Of course, the English which the Irish switched to was that which was available in their environment and for some this was the language of planters. But for many the varieties of English they were exposed to were those which had existed since the early period of settlement on the east coast and in towns around the country. Even if the planters, by virtue of their social standing, ‘imposed’ (Guy 1990) features of their English onto that of the Irish engaged in the language shift, there is no way of showing this. Today, it is not possible in southern Ireland to distinguish between a group descended from original Irish speakers and a group which stems from early English settlers. In the north of the country, however, there is this distinction given the clear profile of Ulster Scots which derives from the speech of the seventeenth century settlers from Scotland (see section 3.3). In their remarks on the Irish language shift, Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 43) assume that descendants of settlers did not emulate the English used by Irish speakers but, given that the latter group was much more numerous, their ‘speech habits prevailed anyway’. They furthermore note the large amount of phonological and morphosyntactic interference from Irish into Irish English and the comparative lack of lexical transfer (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 129); indeed they postulate that the few items there are may well have been introduced by English speakers confronted with Irish rather than by speakers of Irish English themselves. The cumulative effect of the English presence in the south of the country from the late sixteenth century onwards would have meant that the native Irish were increasingly exposed to the English language. What cannot be determined in retrospect is whether the accents represented by the English settlers were homogeneous enough to have represented a recognisable model for the Irish switching to English. The phonology of Irish English, certainly in the rural south-west where settlements took place in the late sixteenth century (see above), is determined by the sound system of Irish, as one might expect of a language acquired inanon-prescriptive environment by adults, so thata linguistic influence of English settlers on the shape of later southern Irish English is not discernible. 2.1.4.2 Transplantation and transportation In 1642 the English parliament decided that 2,500,000 acres of profitable Irish land should be ‘taken out of the four Provinces of that Kingdom’ and given 6 This view is also held by scholars working on language contact who have considered the Irish situation, e.g. Sarah Thomason who maintains that ‘the shifters’ variety of English was able to influence the English of Ireland as a whole because the shifters were numerous relative to the original native speakers of English in Ireland’ (Thomason 2001: 79). 2.1 External developments 39 as security to those who would invest money – so-called ‘adventurers’ (Foster 1988: 110) – in the attempt to establish orderly government in Ireland (Canny 2001: 553). This scheme continued to influence English thinking under Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) who after attaining military victory in Ireland – over both Catholic and royalist Protestant segments of society in the late 1640s (Bardon 1996: 79f.) – proceeded to implement a land settlement in the 1650s. After the military subjugation of the Irish, Cromwell was in the position of having to remunerate his army and the donation ofland was ina number of cases a preferred solution as the state finances in England at the time did not permit direct payment for services rendered (Foster 1988: 112). An essential part of the Cromwellian land settlement was transplantation:in general, those landowners who had not shown continued allegiance – ‘constant good affection’ – to the Cromwellian parliamentary cause were banished to the poorest province of Connaught in the west, 7 and forcibly moved from north to south: to the counties of Roscommon, Mayo, Galway and Clare. 8 The scheme was carried out between 1654 and 1658 and although plans to shift the entire Catholic population to the west were abandoned, it may be that several hundred thousand in all were actually transplanted. After 1660 and the restoration of the English crown under Charles II, loyalist Catholics were not regranted their lands as the king did not dare upturn the Cromwellian land settlement (Bardon 1996: 80). The land vacated during this period was re-allocated to English settlers (Barnard 2000 [1975] : 11), this group providing fresh linguistic input to the island. Scholars like Alan Bliss viewed this input as the seed of modern Irish English. The second policy implemented by Cromwell in the 1650s was one of trans- portation which involved the dispatchment overseas of several thousand persons regarded by the regime at the time as undesirable (Hickey 2004c). These vari- ously included prisoners, members of the Catholic clergy and general vagrants. But it should be noted that not all the Irish emigrants of this period were deported persons. For instance, for some Galway families, movement to the Caribbean can be traced back to the 1630s (Cullen 1994: 126). Irish migration was to the eastern Caribbean – to Barbados and later to Montserrat – where a certain degree of intermingling with the native pop- ulation led to an Afro-Irish community arising, known as the Black Irish. Given the migration within the Caribbean which started from Barbados, the language of these transported Irish may have affected the embryonic forms of English in this area and provided models for structures, above all in the 7 Foster (1988: 101–16, ‘Cromwellian Ireland’) details the confiscation and resettlement to the west (except the coastal areas). 8 The people transplanted from Ulster cannot be traced in Connaught today on the basis of an accent of English (there are no enclaves of Ulster English in the south). But the Irish, which is still spoken in small pockets on Achill Island and on the adjoining mainland and slightly north of this, does show clear Ulster features. What this would imply is that the Ulster people maintained northern traits in their Irish but shifted then to the more general western form of English which was being spoken around them in Connaught. 40 History I: The coming of the English area of verbal aspect, which later appear in creolised Caribbean English and African American Vernacular English; see the discussion of this and related mat- ters in Rickford (1986) and the critical assessment in Hickey (2004b). See also chapter 6. 2.1.4.3 The later seventeenth century Settlement policy from the late sixteenth to the mid seventeenth century was aimed at reorganising the demographic and property structure of Ireland by making it decidedly English, i.e. loyal to the crown and Protestant in character. But the picture of a harmonious society overrun by a more powerful neighbour is, however, a simplistic view of native Ireland at that time. Many elements of Irish society were already quite anachronistic (see chapter ‘The end of the old order’ in Lydon 1998: 129–62). The leaders were out of touch with reality in many respects, certainly the literary sectors of Irish society were (Canny 2001: 426). There were attempts to defend Irish culture against what was perceived as English domi- nance. The most notable example was by Geoffrey Keating (Seathr ´ un C ´ eitinn, c. 1580–1644, a member of an Old English family) in his native narrative of Irish history Foras Feasa ar ´ Eirinn ‘Store of knowledge about Ireland’ (Byrne 2004: 123), which did much to enhance the cultural assessment of pre-Norman Ireland and so throw a better light on native Irish culture (Canny 2001: 414). Whether native Irish society was robust and adaptive enough to have coun- terbalanced English influence in the seventeenth century is a matter of debate amongst historians. However, the survival of Irish society was not decided by its internal organisation but by military events. After the victory over the Catholic forces under James II by William III and his forces at the Battle of the Boyne (1690) and after the militarily decisive Battle of Aughrim under his Dutch gen- eral Ginkel (Bardon 1996: 88–92) in the following year, Catholics were excluded from political power and from higher positions in society. After this the spread of English throughout the entire country could advance unhindered. The linguistic legacy of the seventeenth century is somewhat paradoxical. The only group, introduced into Ireland in this period, which changed the linguistic landscape was the one least loyal to the crown and non-conformist in religion. Because of the perceived and practised otherness of the Ulster Scots, it is their speech which has maintained itself longest and most distinctively (see section 3.3). Indeed in Ulster, the English planters, if anything, adopted features of the Scots probably by diffusion throughout the province. Other planters do not appear to have had an appreciable effect on the speech of the majority Irish, or if they did, then this effect was not lasting and has not been recorded. This may have been the case because in many instances the English settlements on the agriculturally more profitable land were interspersed with native Irish who remained as tenants rather than moving to less arable land (H. Clarke 1994 [1967] : 154). 2.1 External developments 41 ..    The next two centuries were to see a gradual transition on the part of the native population to English with the attending demise of Irish. The eighteenth century was the period of the Penal Laws (Byrne 2004: 230f.), a set of legislative measures which had the effect of excluding the Catholic Irish from political and social life. These were relaxed towards the end of the century but without any substantial improvement in the lot of the Catholics. No general education was available for Catholics in this period but there was a loosely organised system of so-called ‘hedge schools’ where migrant teachers offered tuition to individuals or small groups in largely rural areas (see section 2.1.5.3). In Ireland the eighteenth century is at once a period of blossoming and decline, of liberty and of oppression. There was a long-lasting relative peace: between William’s suppression of the Jacobites in Ireland (1689–91) and the United Irish- men uprising of 1798 there were no significant military campaigns against English rule. This is the age of the writer Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), of the philosopher Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753), of the political thinker Edmund Burke (1729– 97), of the elocutionist and grammarian Thomas Sheridan (1719–88) and of his more famous son, the dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816). It is the period in which Dublin was almost on a par with London and could vie with it as a cultural centre with such events as the first performance of H ¨ andel’s Messiah in 1741 and the founding of the Royal Dublin Society in 1731 and of the Royal Irish Academy in 1785. Dublin Protestants prospered as burghers and landlords and their self-confidence is amply documented by the impres- sive Georgian buildings in the city, a living testimony to this period of relative wealth. The sector which benefited most in this century was of course the Protestant middle and upper class which was assessed positively by later writers such as Ye ats. There are, however, many critical voices which rightly point to the darker sides of this era with its ostracisation of the indigenous population; see ´ OTuama and Kinsella (1981)for neglected Irish poetry of this period. The story of the Gaelic subculture of the time is recounted in a light much less favourable to the Protestants, and with an ideological slant of its own, in Daniel Corkery’s The Hidden Ireland (1967 [1924]). During the eighteenth century the rural population was particularly disad- vantaged. Not only did it not partake in the prosperity of the Protestant sector butitwas subject to the ravages of famine, for instance in 1740–1 when it struck very severely. However, despite the exclusion from urban prosperity, there was nonetheless a flourishing of Irish literature, particularly of poetry in Munster. This period produced such lasting literary works as C´uirt an Mhe´an-O´ıche (‘The midnight court’, c. 1780; see dual language translation in Power 1977)byBrian Merriman (?1745–1805) and the Lament for Art O’Leary written by the widow of the individual in the poem’s title. It was also the period of Turlogh Carolan (1670–1738), the blind harpist who travelled in Connaught and Ulster and who [...]... syllables and gemination (in writing at least) after short vowels (Hickey 1993: 22 8) and some long vowels as well such as botte ‘boat’, plessyd ‘pleased’ 2. 2.3.1 Phonological evidence of early Irish English and Irish The pronunciation of early Irish English can be partially confirmed by various loanwords which appear in Irish after the twelfth century Because the Great Vowel Shift had not yet occurred... the overview chapter by Lydon (1967) for an outline of the English colony in Ireland in the fourteenth century On language in particular, see Bliss (1984a) and Bliss and Long (1987) Irish English literature of this period has been dealt with by Seymour (1970 [1 929 ]) 2. 2 Languages in medieval Ireland 53 Table 2. 4 Features of medieval Irish English after McIntosh and Samuels (1968) 1 Initial /θ/ in... greater priority 2. 1 External developments 47 Table 2. 3 Population and land holdings in mid to late nineteenth century Growth in population 1841–51 Dublin 9% 1891–1 926 Dublin 20 % or more Decline in population 1841–51 20 29 %, Roscommon 30–39% 1851–1891 20 –50% in all counties bar Dublin greatest decline in midlands and mid south (Tipperary, Kilkenny) along with Clare 1891–1 926 20 29 % for all Connaught... literary document of medieval Irish English, the Kildare Poems (see section 2. 3)                  -       Almost the entire records of medieval Irish English are represented by the poems in the collection to be found in the British Library Harley 913 manuscript (Lucas and Lucas 1990) The sixteen English poems are known at the latest since Heuser (1904) as the Kildare Poems Apart... Irish In addition, one sees here that English 54 History I: The coming of the English [ ] was rendered by Irish /f/ (phonetically [φ ] in western and northern dialects) The equivalence of these sounds is also attested in the opposite direction with ´ the rendering of the Irish surname O Faol´ in as Pheelan or Wheelan a 2. 3 A singular document: the Kildare Poems Irish English of the late Middle Ages (Benskin... texts which were collected at the end of the eighteenth century by a Protestant farmer, Jacob Poole ,24 though not published until 1867 by an Anglican 23 24 Charles Vallancey (1 721 –18 12) was an English army general and Irish antiquarian Born in Windsor to a Huguenot family, Vallancey came to Ireland in 17 62 as a member of the army and by 1803 had attained the rank of general In keeping with the antiquarian... more objective research, particularly on the Irish language His relevance for Irish English studies lies in the publication in 1788 (as one of the first proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy) of a glossary of the dialect of Forth and Bargy in Co Wexford Jacob Poole (died 1 827 ) was a Protestant minister, born in Growtown, Co Wexford, of a Quaker family He is known in Irish English studies for his glossary... coming of the English indistinguishable from that of standard English speakers from southern Britain who grew up at the beginning of the twentieth century 2. 1.5 .2 Prescriptivism and elocution The latter half of the eighteenth century saw a steep rise in prescriptivism in Britain (Beal 20 04a: 89– 123 ) which was not without effect in Ireland Indeed there is a curious connection here: the English prescriptive... structure of Norman -Irish society’, pp 1 02 25 , in Otway-Ruthven (1968) and Flanagan (1989) Works which deal specifically with urban development in the history of Ireland are Butlin (1977) and Harkness and O’Dowd (1981)  52 History I: The coming of the English seriously threatened until the advent of the Tudors (Dudley Edwards 1977); see section 2. 1.3 ..     The English settlers in... (see section 2. 2.3), some of the unexpected forms may derive from compromises which occurred between various dialects of English in Ireland at the time A further issue which has not always been discussed in the scholarly literature – but see Hickey (1993) for an assessment – is the extent to which the idiosyncrasies of medieval Irish English can be traced to substrate influence from Irish 21 For the following . southern Irish English is not discernible. 2. 1.4 .2 Transplantation and transportation In 16 42 the English parliament decided that 2, 500,000 acres of profitable Irish land should be ‘taken out of the. was reduced between 1841 and 1891 from 20 0–400 to 100 20 0 inhabitants per square mile (Dudley Edwards with Hourican 20 05: 21 4 20 ). The figures given in table 2. 3 attempt to indicate changes in popu- lation. speakers of Irish are fluent in English. 12 There is a certain amount of influence of Welsh on Irish from the Old Irish period. This was due to previous contacts betweenboth sides of the IrishSea