Irish Literature

C

The Historical Cycle

The Historical Cycle, or Cycle of the Kings, consists of narratives—part fact and part fiction—that chronicle the lives of kings of Ireland. They begin with the 3rd-century-bc king Labraid Loingsech, one of the earliest known kings of Ireland. They continue through Brian Bórú, a prince who united the province of Munster and was declared king of all Ireland about ad 1000. The most famous tale in the Historical Cycle is Buile Shuibne (The Madness of Suibne [Sweeney]). In this tale a minor king, Suibne, attacks the 7th-century saint Rónán. Rónán curses Suibne, who subsequently loses his wits during the Battle of Mag Roth in 637. Suibne takes to the forest, where he lives in the company of fellow madmen. After many adventures, Suibne is befriended by another saint, Moling, and dies reconciled with the church. Suibne’s travels and transformations make this tale a model for Irish stories of exile, mental and physical journeying, and personal growth—similar in function to the Odyssey. Buile Shuibne was first translated into English by J. G. O'Keeffe in 1913; a modern translation, Sweeney Astray, by Irish poet Seamus Heaney appeared in 1983.

Few Irish manuscripts remain from before the year 1000. The scarcity of early manuscripts is the result of Viking raids against Ireland that began at the end of the 8th century and destroyed most of the monasteries and their contents. Some manuscripts were preserved on the European continent by Irish missionary scholars who fled the invaders. But most knowledge of early Irish texts comes from fragments of works that were passed along orally and written down later. The stories of the Ulster and Fenian cycles are preserved in manuscripts dating from 1100 to the late 1300s, but their language and their references to earlier events demonstrate that the stories are remnants of a much older oral tradition.

D

Irish Traditions and Christianity

From the 5th century onward, native Celtic society existed alongside Irish Christianity, presenting a model for the coexistence of paganism and Christianity, the establishment of written as well as oral traditions, and the development of literacy in both English and Irish. Christianity in Ireland dates to the arrival of Saint Patrick in ad 432. Monasteries, where members of religious communities lived, served as centers for learning and the arts at a time when the general population could neither read nor write. Irish monasteries produced illuminated manuscripts, elaborately carved crosses, and fine metalwork. The earliest Christian writings survive in a few manuscripts from the 7th through the 10th centuries.

Monks copying manuscripts sometimes wrote short poems in the margins. One such poem, titled by modern scholars as 'The Viking Terror,' was found in the margins of a 9th-century Christian manuscript. It describes a stormy night bringing the writer relief from worry because the stormy sea prevents Viking raiders from landing on shore. A 9th-century poem entitled 'Pangur Ban' likens a cat chasing mice to the monk chasing words. Many of these personal poems seem modern as a result of vivid imagery: the season's changing light, the cry of a bird, the winter chill.

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Ireland made no unified response to the Viking raids until Brian Bórú led Irish forces at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. Bórú’s forces routed the Vikings, but he was killed and various small kingships ruled Ireland until the island fell under the control of Normans from England. The Normans began to arrive in 1169.

III

Anglo-Irish Literature: 1200 to 1800

Irish life and literature changed dramatically after the Norman invasion. The invasion began when a deposed king of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough, sought help from England in reclaiming his land. Forces led by a Norman noble, Richard de Clare Pembroke (known as Strongbow), helped MacMurrough recover his territory. Pembroke married MacMurrough’s daughter and, after his father-in-law’s death, claimed the throne of Leinster and recognized England’s King Henry II as his overlord. Later English kings continued to consider the country part of their domain.

The Normans introduced a central government and a feudal system, whereby nobles owned land and peasants worked it, but their conquest of Ireland was slow and incomplete. Many Normans adopted the Irish language and Irish ways, and Gaelic culture flourished alongside its Norman counterpart. Satiric literature appeared in both the Irish and English languages, although English increasingly became the language of literature. A satire of monastic life, which depicts monks as alternately inhospitable and violent, and finally exploitative, appears in Aislinge Mac Conglinne (translated as The Vision of MacConglinne, 1892), written in the 11th or 12th century.

A

English Settlement and its Consequences

In the 16th century, England’s monarchs broke with the Roman Catholic Church and established the protestant Church of England. Although their efforts to introduce Protestantism throughout Ireland failed, they sought to ensure loyalty by settling parts of Ireland with English Protestants. These settlers and their descendants were known as Anglo-Irish. During the 17th century English rulers consolidated their control of Ireland, confiscating lands held by Catholics and giving them to English Protestant planters. Rebellions by Irish Catholics were brutally crushed. By the late 17th century repressive laws prohibited Catholics from owning property or working in many professions. English increasingly became the language of literature and everyday speech, and the Gaelic language and Gaelic culture were suppressed.

The suppression of Gaelic culture destroyed Ireland’s tradition of filidh, or bards, and its centers for training them. Poets turned from praising their patrons to writing of loss and exile, thus becoming the voice of the Irish people’s dispossession. Various works bitterly protested the condition of Ireland after the confiscation of Catholic lands. A notable work of this kind is 'D'Aithle na Bhfileadh' (The High Poets are Gone) by 17th-century poet Dáibhí O'Bruadair, who learned his craft at a bardic center. Others include 'Is Fada Liom Oiche Fhírfhliuch' (The Long Night of Soaking Rain) and 'Vailintín Brún' (Valentine Browne, 1720-1726?) by poet Aogán O'Rathaille. Several poems by O'Rathaille personified Ireland as a beautiful maiden waiting for her male rescuer.

B

Anglo-Irish Viewpoints

Although he seems far removed in time and in tone, Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift was a contemporary of O'Rathaille. Although ambivalent about his Irish identity, Swift was forthright in his attacks on English policies that beggared the Irish nation. Swift became a hero in Ireland for championing the Irish cause in such works as the Drapier’s Letters, a series of pamphlets published anonymously in 1724 and 1725. When English policies prohibited most Irish exports, Swift wrote the bitter satire A Modest Proposal (1729). In it he suggested that in order to solve the problems of food shortages, unemployment, and overpopulation in Ireland, Irish children of poor parents “be offered in Sale to Persons of Quality and Fortune, through the Kingdom; … I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for Landlords; who, as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem to have the best Title to the Children.” Much of Swift’s poetry, like his prose, addressed the unfair treatment of the Irish by the English.

Swift also encouraged the work of a number of women writers. Mary Delany, an English woman married to Irish writer and clergyman Patrick Delany, corresponded with Swift and with friends and relatives in England. Her letters, which provide a detailed account of Anglo-Irish life, were compiled in six volumes in 1861 and 1862 and were republished in one volume as Letters from Georgian Ireland in 1991. Others who received his encouragement include memoirist Laetitia Pilkington and poets Mary Barber, Constantia Grierson, and Swift’s longtime friend and student, Esther Johnson.

Ethnic viewpoints had begun to characterize the writing of history in the 17th century. English poet Edmund Spenser, who settled in Ireland, described the Irish as savages and supported England’s political position in his Veue of the Present State of Ireland (1633). On the other side, native Irish priest and poet Geoffrey Keating captured Irish legend and history in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (1618-1634; Basic Knowledge of Ireland, 1723).

In the 18th century, English caricatures of the Irish were brought onto the stage. Anglo-Irish dramatist Thomas Sheridan incorporated the figure of the so-called stage Irishman in his farce The Brave Irishman or Captain O'Blunder (1743). This stereotypical Irishman was talkative and fond of exaggeration and of drinking, yet able to outwit his English enemies. Richard Brinsley Sheridan developed this figure in his portrayal of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, a man who enters a duel to defend his country, in the farce The Rivals (1775).

Other Anglo-Irish writers were more sympathetic. Oliver Goldsmith praises the qualities of rural Irish and English life in the novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) and comments on the effects of privilege in the Anglo-Irish world in She Stoops to Conquer (1773), a comedy of mistaken identity. Writer and clergyman Laurence Sterne produced an inventive work of fiction, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767), that ridiculed 18th-century literary conventions even as it employed them. Calling the work his autobiography, Sterne starts by having the narrator question his parent’s judgment at the moment of his conception. The work, which proceeds in a nonlinear fashion with lapses and interruptions, would influence the narrative technique of James Joyce in the 20th century.

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