Rite and Reason: A bilingual summer school next month will investigate the extraordinary Celtic Revival period when our two great traditions, the Anglo-Irish and the Gaelic Irish, co-operated so fruitfully, writes Aonghus Dwane
'Ceangal Dhá Chultúr: Celtic Revival Summer School" is a cultural collaboration between Áras Éanna, the Gaeltacht arts centre on Inis Oírr, Aran Islands, and Christ Church cathedral in Dublin.
The summer school begins at Christ Church on Friday, July 7th, and transfers to Inis Oírr on Sunday, continuing there until Wednesday, July 12th. It will explore Ireland's literary and artistic renaissance of the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th century, following a period of great national reversal as a result of the Famine and mass emigration.
A notable feature of the revival was the encounter it represented between the Anglo-Irish and the Gael. Sons and daughters of the Church of Ireland were prominent in the work of collecting traditional language and lore from the people, in rendering native idioms into English, and in presenting traditional Irish culture to an international audience.
Many of the leading figures who helped unearth Ireland's cultural past made their way to the Aran Islands: "three stepping stones into the Atlantic", from where mystical Hy Brasil, or Tír na nÓg - dwelling place of the fairies, na síoga - might be glimpsed.
The revivalist groundwork was undertaken by people such as George Petrie and William Wakeman, during their employment with the Ordnance Survey. Peter Murray, curator of the 2004 Petrie exhibition at Cork's Crawford Gallery, will lecture on "The Antiquarians: Forerunners of the Revivalists".
Memorably, a party from the Ethnological Section of the British Association, including Sir William Wilde, father of Oscar, visited Inis Mór in 1857 and a lavish picnic banquet was held within the great fort of Dun Aengus on the sheer cliff edge, as Atlantic waves crashed against the rocks 300 feet below. A contemporary account records: "The banquet terminated with an Irish jig in which the French consul danced con amore . . . "
In 1896, WB Yeats advised his friend John Millington Synge to "leave Paris - you will never create anything by reading Racine - go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression."
This Synge did, staying in a cottage on Inis Meáin, learning the folk tales and lore of the people and lying "dreaming on the Dún" - the prehistoric stone fort, Dún Chonchúir. His classic work The Aran Islands was to win him international acclaim.
Further north, the mystical Sligo landscape inspired much of Yeats's poetry. Prof Terence Brown will speak on "WB Yeats and the Land of Heart's Desire".
Interestingly, during the 1850s one of Synge's uncles was minister at St Thomas's church on Inis Mór (which remains standing, albeit roofless). This edifice and others like it were the legacy of the missionary societies of the Established Church in the early-to-mid 19th century. Dr Gordon McCoy of the Ultach Trust will look at their work, which included the training of Irish-speaking ministers with a view to establishing congregations on the western seaboard.
Lady Gregory, playwright, friend and patron of WB Yeats, visited Inis Oírr; making drawings of Cill Ghobnait and the "tree of Inisheer". Judith Hill, her biographer, will consider the great Gregory/Yeats's creative love-child: the Abbey Theatre.
In this 90th anniversary year of the 1916 Easter Rising, it is timely to consider the impact which the rediscovery of national cultural self-awareness had on those who later led the decisive drive for political independence.
Patrick Pearse, poet, revolutionary and lecturer in Irish at Dublin's (Protestant) Alexandra College, visited Inis Meáin on Gaelic League business. His father's firm built the altar for the chapel there and the stained glass windows are the work of the Harry Clarke studio.
Nicola Gordon Bowe, Clarke's biographer and editor of Art and the National Dream, will reflect on the artistic renaissance of the period and unveil a new stained glass work created at Áras Éanna this year, inspired by Clarke's legacy and featuring saints Enda, Gobnait and Caomhán.
Former archbishop of Dublin and Irish scholar Dr Donald Caird will speak on that illustrious son of the rectory, Douglas Hyde, "An Craoibhinn Aoibhinn", one of the founders of the Gaelic League and writer of poetry and plays in Irish. Dr Caird knew many of the people involved in the early years of the Irish Guild of the Church, Cumann Gaelach na hEaglaise, formed in 1914 to provide a meeting ground for "all members of the Church of Ireland inspired by Irish ideals".
It still holds monthly services in Irish at Christ Church.
The renowned Christ Church choir, whose director is Judy Martin, teams up with singer Deirdre Ní Chinnéide of Inis Mór for Urnaí na Nóna, a special service of Evensong in Irish on Saturday, July 8th.
Full details of this unique east/west summer school are at www.araseanna.ie or 099 75150.
Aonghus Dwane is director of the Celtic Revival Summer School