Irish Influence Research Articles

"Rose Connolly" Revisited: Re-Imagining the Irish in Southern Appalachia

Abstract This essay revisits the Appalachian murder ballad "Rose Connolly," the subject of a 1979 essay by D. K. Wilgus. Following Wilgus, I offer further evidence of the song’s presence in Ireland and interrogate persistent hesihistorytancy to claim Irish influence on Appalachian folklore. My analysis then traces this bias to the influence of Cecil Sharp’s English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (Sharp and Campbell 1917) and his theories of race in the British Isles and Appalachia. Ultimately, I use "Rose Connolly" to re-imagine Irish diasporic and Appalachian identities.

Ireland and the picturesque: design, landscape painting and tourism, 1700-1840

That Ireland is picturesque is a well-worn cliche, but little is understood of how this perception was created, painted, and manipulated during the long 18th century. This book positions Ireland at the core of the picturesque's development and argues for a far greater degree of Irish influence on the course of European landscape theory and design. Positioned off-axis from the greater force-field, and off-shore from mainland Europe and America, where better to cultivate the oblique perspective? This book charts the creation of picturesque Ireland, while exploring in detail the role and reach of landscape painting in the planning, publishing, landscaping and design of Ireland's historic landscapes, towns, and tourist routes. Thus it is also a history of the physical shaping of Ireland as a tourist destination, one of the earliest, most calculated, and most successful in the world.

Irish influence on the temperance movement

In May of 2011, the Irish Republic had two very important and historic visitors. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and US President Barack Obama were both officially welcomed by the Irish people to these shores for the first time. The level of preparation was enormous, from security at the various sites both luminaries were visiting, to road upgrades, and carefully choreographed photo opportunities with politicians, business people, and other various influential figures. Part of Barack Obama’s visit was to a small pub in Moneygall, Co. Offaly1 where both he and his wife enjoyed a pint and a half pint of Guinness, respectively, to the constant click and whirr of camera lenses. Queen Elizabeth was not spared the Guinness photo opportunity either, and at the Guinness Storehouse on James’ Street in Dublin (site of the first Guinness brewery in Ireland) she was poured a pint of the black stuff, although unlike her US counterparts …

The Birth of Scottish Philosophy from the Golden Age of Irish Philosophy

This essay looks at the Irish contribution to eighteenth-century Scottish philosophy. Focusing especially on the philosophical work of Francis Hutcheson, but also of George Berkeley, I try to show why the Irish influence has been occluded, and how that influence has been more considerable than has usually been supposed. Hence I oppose the idea that Ireland was intellectually asleep or dozing during the eighteenth century, an idea expressed in the description of Trinity College Dublin as the “sleeping sister,” compared to Oxford and Cambridge, and in the song of Alexander Boswell, famously set to music by Beethoven, according to which the Irish pulse beats strongly when “war is the story or love is the theme,” but not in intellectual matters, where “the pure light of knowledge [is] slow.”

Glossa do enigm biskupa Aldhema (ok. 639-709)

Though the Latin language appeared on British Island in common with Roman Invasion, exactly after 55 AD, yet his real popularization had become until after 597 AD, in which the Romans missionary gets to the Anglo-Saxon Canterbury and started great evangelization on this lands. The British Clergy and Aristocracy were very quickly mastered the arcana of Latin language which in this days was a synonym of a culture and a imperial traditions. Anglo-Saxon like any another nation managed to subordinate to themselves the Church language and not resign at the same time about an old traditions and fondness. Remarkable thing is that the anglo-saxon literature was creating on the spur of the three abnormally valuable inspiration source – the Roman, Irish and nativ influence – settled in Celtic culture. Creativeness of an Adhelm who was writing about VII and VIII AD was perfectly mirrored the colour of medieval culture of British Island. His corpus of a hundred riddles display over the reader unprecedented in early middle ages universal. In Sherborne bishop enigmas we can find an Irish boldness which didn’t want to fight with the Greek and Roman paganism but on the contrary it foster an advancement of Christian latin culture. In riddles we can find an Irish culture as well which cherish the bard tradition, attached attention to art of word and found an likes in that what is mannerism and vivid. And finally the Roman culture along with latin alphabet and monastery scholarship contribute to final combined all of drifts forming the original writing of Adhelm.

Reviews: Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre, Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire: Ireland, India and the Politics of Alfred Webb, The European Culture Wars in Ireland: The Callan Schools Affair, 1868–81, The Irish Folklore Commission 1935–1970: History, Ideology, Methodology, Irish Protestant Identities, Contested Island: Ireland 1460–1630, a History of Ireland's School Inspectorate, 1831–2008, Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora in the United States, Terenure

Reviews: Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre, Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire: Ireland, India and the Politics of Alfred Webb, The European Culture Wars in Ireland: The Callan Schools Affair, 1868–81, The Irish Folklore Commission 1935–1970: History, Ideology, Methodology, Irish Protestant Identities, Contested Island: Ireland 1460–1630, a History of Ireland's School Inspectorate, 1831–2008, Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora in the United States, Terenure

A Saint and the Natural World: A Motif of Obedience in Three Early Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives

Saints’ interactions with the natural world (with beasts and birds as well as the elements) as represented in hagiographical literature constitute an integral part of a much wider theme concerning Christian perceptions of nature and the place of humankind in it. While being in line with the general Christian ideas on creation, hagiographical accounts of the saints’ relationship with nature may reveal different aspects of such ideas and perform diverse narrative functions in various traditions and texts. This paper will look at the Anglo-Saxon hagiographical tradition which was enriched in its development by Irish, Continental and Eastern influences. Thus analysis of Anglo-Saxon saints’ Lives is an essential part of a broader study of medieval hagiographical literature, both Eastern and Western.

The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English, by C. L. Innes

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English Supriya Nair The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English C. L. Innes Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. ix +295 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-54101-5 paper. $24.99. The Cambridge Introductions series now has over twenty-five titles devoted largely to major authors and occasionally to literary periods, genres and fields. The books are designed primarily as an introduction for students but can also be useful to scholars and teachers looking for broad overviews, quick historical references, and general thematic connections for pedagogical purposes. The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English by C. L. Innes provides convenient discussions of conventional postcolonial themes: cultural nationalism preceding and following independence, racial constructions, local and subaltern counternarratives, landscape, language (including orality, nation language and performance poetry), neocolonial failures, and so on. Genres include drama and poetry, usually neglected for the novel in the field, and another productive variation is the discussion of Irish texts and authors, particularly the influence of Irish plays and poetry on writers such as Derek Walcott. Innes ends by locating the empire back in the heart of London with a chapter on black British and other transnational writing. The book pays considerable attention to the renowned writers of a couple of generations and the most familiar terrain of the postcolonial—thus Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Wilson Harris, George Lamming, V. S. Naipaul, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Raja Rao, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, and Derek Walcott; Nigeria, the anglophone Caribbean, Kenya, and India form an inevitable cluster. Other geographical territories and works, including those of women and indigenous writers, tend to be unevenly distributed. Innes admits in the preface the impossibility of including all the postcolonial countries and authors and pragmatically focuses for the most part on "just a few former colonies, chosen as examples of particular kinds of colonial and postcolonial structures and traditions" (viii). But the earlyhistory of the field in its comparatively more compact British Commonwealth literary heritage rather than its current unruly, intractable, and multiple incarnations influences the selections. The field's tendency to be dominated in later years by the theory is avoided, constructively highlighting the literary production; however, [End Page 199] the selection is not always balanced. While the chronological reading of the "postcolonial" may explain why the twentieth century is emphasized, the younger, more diverse, and emerging late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century contexts do not figure as much as the "golden greats" of the immediate post-independence period. The chapter on gender revolves around older women writers. Although writers such as Michelle Cliff, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jamaica Kincaid, Pauline Melville, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, Caryl Phillips, Arundhati Roy, and Zadie Smith are mentioned, more recent issues in diaspora studies, gender and sexuality, or popular culture and the continuing genealogy of literary heritage not just from the Commonwealth era of the British empire but from within postcolonial literary and cultural traditions, for instance, are less visible in the book. This is not altogether to be regretted since I find my students not only unfamiliar with but also unwilling to read the older postindependence generation in favor of the younger writers. Such an introduction takes us back to the writers who were pioneers of the field and gave it international recognition, reshaping the field of English literature and transforming modern political and cultural views. But perhaps one can now speak, like of the early modern, of an early postcolonial literature. The book is a handy reference guide to this literature, concluding its analyses with brief sections on glossary, biography, and history compiled by Kaori Nagai and including a short bibliography. Supriya Nair Tulane University supriya@tulane.edu Copyright © 2009 Indiana University Press

Irish Episcopalians in the Scottish Episcopal Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway during the Nineteenth Century

In his recent doctoral thesis, the author has undertaken the fundamental research of a close examination of the composition of congregations, to establish the substantial contribution of working-class Church of Ireland immigrants to the nineteenth-century expansion of the Scottish Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway in the west of Scotland. He has thereby supplied a correction to the usual Episcopalian idea that the Scottish Church was the outcome of the interaction between a native Scottish tradition and influences from England. He has also redressed the other emphases in this area, by working-class historians, who tend to neglect working-class religious activity altogether, and by historians of Irish emigration, who concentrate primarily upon Catholic emigrants, or in a secondary sense, stress the role of Presbyterian emigrants at the expense of members of the Church of Ireland. This essay delineates the limits to this Irish influence, in the barriers to working-class participation in religion, and in the different characteristics of the Episcopal tradition in Scotland and Ireland, the former increasingly Catholic-minded, the latter strongly Protestant.

Green Politics, Green and Orange Diplomacy: Lyndon Johnson and Eamon de Valera's Farewell Tour of the United States

Ireland had significant pull in domestic American politics, but was a minor power in world affairs. The Irish influence was inverse to the relationship the United States had with the United Kingdom. In 1964, these political and diplomatic factors converged when Eamon de Valera, the American born President of the Republic of Ireland, made one last tour of the United States. Lyndon Johnson used the trip to his political advantage without harming the relationship the United States enjoyed with the United Kingdom. Johnson showed a skillful touch in both the diplomacy and politics that went along with this visit, challenging dominant views about his competence in this area.

Synge and the Irish Influence of the Abbey Theatre on Eugene O'Neill

Synge and the Irish Influence of the Abbey Theatre on Eugene O'Neill

Prayers from the Field: Practical Protection and Demonic Defense in Anglo-Saxon England

A unique set of ritual prayers from tenth-century Northumbria offered the means to protect fields and crops from birds, vermin, and other demonically inspired threats to the agricultural community. They were part of a series of additions made to the Durham Collectar or Ritual (Durham, Cathedral Library A.IV.19) around 970 by the Chester-le-Street scriptorium of St. Cuthbert's community, under the direction of Aldred, the eccentric glossator of the Lindisfarne Gospels. These five Latin prayers glossed in Old English use exorcistic and benedictional formulas, invoke the assistance of an Archangel Panchiel, and contain atypical references to the Book of Tobit, among other unusual characteristics. This seemingly heterodox material has received scant attention from scholars assessing the Durham Ritual manuscript and the work of Aldred. These prayers, however, may reflect the particular interests of the cult of St. Cuthbert, as well as Irish influences in Northumbrian religious practice. Also, a comparable example of one prayer appears in a contemporary Mainz text related to the early development of the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, suggesting that these prayers were part of a larger process, often invisible, of liturgical experimentation during a period of reform and regularization. The prayers read:

Prayers from the Field: Practical Protection and Demonic Defense in Anglo-Saxon England

A unique set of ritual prayers from tenth-century Northumbria offered the means to protect fields and crops from birds, vermin, and other demonically inspired threats to the agricultural community. They were part of a series of additions made to the Durham Collectar or Ritual (Durham, Cathedral Library A.IV.19) around 970 by the Chester-le-Street scriptorium of St. Cuthbert's community, under the direction of Aldred, the eccentric glossator of the Lindisfarne Gospels. These five Latin prayers glossed in Old English use exorcistic and benedictional formulas, invoke the assistance of an Archangel Panchiel, and contain atypical references to the Book of Tobit, among other unusual characteristics. This seemingly heterodox material has received scant attention from scholars assessing the Durham Ritual manuscript and the work of Aldred. These prayers, however, may reflect the particular interests of the cult of St. Cuthbert, as well as Irish influences in Northumbrian religious practice. Also, a comparable example of one prayer appears in a contemporary Mainz text related to the early development of the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, suggesting that these prayers were part of a larger process, often invisible, of liturgical experimentation during a period of reform and regularization. The prayers read:

Philosopher-King: Nechtan mac Der-Ilei

Without doubt one of the more famous events in the progress of the con troversy over the dating of Easter which chronically vexed the churches of Britain and Ireland between the late sixth and the late eighth centu ries is the transfer ral of his kingdom by Nechtan or Naiton, who was king of the Picts roughly between 706x713 and 729, to the so-called 'Roman' system of calculating the date of Easter. It is famous partly because Bede devotes a great deal of attention to it, and we will return to his story shortly. For advocates of the confrontational narrative of seventhand eighth-century insular church history, it also forms a climactic final episode. After the struggles and insults of the 'Synod of Whitby' in 664, Bede's Naiton brings an end to the tale, spurning the Columban church, kicking them and Celtic Christianity out of his kingdom, and embracing the Roman system, with all its attendant evils. The Columban church, now isolated, has no option but to change also. This explanation is dramatically satisfying, but historically less so. Like so much of the history of the early church in Scotland, it is bound up with modern political and religious factionalism. Was Naiton an English imperialist flunky? A Romanist stooge, allowing the authority of the Pope and St Peter into his realm? Or, conversely, a Pictish nationalist, rejecting the insidious Irish influences of the Celtic church? Or was he more a creation of Bede's exegetical mind bringing an 'end to history' in a biblically satisfying way? This article does not set out to assess the effect of his actions on the church, or their motivations?that will have to await a separate occasion. Rather, it examines the king and his back ground, in order to get a firmer sense of the context, genealogical, cul tural and political, in which his reform took place.1 Nevertheless, it is well worth first looking at Bede's testimony con cerning Naiton for what it says. Bede's description of the king, both in his own words, and in the words he quotes from his abbot, Ceolfrith's

Out of Ireland: Revisionist Strategies in Beckett's Drama

Out ofIreland: Revisionist Strategies in Beckett's Drama LAURA BARGE Adeliberate and very public effort to situate Samuel Beckett within he Irish dramatic tradition occurred during thel991 Dublin Theatre Festivalwhen Michael Colgan,Director ofthe GateTheatre,remarked that the moment had arrived "to introduce a Dublin Audience to this greatwriterwho needs to belooked at in Ireland."1 Anyone familiarwith this writer's history understands only too well Colgan's sense ofthe necessity ofsuch an introduction. Beckett's personal, cultural, and aesthetic expatriation from Ireland is so adequately documented in the critical and biographical literature that it needs no reiteration here. Instead, we can remember that Beckett chooses early in his career not only to reject but also to insult—albeit with a humorous mockery—the Irish Celtic literary movement, that he forsakes Ireland as homeland in a biographically definitive manner, and that he deliberately adopts French as the language in which he writes. Thus Rodney Sharkey is surely on target when he claims that any effort attempting to "view Beckett in an Irish context cuts its own throat ifit chooses to ignore" that Beckett's literary careerwas definitivelyformed bythe philosophical and aesthetic culture ofEurope.2 Embracingas earlyas 1934 theaesthetic credo thatthewriter must cut all ties with familial, national, and cultural origins in order to explore the interior ofhis own unique vision,3 Beckett early stakes out his literary path and its territory and never departs from it. 175 176Comparative Drama How, then,can we account forBeckett's recitation in theyearhe died, 1989, on the occasion of the critic Hugh Kenner's final visit, of the last movement of Yeats's poem "The Tower," beginning wim the line referring to artistic self-creation, "Now shall I make my soul"?4 And how explain Beckett's literary Irishness as documented in Vivian Mercier's book The Irish Comic Tradition, in John Harrington's The Irish Beckett, in Mary Junker-Brennan's The Irish Dimension,5 and in a growing collection of scholarly articles? In particular, what should we make of the fact tiiat several of these studies connect specifically both the content and style of Beckett's drama with Irish influences, such as the plays of Yeats, Synge, and O'Casey?6 These numerous evidences ofBeckett's literary debt to the history, culture, language, persons, places, and landscapes of Ireland cannot be ignored. I think the answer to these questions lies in critically situating the Irish influences within the boundaries of Beckett's expatriation, that is, by foregrounding the revisionary nature of the majority of such influences . By following this course, we can contest Anthony Roche's misguided assumption that Beckett's quoting Yeats's "Now shall I make my soul" to Hugh Kenner indicated that Beckett had chosen Yeats rather than Joyce as a "major precursor."7 Few statements about Beckett as a writer could be more misleading. As Harrington says, "Beckett's work deconstructs a local revivalism confident ofthe sureties ofplace and collective consciousness." But Harrington is stopping short of exploring the rich Irish dimension of Beckett's writings when he argues further that because Beckett does not "consequently construct a positive" and "evident alternative" but remains in an "intractable" mode that issues merely in "an endless comedy of substitution," his writings are "unsuitable for revisionist use."8 1 think instead that Beckett moves beyond the stasis of revolt to function as an expatriate Irish writer on the literary frontiers ofthis century. As Sharkey insists,"...it is important not to view Beckett's Irishness as a type of tale ...signifying nihilism," but rather as the "condition" of"specific Irish experiences" and "understanding" out ofwhich Beckett's "extraordinary artistic vision emerged."9 A strong proof for this claim that springs immediately to mind is Beckett's incredibly innovative response to the work of James Joyce. Nothing could be more expected—and easily executed by someone of Laura Barge177 Beckett's genius—than to follow in the revolutionary/revisionary mode executed by Joyce's literary upheaval. That Beckett incorporates in his saying ofnothing the revisionarysaying ofeverythingby Joyce, and then moves beyond Joyce's amplitude ofform and content to an original impoverishment of both form and content that makes Beckett's achievement equal that...

Tánaise ríg: the earliest evidence

The Rule of the master shows numerous signs of Irish influence, as well as instances of Lombard-Latin vocabulary, suggesting that it was composed, not before Benedict, but at the Columbanian monastery of Bobbio in northern Italy in the seventh century. It also uses the term secundarius to mean a designated successor, a usage familiar from the Life of Alfred and comparable to the Irish tanaise rig, confirming the antiquity of the concept and even suggesting that it may have been known as early as the time of Columbanus (†615).

Catholic Devotion in Victorian England.

This is the first full study of English Catholic spirituality in the modern period. Dr Heimann reassesses Roman Catholic piety as practised in Victorian England, stressing the importance of devotion in shaping the characteristics of the Catholic community. Prayers, devotions, catechisms, confraternities, and missionary work enabled traditional English Catholicism not only to survive, but to emerge as the most resilient Christian community in twentieth-century England. Heimann offers a controversial analysis of the influence of long-established recusant devotions and attitudes in the new context of the reestablishment of Roman Catholicism in England from the mid-nineteenth century. Challenging widely held assumptions that Irish influences, government legislation, or directives from Rome can account for English developments after 1850, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England offers important new insights into religion and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Ordines Coronationis Franciae. Texts and Ordines for the Coronation of Frankish and French Kings and Queens in the Middle Ages, Volume I., ed. by Richard A. Jackson

Ordines Coronationis Franciae. Texts and Ordines for the Coronation of Frankish and French Kings and Queens in the Middle Ages, Volume I. Edited by Richard A. Jackson. [Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1995. Pp. xiv, 283. $49.95.) A number of modern scholars have studied or produced editions of the royal or imperial coronation ordines of the Middle Ages; Georg Waitz, Carl Erdmann, Percy Ernst Schramm, Michel Andrieu, Reinhard Elze are a few of the names that come to mind. Richard A. Jackson, the author of a good book on the later French coronation ceremony, now joins this select group with his edition of all French coronation texts and orders from the Sacramentary of Gellone (790-800) down to the Ordo of 1200, some nineteen in all. This constitutes the first volume of a projected two-volume work and contains, among other topics, a general introduction to coronation rituals, a discussion of their manuscript sources, an analysis of the historical development of the ceremony and a statement of principles governing the edition and presentation of texts. Like some other scholars, perhaps, the present reviewer was initially dubious of the need for a new edition, especially for the Early Middle Ages, since I had long trusted the MGH texts as well as some of those published by the scholars noted above. In his introduction, as well as in related studies recently published in Viator,Jackson convincingly argues otherwise. Not only has he made a real contribution with his new edition of the four orders attributed to Hincmar of Reims and his analysis of their liturgical and political background, but he has produced a complete series of dependable texts for future students of kingship, liturgy, and church-state relations. It is especially welcome to have all of these between two covers. Jackson's introduction and individual commentaries for each order are clearly written and fully footnoted; his presentation of variant readings after each paragraph in smaller type rather than in a separate apparatus criticus is a good idea, and the layout of materials is visually pleasing. The scholarship throughout is reliable and impressive. I venture to disagree with one interpretation, however, although because of the brief space allotted, the explanation will be in summary form. In Jackson's view, the origin of the royal anointing rite of the Franks-a critically important ritual because it was a decisive step in the Christianization of Germanic kingship-might have developed through either Visigothic or Irish influence or else have been developed by the Franks themselves by drawing on the Old Testament or the baptismal ritual. In my view, the evidence for Irish influence is much stronger than he allows, while arguments for other possible sources fail for several reasons. To take the latter two hypotheses first: although the unction rite might theoretically have been developed by the Franks themselves from Old Testament examples or the baptismal rite, there is absolutely no evidence that they ever actually considered applying such ideas to the contemporary kingship. The Franks simply did not think in such terms whereas copious evidence (that discussed by Raymund Kottje and Kim McCone, for example) shows that the Irish very definitely did, and did so frequently and programmatically. …

J. D. Bernal, F. R. S.: some Irish influences

Ann Synge’s essay on Bernal’s family, school and university background resurrected some questions which had first occurred to me when reading Bernal’s Science in History in the late 1950s. We have the Sherlock Holmes problem of the ‘dog that didn’t bark’: the paucity of Irish references. Why the blind spot regarding what should have been a rich source of material for the Bernal ‘science and society’ paradigm? He references Parsons, but labels him British, and is apparently unaware of the richness of the connection between Parsons and Birr Castle, which he visited as a boy. Ann Synge’s essay re-opened the question for me, prompting a visit to Cambridge to look at the Bernal papers, with a view to gaining insight into the nature and extent of the specific Irish influences on Bernal, if any, and complementing Ann Synge’s research into the Bernal family background. Other questions arise: what was the totality of factors influencing the education decision which led to Bedford and Cambridge?- How good was Bernal’s own awareness of his ‘anomalous position’, as expressed in his 1955 self-assessment, where he describes his background as ‘small farmer’? What degree of political understanding lay behind the 1920 family row, and how did this relate to his emerging Cambridge Marxism? How near was he to joining the British Army? In the following sections I address some aspects of these questions.

The Expositio Iohannis in Angers BM 275. A commentary on the Gospel of St John showing Irish influence

The <i>Expositio Iohannis</i> in Angers BM 275. A commentary on the Gospel of St John showing Irish influence