Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:25:51 PDT
From: Patrick Maume
Subject: Re: Ir-D Competition Entry Number 1
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
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From: Patrick Maume


This is certainly a masterpiece of misplaced erudition - erudition
which unfortunately does not include the knowledge that by 1760 the
O'Briens of Dromoland were not Catholic but Church of Ireland!
Best wishes,
PAtrick MAume
On Thu 5 Jul 2001 06:00:00 +0000 irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:


> From:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk> Date: Thu 5 Jul 2001 06:00:00
+0000
> Subject: Ir-D Competition Entry Number 1
> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>
>
> >From Email Patrick O'Sullivan
>
> Oh...
>
> Stop pestering me...
>
> Here it is, the evil thing...
>
> John Allcock does not suggest that Miles O'Brien was accidentally
left
> behind in an Away Team/Time Warp episode of Star Trek... But it is
the only
> rational explanation...
>
> Those of you familiar with Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, will be
> familiar with the techniques... the lies, the half lies, the
confident
> assertions...
>
> Do not circulate further. Read and eat. Wicked nonsense...
>
> I blame myself...
>
> P.O'S.
>
>
>
> The Irish Origins of Independent Serbia
>
> John B. Allcock
> (Research Unit in South East European Studies,
> University of Bradford)
>
>
> Takovska zora (1)
> (extract)
>
>
> Came then the Pa?a, Kursid and his spahis;
> Cut down the knez, put to the knife the raja;
> Drove from the land the weeping wives, the orphans;
> Hauled high, impaled, the bleeding hajduk heroes.
> Then lowly fell the friendless Had?i Prodan;
> Forth stretched his neck to Sulejman?s swift sabre.
> Such was all ?umadija?s bitter springtime--
> Of ash and stone, of iron, graves and silence.
>
> Then from the North was heard the voice of vengeance;
> >From blood-soaked sod there rose again the flower (2)
> Of Serbia?s sons, all armed with steel and fire
> To Takovo, ?neath Suvobor?s stern ?scarpment.
> There Milo? called the knezovi together;
> Before the oaken altar drew his sabre.
>
> ?Here am I, and here are you, my brothers!
> War to the Turk! Away the yoke, the goad!
> No more the harac: dahija?s grim ire!?
>
>
> In the wake of the recent fall of Slobodan Milo?evic, ?revisionist?
> historians in Serbia have begun to unravel a hitherto unsuspected
role for
> the Irish diaspora. The founder of the Serbian independent state was
an
> Irishman.
>
> Serb names (along with those of many other Slav peoples) commonly
end in the
> suffix ?-ic? (frequently ?-evic? or ?-ovic?, for reasons which need
not
> detain us here). This is simply the Slavonic equivalent of the
Celtic prefix
> ?Mac-? or the northern European suffix ?-son? (or ?-sen?) and
signifies ?son
> of?. Hence Milo?evic is ?the son of Milo??, or Jovanovic ?the son of
Jovan?.
> Nobody suspected that Obrenovic might actually have originated,
early in the
> nineteenth century, as ?the son of O?Brien??nobody, that is, until
> Professors ?alica and Zadirkavac published the results of their
research in
> the latest edition of the Glasnik Srpske Akedemije.
>
> Towards the end of the fourteenth century the formerly independent
Slav
> princedoms (fragmented legatees of the Nemanjic Empire) fell under
Ottoman
> rule. Although the intervening centuries were punctuated by frequent
> uprisings of the peasantry, and the Serb hajduk has even been
recognised by
> Hobsbawm as the archetype of the ?social bandit?, it was not until
the end
> of the eighteenth century that Ottoman hegemony began to be
seriously
> challenged in the Serb lands (the revolt of 1787-88). The effective
> beginnings of the Serb national struggle are usually dated, however,
from
> the rising of 1804, led by ?Karadjorde? Petrovic. Although this
dragged on
> (with half-hearted aid from Austria and Russia) until 1813, Russian
> preoccupation with Napoleon, and the conclusion of the Treaty of
Bucharest
> between Russia and Turkey, in 1812, effectively pulled the rug from
under
> the rebels, and the struggle collapsed.
>
> The severity of Turkish reprisals resulted in the resurgence of
armed
> resistance against the returning Ottoman forces, in 1815. On this
occasion
> the leader of the uprising was one Milo? Obrenovic--as his name has
passed
> into history. Professors ?alica and Zadirkavac now affirm,
convincingly,
> that it was originally Miles O?Brien.
>
> The origins of this ?Obrenovic? have always been obscure. Readers of
Serbian
> history in English will probably have assumed that his sudden
arrival on the
> stage of history could be illuminated if only one were to pursue the
> original Serbian sources. Darby, the Jelaviches, Pavlowitch,
Petrovitch,
> Schevill, Singleton and Stavrianos, however, are all oddly reticent
about
> his origins. Indications are commonly given that he had participated
in the
> first rising, and it is accepted that he was no simple peasant.
> Nevertheless, there are clear indications that the story of Milo? is
heavily
> mythologised in places. While acknowledging that the name Obrenovic
was not
> actually his familial name, Ranke plainly constrains his account to
fit Serb
> customary rules about adoptive kinship, without enquiring further.
(4) The
> religious overtones of the declaration of his intentions, in the
village of
> Takovo on Palm Sunday, are clearly intended to echo Prince Lazar?s
> dedication of himself and his knights on the eve of the Battle of
Kosovo,
> celebrated in traditional epic song. (5)
>
> This obscurity is not dispelled, however, even when one does
penetrate to
> the presumed foundations in Serbian documentation and
historiography. The
> entry on Milo? in the Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, for example, is
evasive
> even about the date of his birth. (6) Accounts of his life before
1814 are
> inevitably stylised, rudimentary and repetitive. Milo? is a mystery.
In the
> light of recent research it is not surprising that historians
frequently
> refer to his deviousness, because it seems that the mystery was at
least in
> part deliberately fostered.
>
> Two questions require an answer. Who was ?Milo? Obrenovic?? Why has
his
> identity escaped detection until now? There are still significant
lacunae in
> the record, but a consistent answer to both of these questions can
at least
> be suggested.
>
> Milo? Obrenovic (or Miles O?Brien, as we shall now call him) came
from an
> ancient family of Irish aristocrats, staunchly Catholic in their
religious
> persuasion and consistently nationalist. O?Brien was, in fact, an
uncle of
> William Smith O?Brien, a leading figure in the Young Ireland
movement. His
> birth (baptised under the name of Michael) has been definitively
established
> in Drumoland, County Clare, in 1760. (7) The precise date at which
he
> finally left his native land is still contested, and estimates have
been
> offered between 1796 and 1802. (For a variety of reasons, which need
not
> concern us here, an earlier date seems probable.) In fact, O?Brien
was one
> of the celebrated ?Wild Geese?. Clearly he had acquired a measure of
> military experience and ability, as his travels took him soon into
the
> service of the Habsburgs?initially to Naples, where he took the name
> ?Milo??before moving to Vienna. ?alica and Zadirkavac uncovered the
trail
> by accident during their research into Austrian documentary sources
relating
> to Habsburg support for the Serbian uprisings. Indeed, O?Brien did
play a
> part in the first Serb uprising (although not joining the rebels
until
> 1807?he was wounded at the siege of U?ice) holding a commission from
the
> Ballplatz as what we would today call a ?military advisor?.
>
> Correspondence with his masters in Vienna ceased with the failure of
the
> rising, and here the links in the story become more speculative. It
seems
> most probable that, on account of his involvement with the Serb
struggle for
> independence, he ?went native? and remained in Serbia. (8) The
rest, as
> they say, is history.
>
> It remains necessary to address our second question. Why has the
story
> remained so well-hidden until its recent accidental discovery? As
with most
> historical false trails, the answer lies in a mixture of deliberate
> obfuscation and accidental misunderstanding.
>
> It is not hard to surmise why O?Brien should have found it desirable
to
> conceal his true origins in Serbia. He stood in a long line of
romantic
> western European adventurers who adopted the cause of small nations,
of whom
> Lord Byron is the archetype. In the case of O?Brien, however, his
> identification with Serbia was given the added spur of its adoption
as a
> substitute for the failing cause of Irish national independence.
Given the
> entrenched parochialism of the ?umadijan peasant, however, rendered
> chronically paranoid by decades of harassment by ill-disciplined
Ottoman
> dahija and krd?ali, the minimisation of signs of his difference
would have
> been necessary to his securing their trust and recognition of his
authority.
> Given the intermittent need of the infant Serb state to flatter
Russian
> pretensions as the protector of the Orthodox, discovery of the
Catholic
> origins of the Serbian prince would have raised unhelpful suspicions
of
> complicity with the rival Habsburg Empire. (9)
>
> What is in a sense more interesting, however, is the way in which
the
> intellectual agendas of others have constantly worked to overlook
the
> evidence which confronted them. Generations of European historians
have been
> led off course in this respect by the first great historian of the
Serbian
> independence struggle, Leopold von Ranke. Ranke set out, influenced
by
> Herder, in writing his history of the Serbian ?revolution? to match
his
> earlier studies of ?teutonic? history as the realisation of the
authentic
> spirit of a distinctive culture. The Irish origins of its leader can
hardly
> have been welcome in the context of this thesis. Despite his
acknowledged
> commitment to the ideal of historical objectivity, neither can
Ranke?s
> immersion in Lutheranism have found much use for O?Brien?s
Catholicism.
>
> Contemporary indigenous observers also would have found it
convenient to
> ignore any information they may have possessed about O?Brien?s
background.
> The great systematiser of the Serbian language, Vuk Stefanovic
Karad?ic took
> as his goal the purification of the Serbian tongue from all traces
of its
> ?corruption? under various foreign influences?especially Turkish,
but also
> (in view of Vuk?s tendency to assimilate Croats to Serb ethnicity)
German
> and Magyar. The prophet of the purity of Serb culture might well
have found
> it embarrassing, especially in the light of his personal dependence
upon at
> least the tolerance of the Court, to draw attention to the foreign
origins
> of the new ruler of Serbia. (Perhaps it is his sensitivity on this
point
> which motivated the chronic ambivalence of ?Milo?? towards Vuk, on
which
> Wilson has commented.) (10)
>
> At this period, when as a consequence of Ottoman rule so few Serbs
were
> literate, it is not surprising that the records which are left to us
by
> contemporaries are generally composed by members of the Orthodox
clergy,
> such as Dositej Obradovic and Prota Matija Nenadovic. (11) They too
will
> have had little reason to draw attention to the Catholic origins of
such a
> central figure in the story of Orthodox Serbia.
>
> Despite these pressures towards the falsification of history,
occasional
> clues have been there for the observant to have seen?had they not
been
> primed to ignore them by historiographic orthodoxy. Vuk?s own
collection of
> folk-song bears witness to this. Contrary to widespread belief, what
Vuk
> recorded was not folk ?tradition? handed down unaltered from time
> immemorial, but a living genre of expression in which contemporary
events
> were recorded. His Takovska zora, which celebrates the events of
1815,
> clearly refers to Milo? as coming from the North?which can only have
> signified from across the river Sava, in Habsburg territory. (12)
>
> Of equal significance in enabling O?Brien to cover his tracks has
been the
> indifference of Serbian historians towards the potential utility of
Ottoman
> archives (indeed, their technical inability to use them until very
> recently). It is now known, however, that in his report of the
negotiations
> between himself and the Serbian rebels, at the conclusion of
hostilities in
> 1813, Marasli Ali Pasa refers to the Serb leader as a frenk?a term
normally
> reserved for western Europeans. (13)
>
> Because he invested the spoils of dispossessed sipahija in estates
in what
> is now Romania, many of the personal effects of ?Milo?? have ended
up in
> Romanian museums?though not always recognised for what they are. A
pair of
> miniatures recently discovered in the municipal museum of Cráiova,
apart
> from being evidently commissioned to suit a taste which is neither
Ottoman
> nor Serb, clearly are domestic scenes from the life of ?Milo??. (14)
The
> fabric of his cloak is, without question, not of any design familiar
to
> Balkan weavers, but unmistakably of Irish origin. Although his
flamboyant
> preferences for dressing at Court like an Ottoman Pasha were the
regular
> object of the mockery of his opponents (likewise the fate of a much
later
> Yugoslav leader!) it seems that at home, and out of the public gaze,
he
> reverted to a less formal, Celtic domesticity.
>
> Among the evidence which ?alica and Zadirkavac regard as the most
decisive
> in pointing to the Irish descent of ?Miloë? is that which refers to
his
> character and behaviour. Reports of his irascible and violent
character are
> commonplace in the literature?summarised succinctly by Fred
Singleton:
> ?Miloë ?. was not an attractive personality ?. cruel, greedy,
corrupt,
> devious ?.? (15) On a more positive note, he had unquestionably made
his own
> way by virtue of his exceptional energies. Ranke tells us that
?Milosch
> might be classed in the number of chiefs who have created their own
power?.
> (16) Michael B. Petrovich, however, gives a rather more pointed
indication
> of his character. Present at the ?submission? of the Serbs in 1813,
Süleyman
> Skopljak Pasa recognised Milo? as somebody with whom he had tangled
on the
> field of battle. ?This (said the Pasa, exhibiting the scar on his
arm) is
> the man who bit me!? It is hard to imagine a finer example of
?Blarney? than
> Milo??s response. ?I will cover it with gold, honourable Pasa?. (17)
> Accounts of his violence as ?Supreme Knez? after independence are
frequent,
> regularly beating members of the Court who displeased him. (18)
>
> There was another side to his character, however, commented upon
frequently
> by contemporaries, which the revisionists now interpret as evidence
of Irish
> origins, namely his success as a ?ladies? man?. Castellan records
the
> occasion upon which (following a sharp exchange with his wife):
>
> Le princesse se leva et s?en alla. Milos resta tout seul, pensif. A
ce
> moment, Petria passa devant Milos et l?illumina comme le soleil du
matin
> avec ses yeux, grands et beaux. Milos tressaillit et se dit soudain:
> ?Comme elle est belle, que Dieu la sauvegard! Pourquoi Ljubica se
> fache-t-elle? Sans cette femme, toute la maison serait sourde!? (19)
>
> His authoritarianism within the confines of traditionally democratic
Serb
> culture, and his open displays of libido in the context of a society
in
> which the honour of women was valued, have been remarked upon
precisely
> because they were both unusual and scandalous. Surely, such a man
was no
> Serb!
>
> This dramatic revision of Serbian history has already caused a
sensation in
> Belgrade?as it will undoubtedly do when it is assimilated more
generally by
> historians of the Balkans. The discovery that the first ruler of an
> independent Serbia was no more nor less than a representative of the
Irish
> diaspora, violent, smooth-talking and lecherous, is in itself almost
less
> remarkable than the derivative controversy which it has already
ignited.
> Does the hostile reception which as greeted the discovery that
?Milo
> Obrenovic? was really ?Miles O?Brien? tell us more about public
stereotypes
> of the Irish, or of the Serbs? In the present state of the debate,
it is
> hard to tell.
>
> JBA
>
> NOTES
>
> 1 The poem was part of the collection of material gathered by Vuk
> Stefanovic Karad?ic, for his projected Life of Milo?. It is believed
that it
> was collected from one of his major sources, Te?an Podrugovic of
Sremski
> Karlovci, who was probably a participant in the events described.
(See
> Wilson, op. cit., p.107.) As Vuk?s published collection of ?popular
songs?
> was guided by a vision of the great antiquity of Serb culture, more
> contemporary material was omitted. It might well have been intended
for
> inclusion, however, in the pamphlet Poem on the Rising of the Serbs
against
> the Dahijas (1832) but following Vuk?s disastrous break with Milo
of that
> year, was omitted--its lauding of the prince?s heroism evidently too
much
> for Vuk to stomach. The version here is taken from Vojislav Djuric,
Narodne
> junacke pesme. Belgrade: Prosveta, 1960. (Trans. JBA.)
>
> 2 This is a verbal play on the Serbian name for Palm Sunday, the
day of the
> declaration of the uprising. Cveti is from the root cvet, meaning
?flower?.
>
> 3 ?Altar? is metaphorical here. The event took place under a tree,
but is
> intended here as a direct reference to the Eucharist celebrated by
Prince
> Lazar and his knights before the Battle of Kosovo?a widely known
image in
> Serbian epic poetry.
>
> 4 Leopold Ranke, The History of Servia and the Servian Revolution.
London:
> Henry G. Bohn, 1853, p. 196. According to Ranke, ?having entered the
service
> of Milan? the two men became ?so closely united that Milosch called
himself
> Obrenovitsch, after Milan?s father?. Castellan notes that his
?brothers?
> actually took the name of Tesanovic. Georges Castellan, La Vie
quotidienne
> en Serbie au seuil de l?indépendance, 1815-1839. Paris: Hachette,
1967, p.
> 30. The frequency with which Castellan?s description of Milo?? early
life is
> framed by ?sans doute? suggests that he might be guessing!
>
> 5 See Milorad Djuric (ed.), Boj na Kosovo, Beograd: Vuk Karad?ic,
1989.
> There are several occasions also in which what purports to be a
historical
> account of the actions of Milo? Obrenovic seems to have been
modified to
> echo those of the other Milo?--Obilic, a central character in the
Kosovo
> cycle.
>
> 6 Encikloedija Jugoslavije, Zagreb: Jugoslovenski Leksikografski
Zavod,
> 1965, Vol. 6, pp. 362-364. The primary source for all of these
accounts
> appears to be Ami Boué, who did not visit the area until after 1835,
when
> Milo? had already established himself as ?Prince?, and the process
of
> adapting his ?life? to standard hagiographical forms was already
well under
> way. Ami Boué, La Turquie d?Europe, Paris, 1840, 4 Vols.
>
> 7 It is not difficult to see how this has been rationalised in
Serb
> sources to Dobrinja, usually given as his birthplace.
>
> 8 Sources agree that he steered well clear of the abortive
uprising of
> Had?i-Prodan, in the early months of 1815.
>
> 9 The hallmark of Obrenovic foreign policy, in contrast to that of
their
> rivals the Karadjordjevices, was always willingness to accommodate
to the
> guidance of Vienna. Whereas the depravity of the last Obrenovic
(Aleksandar)
> is generally fastened onto as providing the explanation of his
brutal murder
> (together with his consort Draga) in 1903, a more sober historical
appraisal
> would probably give greater weight to the impatience of the Serb
military
> with what was perceived as his disgraceful acquiescence to Austrian
demands.
>
> 10 Duncan Wilson, The Life and Times of Vuk Stefanovic Karad?ic:
> 1787-1864. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1986.
>
> 11 See esp. Prota Matija Nenadovic, The Memoirs of Prota Matija
Nenadovic.
> Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969. See also my remarks above, in
note 3.
>
> 12 Vojslav Djuric, Narodne junacke pesme. Belgrade: Prosveta,
1960.
>
> 13 Fadir Banguoglu, Tarih Sirbistanin. Ankara: Osmanlia, 1989, p.
476. The
> term derives from the earlier ?Frank?.
>
> 14 Catalog de museul municipal. Cráiova: Liber, n.d.
>
> 15 Fred Singleton, A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples.
Cambridge
> University Press, 1985, p. 83.
>
> 16 Ranke, op. cit., p. 196.
>
> 17 Michael B. Petrovich, A History of Serbia. New York and London:
> Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1976, Vol. 1, p. 84.
>
> 18 The title Knez (or knjaz) is often translated erroneously as
?Duke?.
> This is an anachronistic reading of the title based upon mediaeval
sources.
> In Ottoman terms it signified no more than ?standing with respect?,
and was
> used to refer to local Christian headmen. It was definitely not a
title of
> nobility, and not hereditary.
>
> 19 Castellan, op. cit., p. 45. This dimension of his character is
> illuminated more fully by the chapter on his relations with women
included
> in M.D. Milicevic, Knez Milo? u pricama, Belgrade, n.d.
>
> John B. Allcock
> (Research Unit in South East European Studies,
> University of Bradford)
>
>

Dr. Russell Murray
Honorary Visiting Research Fellow
Department of Peace Studies
University of Bradford

From: Elizabeth Malcolm
Subject: Fwd: The Irish Sword
X-Sender: elmalc[at]myriad.its.unimelb.edu.au
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
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hydrogen.cen.brad.ac.uk id f6E0Hef11055

Paddy,

I know you are interested in 'The Irish Sword' and perhaps others are
as well, so I thought this message from Books Ulster in Bangor might
be worth passing on. Their email catalogues usually have a lot of
material, especially on Northern Ireland. I've found their prices
reasonable, and they are very efficient and quick in despatching
books.

Elizabeth Malcolm

>Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:31:16 +0000
>From: orders[at]booksulster.com
>Subject: The Irish Sword
> >To: e.malcolm[at]history.unimelb.edu.au
> >Status:
> >
> >36 issues of `The Irish Sword: The Journal of the Military History
> >Society of Ireland' are available on the Books Ulster website
> >http://www.booksulster.com now. Price is £10 per copy. They can be
> >viewed by going to the bookstore page and clicking on the `view
> >latest additions to stock' link.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >http://www.booksulster.com
> >
> >Books Ulster
> >12 Bayview Road
> >Bangor
> >County Down
> >Northern Ireland BT19 6AL
> >United Kingdom
> >
> >Tel: +44 28 91 461055
> >Email: orders[at]booksulster.com
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Click on the link below to be removed from the
> >Books Ulster Announcement List.
> >
> >http://www.booksulster.com/mail/mailmachine.cgi?e.malcolm[at]history.uni
> >melb.edu.au
> >(Or copy and paste the link into your browser)
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Professor Elizabeth Malcolm Tel: +61-3-8344 3924
>Chair of Irish Studies FAX: +61-3-8344 7894
>Department of History Email: e.malcolm[at]unimelb.edu.au
>University of Melbourne
>Parkville, Victoria, 3010
>AUSTRALIA



Dr. Russell Murray
Honorary Visiting Research Fellow
Department of Peace Studies
University of Bradford

From: Eileen A Sullivan
Dear Elizabeth,
Thank you for the data on THE IRISH SWORD. I have an article on the
Irish military serving Spain in North America, 18th and 19th century in
the last issue, Vol XXI Winter 1999 No 86. It was just published, tho,
a little behind schedule; my copy arrived in Feb 2001. It is a great
journal which I highly recommend to all. Dr Samuel Ferguson is now the
editor.
Currently, I am working on William Carleton's biography. (1794-1869) Do
you have any interest in his work or do others in your Univ ?
Sincerely,
Eileen


Dr. Eileen A. Sullivan, Director
The Irish Educational Association, Inc. Tel # (352) 332
3690
6412 NW 128th Street E-Mail :
eolas1[at]juno.comGainesville, FL 32653

Dr. Russell Murray
Honorary Visiting Research Fellow
Department of Peace Studies
University of Bradford

From: Elizabeth Malcolm
Subject: Re: Ir-D - Irish Sword 2
I
Dear Eileen,
I also had an article recently in 'The Irish Sword' and I know that
publication dates are running behind schedule. The editor, Ken - not
Samuel! - Ferguson, told me that, when he took over, the journal was
in some disarray, with a backlog of unpublished MSS. He's trying to
catch up by publishing a number of issues quickly. Ken's a barrister,
with a Ph.D. in military history from TCD. It is, as you say, a fine
journal and it's good to see it being rejuvenated. And Ken is keen to
publish more articles, whether on Ireland or on the Diaspora, as long
as they have some military connection.
You ask about Carleton. I do have an interest in his writings. I have
a two-volume collected edition of his works, plus various individual
volumes of novels and short stories - all in all, I think I probably
have everything he published. When I was working on popular culture
and drink, I found his writings very valuable. A number of his short
stories about festivals are interesting, as is his novel about Fr
Mathew's temperance movement. He is rather an 'historian's
novelist', and as an historian I have certainly used him as though he
were a reporter of fact rather than fiction. That's problematical of
course, but he does deal with aspects of pre-Famine society that are
not particularly well documented in official sources. So there is a
huge temptation to treat him as reliable, even although he probably
isn't. But I'm sure you're more aware of that than I am.
Afraid I don't know of anyone here interested in him. So I look
forward to your biography. Can you tell us a little more about it?
Any publication information available yet?
Best wishes,
Elizabeth

Dr. Russell Murray
Honorary Visiting Research Fellow
Department of Peace Studies
University of Bradford

>From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Dymphna=20Lonergan?=
>Subject: Re: Ir. spraoi
>
>Below is a reply from the Oxford English Dictionary to
>my suggestion that a 'cf Ir. spraoi' be included in a
>revision of the etymology for the wpord 'spree'.The
>dilemma seems to be trying to find evidence of the
>movement of the word between Ireland and Scotland. All
>suggestions will be welcomed by me anyway as I am
>claiming 'spree' as Irish for my thesis!
>
>Dymphna Lonergan
>Flinders University of South Australia
>...............................................
>
>Thank you for your message of 26 July. Our
>earliest evidence for the word spree
>is from the beginning of the 19th century,
>chiefly in Scottish sources:
>
>for the form spree:
>1804 W. Tarras, in sense 'frolic';
>1808 J. Jamieson Etymol. Dict. Sc. Lang., in
>sense 'drinking bout';
>
>for the form spray:
>1819 Scott Legend of Montrose, in sense 'drinking
>bout';
>1826 J. Wilson Noctes Ambrosianae, in sense
>'frolic'.
>
>We also have an example of the form sprey, in
>sense 'drinking bout', from 1813.
>
>Diarmaid O'Muirithe in his Dictionary of
>Anglo-Irish (1996) also suggests a
>connection between spree and Irish spraoi, and it
>seems not altogether
>implausible, but it would be nice to have some
>evidence for how the word came
>into Scots in the early part of the 19th century.
>

>From: "Anthony McNicholas"
>To:
>Subject: pessimistic ballads
>
>
>Dear list
>I wonder could anyone tell me from which ballads the following lines come.
>There are five different ballads. They were quoted in AH Birch (1977)
>Political Integration and Disintegration in the British Isles. London:
Allen
>and Unwin pp 52-3. Birch implies that they all pre-date the literary
revival
>at the end of C19 and he uses them as illustration of the depressed nature
>of Irish life prior to Yeats & co. I would like to know for sure when they
>date from. I have looked at the copies of Soodlums I have and can't place
>them. I know it's a bit of a tall order but if there is anyone out there
>with a penchant for these things who hasn't gone on holiday yet...
>
>1 Our prayers and our tears they have scoffed and derided,
>They've shut out God's sunlight from spirit and mind,
>Our foes were united and we were divided,
>We met and they scattered our ranks to the wind.
>
>2 We knelt at Mass with sobbing heart
>Cold, in the dawn of day,
>The dawn for us, for hum the night, Who was so young and gay
>
>3 The battle it was over and the morn was shining bright;
>The stars shone o'er the dying and the dead,
>Not a sound was to be heard but the cry of the wild bird
>AS it fluttered over a dying rebel's head.
>
>4 But the gold sun of freedom grew darkened at Ross,
>And it set by the Slaney's red waves;
>And poor Wexford, stripped naked, hung high on a cross,
>And her heart pierced by traitors and slaves.
>
>5 My curse upon all drinking! It made our hearts full sore;
>For bravery won each battle, but drink lost ever more,
>And if, for want of leaders, we lost at Vinegar Hill,
>We're ready for another fight, and love our country still.

>From: "Anne-Maree Whitaker"
>Subject: Fwd: Call for articles
>
>Dr Anne-Maree Whitaker FRHistS
>P O Box 63
>Edgecliff NSW 2027
>Australia
>ph (+61-2) 9356 4929 fax (+61-2) 9356 2065
>mobile 0408 405 025
>email ahcwhitaker[at]hotmail.com
>website http://foveaux.freeservers.com
>
>Australian Journal of Irish Studies
>
>Call for Articles: Volume 2 (2002)
>
>The Editorial Board of the Australian Journal of Irish Studies is now
>inviting contributions to Vol. 2, which is due to be published in early
>2002. Articles of up to 6,000 words on any aspect of Irish Studies or Irish
>Australian Studies should be submitted to the Editor, Bob Reece, by 30
>September. Contributors should note that the Style Guide to be followed can
>be found at: http://wwwsoc.murdoch.edu.au/cfis/styleguide.html
>
>The Australian Journal of Irish Studies is the principal vehicle for Irish
>Studies and Irish Australian Studies for Australia and New
>Zealand. In addition to history and literature, it covers developments in
>contemporary Ireland, including politics, the economy, social change and
the
>Northern peace process. It also reviews a wide range of books in Irish
>Studies.
>
>All articles submitted to the Journal are sent to external readers
>before a decision is made on their publication.
>
>Articles should be posted or emailed to:
>
>Associate Professor Bob Reece,
>Editor, Australian Journal of Irish Studies,
>School of Social Inquiry,
>Murdoch University,
>Murdoch WA 6150
>
>email: breece[at]central.murdoch.edu.au
>
>Books for review should be sent to:
>
>Dr Brian Mooney,
>School of Philosophy and Theology,
>University Notre Dame Australia,
>Mouat St.,
>Fremantle WA 6160
>
>

>From: "Molloy, Frank"
>Subject: RE: Ir-D Irish Australian fiction
>
>
>Tracy,
>
>You're right on both counts. Kings in Grass Castles is the history of the
>Durack family, although it reads in places like a saga novel.
>
>Ruth Park is a New Zealander; she came to Australia in the 1940s and
married
>Darcy Niland. She had, I recall an Irish grandmother, although I don't
>think she was a constant presence in her childhood. The only actual Irish
>character in The Harp in the South is the grandmother who could well be
>based on her own. The novel is often presented as about the Australian
>working class, and that's true but the whole emphasis on family values and
>loyalty has an Iish ring to it.
>
>FRank
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>[mailto:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
>Sent: Sunday, 15 July 2001 10:00
>To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>Subject: Ir-D Irish Australian fiction
>
>
>
>Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 06:07:46 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Tracy Ryan
>Subject: Re: Ir-D Irish-Australian fiction
>To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>In-Reply-To:
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>Isn't the Durack (Kings in Grass Castles) really
>family history rather than fiction, strictly speaking?
>(albeit with generic traits of fiction).
>
>Also (someone tell me if I have this wrong!) Ruth Park
>was not Irish-Australian, though her husband I think
>was. But I may have this wrong -- and she surely
>conveyed a strong sense of at least people's _idea_ of
>one kind of Irish-Australia in her well-known novels.
>
>Cheers,
>Tracy.
>
>

>From: "Molloy, Frank"
>Subject: RE: Ir-D
>
>Paddy,
>
>Another follow-up on Irish-Australian fiction. Surprisingly, I forgot a
>recent novel, Out of Ireland, by Christopher Koch. I'm surprised because I
>reviewed it for the Irish Studies Review early last year. It's an
ambitious
>novel, based - some people argue too closely - on John Mitchell and the
Gaol
>Journal. Koch is a Tasmanian, so interested in the 1848 leaders
transported
>there. It's published by Doubleday, and is now in pk. Another older book
>worth mentioning is The Sundowners (1952) by Jon Cleary - at the popular
end
>of the spectrum.
>
>I'm interested in whether a trawl of Canadian fiction for the past 100
years
>or so would produce many novels with Irish-Canadian themes. Australia and
>Canada are often compared -settler societies etc - how do they compare on
>this?
>
>Frank Molloy
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>[mailto:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
>Sent: Sunday, 15 July 2001 10:00
>To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>Subject: Ir-D
>
>
>
>From: "Molloy, Frank"
>To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk '"
>Subject: RE: Ir-D Irish-Australian fiction 8
>Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:16:01 +1000
>
>
>Paddy,
>Anne-Maree has beaten me to it with Ruth Parks's The Harp in the South. I
>did forget it yesterday, and yes, it has not been favoured by the critics.
>Too sentimental, I suppose, and certainly "un-feminist", if I can use that
>term. But it has been in print since first published in the alet 1940s, so
>is popular with readers. This and many other boks mentioned are in
>paperback, mostly Penguin, so should be available overseas.
>Frank
>

>From: "Richard Jensen"
>To:
>Cc: "h-ethnic"
>Subject: Fw: Finan on Duffy, Edwards, Fitzpatrick, _Gaelic Ireland_
>Subject: Finan on Duffy, Edwards, Fitzpatrick, _Gaelic Ireland_
>
>
>H-NET BOOK REVIEW
>Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (July, 2001)
>
>Patrick J. Duffy, David Edwards, and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick. _Gaelic
>Ireland: Land, Lordship and Settlement, c 1250-c 1650_. Dublin: Four
>Courts Press, 2001. 454 pp. Tables, maps and index. $55.00 (cloth),
>ISBN 1-85182-547-9.
>
>Reviewed for H-Albion by Thomas Finan ,
>Departments of History and Religious Studies, Webster University,
>St. Louis
>
>The Lost Gaelic Middle Ages Re-found
>
>Gaelic Ireland is one of the most under-studied fields of all
>medieval history. To be precise, though, Gaelic Ireland refers to
>that period after the arrival of the Anglo-Normans at the end of the
>twelfth century. There is no lack of scholarship concerning the
>period before the Anglo-Normans, but the history, archaeology, and
>literary history of Gaelic Ireland have been remarkably neglected.
>The editors and authors of this volume concerning settlement and
>geography in Gaelic Ireland attempt to respond to this state of
>affairs with a variety of approaches meant to fill in blanks left by
>years of neglect, and in the process have produced an exceptional
>volume that should attract more scholars to such a fertile field
>waiting to be harvested.
>
>The introduction of the volume, written by Duffy, Edwards, and
>Fitzpatrick, is valuable if only because of the extensive references
>found in the footnotes. No book on Gaelic Ireland provides such
>information. Often other monographs concerning Gaelic Ireland
>(particularly _Gaelic Ireland_ by Kenneth Nicholls) attempt to
>inform a general audience and hence have not provided any
>references; few books on Gaelic Ireland lead new scholars into the
>discipline by showing the reader where to turn for sources. Nor do
>many books provide the level of interpretation that explains why the
>subject of medieval Gaelic Ireland is in the state that it is in.
>Irish historians have generally blamed the catastrophic fire in the
>Public Record House in Dublin during the Irish Civil War for the
>supposed lack of documents comparable to those of Ireland's nearest
>neighbor, England. But Duffy, et al., rightly point out that the
>records held in the Public Record Office (while valuable) rarely
>dealt with Gaelic Ireland, and that most of the materials of Gaelic
>Ireland had been deposited at the libraries of Trinity College, the
>Royal Irish Academy, and other learned societies in Ireland. As
>well, the linguistic difficulties of Middle and Early Modern Irish
>(which still has no usable grammar) have led some scholars to
>declare that until more documents are translated by the linguists,
>we will not be able to piece together medieval Gaelic society.
>Again, Duffy, et al., show that large bodies of material (including
>massive collections of bardic poetry) already exist in translation,
>but few have considered these materials as historic source material.
>And, finally, following a recent work by Kieran O'Conor, the editors
>posit that Gaelic Ireland is so understudied because the nation that
>evolved from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw
>itself in terms of a non-English identity.[1] As a result, the
>greater part of the twentieth century was spent investigating the
>archaeology and history of Early Christian or Early Medieval period
>in Ireland, as this period was seen as somehow "purely" Irish.
>
>The seventeen essays in the volume address these supposed
>limitations and do so successfully. I must point out that I would
>like to summarize all of the essays for this review, as all are
>vital studies, but I will instead discuss several notable essays as
>exemplary of the volume itself.
>
>Kenneth Nicholls treats the question of the extent to which Ireland
>was wooded in the late medieval period, and does so with his usual
>style, clarity and ability to draw the most out of seemingly
>disparate sources. Rather than accepting either the commonly held
>idea that the primeval forests of Ireland lasted the Anglo-Normans
>and were only destroyed in the Early Modern period as a result of
>the growing need for wood in the production of iron, or the newer
>position that Ireland's primeval forests were already consumed by
>the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, Nicholls describes a complicated
>system of destruction and re-growth over time, in which the size of
>the forests was at least modestly related to the stability within
>Irish society. As a result, for instance, reforestation occurred
>during the fourteenth century, while by the time of the Tudor
>reconquest, the forests were exploited in an unsustainable way.
>
>Valerie Hall and Lynda Bunting have successfully used the study of
>Icelandic volcanic ash in the peat bogs of Northern Ireland to date
>layers within the bogs with great accuracy. As a result, the pollen
>found in the layers can also be dated with the same accuracy, such
>that Hall and Bunting can show what species of plants, grains and
>trees existed around the bog. Their conclusion, that "...the rural
>landscape of medieval Ireland was at least as diverse as its modern
>counterpart...," (pp. 221-2) of course leads to more questions than
>answers, but hopefully this method can give us a much better picture
>of the landscape of historic Ireland that has too often been
>described as simply a wild forested land.
>
>Katharine Simms has spent the better part of three decades
>describing Gaelic Ireland by analyzing the massive corpus of bardic
>poetry that is still relatively underutilized by historians. The
>use of bardic poetry has its difficulties, to be sure, as does the
>use of any type of literature as historic source. But Simms has a
>unique gift for extracting meanings from these poems that are often
>more concerned with flattering a patron than with providing the
>modern scholar with information. In her article on "the House
>Poems," she analyzes the vocabulary used by the bardic poets in
>describing the houses, forts, and "castles" of Gaelic lords. Simms
>reminds the reader that taking the descriptions of houses at face
>value is dangerous indeed; the houses are often compared to
>supernatural places, in which case the analogy is clearly symbolic,
>while in other cases the vocabulary is simply ambiguous. On the
>other hand, she surmises that the language used by the bards
>suggests rather complicated structures within the forts of the
>Gaelic lords. Her list of bardic vocabulary words analyzed in the
>article is a very useful tool for archaeologists and historians not
>acquainted with the intricacies of bardic poetry.
>
>By using a variety of different sources, Elizabeth Fitzpatrick has
>identified the inauguration sites of two Anglo-Norman lordships, the
>two factions of the Connacht Burkes, who, during the course of the
>fourteenth century, adopted Gaelic titles, culture, and language.
>In frontier regions Anglo-Norman lords adopted Gaelic ways despite
>the attempts of the Anglo-Norman colonial government to legislate
>otherwise (as with the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366). In her
>article Fitzpatrick argues that the inaugurations of the Mayo Burkes
>took place at "Ratsecer," and that this site is also identified as
>the ringfort of Raheenagooagh. While Gaelic lords were prone to
>using hilltops for their inauguration, it seems that Gaelicized
>Anglo-Norman lords may have favored ringforts that had gone into
>disuse. As she admits, Fitzpatrick is on shakier ground when she
>argues that the inauguration of the Clanrickard Burkes took place at
>Dunkellin, since in the main the source for this theory is
>place-name analysis and eighteenth and nineteenth century folklore.
>Nevertheless, her argument is strong, and leads the reader to
>question the whole process of associating particular settlement
>types with particular ethnic identities, or, for that matter, the
>use of those ethnic identities to begin with!
>
>Kieran O'Conor examines the morphology of Gaelic high-status
>habitation sites in north Roscommon, a region that was controlled by
>the MacDermot and O'Conor Gaelic lords of the thirteenth and
>fourteenth centuries. These lords used a wide variety of types of
>fortification and settlement, including crannogs, moated enclosures,
>and natural islands. No one type of site was used more than the
>other, but in some cases, such as the MacDermot island fortress at
>Lough Key and the possible moated site on the shore at Lough Key,
>these settlement types are often found in very close proximity.
>Ultimately, his article is a prelude and call for future work; the
>geographic area that he has researched should yield important
>information about medieval Gaelic Ireland. The strength of
>O'Conor's work lies in his ability to weave a narrative between
>archaeological survey and in-depth analysis of literary sources.
>Cross-disciplinary analysis can fill gaps in both fields, as O'Conor
>has shown in this article.
>
>Aidan O'Sullivan surveys the evidence for later medieval occupation
>of crannogs, or defensive island lake settlements, in Gaelic
>Ireland. If one considers crannogs from the perspective of the
>Irish Annals, they seem to be described uniquely as royal residences
>or defensive refuges. However, based upon recent survey and
>archaeological analysis, O'Sullivan argues that the crannog is even
>more enigmatic than we have presumed. Some crannogs were clearly
>used in manners described in the Annals, but others were used by
>peasants, or for holding cattle, or as seasonal settlements. He
>concludes by stating that the most extensive occupation periods of
>crannogs lie in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and again
>in the sixteenth centuries. Both were periods of stress and social
>disorder in Ireland, so perhaps these is more to consider in terms
>of the crannog's use as a defensive refuge than normative settlement
>feature.
>
>This volume is a vital contribution to the study of Gaelic Ireland,
>and must be considered by any scholar of medieval history in the
>British Isles. It is not without a noticeable fault, however.
>While the title suggests that the essays cover the period 1250-1650,
>only four of the essays are even moderately concerned with the
>thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Robin Frame and Sean
>Duffy have considered the history of medieval Ireland in the
>thirteenth century in several monographs and articles, but their
>perspectives generally result from using the administrative records
>of the Anglo-Norman colony. Both of these scholars have contributed
>greatly to our understanding of the political history of thirteenth
>century Ireland, but, as shown in this volume, thirteenth century
>Gaelic Ireland is often forgotten in terms of culture history or in
>terms of settlement. One nevertheless gets the feeling from the
>present volume that "real" Gaelic Ireland began in the late
>fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While Ireland was technically
>divided into English lordships by the end of the thirteenth century,
>the West and North were never inhabited to the extent of regions
>like Leinster, eastern Ulster and Munster. Certainly the Gaelic
>lords in the West and North were not simply dormant from the late
>twelfth century until the late fourteenth century? Or could there
>be a tacit assumption that in the thirteenth century the Gaelic
>lords who employed Anglo-Norman mercenaries and formed political
>alliances with Anglo-Normans were somehow not Gaelic? Such a
>question is outside the purview of a book on settlement; but it is
>nevertheless a question that needs to be answered in light of the
>fine introduction of Duffy, et al., in this volume.
>
>Four Courts Press has been producing a large number of important new
>and reprint volumes in Irish medieval history over the last few
>years, and the Press is to be commended for such a fine book. The
>editors and authors of this volume, as well, are to be commended for
>providing starving scholars of medieval Ireland with plenty of food
>for thought.
>
>[1]. Kieran O'Connor, _The Archaeology Medieval Rural Settlement in
>Ireland_ (Dublin, Discovery Programme Monographs: 1998); 10.
>
>Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
>redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
>educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
>author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
>H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed
>use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at
>hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

>Subject: Carleton bio
>From: Eileen A Sullivan
>
>Dear Elizabeth,
>
>Thanx for the reminder; know Ken, of course. Several notes were
>exchanged prior to my article. My mind is on 19th century!
>
>Carleton is being quoted as a reliable source of his times; faction
>fights, famine, landlord/tenant, education, family relations, characters,
>and clergy, More often than not, he is accurate AFTER the attempted
>Otway make over. His son, William, emigrated to Australia. When
>O'Donoghue's Bio in1896 was published (none since then, and I can tell
>you why). His son, J.R. Carleton, wrote to O'D on 12/10/95
>
>J. R. said his father, William,Jr was still alive, recognized as the
>"well known Australian poet. He lived at 34 York St, Melbourne .
>
>J R was a tradesman with elaborately designed stationery entitled, MEMO
>FROM J. R. CARLETON (Late E. Keen). Business included painting,
>paperhanging, house decorating et al . 139 Toorak Road, South Yarra
>private address: 77 Osborne St, So Yarra
>
>Anything at all on son or grandson.
>
>Carletons from Australia have been at the Carleton Summer School, not
>sure of relationship with Wm, Jr, but have the resource to make the
>connection.
>
>Title of my bio, WILLIAM CARLETON: FATHER OF MODERN IRISH LITERATURE.
>BEN KIELY, JOHN MONTAGUE, TOM FLANAGAN, AND MAURICE HARMON have voiced
>no objection. I want to dispel any negative criticism about the title.
>Hopefully, it will appear next year.
>
>Any data there about Wm.Jr and family?
>
>When was your article printed, volume, page numbers? I'd like to read
>it'
>
>
>Dr. Eileen A. Sullivan, Director
>The Irish Educational Association, Inc. Tel # (352) 332
>3690
>6412 NW 128th Street E-Mail :
>eolas1[at]juno.com
>Gainesville, FL 32653

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

My thanks to Russell Murray, for looking after the Ir-D list in my absence.

And, yes, the software which runs our list is a nasty, clumsy thing...

Our family holiday in Crete went quite well - given that O'Sullivan family
holidays are usually a catalogue of medical and other disasters...

The Irish Diaspora Studies part of the holiday involved much reading, and
catching up on book reviewing.

And a visit to the war graves at Suda Bay...

Most of the casualties died in the nightmarish Battle of Crete, May 1941.
Of the 1527 buried at Suda Bay, 862 are from the United Kingdom, 5 from
Canada, 197 from Australia and 446 from New Zealand. Mostly young men in
their early 20s of course. (The dead in the German cemetery at Maleme are
often even younger, teenagers from the Hitler Youth suddenly become
paratroopers.)

The New Zealanders suffered disproportionately in the Battle, and there is a
disproportionate number of a small country's young men in the cemeterey.
Many Irish and Scottish names amongst the New Zealanders, of course - and
Maori names.

I noted...

Sullivan, Private Patrick, 35475
died 25th May 1941
Son of J. L. Sullivan and Kate Blackmore Sullivan of Palmerston North,
Wellington, NZ
Grave 2 D 2

Prendergast, Private Reuben, 14823, 20th Bn NZ Infantry
died 25th May 1941, Age 21
Son of John Augustine and Ivy Margaret Prendergast of Te Pahu, Auckland, NZ
Grave 2 A 15

(Prendergast is my mother's family name...)

One of my family found the grave of an Irish Fusilier - I could not recall
any of the Irish regiments being involved in Crete, and made some notes...

Captain C. M. Clynes MC 132523
The Royal Irish Fusiliers
attached to 1st Special Air Services Regiment, Army Air Corps
died 6th Feb 1945, age 26
Son of Charles Maurice and Margaret Davina Clynes of Glasgow, Scotland
Grave 16 A 20

So young Captain Clynes was seconded to the SAS, a commando-style unit (now
perhaps more known for its anti-terrorism activities, with its own chapter
in the recent history of Northern Ireland). He died in the last year of the
war. I guess we might find some sort of connection between the Clynes of
Glasgow and an Irish regiment.

The standard book on the Battle of Crete is Callum MacDonald, The Lost
Battle: Crete 1941, Macmillan, 1993, 1995 - very well done and very moving.

P.O'S.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

I thought it worth noting that Taylor & Francis, the conglomerate that
publishes Irish Studies Review, has a system whereby sample copies of its
journals can be viewed and downloaded... free. You have to go through the
usual hoops, but see...

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/frameloader.html?http://www.tandf.co.uk/jour
nals/carfax/09670882.html

The issue of Irish Studies Review currently available free is Volume 9
Number 1, Issue Apr 2001 - previously discussed on the Ir-D list.

I have pasted in below, just to remind people, the list of contents - this
is the issue that included Margaret Kelleher on Women's literary history,
John McAuliffe on representations of Irish Travellers, and Bracken &
O'Sullivan on British Health Research. Also, the T & F system plugs into
the Catchword system - which, when it works (which isn't always) allows you
to connect up with an article's citations, if that material is available on
the Web. So, in this case, many of the articles cited by Pat Bracken and
myself become available.

You can, of course, also browse through the many other T & F journals and
pick up other free goodies...

P.O'S.


Irish Studies Review, Volume 9 Number 1, Issue Apr 2001

ARTICLES
Writing Irish Women's Literary History 5 - 14
Margaret Kelleher
Typing Dorian Gray: Wilde and the Interpellated Text 15 - 24
Mary C. King
Taking the Sting out of the Traveller's Tale: Thackeray's Irish Sketchbook
25 - 40
John McAuliffe
The Invisibility of Irish Migrants in British Health Research 41 - 51
Patrick J. Bracken; Patrick O'Sullivan
Representations of the Travellers in the 1880s and 1900s 53 - 68
Paul Delaney
The Irish and the Germans in the Fiction of John Buchan and Erskine Childers
69 - 80
Lisa Hopkins

REVIEW ARTICLES
Revisiting the Blasket Island Memoirs 81 - 86
James E. Doan

Reviews 87 - 137


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

I have pasted in below the contents list of the latest issue of Irish
Studies Review, Volume 9 Number 2
Issue Aug 2001...

Contact points...

http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/school-of-historical-and-cultural-studies/irish-stu
dies-review/

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/frameloader.html?http://www.tandf.co.uk/jour
nals/carfax/09670882.html

(As always, note that your own email line breaks might fracture those long
web addresses...)

This is guest editor Lance Pettitt's special issue, looking at the Irish and
cinema and television. It is all very well people like me complaining that
studying representations of the Irish is not the same thing as studying the
Irish. But it is a part of the problem of the Irish - the problem of being
Irish - that we are to such an unusual degree the subject matter of other
people's representations. Especially, perhaps, in cinema and television.
So that people of Irish heritage must negotiate and overcome these versions
of Irishness, these visions of the Irish.

Lance Pettitt is to be congratulated on bringing together a collection that
really does push forward (and calm down) discussion. I will see if I can
get hold of the text of Lance's little Introduction - for the Ir-D list.
This might be the simplest way of giving an impression of the scope of this
volume.

As usual ISR is strong on book reviews, with little essays by John McGurk
and Bruce Stewart, and respectful reviews of Donald MacRaild, ed., The Great
Famine and Beyond: Irish Migrants in Britain, and of Jill Blee, Brigid -
both books previously discussed on the Ir-D list.

P.O'S.


Irish Studies Review

Volume 9 Number 2
Issue Aug 2001

Introduction 149 - 153
Lance Pettitt

ARTICLES
From Radicalism to Conservatism: Contradictions within Fianna Fáil Film
Policies in the 1930s 155 - 165
Kevin Rockett
Somewhere to Come Back to: The Filmic Journeys of John T. Davis 167 - 177
Harvey O'Brien
'A Gallous Story and a Dirty Deed': Word and Image in Neil Jordan and Joe
Comerford's Traveller (1981) 179 - 191
Keith Hopper
Kitsch as Authenticity: Irish Cinema and the Challenge to Romanticism 193 -
202
Ruth Barton
In the Name of the Family: Masculinity and Fatherhood in Contemporary
Northern Irish Films 203 - 213
Fidelma Farley
From the 'Other' Island to the One with 'No West Side': The Irish in British
Soap and Sitcom 215 - 227
Marcus Free
The New Primitives: Irishness in Recent US Television 229 - 239
Diane Negra

REVIEW ARTICLES
Bringing Bram Stoker Back from the Margins 241 - 246
Andrew Smith
New Voices 247 - 249
Bruce Stewart

Reviews 251 - 292


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
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Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
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Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Vincent McGough"
To:
Subject: Song Number 4.

>
> >From: "Anthony McNicholas"
> >To:
> >Subject: pessimistic ballads
> >
> >
> >Dear list
> >I wonder could anyone tell me from which ballads the following lines
come.
> >There are five different ballads. They were quoted in AH Birch (1977)
> >Political Integration and Disintegration in the British Isles. =
London:
> Allen
> >and Unwin pp 52-3. Birch implies that they all pre-date the literary
> revival

This song is 'Kelly the boy from Killan'.

> >4 But the gold sun of freedom grew darkened at Ross,
> >And it set by the Slaney's red waves;
> >And poor Wexford, stripped naked, hung high on a cross,
> >And her heart pierced by traitors and slaves.

Vncent McGough

>From: "Matthew Barlow"
>To:
>
>Subject: Re: Ir-D Irish Australian/Irish Canadian fiction
>
>Frank,
>There must be a fair amount of Irish-themed Canadian fiction out there, but
>I can only think of two off the top of my head, and both of them published
>within the past decade. The first is Jane Urquhart's novel, "Away", and
the
>second is Margaret Atwood's "Alias Grace." If someone else could fill in
>the gaps for me, I would be appreciative.
>Cheers,
>Matthew Barlow
>
>
>From:
>To:
>Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 12:00 PM
>Subject: Ir-D Irish Australian/Irish Canadian fiction
>
>
> >
> > >From: "Molloy, Frank"
> > >Subject: RE: Ir-D
> > >
> > >Paddy,
> > >
> > >Another follow-up on Irish-Australian fiction. Surprisingly, I forgot
a
> > >recent novel, Out of Ireland, by Christopher Koch. I'm surprised
because
>I
> > >reviewed it for the Irish Studies Review early last year. It's an
> > ambitious
> > >novel, based - some people argue too closely - on John Mitchell and the
> > Gaol
> > >Journal. Koch is a Tasmanian, so interested in the 1848 leaders
> > transported
> > >there. It's published by Doubleday, and is now in pk. Another older
>book
> > >worth mentioning is The Sundowners (1952) by Jon Cleary - at the
popular
> > end
> > >of the spectrum.
> > >
> > >I'm interested in whether a trawl of Canadian fiction for the past 100
> > years
> > >or so would produce many novels with Irish-Canadian themes. Australia
>and
> > >Canada are often compared -settler societies etc - how do they compare
on
> > >this?
> > >
> > >Frank Molloy
> > >

From: "Brian McGinn"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D Patrick Sullivan & Reuben Prendergast

Welcome back, Paddy.

Your Irish notes from Crete sent me back to 'The Mediterranean' (1981), a
volume of the (almost endless) Time-Life series on World War II, on which I
once served.

Some relevant trivia from same (August is a slow month, isn't it):

The Australian and New Zealand soldiers who got off safely, to Alexandria in
Egypt, later rewarded the British sailors who had saved their lives. The New
Zealanders donated nine hundred pounds to Royal Navy charities, while the
more resourceful Aussies gave the sailors 29,000 (sic) bottles of beer "that
they had somehow managed to bring with them."

A more recent Irish connection to the 1941 battle, via Mullaghmore, Co.
Sligo: Captain Louis Mountbatten's destroyer, the Kelly, was sunk beneath
him off Crete. Mountbatten's loss and subsequent rescue during the Battle of
Crete was later dramatized in Noel Coward's 1942 film, In Which We Serve
(starring John Mills, Richard Attenborough, and Coward himself).

Neither here nor there, except as a comment on the British military's
fondness for the adjective Special, as in Air Service. Another of
Churchill's wartime creations was the Special Operations Executive, which
dropped agents behind German lines to aid the Resistance. SOE was headed up
by Colin Gubbins, a veteran Middle East operative who had learned his trade
in Ireland during the War of Independence. Sort of a Tom Barry in reverse, I
suppose.

Brian McGinn
Alexandria, Virginia
bmcginn[at]clark.net

From: Patrick Maume
Subject: Re: Ir-D pessimistic ballads


On Thu 02 Aug 2001 16:00:00 +0000 irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

> Subject: Ir-D pessimistic ballads
> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>
>
> >From: "Anthony McNicholas"

> >To:
> >Subject: pessimistic ballads
> >
> >
> >Dear list
> >I wonder could anyone tell me from which ballads the following
lines come.


> >4 But the gold sun of freedom grew darkened at Ross,
> >And it set by the Slaney's red waves;
> >And poor Wexford, stripped naked, hung high on a cross,
> >And her heart pierced by traitors and slaves.

This is the first half of the last verse of KELLY THE BOY FROM
KILLANN by P.J. McCall, a Wexford-born member of Dublin Corporation
who kept a fruit shop and died in the 1918 flu epidemic. He wrote
many popular ballads on 1798, mostly in the 1890s and early 1900s.
The use of the quotation as an example of unrelieved gloom is
slomewhat misleading - most of the ballad is taken upo with the high
hopes of the Wexford rebels - the quoted lines acknowledge their
defeat but the last lines celebrate their bravery.

What's the news, what's the news, o my brave Shelmalier
With your long-barreled gun of the sea?
Say what wind from the sun blows his messenger here
With a hymn of the dawn for the free?
Goodly news, goodly news do I bring, youth of Forth,
Goodly news shall you hear, Bargy man!
For the boys march at dawn from the south to the north
Led by Kelly, the boy from Killann!

O who is that giant with gold curling hair
He who rides a the head of your band?
Seven feet he in height, with some inches to spare,
And he looks like a king in command!
Ah, my lads, that's the pride of the bold Shelmalier
'Mongst our bravest of heroes, a Man!
Fling your beavers [hats] aloft and give three ringing cheers
For John Kelly, the boy from Killann!

Enniscorthy's in flames, and old Wexford is won,
And the Barrow tomorrow we cross!
On a hill o'er the town we have planted a gun
That will batter the gateways of Ross!
All the Forth men and Bargy men will march o'er the heath,
With brave Harvey to lead on the van,
And formeost of all in the grim Gap of Death
Will be Kelly, the boy from Killann!

But the gold sun of freedom grew darkened at Ross,
And it set 'neath the Slaney's red waves,
And pooor Wexford, stripped naked, hung high on a cross
And her heart pierced by traitors and slaves!
Glory O, Glory O to the brave sons who died
For the cause of long downtrodden Man!
Glory O to Mount Leinster's own darling and pride
Dauntless Kelly, the Boy from Killann!

The speaker is imagined as exhorting his audience to join the
rebel army, nominally commanded by the radical Protestant landowner
Bagenal Harvey, which was marching to attack New Ross, a major
crossing-point on the Barrow River between Wexford and Kilkenny. The
rebels had already won several victories over government forces within
Wexford and taken most of the county's major towns - now they
needed to break out of the county by defeating one of the
garrisons along the Wexford boundaries so that they could march on
Dublin "from the south to the north". The 1890s audience for whom
McCall wrote is assumed to know, as the speaker does not, that the
rebels were in fact defeated at New Ross with great slaughter.

John Kelly of Killann was a popular local United Irish leader from
the area of western Wexford around Mount Leinster (on the
Wexford-Carlow border); he was severely wounded at New Ross and
executed by the victorious government forces after the defeat of the
Wexford rebellion. Forth and Bargy are baronies in south-eastern
Wexford where the population strongly supported the rebels. Shelmalier
is a district on the southern shore of Wexford harbour which has large
populations of migratory wildfowl during the winter months - the
inhabitants were skilled wildfowlers with their "long-barreled gun[s]
of the sea" and provided the rebels with skilled marksmen. The gold
sun of freedom was darkened at Ross because of the rebel defeat and
set neath the Slaney's red waves when the last major rebel camp at
Vinegar Hill (located above Enniscorthy, which is on the River Slaney)
was dispersed by government forces.

McCall I think consciously tries to echo French Revolutionary
language ("the cause of long down-trodden Man") and the comparison of
the female personification of Wexford to the crucified Christ was
quite daring. I don't think it is fair to call this a misery-fest -
it is a conscious call on future nationalists to admire the 1798
rebels and renew their efforts in the near future, and as such a
fairly typical product of the 1898 centenary. It was also very
successful - a lot of people's image of 1798 derives from McCall
ballads or others in the same strain.



> >5 My curse upon all drinking! It made our hearts full sore;
> >For bravery won each battle, but drink lost ever more,
> >And if, for want of leaders, we lost at Vinegar Hill,
> >We're ready for another fight, and love our country still.
>
>
This I think is part of THE BOYS OF WEXFORD, a Young Ireland song
from the 1840s. The rest of the verse goes something like this -
In comes the captain's daughter, the captain of the Yeos
Saying - Brave United Irishman, we'll ne'er again be foes.
A thousand pounds I'll bring if you will fly from home with me
And clothe me in a man's attire to fight for liberty

CHORUS
We are the boys of Wexford, who fought with heart and hand
To burst in twain the galling chain and free our native land.

I want no gold, my maiden fair, to fly from home with thee
Thy shining eyes shall be my prize, more dear than gold to me
I want no gold to steel my arm to play a true man's part
To free my land I'd gladly give the red blood from my heart
CHORUS

And when we left our cabins, boys we went with right good will
To meet the friends and neighbours we found at Vinegar Hill
The same young man from out our ranks a cannon he let go
He slapped it into Lord Mountjoy [killed at New Ross]- a tyrant he
laid low.
CHORUS

We boldly fought and conquered at Ross and Wexford town
And if we failed to win the day 'twas drink that brought us down
We had no drink beside us on Tubberneering's day
Depending on the long bright pike, and with it carved our way.
CHORUS
- last verse as given above.

Again I think this is not so much pesimistic as moralistic- a typical
Young Ireland insistence on the link between personal
self-command/virtue and successful rebellion. What is really
significant is that the speaker openly identifies with the 1798 rebels
and hopes to follow in their footsteps.

Oddly enough, the Young Irelanders themselves complained about
pessimistic ballads - they accused writers like Thomas Moore of
romanticising and wallowing in defeat instead of calling for renewed
action. Some of the advanced-nationalist criticisms of Yeats are very
similar to those made of Moore by Young Irelanders and later exponents
of the Young Ireland tradition.

Patrick Maume

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

On a train of thought...

Those with access to BBC 2 television will notice that they are running an
afternoon James Mason season. The movie at 1.25 on Wednesday August 8 is
Carol Reed's 1947, Odd Man Out - an opportunity to set your videos, and
capture the archetypal 'doomed IRA man' movie, the movie which set the
agenda, and established the tone and approach... See the discussion by John
Hill, in Rockett, Gibbons and Hill, Cinema and Ireland, Crtoom Helm, 1987...

See also...

http://aoife.indigo.ie/~obrienh/omo.htm

http://showcase.netins.net/web/dendrys/reviews/oddmanou.html

http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/fns99n8.html

http://www.filmsondisc.com/dvdpages/odd_man_out.htm

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: ppo[at]aber.ac.uk
Subject: Corporate Irishness

From: Paul O'Leary

At risk of inundating the list with holiday reminiscences, I thought it
might be worth sharing an observation from my recent holiday in the Baltic.
By coincidence, the hotel I stayed in at Stockholm had an 'O'Leary's bar',
a place that was heavily festooned with sporting memorabilia from Boston,
Mass. - Boston Bruins pennants, etc. Only on returning did I check out their
website and discover that this is a franchise initiated by a couple, one of
whom appears to be Irish-American, and that the chain has spread across
Sweden like wildfire (www.olearys.se). In most places we visited there were
the ubiquitous 'Irish' bars, though I did notice that some distinguished
themselves in the market by claiming to have 'Irish staff'. An example of
consumer market-led Irish migration, perhaps?

In the central medieval square of Talinn, Estonia, there is a prominent
'Molly Malone's' bar/restaurant. On the same square a building is being
renovated by a company called Pro Kapital, opposite the Karl Friedrich
Hotel, so perhaps it shouldn't be surprising.


Dr Paul O'Leary
Adran Hanes a Hanes Cymru / Dept of History and Welsh History
Prifysgol Cymru Aberystwyth / University of Wales Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion SY23 3DY

Tel: 01970 622842
Fax: 01970 622676