This book is at once a history and a manifesto. Ostensibly it tells the story of Fainne an Lae, a bilingual newspaper published as part of the Gaelic revival between 1898 and 1900. Its publisher was Bernard Doyle and while it was printed in Dublin, most of its support came from Cork. The story brings many issues to light, most notably the role of newspapers in the Gaelic revival and in the creation of a readership for works in Irish, as well as issues of critical categorisation and cultural interpretation.
Nic idin Phaidin makes much of Doyle's working-class and trade union connections, but he was nonetheless a self-employed printer and so was typical enough of the petit bourgeois class from whom the language revival drew its popular support. He spoke no Irish but supported the revival as part of a wider support for native industries and national independence, often expressed in the characteristic manner of the day as denunciation of "shoneens" and "west Brits". This wider ideology made him an uneasy ally for revivalists such as Eoin Mac Neill who were anxious for a concentrated emphasis on the revival itself.
Fainne an Lae carried its propaganda in both Irish and English and bestowed on journalism in Irish a propagandist function it has never outgrown. Nonetheless, a vibrant journalism might have yielded standardised and flexible forms of grammar and spelling had not other factors intervened.
While newspapers generally develop as a symptom of literacy, newspapers in Irish were uniquely intended to create literacy where little or none existed. An informed estimate of 1882 put at 50 the number of those in the whole country able to read and write Irish. Illiteracy and the speaking of Irish were synonymous; literacy in English was a necessary prelude to literacy in Irish.
Furthermore, Patrick Pearse's claim that "the Gael is not like other men" required that newspapers which carried propaganda such as his own be controlled by the central body of the revival, the Dublin executive of the Gaelic League. Doyle depended on the league for endorsement, circulation and editorial direction and when Cork-Dublin tensions and other factors led the Gaelic League to establish An Claidheamh Solais as a rival to Fainne an Lae, Doyle's enterprise was doomed and he was eventually bankrupted.
No subsequent Irish-language newspaper appeared without subsidy and, more vitally, none had any more success than Fainne an Lae in establishing a readership for written material in Irish. Nic Phaid in cites evidence of rural schoolmasters reading aloud to neighbours, but the leap to widespread private reading never occurred. Primers (or what Sean O'Casey called "enders") were to be the most popular reading material in Irish, followed in rapidly descending order by bilingual newspapers, prescribed texts and, with the slightest readership of all, literary works.
The final chapter is the book's manifesto and in this Nic Phaidin calls for a radical reinterpretation of the history of writing in Irish in the 20th century. Models which attach exclusive value to poetry and prose fictions are, she argues, appropriate to French or English but not to Irish. Instead, low-prestige material such as journalism, diaries and translations needs to be acknowledged as part of the century's literary achievement, an achievement which furthermore needs assessment in line with Gaelic literary tradition rather than external models.
Eoin Mac Neill is the villain of Nic Phaidin's narrative and is credited with sundering the connection between the writers of the Gaelic revival and English-language contemporaries such as George Moore and Edward Martyn. As a result the Irish language lost "an comhphle criticiuil a d'eascrodh as caidreamh an da shruth lena cheile isteach san aois nua" (the critical interplay which would issue from the association of each stream with the other in the new era).
She does not mention the Field Day Anthology but it is a prime illustration of the validity of her arguments. While the modern section of the anthology includes as part of literature topics such as "Northern Protestant Oratory and Writing" and "Political Writing and Speeches", the anthology limits its Irish-language selection to poetry and prose fiction, thus perpetuating the Spenserian belief that while Irish might be used for poetic expression, it had no discursive capability.
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