Abstract: The Irish-language term duanaire is now best known as the title of a landmark volume, An Duanaire, 1600–1900: Poems of the Dispossessed , published by Dolmen Press in Mountrath, Portlaoise in 1981. For this dual-language anthology, poems in the Irish language were chosen by academic and poet Seán Ó Tuama, and new translations into English verse were provided by poet Thomas Kinsella. The collection won immediate and lasting acclaim for enabling a much wider readership for these three centuries of creative work by Irish-language poets, and also for foregrounding the cultural and social consequences of language shift and loss in Ireland: "there, more clearly than anywhere else," wrote Denis Donoghue in his review for the London Review of Books , "we can see what an Irish tradition means by marking its loss." Yet behind the word duanaire , made newly prominent by the 1981 collection, is a long linguistic provenance with deep explanatory power, cultural significance, and continuing resonance, a term which records a long cultural history of confident possession and repossession, and not only dispossession and loss.
Abstract: This essay takes a comparative perspective, looking at both Ireland and Palestine in order to assess the term "settler." It argues that the planting of settlers in Ireland and Palestine was intended by Britain to subjugate their peoples and take control of their land, while providing a loyal local garrison for the colonial power, all of this under the rubric of a noble "civilizing" mission to tame and uplift the natives. Stripped of its ideological baggage, and placed in context, whether that of Ireland, North America, or Palestine, the term "settler" reeks of aggression toward, and disdain for, the native.
Abstract: From the time they arrived in the United States in the 1820s, Irish immigrants built wooden shanties that, while often only a single room, reflected the resourcefulness of their builders. As the pace of immigration accelerated, "shanty Irish" became shorthand for otherness and a lack of civilization. Shantytown residents pushed back on the streets, in the courts, and on the stages of nineteenth-century America, asserting ethnic and class aspirations. As Irish-Americans cemented their political and cultural influence in the twentieth century, the shanty acquired a nostalgic glow, celebrating the tenacity of Irish immigrants even as they ceased to live in shanties.
Abstract: The origins of the term "Troubles" to describe war in Ireland have a history that is difficult to pin down with any degree of precision. But what we do know is that, in historical terms, the word is not specific to the violence that erupted in the streets of Derry and Belfast in the summer of 1969. One can find the term being employed by a variety of actors to describe conflict in Britain and Ireland as far back as the seventeenth century. The ambivalent, even evasive term remains deeply embedded in contemporary Irish culture. Understanding its use offers perspective into both Ireland's past and present.
Abstract: "Brogue" is a dialectical pronunciation or accent that seeks to represent the particularities of Irish speech. The term derives from the Irish word bróg meaning "shoe," and can also refer to a coarsely made leather shoe. Its usage has historically been burdened by colonial and class prejudices, embedded with anxieties about national identity and hybridity. Frequently associated with hackneyed representations of English as spoken by the Irish, and generally deployed by outsiders to Ireland to reinforce broader stereotypes of Irish identity, brogue offers a means to track perceptions of Irish English from the sixteenth century to the present day.
