The Irish language was once spoken by some immigrants to the island of Newfoundland before it disappeared in the early 20th century.[1] The language was introduced through mass immigration by Irish speakers, chiefly from counties Waterford, Tipperary and Cork. Local place names in the Irish language include Newfoundland (Irish: Talamh an Éisc; 'Land of the Fish'),[2]St. John's (Baile Sheáin),[3]Ballyhack (Baile Hac), Cappahayden (Ceapach Éidín), Kilbride and St. Bride's (Cill Bhríde), Duntara, Port Kirwan and Skibbereen (Scibirín). The dialect of Irish spoken in Newfoundland is said to resemble the Munster Irish of the 18th century. While the distinct local dialect is now considered extinct, the Irish language is still taught locally and the Gaelic revival organization Conradh na Gaeilge remains active in the province.[4]
Irish settlers were established in Trinity Bay by 1675
The Irish language (also known as Gaelic) arrived in Newfoundland as a consequence of the English migratory cod fishery. While Sir Humphrey Gilbert formally claimed Newfoundland as an English overseas possession in 1583, this did not lead to permanent European settlement. A number of unsuccessful attempts at settlement followed, and the migratory fishery continued to grow. By 1620, fishermen from South West England dominated most of the east coast of Newfoundland, with the French dominant along the south coast and Great Northern Peninsula. After 1713, with the Treaty of Utrecht, the French ceded control of the south and north shores of the island to the British, keeping only the nearby islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the south coast.[5]
Irish labourers were recruited for the fishery from southeast Ireland. Irish settlers were reported to be residing at Ireland's Eye, Trinity Bay, by 1675, at Heart's Content in 1696, and at St. John's by 1705.[6]Thomas Nash, an Irish Roman Catholic, was one of the later pioneers of Irish settlement in Newfoundland. A native of County Kilkenny, he arrived on the Southern Shore in 1765 and eventually settled in the Branch area.[7]
Between 1750 and 1830, and particularly between 1793 and 1815, large numbers of Irish people, including many Irish speakers, emigrated to Newfoundland, known colloquially simply as an tOileán, 'the Island'. An account dating from 1776 describes how seasonal workers from Cork, Kerry, and elsewhere would come to Waterford to take passage to Newfoundland, taking with them all they needed.[8]
In the oral tradition of County Waterford, the poet Donnchadh Ruadh Mac Conmara, a former hedge school teacher, is said to have sailed for Newfoundland around 1754.[9] For a long time, it was doubted whether the poet ever made the trip. During the 21st century, however, linguists discovered that several of Donnchadh Ruadh's poems in the Irish language contain multiple Gaelicized words and terms known to be unique to Newfoundland English. For this reason, Donnchadh Ruadh's poems are considered the earliest solid evidence that the Irish language was spoken in Newfoundland.[10]
Donnchadh Ruadh provides a description of the rewards of going to Newfoundland (with a burlesque flavour) in a poem describing his deep sea-chest filled with eggs, butter, bacon and other necessities:
Do thug an pobal i bhfochair a chéile Chum mo chothuighthe i gcogadh nó i spéirlinn – Stór nach g-caillfeadh suim de laethibh, As cófra doimhin a d-toilfinn féin ann; Do bhí seach bh-fichid ubh circe 'gus eunla ann Le h-aghaidh a n-ithte chomh minic 's badh mhéin liom – Cróca ime do dingeadh le saothar As spóla soille ba throime 'ná déarfainn...[11]
The people brought together So as to nourish me in war or strife – A treasure that they would not lose for many a day, And a deep chest that I would like myself; There were a hundred and forty hens' eggs and birds, For me to eat as often as I would wish – A crock packed tight with butter And a fat joint of meat heavier than I could tell.
County Kilkenny's contribution to this emigration was 25%, followed by County Wexford (at least 23%), County Waterford (at least 20%) and County Tipperary (at least 15%), with County Cork adding a further 6%. Wexford was the county of origin in which the Irish language was least spoken. The other counties, mostly in Munster, were part of an area in which Irish was widely spoken until at least the middle of the 19th century. An illustration of this is furnished by the estimated percentage of Irish speakers for the decennial period 1771–1781 in the following counties: County Kilkenny 57%, County Tipperary 51%, County Waterford 86%, County Kerry 93%, and County Cork 84%.[12] This is borne out by observations made in 1819 by James McQuige, a veteran Methodist lay preacher in Irish:
In many parts of Ireland I have travelled frequently twenty miles without being able to obtain directions on my way, except in Irish... I need hardly dwell on the Catholic counties, Cork and Kerry, where even the few Protestants speak their native tongue [i.e. Irish]... In some of the largest southern towns, Cork, Kinsale, and even the Protestant town of Bandon, provisions are sold in the markets, and cried in the streets, in Irish.[13]
Most Irish settled on the Avalon Peninsula, with many in the main port and present capital of St. John's.[14][15]
Some Irish immigrants to Newfoundland moved on, and many others were part of an annual seasonal migration between Ireland and Newfoundland. Most landed in the Newfoundland ports of St. John's and Harbour Grace, and many moved on to smaller outports on the coast of the Avalon Peninsula. By the 1780s, the Irish had become the dominant ethnic group in and around the St. John's area, in a population of about 3,200. Many were engaged in fishing and had little formal education. Many were servants who came to Newfoundland alone, but others had families, in which the labour of women and children was essential. Most families had a small plot of land.[16]
By 1815, the Irish in Newfoundland numbered over 19,000. Emigration was encouraged by political discontent at home, overpopulation and impoverishment. It was also aided by the fact that legislation of 1803 designed to regulate conditions on British passenger vessels, making the passage too expensive for the poorest, such as the Irish, did not apply to Newfoundland, which was viewed as a fishery rather than a colony.[17]
The use of the Irish language in Newfoundland was closely tied to the persistence of an ancestral culture preserved in scores of enclaves along the coast.[18] That culture, in the Avalon Peninsula and elsewhere, included feast days, holy wells, games, mumming, Irish bardic poetry, faction fighting, and Gaelic games such as hurling. Church services were often conducted in the Irish language.[19] The post-1815 economic collapse in Newfoundland after the Napoleonic Wars caused many of these Irish-speaking settlers to flee to the nearby Maritime colonies, taking their language with them.[20]
Court records show that defendants sometimes required Irish-speaking interpreters, as in the case of an Irishman in Fermeuse in 1752.[21]
Ecclesiastical records also illustrate the prevalence of Irish. In the mid-1760s the Reverend Laurence Coughlan, a Methodist preacher, converted most of the North Shore of Newfoundland to Protestantism. Observers credited the success of his evangelical revival at Carbonear and Harbour Grace to the fact that he was fluent in Irish.[citation needed] There are references to the need for Irish-speaking priests between 1784 and 1807.[21] In letters to Dublin, the Catholic Bishop James Louis O'Donel, when requesting a Franciscan missionary for the parishes of St. Mary's and Trepassey, said that it was absolutely necessary that he should be able to speak Irish.[citation needed] O'Donel himself was an Irish speaker, and the fact that his successor Bishop Patrick Lambert (a Leinsterman and coadjutor bishop of St. John's from 1806) had no Irish may have contributed to the mistrust shown towards him by Irish-speaking Newfoundlanders.[16]
Beginning in the 1870s, the more politicized Irish-Americans began taking interest in their ancestral language. Gaelic revival organizations like the Philo-Celtic Society began springing up throughout the United States. Irish-American newspapers and magazines also began adding columns in the Irish language. These same publications also circulated widely among Irish-Canadians. Furthermore, the sixth President of St. Bonaventure's College in St. John's, Newfoundland was not only a member of the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, but also taught Irish-language classes there during the 1870s. Although the subject still remains to be explored, Kenneth E. Nilsen, an American linguist specializing in the Celtic languages in North America, argued in a posthumously published essay that "closer inspection would likely reveal a Canadian counterpart to the American language revival movement."[22]
Revival
The identities of the last speakers of Newfoundland Irish are unknown. There is a lack of information of the sort available from the adjacent Province of New Brunswick (where, in the 1901 Census, several individuals and families listed Irish as their mother tongue and as a language still spoken by them).[18] The question of how far Newfoundland Irish evolved as a separate dialect remains open. Newfoundland Irish has left traces in Newfoundland English, such as the following: scrob 'scratch' (Irish: scríob), sleveen 'rascal' (slíbhín) and streel 'slovenly person' (sraoill), along with grammatical features like the "after" perfect as in "she's already after leavin'" (tá sí tar éis imeachta).[1]
The most notable scholar of the Irish language in Newfoundland was St. John's native Aloysius (Aly) O'Brien (16 June 1915–8 August 2008). O'Brien's paternal grandmother, Bridget Conway, had spoken Irish (which she had learned growing up in Ireland) but his father did not speak it. O'Brien taught himself Irish by means of language records, cassette tapes, and the booklets of Eugene O'Growney, a notable figure in Ireland's Gaelic revival. O'Brien was thus enabled to become an authority on the many Irish words used in Newfoundland English and became a teacher of the language at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He claimed, despite this, that he was not fluent in Irish, lacking opportunities for immersion.[23]
There is interest in the Irish language, as indicated by the fact that Memorial University in St. John's, employs one of the Irish language instructors appointed every year by the Ireland Canada University Foundation to work in Canadian universities and support the Irish language in the wider community.[24] Memorial University's Digital Learning Centre provides resources for learning the Irish language.[25]
Efforts to revive the Irish language in Newfoundland are taking place, however.
In a 2016 article for The Irish Times, Sinéad Ní Mheallaigh, who teaches Irish at Memorial University, wrote, "There is a strong interest in the Irish language. Irish descendent and farmer Aloy O'Brien, who died in 2008 at the age of 93, taught himself Irish using the Buntús Cainte books and with help from his Irish-speaking grandmother. Aloy taught Irish in Memorial University for a number of years, and a group of his students still come together on Monday nights. One of his first students, Carla Furlong, invites the others to her house to speak Irish together as the 'Aloy O'Brien Conradh na Gaeilge' group."[4]
Ní Mheallaigh further wrote, "An important part of my role here in Newfoundland is organising Irish language events, both in the university and the community. We held an Irish language film festival on four consecutive Mondays throughout November. Each evening consisted of a short film, and a TG4 feature-length film, preceded by an Irish lesson. These events attracted people from all parts of society, not just those interested in Ireland and the language. The students took part in the international Conradh na Gaeilge events for 'Gaeilge 24' and we will have Gaelic sports and a huge Céilí mór later in March."[4]
↑ Ó Liatháin, Pádraig (2020). "'An tan do bhidh Donchadh Ruadh a tTalamh an Éisg' (The Time That Donncha Rua Was in Newfoundland]: An Eighteenth-Century Irish Poet in the New World". In Sumner, Natasha; Doyle, Aidan (eds.). North American Gaels: Speech, Song, and Story in the Diaspora. McGill–Queen's University Press. p.80. ISBN9780228003793.
↑ Young (1780), pp. 131–132: "October 17 [1776]. Accompanied Lord Tyrone to Waterford; made some inquiries into the state of their trade... The number of people who go as passengers in the Newfoundland ships is amazing: from sixty to eighty ships, and from three thousand to five thousand annually. They come from most parts of Ireland, from Cork, Kerry, etc. Experienced men will get eighteen to twenty-five pounds for the season, from March to November. A man who never went will have five to seven pounds and his passage, and others rise to twenty pounds; the passage out they get but pay home two pounds. An industrious man in a year will bring home twelve to sixteen pounds with him, and some more. A great point for them is to be able to carry out all their slops, for everything, there is exceedingly dear, one or two hundred per cent. dearer than they can get them at home. They are not allowed to take out any woollen goods but for their own use. The ships go loaded with pork, beef, butter, and some salt; and bring home passengers, or get freights where they can; sometimes rum"..
↑ Ní Chrotaigh, Eibhlín (2003) [1928]. "Beatha Donnchadha Ruadh Mac Conmara"[Life of Donncha Rua Mac Conmara](PDF). Journal of the Waterford Archaeological & Historical Society (in Irish) (59): 142–143.
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Munster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the south of the island. In early Ireland, the Kingdom of Munster was one of the kingdoms of Gaelic Ireland ruled by a "king of over-kings". Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into counties for administrative and judicial purposes. In later centuries, local government legislation has seen further sub-division of the historic counties.
Conradh na Gaeilge is a social and cultural organisation which promotes the Irish language in Ireland and worldwide. The organisation was founded in 1893 with Douglas Hyde as its first president, when it emerged as the successor of several 19th century groups such as the Gaelic Union. The organisation was a spearhead of the Gaelic revival and of Gaeilgeoir activism.
A Gaeltacht is a district of Ireland, either individually or collectively, where the Irish government recognises that the Irish language is the predominant vernacular, or language of the home. The Gaeltacht districts were first officially recognised during the 1920s in the early years of the Irish Free State, following the Gaelic revival, as part of a government policy aimed at restoring the Irish language.
The Gaelic revival was the late-nineteenth-century national revival of interest in the Irish language and Irish Gaelic culture. Irish had diminished as a spoken tongue, remaining the main daily language only in isolated rural areas, with English having become the dominant language in the majority of Ireland.
In modern Newfoundland, many Newfoundlanders are of Irish descent. According to the Statistics Canada 2016 census, 20.7% of Newfoundlanders claim Irish ancestry. However, this figure greatly under-represents the true number of Newfoundlanders of Irish ancestry, as 53.9% claimed "Canadian" as their ethnic origin in the same census. The majority of these respondents were of Irish, English, and Scottish origins, but no longer self-identify with their ethnic ancestral origins due to having lived in Canada for many generations. Even so, the family names, the features and colouring, the predominance of Catholics in some areas, the prevalence of Irish music, and even the accents of the people in these areas, are so reminiscent of rural Ireland that Irish author Tim Pat Coogan has described Newfoundland as "the most Irish place in the world outside of Ireland."
Donnchadh Ó Briain was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician and Conradh na Gaeilge activist. He was elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1933 general election.
Kilmacthomas or Kilmactomas, often referred to locally as "Kilmac", is a town on the River Mahon in County Waterford, Ireland. It lies on the R677, a road north of the N25 national primary road from Dungarvan to Waterford.
Ring or Ringagonagh is a parish within the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht na nDéise area in County Waterford, Ireland. It lies on a peninsula about eleven kilometres (7 mi) south of Dungarvan. The main settlement is the village of Ring or Ringville, which is within the townland of Ballynagaul.
Ballylaneen is a small village and townland in County Waterford, Ireland, approximately halfway between the villages of Kilmacthomas and Bunmahon on a hill by the River Mahon. Ballylaneen is in a civil parish of the same name.
Irish, also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language group, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the majority of the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in Ireland's Gaeltacht regions, in which 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2022.
The Gaelic Journal was a periodical publication "exclusively devoted to the preservation and cultivation of the Irish Language". According to Tomas O Flannghaile it was "the first journal devoted to the living Irish language". It has been described by the historian Donnchadh Ó Corráin as "the first important bilingual Irish periodical". An early manifestation of the Gaelic revival, it was established with the help of Douglas Hyde, and first published in 1882, by the Gaelic Union, and from 1893 by Conradh na Gaeilge. After some initial irregularities, the journal was published monthly until 1909.
The Irish language originated in Ireland and has historically been the dominant language of the Irish people. They took it with them to a number of other countries, and in Scotland and the Isle of Man it gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx, respectively.
Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin was an Irish language activist, nationalist and far-right politician born in Belfast, Ireland. He was the founder and leader of Ailtirí na hAiséirghe, a fascist party which sought to create a Christian corporatist state and revive the Irish language through the establishment of an authoritarian dictatorship in Ireland.
Donnchadh Ruadh Mac Conmara (1715–1810) was an Irish schoolmaster of a hedge school, Jacobite propagandist, anti-hero in Irish folklore, and composer of poetry in both Munster Irish and in the Irish language outside Ireland.
Risteard Ó Foghludha was an Irish-language teacher, journalist and editor from near Youghal, County Cork.
Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin, known in English as Timothy O'Sullivan, was a composer of mostly Christian poetry in the Irish language whose Pious Miscellany was reprinted over 40 times in the early 19th century.
Annraoí Ó Liatháin was an Irish writer and film narrator.
De Brún, Pádraig (2009). Scriptural Instruction in the Vernacular: The Irish Society and Its Teachers 1818–1827. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. ISBN9781855002128.
FitzGerald, Garrett (1984). "Estimates for baronies of minimal level of Irish-speaking amongst successive decennial cohorts, 1771–1781 to 1861–1871". Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature. 84: 117–155.
Kirwan, William J. (1993). "The planting of Anglo-Irish in Newfoundland". In Clark, Sandra (ed.). Focus on Canada. John Benjamin's Publishing Co. ISBN90-272-4869-9.
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