Aisling Ghear: Na Stiobhartaigh agus an tAos einn 1603-1788 by Breandan O Buachalla An Clochomhar 808pp, £25 in UK
This is both a large and an important book - one of the largest and most important single volumes to come out of Ireland for a long time. Like the tall oak, it seems to have grown from what, at the time, probably appeared to be a rather small, if not silly, idea, namely the concept contained in 18th-century "aisling" or "visionary poetry": Ireland is ailing for want of her rightful king but he will return "from over the water" and restore her.
O Buachalla begins his analysis of the concept with the accession of the first Stuart king, James VI of Scotland, to the throne of the three kingdoms and follows it chronologically - more or less - through the poetry, politics, and religious conflict of the following two centuries. Though often ineffective, there was nothing small or silly about Jacobitism.
This is very much a history of ideas, which, on such a scale as this, is indeed a rare and wonderful thing in Irish historical writing. Concepts such as "crown", "nation", "divine right", "providence", "God's will", "heredity", "kingship", and the diverse literature in which these ideas are given life, are examined both from the historical point of view and with the aid of modern scholarship in such areas as millenarianism and messianism.
The result is a vast treasury of revelations and revaluations, too numerous to mention. The following are among the more minor items which caught my fancy: clandestine toast drinking in the early 18th century; card playing metaphors; the Jacobite job network; English newspapers and Irish scribes; political codes in Jacobite poems; the increasing obesity of the Catholic clergy in the eyes of the increasingly anti-clerical poets once the Pope had decided, in 1774, that Irish Catholics should show loyalty to King George III; and, of course, the sweet reasonableness of Charles O'Connor.
Much of what I would describe as the romance of the book is due to its close adherence to the poetry it seeks to interpret. This is very much a literary history. Poems, verses, phrases are constantly being quoted, sometimes at length. Each chapter and section opens with at least one epigraph from a contemporary document whether it be an item from the State Papers, and Irish language manuscript, or a book of English polemics. The resulting impression derives as much from the literature discussed as from O Buachalla's discussion of it. This is excellent. One feels close to the poets and to their readers, despite, at times, the strangeness of their world. A whole literature is being restored to us. A whole literary history - however much scholars will argue the toss - is being rewritten.
Yet it is O Buachalla's own vision which is so emphatic. He places the literature firmly in its political context, a context which was both Irish and European. It was not Tone or O'Connell - he says with a modicum of irony - who founded the Irish nation, but the Stuarts. Ceitinn and the Four Masters were not sailing in puddles of the past but writing the founding texts of the new Catholic Irish nation. Similar national histories were being undertaken in most European countries. Nor was Irish adherence to the Stuart cause an exercise in romantic failure but the result of a pragmatism which saw the best interests of the native landowners, their tenants and estates, as being tied to the royal line of Fergus and the divine right of kings. (Would that James II had remained a Protestant!)
O Buachalla's prose style, though far from elegant, is clear and readable. His thoughts and arguments are easily followed, though his material becomes unwieldy at times and he has organised his sections in such a fashion that while we start with one particular tune, we find that, through various modulations, we often end up recalling another. He also uses a number of unfortunate neologisms some of which are unnecessary while others are so ugly that no amount of 17th-century latinisms could ever justify them. Another fault with the book is that while the scholarly apparatus at the back is excellent, the index is ridiculously inadequate.
Perspective is the key to historical interpretation. In this book, much of the perspective - even the use of the fearful neologisms - is in the language itself. It is this that puts the book in a league of its own. In terms of both language and literature O Buachalla has taken up the challenge: to understand Irish Jacobitism on its own terms. He has succeeded handsomely. He has created, or attempted to recreate, a whole Irish world. This is not just a big new light bulb illuminating yet another dark corner of the hidden Ireland. This is a whole landscape brought, by the slow revolution of careful scholarship, into the clear light of day.
Liam Mac Coil is a novelist and critic