Irish Character Research Articles

The Irish Writer and His Public in the Nineteenth Century

The relationship between writer and public may be simply stated in general terms. The writer writes because he has, or thinks he has, something to say; and one may also assume (though the reader may sometimes doubt if the assumption is justified) that he writes in order to be understood. Those of the public who read his work do so for a variety of reasons, which may be grouped under one or more of three headings: pleasure, instruction, guidance. All this applies to the Irish writer as much as to any other. But there is one respect in which he is in a peculiar, though not unique, position. Since he writes in English he has, potentially at least, a much larger public outside his own country than inside; and this additional or alternative public is not remote but conveniently near at hand and was, in the nineteenth century, within the same political, economic, and social framework.1 To consider the effect of this state of affairs on Irish writing during that century is the purpose of this essay. The most immediately striking characteristic of the literary life of nineteenth-century Ireland is its contrast with that of the eighteenth century, and this contrast appears most clearly in the writers' choice of subject matter. It is true that in both centuries Irish authors wrote on the politics, the economy, and the social condition of Ireland; and some of their works on these topics, notably those of Swift and Berkeley, achieved a high degree of literary excellence. But even a cursory survey of the imaginative literature of eighteenth-century Ireland will show how little of it had a distinctively Irish character.2 During that century no Irish novelist published a novel of Irish life. Very few Irish poets found their inspiration in the scenery or the history or the society of their own country. There was, throughout the century, a long succession of Irish dramatists, but among the hundreds of plays that they wrote it would be hard to find more than a couple of dozen with an Irish setting. The nineteenth century presents a quite different picture. Much, perhaps most, of the work by which the century is now

Representative Irish Tales

A fine selection of Irish fiction, as representative of Yeats himself as it is of Irish novelists. Yeats' introductory commentary and notes provide an interesting perspective on a relatively unknown but influential phase of his early work. He wrote that he made the selection in such a way as to illustrate the kind of witness the chief Irish novelists bear on Irish character. A useful anthology which fills a gap in the Yeats canon.

Swift's Explorations of Slavery in Houyhnhnmland and Ireland

Swift recognized that “slavery” was an ambivalent term: on one hand, slavery can be seen as a biological imperative—a natural condition of the innately servile; on the other hand, slavery can be seen as a political accident— a circumstance imposed from without by those with the will and power to oppress. Swift consistently characterized the Irish as “slaves” and called the relationship of Ireland to England “slavery.” In the case of the Irish, Swift feared that their slavery, which may have begun as external oppression, would eventually become an intrinsic part of Irish character. If Swift's observations on slavery in Ireland are applied to the slavery of the Yahoos to the Houyhnhnms in Book iv of Gulliver's Travels, the question of whether slavery is a matter of nature or nurture also arises, for there is evidence in Book iv to suggest that the Yahoos were as rational as Gulliver when they arrived in Houyhnhnmland.

The Comic Character of Fin M'Coul, The Hibernian Hercules, in Carleton's ‘A Legend of Knockmany’

ACCORDING to Thompson, 'the Irish have always been especially fond of stories of marvellous voyages, to the land of Women'.' (F 112). And they are equally fond of stories of legendary heroes who have miraculously returned to inhabit local geographical areas. These stories dramatize 'the more or less imaginary exploits of more or less historical Irish characters.... Among the less historical.., .are the Fenians, supposedly followers of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, a war leader associated with the doubtfully historical king of Tara, Cormac mac Airt'.2 Carleton's 'Legend of Knockmany,' while following the latter type of folktale, focuses our attention upon the artful wiles of a woman performing a helpful service for the cowardly 'hero'. The action occurs on Knockmany Hill in Carleton's native County Tyrone. Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the heroic figure around which the tales of the Ossianic Cycle are grouped, is much like Cuchullain, the hero of the earlier Red Branch or Ulster Cycle tales. Although Fionn's heroic deeds occurred in the third century A.D., they are 'far more concerned with a Fairyland populated by supernatural beings, beautiful or terrible'3 than with Ireland and Irishmen. But Carleton's imagination alters the pseudo-historical episodes of Fionn and his son Oisin beyond any question of historical truth.4 The most evident alteration is in the person and character of the heroic Fionn.

Teague, Shenkin and Sawney : being an historical study of the earliest Irish, Welsh and Scottish characters in English plays. By J. O. Bartley. Cork University Press. Pp. 339. 1954. 25s.

Teague, Shenkin and Sawney : being an historical study of the earliest Irish, Welsh and Scottish characters in English plays. By J. O. Bartley. Cork University Press. Pp. 339. 1954. 25s.

Oysters in Law

THE European oyster, or flat oyster, Ostrea edulis, Linn., occurs in many places off the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe. In all these localities this oyster in the warmer periods of the year reproduces its kind by extruding eggs from the body; but it retains and incubates these eggs within its shell-spaces until the resulting larvæ have developed organs which permit an independent free-swimming life. The incubation of eggs to the larval stage is thus a common character of English, Irish, Scotch, Norwegian, Danish, German, Dutch, French, and Italian flat oysters. At present all these flat larviparous oysters are regarded as belonging to one species, namely, Ostrea edulis, Linn., except for certain oysters occurring in the Adriatic Sea,1 albeit a large number of varieties have been given special names.2

Tales of Irish Life and Character

Tales of Irish Life and Character

The Case of Purpose Against Fate in History

Whatever may be true physically, mentally there must be a bit of the Irish character in us all. Like the Irishman delighting in a brawl or mix-up, we are all of us given to thinking in terms of some confusing opposition. Our serious intellectual problems have to do with good and evil, truth and error, reality and unreality, life and death, God and man; and the Hibernian nature of our thinking is only the more evident because in the case of any two things in opposition, whatever other question we may strive to answer, we are always at special pains to decide and are never able finally to decide which is which. Good and evil, life and death, reality and unreality are possibly not so easily mistaken as things outwardly less unlike or less a match for each other, but even they may be seen as like at least as twins. Are they not always born in our thought together? And unlike as they may seem, are we not constantly taking them for each other? In so many, many ways each term of any pair, no matter how real the opposition be, is found to have some share in the meaning or character of that which appears to stand against it; as when, for example, the preachers or the biologists find life in death or one's mistakes appear as steppingstones after all to improvement, or one's virtues as also one's vices, or when the real patriot is seen to be he. who criticizes and even assails the generally accepted policies of his country, or the real devotee in religion to be he who sets truth above dogma and fears not to tear down or to let fall what the discovered truth refuses to support. And many, if not all, of our deepest insights can have no utterance save in paradox. Byron has expressed this mingling of things opposed in these words: And after all what is a lie? 'Tis but The truth in masquerade, and I defy Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests, to put A fact without some leaven of a lie.

Lynch's "dictionary of illustrious Irish characters."

Lynch's "dictionary of illustrious Irish characters."

Irish characters on the stage

Irish characters on the stage

Irish characters on the stage

Irish characters on the stage

Irish characters on the stage

Irish characters on the stage

Art. VII.—Remarks on a Phœnician Inscription presented to the Royal Asiatic Society

This inscription is a powerful evidence in support of my hypothesis, for it proves two very important facts: first, “that the Phœnician language is the same as the Irish,”—secondly, “that the Irish character is a modification of the ancient Phœnician.”

On Mr. Ledwich's Character of the Irish

On Mr. Ledwich's Character of the Irish