Gaeilge: This is the seventh volume of this most remarkable and invaluable project, which aims to provide a comprehensive dictionary of biography of those people either centrally or tangentially involved in the Irish language and its culture, writes Alan Titley.
The first five volumes, which the authors see as their major project, covered the hundred years between 1882 and 1982. The previous volume to this, which largely dealt with the rest of the 19th century, and this one, which brings us back to 1560, they would like us to see as supplements. They are different only in that they are not based on the original research which was required for the earlier volumes, but rather on the work of other Irish scholars to whom they pay tribute. This is not to imply that this volume is in any way less a labour of prodigious work. They have read, digested, understood, controlled, collated and made concise a massive amount of material from innumerable sources and have presented it with directness, clarity and style. This work is no less than a detailed history of Gaelic Ireland from the mid-16th to the late 18th century told through the lives of those who were there.
Although it is often said that these are "brief" biographies, many of them run to several thousand words. The unfailing curiosity of the authors makes us regularly seek for more, and while they have the great gift of being able to fillet out the judicious and encapsulating quote from the appropriate source, they also show us where we can go to get more. The book is replete with intriguing connections and cross-references, and roads that lead us through the social and cultural history of the time.
The great poets are here, of course: Feirtéar, Haicéad, Ó Bruadair, Ó Rathaille, Séamas Dall, Tadhg Dall; poets and musicians like Carolan; rakes and poets like Cathal Buí; lexicographers such as Risteard Pluincéad; pirate smugglers such as Murtaí Óg Ó Súilleabháin; patrons like Fearghal Ó Gadhra; royal sycophants like Cristopher Nugent; historians like Pilip Ó Súilleabháin Béarra.
But nobody is just one or two things only and cannot be reduced as such. Edward Lhuyd was a Celtic scholar, but also an antiquarian and a botanist, travelled more than 3,000 miles around Ireland and Britain, was imprisoned as a spy in Brittany, accused of theft in Cornwall and of black magic in Wales. Tomás Ó Caiside was a poet, priest, storyteller and soldier who abandoned the monastery and fought in the French, Prussian and English armies before living a wandering life around Ireland. Narcissus Marsh founded the first public library in the country, was a theologian and bishop who promoted Celtic studies and the use of Irish in the established Church and in Trinity College. The story itself is not simple, but pulses with adventure. Máire Ní Mhurchú and Diarmuid Breathnach have done work of national importance.
Antain Mac Lochlainn is another voracious reader in Irish literature, but of another kind. His book is a collection of quotes from those international authors who have been translated into Irish. The translation work done by the state publishing house, An Gúm, in the 1920s and 1930s was often fashionably disparaged, but this work shows the range and value of that project, as well as the work done by independent translators in more recent years. The other world has entered Irish via the thoughts and musings of Chekov and Marx and Socrates, and Pascal, and Shakespeare, and Dante, and just about anybody you want. Mac Lochlainn organises his material thematically, and you sense that he has done this with a certain amount of impish humour when it suited him. So while we have quotes on religion, anarchy, justice, revenge, politics in the normal fashion, we also have mischievous pieces on, for example, the Orange Order and Limerick. He will sometimes contrast one quote with another, as in Dafyyd ap Gwilym's observation that God isn't as merciless as people think he is, with the Bible's which claims him to be a man of sword and war. Montaigne is quoted as saying that the world is awash with commentary, but of writers we have few. This is the best antidote.
Alan Titley is a scholar, novelist and dramatist. He is Head of the Irish Department at St Patrick's College, DCU
1560-1781 Beathaisnéis. By Máire Ní Mhurchú and Diarmuid Breathnach
Clóchomhar, Dublin, 228 pp, No price given.
Focail le Gaois: Seoda Cainte na n-Údar Mór. In eagar ag Antain Mac Lochlainn, Cois Life, Dublin, 168 pp, €15