GAELIC LITERATURE

Literature, both oral and written, in the Gaelic languages of Ireland and Scotland. Before the development of a distinct Scottish Gaelic language in the 15th century, the literature of both countries may be considered as one.

Early Period.

The earliest pre-Christian writings in Ireland are tombstone inscriptions in the ogham alphabet, which date from the 5th to the 8th century. The earliest Christian writings survive in a few manuscripts of the 7th through the 10th century, for example, some material on the life of St. Patrick included in the 9th-century illuminated gospels The Book of Armagh. The scarcity of literary works until the 11th century is the result of the Norse invasions of Ireland in the 8th century and the sacking of the monasteries, the centers of learning. While some manuscripts were preserved on the European continent by scholars fleeing the invaders, most of the literary works composed in this period survive, in fragments, in much later manuscripts. A characteristic form was the praise poetry composed by a professional class of bards, the filidh, in honor of their kings and chieftains. Freer, more personal poetry was written by anonymous poets, such as the one who addressed his white cat, or the writer who composed The Old Woman of Beare (9th cent.), an expression of longing for the pagan past. In the form of a dramatic monologue, it is one of the earliest examples of a genre popular in Gaelic poetry. The hermit monks of the early Irish church, living on intimate terms with their environment, established the tradition of nature poetry that is one of the glories of Irish and, later, Scottish Gaelic verse. Some fine examples of this genre are from the 8th century.

11th–15th Century.

The great victory over the Norse in 1014 freed Ireland from their domination and was indirectly a great stimulus to literary production. In two 12th-century manuscripts known as The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of Leinster are preserved the earliest Gaelic sagas, part in prose, part in poetry, themselves remnants of a much older oral tradition. These sagas have been divided by modern scholars into two cycles. The Ulster, or Red Branch, Cycle is older, consisting of some 100 tales about the heroes of the kingdom of Ulster in the century before Christ, especially the warrior Cú Chulainn (Cuchulainn). Among the more notable tales are The Cattle Raid of Cooley (7th or 8th cent.) and the story of the tragic heroine Deirdre. The later Fenian, or Ossianic, Cycle centers about the hero Finn mac Cumhail or MacCool, a legendary chieftain and bard of the 2d or 3d century. Among his followers was Ossian, also a warrior-bard, believed to be his son (see OSSIAN AND OSSIANIC BALLADS,). The dominant strain of these tales, mostly in ballad form, is nostalgia for the heroic past; tinged with Christianity, they are more romantic than epic. Among the better-known stories are The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne and the lengthy Dialogue of the Old Men.

Aside from these cycles are groups of mythological tales, including a series of marvelous voyages to the Western Isles, notably The Voyage of Bran; king tales, for example The Madness of Sweeney; religious prose, with much emphasis on miracles; and visions, the best known of which is The Vision of Adamnan.

In the later Middle Ages popular ballads and prose tales began to replace the formal bardic literature, and Gaelic translations made the Arthurian legends and some classical literature accessible. The advent of printing, however, which made literature available to large numbers of people in other countries, had little impact in Ireland. Bards there continued to be supported by patrons, their work copied by hand—a tradition that lasted until the early 19th century.

Irish Gaelic Literature, 17th–20th Century.

Their support gone when the nobility was dispossessed during the reign of Elizabeth I, the bards themselves disappeared, and Gaelic gave way to English as the vernacular. Despite this, a good deal of prose, much of it devoted to Ireland’s past, was written. Examples are The Annals of the Four Masters (1636), the history of Ireland up until 1616, by Michael O’Clery (1575–1643); and the History of Ireland (c. 1620) by Geoffrey Keating (1570–c. 1650). At the same time, expressions of defiance of English rule began to appear in the folk poetry that circulated clandestinely. Among the most famed writers of the 17th and 18th centuries were the passionate nationalists Dáibhidh Ó Bruadair (1630–98) and Egan O’Rahilly (fl. 1670–1724), and Brian Merriman (1740–1808), a schoolteacher in county Clare. The latter’s The Midnight Court (trans. 1945), a broad satire on marriage customs, is considered the best long-sustained poem in Irish Gaelic.

Throughout the 19th century, principally because of the depopulation caused by the potato famine of 1845, the Gaelic language, both written and spoken, fell into disuse; most of the Gaelic speakers were by now illiterate. Toward the end of the century efforts were made not only to restore Gaelic as a spoken language but also to stimulate the writing of literary works in Gaelic. Interest in the language was revived by the work of various societies, particularly the Gaelic League, founded in 1893, and by the works of such scholars and nationalists as Douglas Hyde, Canon Peter O’Leary (1839–1920), Patrick O’Connery (1881–1928), and Padhraic Pearse (1879–1916). In the last decade of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries the Gaelic revival resulted in the publication of many collections of Irish folk tales and in the writing of a considerable number of plays, works of fiction, and poetry in Gaelic.

Among the numerous 20th-century lyric poets and novelists writing in Gaelic was Tomás O’Crohan (1856–1937), who wrote The Islandman (1937; trans. 1951) about a Munster fisherman. Brendan Behan, better known for his works in English, composed The Hostage originally in Gaelic (1957; trans. 1958).

Scottish Gaelic Literature, 16th–17th Century.

The first evidence of a distinct Scottish Gaelic literary tradition appears in The Book of the Dean of Lismore, compiled between 1512 and 1526 by Sir James MacGregor (fl. 1511–51). It is an anthology of writings by Scottish and Irish authors: heroic sagas; poetry (dating from the 14th century on), including a group of 28 Ossianic ballads; and ecclesiastical texts. Although it is presumed that much other early poetry existed, popular verse as well as the work of professional bards, none of it has survived.

Some 16th-century folk poetry that had survived orally was written down in the mid-18th century; and in the 17th and 18th centuries, work songs, also descendants of an older oral tradition, were set down in writing. Predominant among these are the “waulking” songs that accompany the fulling of cloth. In the 17th century Scottish Gaelic poetry flowered. Much of it was contained in three manuscript collections, The Black Book of Clanranald and The Red Book of Clanranald, written by the MacMhuirich family, hereditary bards to the MacDonalds of Clanranald, and the Fernaig manuscript (1688–93), a compilation of political and religious verse. Among many poets, three stand out. Mary MacLeod (c. 1615–c. 1706), bard of Harris and Skye, employed conventional imagery with a fresh, natural style, using strophic meters rather than the strictly syllabic meters of the bards. Iaian Lom (c. 1620–c. 1707), active in contemporary events, wrote poems about the Battle of Killiecrankie and the restoration of Charles II, and in opposition to the union of the Scottish and English parliaments. Remarkable for their intensity of feeling are the works of Roderick Morison (c. 1656–1713?), known as the Blind Harper, such as “Song to John MacLeod of Dunvegan.”

Scottish Gaelic Literature, 18th–20th Century.

In the 18th century contact with other literatures brought new vigor to Scottish Gaelic writing. Probably the most significant poet of the century was Alexander Macdonald (c. 1690–c. 1780), whose Resurrection of the Ancient Scottish Tongue (1751) was the first book of secular poetry printed in Scotland. His masterpiece is The Birlinn of Clanranald (after 1751), a vivid description of a sea voyage from the Hebrides to Ireland. He also wrote nature and love poetry, drinking songs, and bitter satires. The poems of Duncan Macintyre (1724–1812), published in 1768, such as Praise of Ben Doran and The Misty Corrie, are emotional, finely detailed lyrics inspired by the scenery of Perthshire and Argyllshire. The greatest 18th-century writer of religious verse was Dugald Buchanan (1716–68), whose “Day of Judgment” and “The Skull” employ impressively somber imagery.

Since 1760, when James Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland (actually forgeries of Ossianic ballads) were published, interest in Gaelic culture has continued. It has, indeed, been encouraged by scholarly anthologies of early texts, such as Reliquiae Celticae (2 vol., 1892–94), by Alexander Cameron (1827–88), and the Carmina Gadelica (6 vol., 1928–71), edited by Alexander Carmichael (1832–1912), and by the work of An Comunn Gaidhealach (The Gaelic League).

Short stories first began to appear in a number of periodicals in the late 19th century. Particularly notable are the 20th-century works in this genre by Iain Crichton Smith (1928– ). Much innovative poetry, still adhering to the old tradition of vivid nature imagery, was written by Smith and by his contemporaries Sorley Maclean (1911–96), George Campbell Hay (1915– ), and Derick Thomson (1921– ).

Lively interest in the Gaelic language and culture is also still maintained in Canada among descendants of Highland settlers in Nova Scotia. Notable among poets writing in Gaelic was John (The Bard) Maclean (1787–1848), whose bitterness at the lot of the exile is expressed in his “The Bard in Canada.” Others were James MacGregor (1759–1820), who translated the Psalms into Gaelic; Duncan Blair (1815–93), best known for a majestic poem on Niagara Falls; and Malcolm Gillis (1856–1929), whose poetry praises the landscape of Cape Breton.