I've had quite a few questions about Tyrone Irish, as you can imagine, and here now is a bit of information about it.
And why does Tyrone Irish, or any other specific Irish dialect matter?
Because they are beautiful, complex, integrated systems of sound and meaning rooted in the specifics of place, and will bring you joy, as well, undoubtedly, as many enthusiastic members of the opposite sex, and loads of money.
,
First, the bad news...
The native Irish population that remained in those parts of Ulster that were heavily colonized in the 17th and 18th centuries became a lower class of scattered families dependent on the new Lowland Scottish and English farmers for work as farm labourers. Their interactions were mainly with the incomers, and they were cut off from the rest of Irish society. Few achieved any kind of position. While in much of Ireland, a somewhat prosperous Catholic middle class of merchants, tradesmen, priests and professionals had come into being by the first decades of the 19th century, the height to which Catholics (native Irish) could aspire in many parts of Ulster was publican and shopkeeper. The Irish language was soon lost in the heavily-colonized areas.
Parts of Ulster were not heavily colonized, though. These parts included north Meath, much of Louth, south Armagh, much of Cavan, South Monaghan, a part of Down, the glens of Antrim, and north Tyrone. These were places where the Irish language was strong into the mid-19 century.
In Cavan and Monaghan, early 19th century Protestant proselytization through Irish supplied prayer books and Bible portions in Irish, and classes in reading Irish. This was the first opportunity people had had for education in their own language, and was hugely popular: so much so that the Catholic church whose priests dominated local society, forbade people to participate in even non-religious Irish language classes and reading, and waged war on those who championed the language. The language was lost in these counties in a generation. But there were still plenty of older people alive in Farney barony (Carrickmacross) in 1900, and Seosamh Laoide published a lot of folktales from there in the early part of the 20th century, and there were native speakers there into the 1930s and beyond. Also, Glengevlin in far western Cavan continued to speak Irish, though that was really a Connacht dialect; it originally was part of Leitrim (See Seanchas Ghleann Ghaibhle, a volume published as an issue of Bealoideas.).
You can read about Irish in South Armagh and Louth (alright, mostly Omeath) in P. Ni Uallachain's book A Hidden Ulster. Homer published a phonological study in a Norse journal that is strictly that -- a phonological study. O Caiside's The Irish Language in County Down provides information on Down. There is a lot of information on Rathlin Island (Antrim) Irish, but that was really a Scottish Gaelic dialect. There is much less available on the Glens: mostly (as far as I know) Seanmas O Duilearga's notebooks.
Irish continued in two areas of Tyrone: the Sperrin Mountains; and in the mid-west, Castlederg area.
The Sperrins, which include neighboring parts of County Derry (Draperstown) is much better documented.
Michael Murphy worked for the Irish Folkore Commission in the area in the 1950s. Here is a bit from his book Tyrone Folk Quest. He is describing meeting an important storyteller.
"That day, however, everyone seemed to have heard of a 'great ceili' to be held in our house that night. There was even some talk about 'invitations.'...I did not miss among some of the younger people a tone of amusement, even the supercilious in what they assumed to be the enlightened attitude to observe anything even dimly connected with the thing 'folk.'
'...The man hurried in a crouch into the crowded kitchen before anyone fully realised he was among them. In his run, he clawed an old grey cap from his head, wheeled this way and that in search of a seat like a scholar late for school and expecting rebuke while hoping to elude it. His head came up quickly like a cat's, then down, as Alice came in again. He flicked a similar glance at me, found a corner of a chair, ignored it, and instead squatted where he was with his back to us, trying to make talk to some man near him. I hadn't a notion who he was, but I was soon aware of the odd silence which slowly settled on the kitchen.
"...Francis MacBride quietly rose from the armchair nearest the fire...and crossed to the newcomer with his hand out. In a voice too hushed and solemn for Frances, he said, 'How are you, Patrick Phelimy?"
"...Then up on his feet again, he (Patrick Phelimy) limped noticebly as he thrust through the chairs towards me. His cap was off again, his hand out. His greeting was in Gaelic. His face burned with shyness, the grey eyes alive with excitement. His hand quivered with great nervous power...And then something else happened.
Every man was on his feet, shaking his hand. Some of them returned his greeting in Gaelic too. From his corner in slow measured strides, Francis Daniel came and welcomed the man. The man himself, speaking sometimes in English, sometimes in Gaelic, seemed to be genuinely surprised and moved by their obvious respect for him.
They talked in Gaelic for a time. I didn't know Gaelic...and had never heard such conversation in the native tongue since my grandmother and other Old Age Pensioners in the 1920s in South Armagh used to converse outside her house every Friday...'
I did not know it that night in Glenhull, but that had been the first time in many years that such a group of men had got together.
...It was almost 3.00 in the morning before he rose to go....He had come on a bicycle -- without any light -- and this he hauled from along the back wall and let t bounce down the steps to the road. I offered to lend me a lamp, but he said he had been 'coming the road all his life' and didn't need a light.
I tried to fix up a future meeting -- at his own house if he wished but he replied that 'Mickey John Katie" (as Michael Morris was known in familiar parlance) would let me know. He seemed to have become rather brusque so suddenly that I wondered if he had been disappointed and said so. His reply was swift as a rebuke.
'I'd go to the far end of the county on foot for a night like that in your school." (The early Gaelic League had conducted night schools for a time in Greencastle.)
Then he was gone on his bike into the darkness with a phrase of Gaelic floating back over his shoulder.'
The Sperrins were in the process of being abandoned, as many remote parts of Ireland were, and local society was collapsing. Murphy describes his meeting with another tradition-bearer, Jane MacRory:
'Only then did I notice a woman on a high dunghill across the street (farmyard) from the door. She began to shriek: 'There's no Irish here. Be off...we have no Irish and want no Irish.'
'She was in in a nondescript array of dress, worn and patched, layer upon layer, with the shortest outside. her grey hair loose and flying, a terrifying figure.'
'...The second woman, also poorly dressed and in tatters, seemed to trundle out of the doorway, through the smoke, then shoot or project herself across the street (farmyard), the smoke wafting behind her. She came up to me wraithed in smoke and stinking of the 'reek' even worse than the little dark man who now remained inside."
(It turned out that the 'shrieker' had spent years in America where she had been exposed to the derision and contempt of other Irish towards an Irish-speaker, and had come to loathe the language.)
The second woman was Jane MacRory, who had supplied songs to Eamonn O Tuathail, published in Sgealta Mhuintir Luanaigh, his collection of folk tales from the Sperrins published by the Irish Folklore Institute in 1933.
This book is the main source of information on Sperrins Irish, along with Gerard Stockman and Heinrich Wagner's Contributions to the Study of Tyrone Irish (which includes a hundred-page dictionary etc, published in the Scandinavian Celtic Studies periodical Lochlann III, 1965, pp. 43-236; and the Doegen records.
The Doegen records are recordings of Irish language dialects made in the 1920s by a German scholar under the auspices of the Irish government. They are online now at:
https://www.doegen.ie/LA_1212d3 and https://www.doegen.ie/LA_1209d2
The Sperrins speakers recorded were Eoin O Cianain of Creggan, and Jane MacRory of Glenlark. There are transcriptions and translations on the site. The Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish dialects, Volume IV, Wagner and O Baoill, Dublin Institute 1969 also offer the same, with linguistic notes.
Seamas O Ceallaigh was from a Ballinascreen (County Derry) family, and learned the language there. He was primarily an Ulster historian, but translated two novels into Ballinascreen Irish. Or as the Ainm.ie site says:
D’aistrigh sé dhá leabhar: The Black Prophet (An Fáidh Dubh, 1940) le William Carleton agus The Pike Men le S. R. Keightley (Lucht pící a’s sleagh, 1936). Is deacair gan a mheas gur chun canúint Bhaile na Scríne a bhuanú ar phár a tharraing sé an saothar sin air féin.
Also useful is Padai Laidir Mac Culadh agus Gaeltacht Thir Eoghan, a 2009 book by a Donegal man who spent time in the area. This includes a cd with stories, and focuses a good bit on the storyteller described in the bit from Tyrone Folk Quest.
Breandan O Buachalla published an article, Notai ar Ghaeilge Dhoire agus Thir Eoghan in Eigse 13, 1970, pp. 249-278. It is a grammatical analysis of the language of a long Protestant religious tract written in 1849 specifically for Counties Derry and Tyrone. There is also Sean Mac Airt's 'Sgealtai o Thir Eoghain', published in Bealoideas 20. These are stories collected in 1904. And A. J. Hughes' 'A Phonetic Glossary of Tyrone Irish' in Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie 46 (1994), pp. 119-163. (I have not seen this last, so I can't tell you anything about it.)
And finally, Ciaran O Duibhin published online the results of his geneological and sociolinguistic research on the last twentieth century Irish speakers all through east Ulster. Great stuff. http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/doegen/ocianain_biog.htm
Here is one of his pages about another Sperrins storyteller.
To end with good news: there are three rural areas in Northern Ireland where Irish has been making a comeback in a big way as a family and community language, in a way that has never happened anywhere in the south. Two of them are centered on the Sperrins: Draperstown and Carntogher to the east of the Sperrins in County Derry, and Carrickmore, south of the Sperrins. (The third is South Armagh.)
,
First, the bad news...
The native Irish population that remained in those parts of Ulster that were heavily colonized in the 17th and 18th centuries became a lower class of scattered families dependent on the new Lowland Scottish and English farmers for work as farm labourers. Their interactions were mainly with the incomers, and they were cut off from the rest of Irish society. Few achieved any kind of position. While in much of Ireland, a somewhat prosperous Catholic middle class of merchants, tradesmen, priests and professionals had come into being by the first decades of the 19th century, the height to which Catholics (native Irish) could aspire in many parts of Ulster was publican and shopkeeper. The Irish language was soon lost in the heavily-colonized areas.
Parts of Ulster were not heavily colonized, though. These parts included north Meath, much of Louth, south Armagh, much of Cavan, South Monaghan, a part of Down, the glens of Antrim, and north Tyrone. These were places where the Irish language was strong into the mid-19 century.
In Cavan and Monaghan, early 19th century Protestant proselytization through Irish supplied prayer books and Bible portions in Irish, and classes in reading Irish. This was the first opportunity people had had for education in their own language, and was hugely popular: so much so that the Catholic church whose priests dominated local society, forbade people to participate in even non-religious Irish language classes and reading, and waged war on those who championed the language. The language was lost in these counties in a generation. But there were still plenty of older people alive in Farney barony (Carrickmacross) in 1900, and Seosamh Laoide published a lot of folktales from there in the early part of the 20th century, and there were native speakers there into the 1930s and beyond. Also, Glengevlin in far western Cavan continued to speak Irish, though that was really a Connacht dialect; it originally was part of Leitrim (See Seanchas Ghleann Ghaibhle, a volume published as an issue of Bealoideas.).
You can read about Irish in South Armagh and Louth (alright, mostly Omeath) in P. Ni Uallachain's book A Hidden Ulster. Homer published a phonological study in a Norse journal that is strictly that -- a phonological study. O Caiside's The Irish Language in County Down provides information on Down. There is a lot of information on Rathlin Island (Antrim) Irish, but that was really a Scottish Gaelic dialect. There is much less available on the Glens: mostly (as far as I know) Seanmas O Duilearga's notebooks.
Irish continued in two areas of Tyrone: the Sperrin Mountains; and in the mid-west, Castlederg area.
The Sperrins, which include neighboring parts of County Derry (Draperstown) is much better documented.
Michael Murphy worked for the Irish Folkore Commission in the area in the 1950s. Here is a bit from his book Tyrone Folk Quest. He is describing meeting an important storyteller.
"That day, however, everyone seemed to have heard of a 'great ceili' to be held in our house that night. There was even some talk about 'invitations.'...I did not miss among some of the younger people a tone of amusement, even the supercilious in what they assumed to be the enlightened attitude to observe anything even dimly connected with the thing 'folk.'
'...The man hurried in a crouch into the crowded kitchen before anyone fully realised he was among them. In his run, he clawed an old grey cap from his head, wheeled this way and that in search of a seat like a scholar late for school and expecting rebuke while hoping to elude it. His head came up quickly like a cat's, then down, as Alice came in again. He flicked a similar glance at me, found a corner of a chair, ignored it, and instead squatted where he was with his back to us, trying to make talk to some man near him. I hadn't a notion who he was, but I was soon aware of the odd silence which slowly settled on the kitchen.
"...Francis MacBride quietly rose from the armchair nearest the fire...and crossed to the newcomer with his hand out. In a voice too hushed and solemn for Frances, he said, 'How are you, Patrick Phelimy?"
"...Then up on his feet again, he (Patrick Phelimy) limped noticebly as he thrust through the chairs towards me. His cap was off again, his hand out. His greeting was in Gaelic. His face burned with shyness, the grey eyes alive with excitement. His hand quivered with great nervous power...And then something else happened.
Every man was on his feet, shaking his hand. Some of them returned his greeting in Gaelic too. From his corner in slow measured strides, Francis Daniel came and welcomed the man. The man himself, speaking sometimes in English, sometimes in Gaelic, seemed to be genuinely surprised and moved by their obvious respect for him.
They talked in Gaelic for a time. I didn't know Gaelic...and had never heard such conversation in the native tongue since my grandmother and other Old Age Pensioners in the 1920s in South Armagh used to converse outside her house every Friday...'
I did not know it that night in Glenhull, but that had been the first time in many years that such a group of men had got together.
...It was almost 3.00 in the morning before he rose to go....He had come on a bicycle -- without any light -- and this he hauled from along the back wall and let t bounce down the steps to the road. I offered to lend me a lamp, but he said he had been 'coming the road all his life' and didn't need a light.
I tried to fix up a future meeting -- at his own house if he wished but he replied that 'Mickey John Katie" (as Michael Morris was known in familiar parlance) would let me know. He seemed to have become rather brusque so suddenly that I wondered if he had been disappointed and said so. His reply was swift as a rebuke.
'I'd go to the far end of the county on foot for a night like that in your school." (The early Gaelic League had conducted night schools for a time in Greencastle.)
Then he was gone on his bike into the darkness with a phrase of Gaelic floating back over his shoulder.'
The Sperrins were in the process of being abandoned, as many remote parts of Ireland were, and local society was collapsing. Murphy describes his meeting with another tradition-bearer, Jane MacRory:
'Only then did I notice a woman on a high dunghill across the street (farmyard) from the door. She began to shriek: 'There's no Irish here. Be off...we have no Irish and want no Irish.'
'She was in in a nondescript array of dress, worn and patched, layer upon layer, with the shortest outside. her grey hair loose and flying, a terrifying figure.'
'...The second woman, also poorly dressed and in tatters, seemed to trundle out of the doorway, through the smoke, then shoot or project herself across the street (farmyard), the smoke wafting behind her. She came up to me wraithed in smoke and stinking of the 'reek' even worse than the little dark man who now remained inside."
(It turned out that the 'shrieker' had spent years in America where she had been exposed to the derision and contempt of other Irish towards an Irish-speaker, and had come to loathe the language.)
The second woman was Jane MacRory, who had supplied songs to Eamonn O Tuathail, published in Sgealta Mhuintir Luanaigh, his collection of folk tales from the Sperrins published by the Irish Folklore Institute in 1933.
This book is the main source of information on Sperrins Irish, along with Gerard Stockman and Heinrich Wagner's Contributions to the Study of Tyrone Irish (which includes a hundred-page dictionary etc, published in the Scandinavian Celtic Studies periodical Lochlann III, 1965, pp. 43-236; and the Doegen records.
The Doegen records are recordings of Irish language dialects made in the 1920s by a German scholar under the auspices of the Irish government. They are online now at:
https://www.doegen.ie/LA_1212d3 and https://www.doegen.ie/LA_1209d2
The Sperrins speakers recorded were Eoin O Cianain of Creggan, and Jane MacRory of Glenlark. There are transcriptions and translations on the site. The Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish dialects, Volume IV, Wagner and O Baoill, Dublin Institute 1969 also offer the same, with linguistic notes.
Seamas O Ceallaigh was from a Ballinascreen (County Derry) family, and learned the language there. He was primarily an Ulster historian, but translated two novels into Ballinascreen Irish. Or as the Ainm.ie site says:
D’aistrigh sé dhá leabhar: The Black Prophet (An Fáidh Dubh, 1940) le William Carleton agus The Pike Men le S. R. Keightley (Lucht pící a’s sleagh, 1936). Is deacair gan a mheas gur chun canúint Bhaile na Scríne a bhuanú ar phár a tharraing sé an saothar sin air féin.
Also useful is Padai Laidir Mac Culadh agus Gaeltacht Thir Eoghan, a 2009 book by a Donegal man who spent time in the area. This includes a cd with stories, and focuses a good bit on the storyteller described in the bit from Tyrone Folk Quest.
Breandan O Buachalla published an article, Notai ar Ghaeilge Dhoire agus Thir Eoghan in Eigse 13, 1970, pp. 249-278. It is a grammatical analysis of the language of a long Protestant religious tract written in 1849 specifically for Counties Derry and Tyrone. There is also Sean Mac Airt's 'Sgealtai o Thir Eoghain', published in Bealoideas 20. These are stories collected in 1904. And A. J. Hughes' 'A Phonetic Glossary of Tyrone Irish' in Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie 46 (1994), pp. 119-163. (I have not seen this last, so I can't tell you anything about it.)
And finally, Ciaran O Duibhin published online the results of his geneological and sociolinguistic research on the last twentieth century Irish speakers all through east Ulster. Great stuff. http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/doegen/ocianain_biog.htm
Here is one of his pages about another Sperrins storyteller.
Eóin Ó Cianáin (1857–1937) of Creggan, Carrickmore
According to the information recorded on the Doegen speaker
questionnaire in September 1931, Eóin Ó Cianáin was born in
Formil, near Greencastle in County Tyrone, and was aged 74 at the time of
recording in 1931. His father was a farmer from Formil and his mother came
from Greencastle. In response to questions, he stated that he spent all his
childhood in Formil and attended primary school at Greencastle. His adult
life was spent partly in Formil and partly in Creggan, where he was living in
1931. His occupation was given as a farmer. Irish was his mother language,
and he could also speak English from the age of 10 years old. He could read
and write English but not Irish.
The above information is supplemented by that given on pp xlvii–xlviii of
Éamonn Ó Tuathail's Sgéalta Mhuintir Luinigh, 1933 — a book for which
Eóin provided the greater part of the content. Eóin was born on 14/10/1857 at
Aghascrebagh, the native place of his mother, Anna Nig Cuirc, who had
"gone home" for the birth. Anna had "only a limited knowledge
of English". His maternal grandfather, Eóin Mhag Cuirc, was
"something of a poet" in Irish. On the other side of the family,
the speaker's father knew Irish and English, and a near relative, Proinnsias
Ó Cianáin, known as Frank John Tarry, was a noted story-teller. An uncle,
Peter Keenan, is named as Eóin's source of a couple of the stories in Sgéalta
Mhuintir Luinigh (pp 185, 196).
Some of Eóin's cylinder recordings for Éamonn Ó Tuathail are preserved in
Cnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann — see Cuach mo Lon Dubh Buí and Gabha an tSoic
Eóin Ó Cianáin was raised by his parents in Formil, which is a large
rural townland between Greencastle and Creggan. It is remarkable how many of
the late speakers of Tyrone Irish turn out to be natives of Formil, whatever
part of the district they eventually settled in. One of them, Mrs Mary Anne
Bradley, Crockanboy (1880–1953), née "Micky Hamish" McCullagh,
Formil, told how Formil people were "the last in the parish who spoke
Irish regularly among themselves" and how they used to gather outside
Greencastle Chapel on Sunday.
Eóin married Mary Mallon or Mellon of Creggan at Carrickmore on
23/08/1898. Monica Haughey writes that Eóin had been hired in Mallon's. The
family were living at Formil in 1901: Eóin's father, Thomas (75), Own (40),
Mary (35) and daughter Alice (1); only Thomas was noted as speaking Irish.
Eóin's mother Anna Nig Cuirc had died on 12/07/1899, reportedly aged 55.
Alice had been born in 1900; two more daughters soon followed, Anne, born in
1901 and Mary, born in 1903. Thomas Keenan died on 13/07/1906. He was known
as Tam Ruadh, whence our speaker was Oynie Tam.
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At around this time, the family moved to the Mallon home in Creggan,
where they joined Mary's unmarried brother James. They were found there in 1911: James Mallon (68), Owen Keenan (60), Mary
(55), Alice (11), Anne (9), Mary (8). Only James Mallon was claimed to be an
Irish-speaker — strange indeed, as Monica Haughey writes that "Irish was
rarely spoken in this home and indeed James is remembered as having a good
repertoire of stories in English". On the other hand, Ó Tuathail says
that James sometimes assisted Eóin to recall his Irish stories. Nevertheless,
this illustrates the dangers of giving credence to the census language
responses on an individual basis. It may also be observed that Peadar Joe
Haughey, another Irish speaker, lived close by.
The Mallons' two-storey house is now a ruin; it is located by the south
side of the Barony Road (A505), with its gable to the road, about a mile east
of An Creagán Centre, at the top of a small brae. A plaque was placed there
on the roadside in 2017. The house has been unoccupied since a fire in which
Owen's unmarried daughter Alice lost her life on 26/11/1985. The pictures of
Eoin at the Keenan home in Sgéalta Mhuintir Luinigh (also reproduced
here) are thought to be at the Formil house, not the Creggan one. No trace
remains of the Formil house, but we show the field in which it was thought to
have been situated.
Eóin's youngest daughter, Mary, married John McCullagh of Greencastle,
Johnny Pat, on 20/11/1924. Their family consisted of Margaret (born 1925),
Charlie (Armagh), Patsy (Formil) and Johnny (born 1927, died London 2010).
On 25/07/1937, Eóin Ó Cianáin, farmer, died at Creggan, at the age of 79.
His grave at An Caisleán Glas is shown (his daughter Alice is buried at An
Charraig Mh
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Piper from County Waterford
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