gaellit

GAELIC LITERATURE - literature both oral and written in Gaelic languages of Irealnd ans Scotland. Before the development of a distinct Scottish Gaelic language in the 15th century, the literature of both countries may be considered as one.

EARLY PERIOD.
The earliest pre-Christian writings in Ireland are tombstone inscriptions in the ogham alphabet, which date from the 5th to the 8th century. The earliest Christian writings survive in a few manuscripts of the 7th through 10th century, for example, some materail on the life of St. Patrick included in the 9th-century illuminated gospels The Book of Armagh. The scarcity of literary works until the 11th century is the result of the Norse invasions of Ireland in the 8th century and the sackung of the monasteries, the centers of learning. While some manuscripts were preserved on the European continent by scholars fleeing the invaders, most of the literary works composed in this period survive, in fragments, in much later manuscripts. A characteristic form was the praise poetry composed by a professional class of bards, the filidh, in honor of their kings and chieftains. Freer, more personal poetry was written by anonymous poets, such as the one who addressed his white cat, or the writer who composed The Old Woman of Beare (9th century), an expression of longing for the pagan past in the form of a dramatic monologue. It is one of the earliest examples of a genre popular in Gaelic poetry. The hermit monks of the early Irish church, living on intimate terms with their envirinment, established the tradition of nature poetry that is one of the glories of Irish, and, later, Scottish Gaelic verse. Some fine examples of this genre are from the 8th century.

11th-15th CENTURY
The great victory over the Norse in 1014 freed ireland from their domination and was indirectly a great stimulus to literary production. In two 12th-century manuscripts known as The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of Leinster are preserved the earliest Gaelic sagas, part in prose, part in poetry, themselves remnants of a much older oral tradition. These sagas have been divided by modern scholars into two cycles. The Ulster, or Red Branch,Cycle is older, consistingof some 100 tales about the heroes of the Kingdom of Ulster in the century BC, especially the warrior Cu Chulainn (Cuchulainn). Among the more natable tales are The Cattle Raid of Cooley (7th or 8th cent.) and the story of the tragic heroine Deirdre. The later Fenian, or Ossianic, Cycle centers about the hero Finn mac Cumhail or MacCool, a legendary cheftain and bard of the 2rd or 3rd century. Among his followers was Ossian, also a warrior-bard, believed to be his son. The dominant strain of these tales, mostly in ballad form, is nostalgiafor the heroic past; tinged with Christianity, they are more romantic than epic. Among the better-known stories are The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne and the lengthy Dialogue of the Old Men.
Aside from these cycles are groups of mythological tales, including a series of marvelous voyages to the Western isles, notably The Voyage of Bran; king tales, for example The Madness of Sweeney; religious prose, with much emphasis on miracles; and visions, the best known of whic is The Vision of Adamnan.
In the later Middle Ages popular ballads and prose tales began to replace the formal bardic literature, and Gaelic translatoons made the Arthurian legends and some classical literature accessible. The advent of printing, however, which made literature available to large numbers of people in other countries, had little impact in ireland. bards there continued to be supported by patrons, thier work copied by hand - a tradition that lasted until the early 19th century.

IRISH GAELIC LITERATURE, 17th-20th CENTURY
Their support gone when the nobility was dispossessed during the reign of Elizabeth I, the bards themselves disappeared, and Gaelic gave way to English as the vernacular. Des;ite this, a good deal of prose, much of it devoted to Ireland's past, was written. Examples are The Annals of the Four Masters (1636), the history of Ireland up until 1616, by Michael O'Clery (1575-1643); and the History of Ireland (c. 1620) by Geoffrey Keating (1570-c. 1650). At the same time, expressions of defiance of English rule began to appear in the folk poetry that circulated clandestinely. Among tha most fame writers of the 17th and 18th centuries were the passionate nationalists Daibhidh O Bruadair (1630-1698) and Egan O'Rahilly (fl.1670-1724), and Brian Merriman (1740-1808), a schoolteacher in country Clare. The latter's The Midnight Court (trans. 1945), a broad satire on marriage customs, is considered the best long-sustained poem in Irish Gaelic.
Throughout the 19th century, principally because of the depopulation caused by the potato famine of 1845, the Gaelic language, both written and spoken, fell into disuse; most of the Gaelic speakers were by now illiterate. Toward the end of the century efforts were made not only to restore Gaelic as a spoken language, but also to stimulate the writing of literary works in Gaelic. Interest in the language was revived by the works of various societes, particularly the Gaelic League, founded in 1893, and by the works of such scholars and nationalists as Douglas Hyde, Canon Peter O'Leary (1839-1920), Patrick O'Connery (1881-1928), and Padhraic Pearse (1879-1916). In the last decade of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries the Gaelic revival resulted in the publication of many collections of Irish folk tales and in the writing of a considerable number of plays, works of fiction, and poetry in Gaelic.
Among the numerous 20th-century lyric poets and novelists writing Gaelic was Tomas O'Crohan (1856-1937), who wrote The Islandman (1937; trans. 1951) about a Munster fisherman. Brendan Behan, better known for his works in English, composed The Hostage originally in Gaelic (1957; trans. 1958).