How exactly did Dublin Irish die out?

'Dubline' in 1610, map by John Speed. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Updated: 11 August 2019 (information about punishment for speaking Irish, see below)

At first, the question 'How did local Irish die out in Dublin?' seems deceptively simple: the answer of course being that, as elsewhere, its speakers stopped passing it on to their children, making a conscious decision that they grow up speaking English instead. This is the so-called 'utilitarian' explanation most often favoured by those today who have the proudest contempt for Irish. 

The reality is more complex. Firstly, the abandonment of Irish took place only once its speakers had been so disempowered, marginalised, denigrated and impoverished - collectively punished - that they in turn associated Irish (their language) with the powerlessness, stigma, and poverty of their condition, and, by contrast, English (the state's language) with empowerment, prestige, economic advancement and relief.

This is but part of the process that took place throughout Ireland during (mostly) the nineteenth century; there are other central factors - most catastrophically the Great Famine (1845-1849), which killed very many Irish speakers and induced very many to emigrate, further undermining the demographic future of the language and associating it with national trauma.

Nevertheless, the situation in Co. Dublin, due to its longstanding role as the centre of (nominally English-speaking) bureaucratic government and commerce, was a little different.

Irish in Dublin - as Irish as the Irish themselves

Irish was certainly never a stranger to Dublin, as some have gleefully claimed; it was soon spoken, probably as a native language, by the bilingual Norse of Dublin; the mediaeval English of Dublin, too, seem to have known it alongside English (and a little Norman French for occasional administrative purposes); this quite aside from the communities of native Irish who resided in the Pale, and the incomers from throughout the country, for whom Irish was likely the only language.

'Donolle obreane [Domhnall Ó Broin] the messenger' depicted speaking Irish ("Shogh" i.e. seo - '...[take] this') directly to Henry Sidney in John Derricke's The Image of Irelande (1581). There is no reason to assume that the Lord Deputy (who had been in Ireland many years) would not have understood at least some Irish. Click to zoom.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Indeed, the relationship between Irish and English in Dublin city seems to have been essentially stable until the early eighteenth century: both languages would have been omnipresent throughout the city, intermingling in its streets and lanes. Irish may have even had the upper hand in everyday discourse; we repeatedly encounter references that Irish is thriving in Dublin, and in 1657 a complaint is made that city-dwellers, not just rural blow-ins, are speaking Irish - evidently as their preferred language (Ó Cuív, 1951: p. 18). 

Between 1600 and 1700 it seems the locally-raised upper and middle classes spoke English, and likely understood Irish if not spoke it natively too (as late as the early twentieth century the gentry of Connacht often learnt Irish to communicate with the peasantry); the urban working class would have spoken Irish (being often of rural parentage) and English; outside of Fingal, where a dialect of Middle English (Fingallian) was spoken alongside Irish, countryside even close to the city would have spoken Irish exclusively, perhaps only learning a little English in adulthood. (Notably, Dublin was a convenient meeting-place for circles of native Gaelic scholars from all over Ireland during at least the eighteenth century, and probably before as well.)

1700-1800: the shift begins

Nonetheless, for reasons that remain tantalisingly unclear, sometime after 1700 this situation began to shift throughout the country, at first imperceptibly but soon inexorably, in favour of English. By 1738 an observer could write of Ireland as a whole, with clear exaggeration, that 'there is now scarce one in twenty who does not understand and speak English well' (ibid.: p. 19).

Swift's satirical A Letter to the Whole People of Ireland (1729) would have been understood by very few of them.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Certainly after 1750 a sort of bilingualism was rapidly becoming normal: literacy, where it was acquired, was predominantly in English; extrapolating back from nineteenth century census data shows that half of males born 1770 claimed that they could read and write in English (Kelly and Mac Murchaidh, 2012: p. 33).

(Of course, during the nineteenth century, it was also a norm for Irish speakers to eagerly exaggerate their skills in English - the more prestigious language - and likewise downplay their abilities in Irish. We have many examples of monoglots being returned as English-speaking - something an English-speaking state dedicated to the advance of the English language was only too happy to take at face value.)

Details of language use in Co. Dublin between 1700 and 1800 are fewer still; O'Rahilly (1932: p. 6) reports 'Irish sermons being regularly preached in Dublin as late as the middle of the eighteenth century', yet by 1801 we learn from the Statistical Survey of the Royal Dublin Society that 'Very few speak Irish' in Dublin; in 1806 an observer notes only 'Scarcely any Irish speakers' in the county (quoted in Ó Cuív, 1951: p. 77). You can read these statistical surveys in full here.

It might seem likely that the English language took hold earliest in Co. Dublin (and the planted areas of the north east) and radiated outwards from there; yet, curiously, the earliest data (unfortunately at barony level, see Fitzgerald 1983) we have - extrapolated back to the 1770s - shows Irish must then have been spoken by at least up to a quarter of the population in parts of Co. Dublin* whereas the data from Wicklow and parts of Wexford, Laois, Kildare and Carlow show far lower levels of Irish-speaking.

*Fitzgerald (1983: 130) estimates that the minimum levels of Irish speaking by barony in Co. Dublin in 1771-1781 to have been: Balrothery East, five per cent; Castleknock, 12 per cent; Coolock, four per cent; Dublin, six per cent; Nethercross, four per cent; Rathdown, four per cent; Uppercross, four per cent; and City of Dublin, 10 per cent. Baronies are relatively large areas, so it is certain that in smaller areas within these baronies, quite high concentrations of Irish speaking would have been found.

Furthermore, the example of Glenasmole shows that even after 1770 there were significant if overlooked native Irish speaking communities in Co. Dublin at least until the early nineteenth century, and possibly a few isolated speakers thereafter, quite aside from the thousands of migrants speaking Irish in the city itself as well.

Can we trace how Co. Dublin Irish was lost?

It is extremely difficult to trace exactly how Irish receded in Co. Dublin, and at what rate and where, not least because we have no clear idea where exactly in the county it was strongest before its decline set in. Indeed, almost all the most detailed information I have about the decline of native Irish locally relates to the southwestern corner of Co. Dublin, and for even this I am deeply indebted to the work of three prolific local historians, Liam Ua Broin, Donn Piatt and Liam Price, writing mainly in the first half of the twentieth century.

This level of detail centred on south west Dublin is evidence itself, I think, that local Irish lasted longest and strongest there.

We learn from Ua Broin, for instance, that Irish must have been a community language in Rathcoole in Easter 1753 from a single report concerning a man about to be executed, who is ‘exhorted to’ by a Catholic priest in both Irish and English (Ua Broin, 1943: p. 25). Presumably the use of English was for the authorities present, whereas the Irish was for the crowd - drawn as we know at execution time from quite a wide local area for the spectacle - and (certainly) for the condemned man. Rathcoole, of course, is not so far north of where local Irish held out longest in Co. Dublin at Glenasmole, to which we again now turn.

Our next report, from 1837, is now quite well-known: the visit of native Irish-speaking Ordnance Survey man Eugene O'Curry to Castlekelly townland (i.e. the southernmost part of Glenasmole), where he meets 84-year old Uilliam Ó Reachtabhra [anglicised William Rafter] an elderly man 'with more activity and buoyancy of spirit than his son, a man of about 50 years of age' and his sister Úna, who both speak 'as good Irish as I ever heard spoken' (which, given that O'Curry was a Clare native speaker himself, and a folklorist intimately acquainted with Gaelic tradition, must be considered high praise indeed). They supply O'Curry with a list of names of local places and Ó Reachtabhra states:

that 40 years ago very few spoke English in this glen, except the Dublin car men, very few men of 40 years of age, even now, in the glen that don’t understand though they don’t speak the Irish. (cf: Healey, 2006, p. 11)

A copy of O'Curry's notes on his famed meeting with Ó Reachtabhra. The third line states, 'He knew many persons who read and wrote Irish, the last of whom was Andrew Smith, Aindrias Ó Gobhan [sic], who died three years ago at Glasamucky on the Glenside.' Note the extensive use of Gaelic script here. Click to zoom. (Source: Royal Irish Academy)

From this, it might seem possible Glenasmole was practically monoglot Irish-speaking around 1800, with a smattering of practical English for those who worked for extended periods in the city. Yet forty years later the glen is well on the way to becoming exclusively English-speaking; quite simply, the young prefer to speak English, and the older generations apparently Irish. If we take Ó Reachtabhra's statement uncritically, it seems both languages are understood by both groups (though Irish perhaps not so well by the young), yet language shift is taking place, or has already taken place, by 1840.

A major note of caution is required here, however. William Nolan, in his comprehensive and exquisitely detailed overview 'Society and Settlement in the Valley of Glenasmole' in Dublin City and County: from Prehistory to Present (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1992), puts it well when he writes of the encounter between O'Curry and Ó Reachtabhra (ibid, p. 201):

Commentators have taken this single statement as definitive evidence of widespread Irish-speaking in the glen in the eighteenth century [sic: recte nineteenth]. However, other evidence does not necessarily lend support to this position. The appearance of English fieldnames in the late eighteenth century may pinpoint the period of language transition. 

Hogan (1900) has an interesting reference to Wade’s 1794 catalogue of Irish plants in Co. Dublin thus: 

[Wade] says he saw all those plants himself in the County Dublin, and as Gaelic was spoken in his time at Bohernabreena and on the slopes of the Dublin Mountains [i.e. Glenasmole], Wade may have got the Irish names from the people of that most romantic region. Mr. Kevin Doyle of Bohernabreena, or near it [see below], told me that his father was punished for speaking Irish on his way to or from school! Each boy had a tell-tale bit of stick round his neck; each infraction of the anti-Gaelic law was notched on the stick, then marked on the boy’s hands or back by the master and the parents!

Mr. Kevin Doyle is easily identifiable in the 1901 census, recorded as still living at Ballinascorney Lower in Glenasmole at 84 years of age (he is not recorded in the 1911 census and must by then have passed away). This means Doyle was born in 1817. Kevin Doyle’s own son, Mylis [i.e. Myles, recte Maoilíosa?] is recorded as being 44 years old in 1901; Kevin fathered him at 40 years old. This in turns suggests the incident that Kevin Doyle related to Hogan about punishment for speaking Irish – by parents (!) – in Glenasmole could have happened as early as 1787 or as late as 1807, depending on when Doyle’s father was born and how old he was when he had Kevin. 

(It is highly significant, too, that Doyle’s father was actually attending school at the time; unlike in other Irish-speaking districts in the late 1700s and early 1800s, illiteracy did not seem widespread in Glenasmole – and in fact, as the case of Andrew Smith above shows, literacy in Irish – while uncommon enough to be remarked upon – was not unheard of either.)

Why, then, should parents punish their children for speaking Irish in an area that at the same time had people literate in and apparently proud of speaking Irish? The answer, I suspect, is to be found in the gradual opening up of Glenasmole and in critical events outside the glen. In 1740 the first major road opening up Glenasmole was built; this connected Glenasmole to Dublin proper to such an extent that by the 1790s the main occupation of those men who were not farmers was that of ‘Dublin car-men’ who worked in the city, using English as they did so.

The 1790s to 1810s, however, were a period of severe tension in Ireland, and in Dublin in particular, including both the 1798 Rebellion and the 1803 Robert Emmet Uprising. In both cases fugitives fled (and were pursued) into the Dublin Mountains, to the extent that in 1803 a military road was swiftly constructed to prevent the area being used to shelter sedition. Dublin car-men in particular would have by then been utterly economically dependent on being seen as trustworthy by the authorities – otherwise they would not be allowed to travel into the city to work, depriving many in the glen of their livelihood. (It should also be borne in mind here that a secondary source of income in Glenasmole for many in the nineteenth century was to take in orphans and lodgers from Dublin city.)

So it seems that Glenasmole was a small community in which Irish was already being supplanted by English in the 1790s as the glen opened up to the metropolis on its doorstep; in the midst of this fragile socio-economic trend, political and military events intruded. A small, vulnerable community near Dublin of all places (!) finding itself in a general climate of suspicion, first in 1798 and then in 1803, seemingly had no wish to allow its use of Irish to single it out for any further risk and, accordingly, decided that it would hasten the decline of Irish already occurring among it by simply ceasing to pass the language on.

St. Ann's graveyard, Glenasmole. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

The people of Glenasmole in the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century were sometimes derided as ‘mountainy folk’ – a derogatory term that was apparently strongly linked to their association with the use of the Irish language (no matter how vestigial). I would venture that this term relates not to illiteracy and ignorance, as Kevin Doyle’s father’s case shows that the ‘mountainy folk’ were attending school early on and Malachi Horan relates that certain impressive traditional skills (the production of súgán ropes for horses) were the preserve of ‘mountainy folk’ in his time; rather, it seems, the ‘mountainy folk’, in being Catholic, (at least historically) predominantly Irish-speaking, and having harboured fugitives in 1798 and 1803 were seen by the authorities – and so by their lowland neighbours – as potentially disloyal, unreliable and all too ‘wild’. 

At the same time, the ‘mountainy folk’ of Glenasmole were in fact seeking ever closer integration with both their neighbours and the Dublin economy. The Irish language, as denigrated as it was, was apparently seen by the ‘mountainy folk’ themselves as the foremost obstacle to this integration.

Reports of Irish in Glenasmole and surroundings after 1850

We have further, perhaps tendentiously romantic, reports from the area: Piatt (1933, p. 6) gives a report he had heard that Irish was still spoken in 1850 in Ballymorefinn, Glenasmole - about five kilometres north of Castlekelly. Moreover, '[w]hen the new chapel at Bohernabreena was opened in 1870, the first sermon was preached in Irish, it being the language used in the district.' (Healy, 2006: p. 12, actually drawing on Piatt's 'Seanghaeltacht Átha Cliath' article in Feasta, March 1952). Does this confirm that Irish, even as late as the 1870s, was the preferred language of the oldest generation, and that younger members of the community acquiesced to this at socially important events - or are early twentieth century language enthusiasts, and their twenty-first century audience (us), merely wishing that this had been the case?

Piatt also reports claims of a kind of residual bilingualism 'south of Rathfarnham' in 1893 of 'mixed Irish and English phrases, almost half and half'. (Piatt, 1933: p. 6) This actually suggests Anglo-Irish, i.e. English very heavily influenced indeed by Irish sounds, syntax and lexicon; that is, the type of English spoken shortly after Irish had disappeared from a place.

In the same vein Piatt (ibid.) says that in 1900 there were memories of spoken Irish in Glencree in Co. Wicklow, ten kilometres to the east of Castlekelly, though clearly fluency belonged to the previous generation (i.e. those born after 1870 could not possibly have been native speakers).

Finally and perhaps most mysteriously one elderly lady purported to be a native speaker of Dublin Irish, who had not used the language since her Dublin Mountains childhood and who only spoke it 'when her mind was wandering' is identified in 1930, again by Piatt in his 'Seanghaeltacht Átha Cliath' article in Feasta (March 1952).

(It is relevant here to emphasise that the census records for Glenasmole for 1901, which can be freely accessed here, show that no one born locally returned themselves as having Irish; or, more accurately, the language box of virtually everyone born locally and resident in Glenasmole is either crossed through as irrelevant or left blank.

Perhaps most interestingly, the census also records that there were at least 13 elderly individuals still alive who would have been old enough to remember O'Curry's visit to the glen who, if they had been interviewed in 1901, certainly could have enlightened us as to the exact nature of Irish speaking in the glen in 1837 - whether it was confined solely to Uilliam Ó Reachtabhra and his sister Úna or more widespread.)

So what happened to Irish in Glenasmole between 1800 and 1900?

Judging from what O'Curry reports, it is highly tempting (cf: Nolan above) to surmise that the last generation that had Irish as its native, normative preferred language was born in Glenasmole around 1800 (and thus would have been 80 years old in 1880). It is equally tempting to propose that the generation born twenty years later (1820) - if we take a generation to be twenty years, although most at the time married at around 25 years old, and a generation may in fact have been 35 years - spoke both Irish and English with equal fluency, and can be considered truly bilingual, although in the circumstances of the time bilingual meant aiming for English. (This generation was 80 years old in 1900.) Thus the generation born twenty years later again (1840) might have had English as its native, normative language but understood Irish passively (i.e. semi-speakers as linguists call them), in order to communicate with the oldest people. (This generation was 80 years old in 1920).

According to this model, this would mean that the generation born twenty years later (1860) was the first to speak and understand only English. Nevertheless even then Irish may have been learnt by a few of that generation in exceptional circumstances (i.e. being looked after by a near-monoglot elderly relative for extended periods, often seen in 'final native speaker' scenarios, such as with Ned Maddrell on the Isle of Man in the 1970s) or to communicate with the very oldest people, who were either monoglots, who preferred to speak Irish, or who had again become monoglot with old age. (The 1860 generation would be 80 years old in 1940, thus accounting for the elderly lady in 1930) 

In other words, if we are to take the sources above at face value, local Co. Dublin Irish ceased to be passed on in any form in Glenasmole, but for exceptional individuals, around 1860. And so ended the transmission of any local Irish as a community language in Co. Dublin, although it would be a few decades until those born before 1860 passed away.

Turf cutting, Glenasmole, Co. Dublin. (Source: UCD Digital Library)

South West Co. Dublin outside of Glenasmole

To this must be added the note from Ua Broin (1942, p. 185) that Irish was used by adults in 'Clondalkin and surrounding districts' in 1870 to communicate with migrant workers (harvesters) from Meath who had no English (in order for this to be the case they would have had to have been from North Meath). This is backed up by Healey (ibid., p. 14), who writes of '[an] old man who died at Old Bawn in 1926, aged 90 years, never heard local people speaking Irish, but often heard it from farm labourers from Co. Meath harvesting in the district.' It should be pointed out that Old Bawn is about 10km north of Castlekelly. (This seems similar to the case of Ned Maddrell on the Isle of Man, who is known to have maintained his Manx fluency partly through interaction with Gaelic-speaking fishermen from Scotland and Ireland.)

Ua Broin (1871-1955) also states that his grandmother, born 1802 at Redcow near Clondalkin to a family from the Saggart-Brittas area about 10km west of Glenasmole, 'had some Irish', and would speak it as a play language to him as a child (c. 1877-1878) - though he barely remembered any of it and it was clear that English was the predominant language in the family whenever he was around.

His grandfather, a local man, did not speak Irish. Ua Broin’s parents’ generation was born c. 1837. It is unclear which of the generations described in the Glenasmole model above his grandmother might have belonged to, though given the nature of language use in his family I suspect it was at best to the first truly bilingual generation (i.e. 1820 in Glenasmole), suggesting Irish was decaying as a community language about a generation faster in Brittas-Saggart than in Glenasmole.

Essential sources for Irish dialect study

What is a dialect continuum?

Dialects of Irish spoken in Greater Dublin, and around it, were crucial pieces in an uninterrupted Gaelic jigsaw puzzle extending in a vast Atlantic arc from Co. Cork and its islands in the southwest of Ireland up to part of Caithness in Scotland's northeast.

All languages are made up of dialects (some very divergent from the standard, others less so); the Gaelic languages are no different. Each of these variants connect like a chain: for example, dialect A is similar to dialect B, to its north; dialect C, to the north again, is more similar to B than to A; and so on and so on. The same is true east to west or of any point on the compass.

Data collection points from the Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland (Cathair Ó Dochartaigh [ed.], DIAS, 1997), top, and from the Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish Dialects (Heinrich Wagner, DIAS, 1958), left. The Irish map shows phonetic transcriptions of eirball 'tail'. These surveys are research masterpieces, invaluable to study of the Gaelic dialects of Ireland, Scotland and Mann. The maps are in approximate geographical position; the Isle of Man is inset (point 88) on the Irish map. Click to zoom.

Had we walked from, say, Kerry to, say, Sutherland two centuries ago, we might have noticed subtle changes every few kilometres the entire length of our journey, and the occasional abrupt halt of one feature and the beginning of another; we would essentially travel 1200km without being aware of any bigger picture. Yet eventually, if we looked back, dialect Z would be barely recognisable compared to the dialect A of our starting point.

Therefore, to understand the role played by any one dialect on this map of ours (including those of Greater Dublin), it is wise to have an overview of all variants, especially historically, in order to compare and contrast general characteristics. 

Are there many resources available on the Gaelic dialect continuum?

Yes.

We have a good body of research on Gaelic dialects - although admittedly not as much as we would like. There are detailed linguistic studies into dozens of varieties of Irish and Scottish and even into Manx.

Very many of these date from the first half of the twentieth century, when groundbreaking work was done primarily by German-speaking and Nordic linguists (to whom we owe a great debt of thanks), though we have a good deal of relatively contemporary work too. 

There is a rich body of data listed by geographical location, in the four-volume Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish Dialects (which also includes the Isle of Man) and the five-volume Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland (see above), both from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS), although these are extremely detailed, complex reading and thus not recommended for non-linguists.

(Readers who already have some Irish will be well served by setting aside an hour or two to peruse and listen to the invaluable recordings of native speakers in sixteen counties from 1928-31 digitised by  the Doegen Records Web Project here, whilst a comprehensive bibliography of published works on all Irish dialects can be found at the Universität Duisburg-Essen's very useful site here.)

The springtime of dialect research, as noted, was the first half of the twentieth century, and an essential overview of the situation (which I recommend to anyone interested in the subject regardless of their level of engagement), still of unending usefulness to the novice, is Professor Thomas F. O'Rahilly's controversial Irish Dialects Past and Present, with Chapters on Scottish and Manx (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1932).

Required - if tendentious - reading: O'Rahilly (1932).

Here I must be candid and confess that it was this book, purchased some years ago now, that ignited my initial curiosity into dialects of Gaelic. O'Rahilly, from Listowel, became Professor of Irish at Trinity College Dublin; Professor of Celtic Languages at University College Cork and then at University College Dublin; and was Director of Celtic Studies at DIAS in the 1940s.

O'Rahilly's attitude, and his scholarship, has been (rightly) criticised: most obviously, it exhibits a clear Munster favouritism; it also exhibits serious flaws in the linguistic description of the extent of various features in Ireland. Of course, O'Rahilly is most known for his strong antipathy toward Manx, which he infamously described, scandalously in light of later scholarship, thus:

"From the beginning of its career as a written language English influence played havoc with its syntax, and it could be said without much exaggeration that some of the Manx that has been printed is merely English disguised in a Manx vocabulary. Manx hardly deserved to live. When a language surrenders itself to foreign idiom, and when all its speakers become bilingual, the penalty is death." (p. 121)

The professor was also extremely dismissive of Ulster Irish, which he saw (incorrectly) as thoroughly Scottified. The extent of O'Rahilly's prejudice against Ulster Irish is systematically exposed (and each point demolished) by Cathair Ó Dochartaigh in his brilliant Dialects of Ulster Irish (Belfast: QUB, 1987), p. 205-219, which is also highly recommended for anyone who has already acquainted themselves with the Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish Dialects.

Nevertheless, Irish Dialects Past and Present - even today, eight decades later - remains an unmissable entry point into the issues raised by this blog. It is readable, enjoyable and thought-provoking, and the first publication to push a pan-Gaelic understanding of dialects: in broad strokes, Professor O'Rahilly sketches out the major characteristics of the dialect areas of Ireland, Scotland and Mann and, using a rewarding methodology contrasting features of then-living dialects with dialect features identifiable in manuscripts and placenames (for those areas where Gaelic had died out), gives as complete an overview of the Gaelic dialect continuum as any beginner could hope for. In particular, his methodology is an inspiration for anyone working on extinct dialects. You can get a copy here.

The second great reference work I recommend for anyone even remotely interested in this field is Brian Ó Cuív's Irish Dialects and Irish-Speaking Districts (1951), originally three lectures given by Ó Cuív under the auspices of DIAS and available here.

Three lectures no one should miss: Ó Cuív (1951).

Ó Cuív's lectures, which deal solely with Ireland, are nonetheless of great relevance to the whole Gaelic area. Ó Cuív pores critically through all available statistical sources and historical reports to trace the position and retreat of Irish throughout the island at various points in time (especially in the previous century and a half), all the time referring back to the state of Irish in the country as a whole. Like O'Rahilly, Ó Cuív is biased toward Munster, although his case study comparison of Cork dialects - and their position relative to the dialects of Kerry, Tipperary and Waterford - is a great introduction into how to think in a comparative manner. 

Ó Cuív stresses again and again the local nature of Irish as it was spoken, and as it ceased to be spoken, tracking reports of the last few native speakers here, a monoglot there, assessments as to the state of Irish in this district or that; all the while maintaining a critical eye towards his data, for example (of relevance to this blog) in Co. Dublin:

"In the Barony of Castleknock in County Dublin there were [in the 1851 census] 243 Irish speakers. 200 of these were male and 118 were between the ages of 20 and 30 years. I have little doubt that the explanation of this lies in the fact that in this barony were the Royal Hibernian Military School with 333 inmates and the Constabulary Barrack with 606 inmates. I am sure one would have found there ample material for dialect study."(p. 23)

Both O'Rahilly and Ó Cuív, in their own ways, underlined the urgency of dialect fieldwork in Gaelic-speaking areas; work that remains as urgent today as it was in the 1930s or 1950s, and which has, sadly, in a great many cases not been followed up.

My next post will focus on an area in which fieldwork necessarily had to take a different approach, for there were hardly any Irish speakers left when linguistic study finally caught up with the facts on the ground: the Gaelic dialects spoken in Leinster, and what remained of them.

The 'problem' of Dublin Irish

How do you research an unrecorded dialect?

Quite simply: with great difficulty.

If you wish to record features of a dialect, in the simplest sense you find a number of people who speak that variant and begin recording how they speak it. Historically, this was quite a feat: speakers of the dialects that most interested researchers usually lived in the most remote and difficult to reach places, and travel was by foot. Upon locating people willing to be recorded, the researcher - or a put-upon assistant! - would then write down how those people spoke using only pen and paper, usually utilising their own phonetic shorthand, frantically copying down extensive passages for hours and days on end.

Finnish folklore collector Elias Lönnrot, 1828. Early dialect researchers were folklorists. (Source: Projekti Lönnrot.)

Technological advances during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries vastly improved the situation. Roads were improved, bicycles, cars and public transport made journeys to even the most difficult to reach areas quicker, easier and more frequent, making it easier to find dialect speakers. Most importantly, the introduction of (at first rudimentary) recording devices revolutionised dialect study, allowing the sounds of a dialect to be captured and played back for the first time (although it was still sometimes the case that speakers themselves would have to travel to universities to be recorded!). 

Wax cylinder recordings, 1897-1948. At right, Tadhg Ó Murchú recording from Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin (Source: UCD National Folklore Collection)

The introduction of a common phonetic alphabet also facilitated the easier transcription and comparison of features between linguists. Finally, the internet has revolutionised the field once again, providing opportunities for researchers and dialect speakers to contact one another, information to be placed directly online for anyone to read and draw upon, fora for further discussion and comparison, etc.

The Doegen Records Web Project is a quintessential and celebrated example of how the internet facilitates Gaelic dialect study. (Source: Universität Duisburg-Essen)

Sadly, none of the above two paragraphs applied to Dublin Gaelic (or indeed to virtually all of the dialects spoken in old Leinster). Aside from short examples recorded early on coincidentally as general examples of Irish speech by curious travellers, it was not put to pen or paper. Most of its speakers were illiterate in it (literacy usually being acquired in English) and did not, as far as we know, write it; even once the Gaelic revival of the late nineteenth century had taken off, interested types from Dublin often cycled the 101km north to Omeath in Oriel (see map below), which they presumed to be the nearest Irish-speaking area, rather than the 21km south to investigate what may have been a tiny residually Gaelic-speaking community in their midst at Glenasmole. Ironically, Omeath Irish is an Ulster dialect.

Omeath is point 65 on Heinrich Wagner's Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish Dialects (1958). The image shows pronunciations of brochán 'porridge' in Omeath, Tyrone (66) and West Inishowen (68). Note all three show significant weakening of -ch- (in Omeath, -ch- disappears; in Tyrone it is barely audible; in Inishowen it is a voiceless glottal fricative [h] like English 'high') and short vowels on the dimunitive ending. These are characteristically Ulster features, as if written bróan (65), bróthan (66) and brothan (68). Rathlin is point 67. You can read more about Rathlin Gaelic, which is very divergent, here.

It seems unlikely (m)any of these enthusiasts knew Gaelic might have been spoken natively (if vestigially) in Co. Dublin: even specialists of Irish - who did crucial work fine-combing Ireland for examples of every last native dialect they could find - overlooked whatever might have remained of Glenasmole Gaelic. So, whilst we - thankfully - even have sound recordings of the Irish of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone et al we sadly have none of the Irish of Greater Dublin.

Put simply, the Irish of Dublin was not recorded in any coherent or practical sense.

So that's it? I came all this way for nothing?

Luckily, no.

The traditional Gaelic dialects spoken in what is now Greater Dublin have nonetheless left scattered, tantalising traces: a handful of passages and word lists, believed to have been taken down relatively phonetically in English orthography in Dublin whilst Irish was spoken natively, although varying greatly in date (from between the sixteenth to twentieth centuries); a significant body of Gaelic loanwords in collections of the English of Greater Dublin, in what examples we have of Fingalian (a descendant of Middle English spoken in North Co. Dublin, itself barely recorded and probably passing in the nineteenth century); quite a few manuscripts written by local Irish speakers whose spelling betrays their dialect; a corpus of many hundreds of place-names in the Greater Dublin area, also varying in date, which perhaps show how Irish was pronounced locally and how this varied subtly from place to place; a few very specific references from observers about the properties of Irish spoken in the area, and a few other sources that represent borrowed Irish words, in what is for the most part their traditional local Gaelic pronunciation, in English.

By systematically comparing and contrasting the forms of these words and sentences with identical and similar words and sentences in other dialects, we are able to identify certain distinguishing features that the Gaelic variants of Dublin were likely to have had, both in common with other dialects and separate from them. (Of course, as Dublin Irish was never recorded systematically and properly linguistically from actual native speakers, any conclusions must remain tentative, but the comparative technique is standard practice in historical linguistics.)

Also fortunately, aside from the tiny and imperfect sources we have for Dublin Gaelic, we also have varying amounts of evidence for the dialects surrounding Dublin, including (in order of the information we have) the Gaelic of Kildare, Wicklow (extremely little), Wexford (slightly more, plus very many loanwords in Wexford English, in which the late great Diarmuid Ó Muirithe took a characteristic interest) and Meath (i.e Seosamh Laoide's Sgéalaidhe Óirghiall (1905) here and an extensive fascinating naturalistic dialogue in both Irish and English here, although it seems from various details in the excerpts that the latter may in fact be in South Armagh Irish), so we have a good idea of the key features of the dialects Dublin Irish was surrounded by. By looking at where Dublin sat on this continuum we have hints of what features it may have had, and in turn the role it may have played in that continuum. (In particular, the fairly extensive records we have of Meath Irish are of great comparative use for the study of the Irish of at least North Co. Dublin, although it must be emphasised here that the Meath material is for the most part from the far north of the county, which is very much aligned with Oriel/Ulster norms.)

I am extremely grateful to Ciarán Dunbar for supplying some linkable resources on Meath Gaelic via his own blog here, and to the late Professor Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, Emeritus Professor at UCD, for the extensive samples and summaries of the Gaelic of Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Wexford (among elsewhere) provided in his seminal work Labhrann Laighnigh (Coiscéim, 2011), which you can and should buy here. A little further back in time, we must also thank Seosamh Laoide and Eugene O'Growney for providing us with the majority of material we have from various points in Co. Meath.

When was Dublin Irish last spoken - and where?

Source: JP (Wikimedia Commons)

If you ask anyone the question, 'When did native Irish die out in Dublin?', the likelihood is that they will answer 'very early on' - the presumption being that, as the seat of English and British administration in Ireland, and the centre from which anglicising impulses spread out and overtook the country, the Irish language could not have survived long under such pressures, becoming the first victim of anglicisation. They would likely give answers varying wildly from 1200 to 1700. Perhaps a few might dare to guess 1800.

This is a well-founded presumption given the general trend of Irish history, but it is incorrect.

First of all, Gaelic dialects from outside Dublin have been (and continue to be) spoken in the capital without interruption. There have always been Irish-speaking incomers in the city and once English became the predominant native language there there continued to be a partially Irish-speaking working class and underclass composed of rural migrants. Indeed, during the Famine, the populations of Dublin, Belfast and Cork all actually increased - very many of these would have been Irish speakers. There almost certainly would have been small, poor Irish-speaking districts of the city well into the late nineteenth century, as people moved together to the metropolis from congested Gaelic-speaking areas throughout the country and encouraged others back home to join them.

Secondly, and more importantly for this blog, traditional local Gaelic receded far more slowly in Co. Dublin than generally realised. Anglicisation took hold most quickly along arterial transport routes, through which commerce and bureaucracy could push the English language ahead of them. But mountainous parts of south Co. Dublin remained relatively remote (and so self-sufficient) well into the twentieth century, providing conditions that helped the survival of a local Irish dialect - although it was, even in its lifetime, very difficult to find.

Bohernabreena. Source: South Dublin County Libraries

It is here - just 21km south of O'Connell Street - in the area stretching roughly from the townland of Bohernabreena (Bóthar na Bruíne) to the townland of Castlekelly (Caisleán Uí Cheallaigh) that local Gaelic certainly persisted until the 1830s, possibly as late as the 1870s, with individual native speakers still claimed to be found after 1900. These included one speaker, an elderly lady, who had - ironically - moved to town (Kimmage) by 1930 but who supposedly still spoke, with some difficulty, the Irish of her Dublin Mountains childhood.

You can read more about the Irish of Glenasmole (Gleann an Smóil), as the area is perhaps more famously known, here (p. 11 onward).

(Many thanks to Páid Ó Donnchú for supplying a linkable version of this text.)

Glenasmole. Source: South Dublin County Libraries

Unfortunately (as is so often the case), while the persistence of at least some Irish in and from the area was confirmed at the time, very little information on the actual characteristics of Glenasmole Gaelic has survived, although I hope to be able to return to this aspect very soon. I will also return to other reports of vestiges of native Irish popping up in long-anglicised districts.

A good start is half the work...

Welcome to Dublin Gaelic, a blog on the historical Irish Gaelic dialect(s) of the Greater Dublin region.

The Greater Dublin region includes what is now Co. Dublin, but this blog will also cover related varieties of Irish that were spoken immediately north, south and west of Co. Dublin where relevant (and these, as we shall see, are very relevant!)

Dublin. Source: Chris Hadfield, NASA (Wikimedia Commons)

Why Dublin Gaelic? Why not Dublin Irish?

Originally the plan had been to title this blog 'Dublin Irish' as that is the term most Irish people would be familiar with. That blog title was already taken. Nevertheless, Dublin Gaelic is a fortuituous name - Irish, Scottish and Manx are just varieties of one Gaelic language, spoken historically from western Caithness in extreme northeast to the Beara peninsula in the extreme southwest. This Gaelic dialect continuum - a series of dialects, each one related to each of its neighbours in a vast chain - was and is known to its speakers by variations of the word 'Gaelic' (e.g. Gaoluinn, Gaeilge, Gaelg, Gaedhilg, Gàidhlig). The terms 'Irish', 'Scottish (Gaelic)' and 'Manx' are merely modern differentiations in English, and are not used by any Gaelic language. This blog will use 'Dublin Irish' and 'Dublin Gaelic' interchangeably.

Isn't Dublin Irish dead? What's the point?

Let us be very clear. Dublin Gaelic is indeed dead linguistically, and any hope of its revival are forlorn. It exists only as scattered remains, evidence of what once was - place-names, word lists, the odd recorded sentence here and there, loanwords in the English spoken in Dublin, etc. If you wish to become a fluent speaker of a specific Irish dialect, do not waste your time or effort here - place your enthusiasm in the living dialects of Irish, in Kerry, Waterford, Cork, Galway (the current Irish spoken natively in Meath is a form of Galway Irish), Mayo and Donegal, or the Gaelic dialects of Scotland, or Manx. There are communities speaking all of these dialects, and they need you most.

(If you are a professional linguist interested in studying living dialects of contemporary Irish, I strongly recommend this overview by Professor Raymond Hickey of the University of Duisburg and Essen.)

My main reason to be interested in Dublin Gaelic is its role within the overall Gaelic dialect continuum. The rapid retreat of Irish not only in Dublin and Leinster but throughout the entire country in the nineteenth century left a huge linguistic unknown in the map of Gaelic dialects, stretching from Oriel (Armagh, Louth, Monaghan) in the north, as far west as Fermanagh, Sligo and Roscommon, and as far south as Limerick, Tipperary and Carlow, Wexford and Wicklow. However, we have varying amounst of evidence of the sorts of Irish spoken in every one of these 'missing' counties, and good linguistic work can help us to fill in a few of gaps. The dialects have gone, and much has been lost, but all is not completely hopeless, if one is willing to tolerate a tantalising amount of incomplete answers and uncertainty.

This blog intends to be a linguistic investigation into Dublin Gaelic in its broadest sense, and to show evidence for and discussion of features that were likely to have existed in it (and its neighbours) by looking closely at the fragments of Irish that originate (as place-names, word lists, the odd recorded sentence here and there, loanwords in local English etc.) in Greater Dublin. It will also highlight sociolinguistic aspects of Dublin Irish where relevant. It is driven by linguistic curiosity, by my spare time, and by nothing more than a sincere wish to share knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Will I be able to learn Dublin Irish?

No, is the simplest answer. The intention of this blog is to draw on evidence of Dublin Gaelic for the purposes of comparison and contrast with other Gaelic dialects (whether in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man or elsewhere), and to contribute to research into Gaelic dialectology and the Gaelic languages more generally. It will not be reconstructing or synthesising a Dublin dialect of Irish from these sources (as Cornish was revived, and as an Aboriginal language group in Tasmania, among other examples, seek to do). 

I certainly do not advise anyone to add any of the features posted on this blog to any Irish they might speak in an attempt to make their Irish more eccentrically 'Dublin'. The result would more than likely hinder rather than aid communication with speakers of contemporary Irish; Gaelic language speech communities today are so small that I would advise you to pick an existing dialect and perfect your pronunciation of that, if authenticity matters so much to you. Learn Irish - don't try to learn Dublin!

What about the Irish spoken in Dublin today? Isn't that 'Dublin Gaelic'?

The Irish dialects spoken in Dublin today do indeed constitute an Irish of Dublin, but they originate entirely in dialects that were not native to the area. They are transplanted dialects (or perhaps a koiné of such), which now vary when compared to dialects spoken in Galway, Kerry et al but which are still recognisably subdialects thereof. (I hope to return to the point of the contemporary variants of Irish spoken in Dublin at some point in the future).

Thus people raised speaking Irish in Dublin today do not speak traditional Dublin dialects (although it is highly likely that Dublin's Gaelic-speaking community always included speakers of many different migrant dialects - another point to which I hope to return in a later post), although they do speak various dialects of Irish. This blog focuses on the historical Irish dialect spoken in Greater Dublin, not the Irish spoken there today.

Who is this blog meant for?

Everyone! This blog is aimed at anyone interested (for any reason) in Gaelic dialects, and it is my hope that it will, in some small way, spark curiosity among visitors not only for Dublin Gaelic, but other varieties spoken (or until recently spoken) throughout Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Newfoundland, Cape Breton and elsewhere. 

Despite its title it is not a specifically 'Dublin interest' blog - it just so happened that when I began my research into that missing patch of 'lost' dialects on the dialect continuum map, my eye was drawn unavoidably to Dublin due to its relatively central position on the map. This blog could just have easily been 'Fermanagh Irish' or 'Offaly Irish' or 'Galloway Gaelic' or even 'Newfoundland Gaelic'!

I will try to write this blog in such a way that as many people as possible can get the most out of it, and I hope to reach a general audience as much as I do an academic one. I hope to engage people interested in any of the issues this blog touches upon, and all comments are welcome. 

Part of the reason for setting up this blog was the lack of information in this field available already - and the peculiar difficulty of communication with like-minded people, despite the supposed ease of the internet.

I will try and update the blog as often as possible, but inevitably I will only post points of interest. If I don't have any, I won't post. This is my first blog, so wish me luck! I'll need it!