Morrison Hauntings of the Irish Revolution: Veterans and Memory of the Independence Struggle and Civil War (original) (raw)

'Mo Rùn am Fearann' – 'My Love is the Land': Gaelic Landscapes of the 18th and 19th Centuries

The period of the 18th and 19th centuries was one of great change in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Improvement, the Jacobite Rebellions, and the Clearances transformed its communities and landscapes. These events have rightly been a focus of research. However, archaeological approaches have often sought simply to illustrate these processes, rather than create new narratives about life in the past. The resulting picture of the period can over-emphasise economic change whilst failing to reflect the richness and variety of everyday life. This thesis aims to suggest a new approach to the place and period, one which addresses matters often ignored in previous work. Whilst it has an archaeological sensibility, it draws on ideas from outside archaeology, such as landscape theory and on Gaelic oral tradition, an underused resource, to create a novel and broad-based approach to the period. An important part of the method is a synchronic approach that seeks to reconstruct the experience of the landscape at very particular times, engaging fully with the everyday experience of landscape rather than grand historical narratives. Two Hebridean case studies are utilised: Hiort (St Kilda) and Loch Aoineart, South Uist. Thematic discussions drawn from these landscapes are intended as critical assessments of the efficacy of the approach, as well as new narratives about life in the past in themselves. The thesis concludes by comparing the two case studies, reflecting on the merits of the approach, discussing recurrent themes in the work, and considering its wider context and implications. It is concluded that taking a novel approach to the case study landscapes can create narratives that often contrast or expand upon those produced by previous scholars, allow for a more detailed consideration of everyday life in the period, and open up new areas for archaeological enquiry. The extensive and critical use of evidence from Gaelic oral tradition is highlighted as crucial in understanding life and society in the period. The thesis questions the utility of grand historical narratives as a framework for archaeological study of post-medieval Gaeldom and suggests that our understanding of the past is best served by approaching the evidence in ways which allows for many different voices and stories from the past to emerge.

Remembering and Forgetting in Modern Irish History

The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland, 2017

The long nineteenth century saw the formation of modern Irish memory, although the nature of its novelty is open to debate, as it maintained a continuous dialogue with its traditional roots. A preliminary period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century has been identified by Joep Leerssen – following the German school of history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) pioneered by Reinhart Koselleck – as a Sattelzeit, which accommodated the Anglicisation and modernisation of what had formerly been a predominantly Gaelic society. In particular, antiquarian fascination with the distant past played a key role in re-adapting native bodies of knowledge for Anglo-Irish readerships, whether in the music collecting of Edward Bunting, the song translations of Charlotte Brooke or the writings of Samuel Ferguson, to name but a few. This concept of cultural transition is useful for understanding the changes in memorial practices, which came about through reinvention, rather than simple invention and imposition from above, of Irish traditions. A record of remembrance in the countryside at the time of the transformation was captured between 1824 and 1842 by the Ordnance Survey, which, under the supervision of the noted antiquarian George Petrie, sent out fieldworkers, among them the illustrious Gaelic scholars John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry, to compile detailed memoirs of local customs, originally designed as supplements for the topographical maps. Characteristically, the agents of change also engaged in documentation and preservation of traditional memory. Whereas the loss of Irish language has been poignantly decried by Alan Titley as ‘the Great Forgetting’, the modernisation of Ireland was not a straightforward linear progression from a largely Irish-speaking traditional culture, steeped in memory, to an English-speaking capitalist society, supposedly clouded by amnesia. It should be acknowledged that the Irish language maintained a substantial presence well into the nineteenth century. Moreover, during the cultural revival of the fin de siècle, language enthusiasts such as Douglas Hyde collected folk traditions in Irish in order to make them available as a resource for a modern national society. Overall, the increase in literacy in English did not necessarily eradicate oral traditions. Examination of popular print reveals that it functioned as a vehicle for reworking memories, which then fed back into oral culture.

Folk belief and landscape in Connacht: accounts from the Ordnance Survey letters

Folk Life, 2019

The Ordnance Survey of Ireland, carried out in the early-nineteenth century, was not just the process of mapping and collecting place names for translation as it is frequently depicted. The director of the Ordnance Survey, Sir Thomas Colby, decided to also use the Survey to carry out statistical, antiquarian, and geological surveys. The results of this trigonometrical survey include the so-called Ordnance Survey Memoirs and the Ordnance Survey Letters. Both sources provide valuable information about life in Ireland in the 1830s and early 1840s. Focusing in particular on the province of Connacht, this article argues that the Ordnance Survey Letters should be considered an important source of information about folklore and folk beliefs which were still extant or had been until shortly before the Survey visited the locality. This essay examines how, in a period of change and decline, the Ordnance Survey wrote local cultural heritage and identity onto the landscape.

Traditional Beliefs and Narratives of a Contemporary Irish Tradition Bearer

1995

Honko, L. Memorat och folktroforskning. In: Rooth A. B. (ed.) Folkdikt och folktro. Lund, 1978, pp. 93-105. Singe r, M. When a Great Tradition Modernizes. An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization. Chicago, 1972, p. 320. Brunvand, J. H. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: Urban Legends and Their Meanings. London, 1981/1983, pp. 27-45. Klintberg, B. af. Svenska folksagner. Stockholm, 1972, p. 331. Goss, M. The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-Hikers. Wellingborough, 1984. Klintberg, B. af. Do the Legends of Today and Yesterday Belong to the Same Genre? In: Rorich, L., Wienzer-Piepo, S. (eds.) Storytelling in Contemporary Societies. Tubingen, 1990.