IRISH CULTURE AND NATIONALISM, 1750--1950
IRISH CULTURE AND NATIONALISM, 1750-1950 Edited by Oliver MacDonagh, W. F. Mandie and Pauric Travers Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-17131-6 ISBN 978-1-349-17129-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17129-3 Oliver MacDonagh 1983 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1983 978-0-333-32858-3 All rights reserved. For information, write: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 17 5 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1983 ISBN 978-0-312-43595-0 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Irish culture and nationalism, 17 50-1950. I. Ireland - Civilization - 18th century - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Ireland - Civilization - 19th century - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Ireland - Civilization - 20th century - Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Nationalism - Ireland - History - 18th century - Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. Nationalism - Ireland - History - 19th century - Addresses, essays, lectures. 6. Nationalism - Ireland - History - 20th century - Addresses, essays, lectures. I. MacDonagh, Oliver. II. Mandie, W. F. III. Travers, Pauric. DA947.3.I74 1982 941.507 81-21292 ISBN 978-0-312-43595-0 AACR2
Contents Prefaae Notes on the Contributors vii ix 1 Burke, Ireland and the Empire 1 J. C. Beakett 2 Problems Common to both Protestant and Catholic Churches in Eighteenth-century Ireland 14 E. M. Johnston 3 Popular Recreation in Nineteenth-century Ireland 40 Etizabeth Mataotm 4 Charles Gavan Duffy in Australia 56 J. E. Parnaby 5 Irish Culture and Nationalism Translated: St Patrick's Day, 1888, in Australia 69 Otiver MaaDonagh 6 Irish Nationalism and the British Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century H. V. Brasted 83 7 The Gaelic Athletic Association and Popular Culture, 1884-1924 104 W. F. Mandte 8 Bernard Shaw's Other Island 122 A. M. Gibbs 9 Imagination and Revolution: the Cuchulain Myth 137 Patriak Rafroidi 10 Finland, Norway and the Easter Rising 149 A. R. G. Griffiths 11 The Priest in Politics: the Case of Conscription 161 Pauria Travers v
vi CONTENTS 12 The Irish Republican Brotherhood in Australia: the 1918 Internments 182 Patriek O'Farrell 13 Grafting Ireland onto Australia: some Literary Attempts 194 Gerard Windsor 14 Yeats and the Anglo-Irish Twilight 212 F. S. L. Lyons 15 The Anglo-Irish and the Historians, 1830-1980 239 G. C. Bolton 16 Poetry and the Avoidance of Nationalism 258 Vineent Buekley Index 280
Preface All the essays in this book originated as papers delivered to a conference on 'Irish Nationalism and Culture, 1750-1950', held at the Australian National University in Canberra in November 1980. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Humanities Research Centre at the University and the Australian Historical Association. It was organised by the editors of this volume. The main purpose of the book (as of the conference whose offspring it is) was to help to define and establish, as well as to contribute to, Irish cultural history. 'Culture' was conceived of in a broad sense, to include popular as well as high, politics and sport as well as art, myth and religion. 'Irish' was also generously interpreted. Three of the papers dealt with Australian manifestations of Irish nationalism, two with its implications for the British Empire, and one. with its Scandinavian counterparts and derivations. Both these extensive usages seem well-justified to the organiser-editors, and indeed indispensable if yet another narrow, isolated strip is not to be added to Irish studies. A secondary, but far from negligible, purpose of the book is to further Irish studies in Australia. The generating conference was the first such to be held there and this book is the first joint-fruit of the Irish research being carried out in Australia - as well, of course, as fruit of the work of the conference's distinguished visitors from Ireland, Professors Beckett and Lyons. Our very warm thanks are due in the first place to the Humanities Research Centre and the Australian Historical Association for both financial help and general encouragement, and to the staff of the Humanities Research Centre, and most of all Miss Mary Theo, for their great organisational endeavours. We are also deeply grateful to the Irish Cultural Relations Committee for its support of the undertaking. Finally, we must pay tribute to the heroic labours of the secretarial staffs of the History Department, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University and of the Canberra College of Advanced Education, in typing various versions of papers at vii
viii PREFACE extraordinary speed and eventually mastering 'the new technology' by which this book has been produced. The editors and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: R. Dardis Clarke, for the poem 'The Trial of Robert Emmet' by Austin Clarke. Seamus Deane, for the poem 'After Derry, 30 January 1972', originally published in GraduaZ Wars by the Irish University Press. Dolmen Press Ltd, for the poems 'When I Am Angry' from The Rough FieZd by John Montague, and 'The Young Fenians' by Padraic Fallon, included in the Faber Book of Irish Verse. Faber and Faber Ltd, for extracts from the poems 'Punishment' and 'Summer 1969' from North by Seamus Heaney. Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., New York, and A. P. Watt Ltd, on behalf of M. w. Yeats and Anne Yeats, for the extract from the poem 'Sixteen Dead Men' by w. B. Yeats, from CoZZeated Poems of W. B. Yeats. Canberra JuZy 1981 O. MacD., W.F.M. and P.T.
Notes on the Contributors J. C. Beckett is Emeritus Professor of History at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of A Short History of Ireland (1952), Confrontations (1973) and The Anglo-Irish Tradition (1973). G. C. Bolton is Professor of History at Murdoch University, Western Australia. His books include The Passing of the Irish Act of Union (1966), Britain's Legacy Overseas (1973) and A Fine Country to Starve in (1972). H. V. Brasted is Lecturer in History at the University of New England. He is the author of articles on Indian nationalism, and is undertaking comparative research on Indian and Irish nationalism. Vincent Buckley, poet and critic, is at present living in Ireland on extended leave from the University of Melbourne, where he holds a personal chair in the Department of English. Among his recent publications are The Pattern and Late Winter Child (1979). A. M. Gibbs, Professor of English at Macquarie New South Wales, is the author of Shaw (1969) and Mind of Shaw (1983). He is now working on a study, Shaw: Interviews and Recollections. University, and The Art two-volume A. R. G. Griffiths is Senior Lecturer in History at Flinders University, Adelaide. He is the author of Contemporary Australia (1977). E. M. Johnston is Professor of History at Macquarie University, New South Wales. Among her books are Great Britain and Ireland 1760-1800 (1963) and Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (197 4). F. S. L. Lyons is Professor of History at the University of Dublin, a Fellow and sometime Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Among his publications are Ireland since the Famine ix
X NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS (1971), Charles Stewart Parnell (1977) and Culture and Anarchy in Ireland 1890-1939 (1979). Oliver MacDonagh is W. K. Hancock Professor of History at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Australian National University. His publications include Ireland: The Union and its Aftermath (1968, rev. edn 1977), Early Victorian Government (1977) and The Inspector General, a life of Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick (1981). Elizabeth Malcolm recently completed a doctorate on the nineteenth-century temperance movement in Ireland at Trinity College, Dublin. She is a graduate of the University of Sydney and contributed an essay to a volume of essays in honour of T. W. Moody, Ireland under the Union (ed. F. S. L. Lyons and R. A. J. Hawkins, 1980). W. F. Mandle is Head of the School of Liberal Studies at the Canberra College of Advanced Education, and sometime Reader in History at the Australian National University. He is the author of numerous articles on sports history and of Going it Alone: Australia's National Identity in the Twentieth Century (1978). Patrick O'Farrell holds a personal chair in History at the University of New South Wales. His books include Ireland's English Question (1971), England and Ireland since 1800 (1975) and The Catholic Church and Community in Australia (1977). J. E. Parnaby is a Senior Lecturer in History University of Melbourne. She has published several on Australian nineteenth-century political history currently working on a biography of Gavan Duffy. at the articles and is Patrick Rafroidi is Professor of Modern and Contemporary English Literature and Director of the Centre d'etudes et de Recherches Irlandaises at the University of Lille 3. During 1980/81 he held a Visiting Fellowship in the Humanities Research Centre, Canberra. Professor Rafroidi is Chairman of IASAIL, general editor of Cahiers Irlandais and Etudes Irlandais, and author of a two-volume history, Irish Literature in English (1980). Pauric Travers has recently completed a doctorate at the Australian National University on 'The Last Years of Dublin Castle: the Administration of Ireland 1890-1921'. He is a graduate of University College, Dublin, where he was awarded
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS xi his master's degree for a thesis on the conscription crisis in Ireland. Gerard Windsor is a freelance critic, teacher and short-story writer who lives in Sydney. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the literature of Easter Week.