Crossing Boundaries and Early Gleanings of Cultural Replacement in Irish Periodical Culture

Abstract

THE FIRST IRISH LANGUAGE PERIODICAL, Bolg an tSolair, was published in Belfast in  although journalism in a modern context through the medium of Irish did not begin to flourish until the early years of the twentieth century. The ‘Gaelic column’ in English newspapers; Philip Barron’s Waterford-based Ancient Ireland – A Weekly Magazine (); Richard Dalton’s Tipperary journal Fior-Eirionnach (); alongside some occasional periodicals with material relating to the Irish language, ensured that the Irish language featured as an element of a modern journalistic print culture (Nic Phaidin, : -). Central to a reassessment of Irish language newspapers and periodicals in an historical context are two important elements. First, the linguistic and cultural boundaries within which Irish language media evolved and existed, and second, the role and status of the journalist in contemporary society, assessed in the context of traditional, long established Irish writing practices. Study of these practices by Irish language scholars suggests that English newspaper material was used as a source for Irish language manuscript material, crossing written and print boundaries in an emerging print culture through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Buttimer, : –; Ni Urdail, : –). The overlap between the role and function of the learned highly trained file, the scribe, and that of the untrained journalist within the societies in which they functioned, is also significant in the concept of cultural replacement. By the time that the Irish language journalistic forum was used as a vehicle for communication within the Irish language community in the early twentieth century, linguistic boundaries were also unclear. This necessitated a dual-language approach in the public sphere – ensuring the use of Irish in an English language journalistic forum, while also securing the use of English in an Irish language forum. This paper will examine the initial stages of Irish language periodical culture within this historical framework, focusing on the initial identity projections, alongside the survival of this branch of journalism as an instrument in the replacement of a culture which was perceived to have been displaced for two centuries at this point. This cultural replacement transcended traditional cultural boundaries and writing practices. CROSSING BOUNDARIES AND EARLY GLEANINGS OF CULTURAL REPLACEMENT IN IRISH PERIODICAL CULTURE