[cormacocomhrai]

Originally Posted by pedroeibar1

I wonder about the veracity of that statement . At a time when rural communities had little wealth, any cash usually was reserved for rent payment and then some basic necessities. Most survived principally on barter, only the wealthy “strong farmers” or merchants could afford the cash costs involved in educating one of their sons in the priesthood. (Hence the middleclass outlook of the clergy.) The popular tradition – exemplified by an t-Athair Peadar O’Laoghaire in Mo Sceal Fein - of poverty-stricken peasant farmers struggling from dawn to dusk trying to earn the fees to keep their son in Maynooth may have been true in a very occasional case – for them it would be a heroic struggle to earn the annual fees of £25 for tuition and a similar amount for board & lodging over a sustained period of about 7 years. Although Maynooth College as the national seminary was endowed by the State, all students had to pay their own expenses and it was not until post-1845 that grants became available, so Catholic priests of the pre-Famine era inevitably came from comfortable landowning backgrounds.

Maybe peasant sounded better than strong farmer? Perhaps it was a slightly different meaning of the word itself. Again regardless of whether or not he was a peasant there must have been plenty of people in Maynooth hiding how much Irish they knew.

[jonniebgood1]

Originally Posted by Vanolder

One reason turn outs were so large was down to the influence of the church over the masses , who Dan cleverly used to implement his plan. These meetings, and marches by the priest and his flock to the gathering, were also tied up with the temperance movement at the time. Priests also acted as enforcers and tore down any political banners they deemed offensive to the movement.

This was part of O'Connells intention that the protest be recognised as civilised to put pressure on the British parliament. The meetings were reported widely in the media around the world.

The Liberator concluded by calling upon the men of Kildare to rally round him, as those of the north, west, and south of Ire land had done, and no government could refuse to grant tl.em a restoration of their native parliament. The temperance bands of the Kildare teetotal societies were in attendance, and performed a variety of popular airs with much precision and good taste.

taken from the Sydney Morning Chronicle newspaper of 21/11/43 reporting on Repeal meeting at the Curragh.

[jonniebgood1]

Repeal Movement Association Card
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cla...card_large.htm

[Vanolder]

Originally Posted by jonniebgood1

This was part of O'Connells intention that the protest be recognised as civilised to put pressure on the British parliament. The meetings were reported widely in the media around the world.

taken from the Sydney Morning Chronicle newspaper of 21/11/43 reporting on Repeal meeting at the Curragh.

The Church were used for far more then just appearance and making the movement seem civilized. It was they who extracted the money from the poor to fill O'Connell's 'war chest'.

British economists at the time, while debating what would be best for Ireland and controlling the peasantry, came to the wonderful conclusion that Priests would be cheaper to use than troops. Dan certainly saw the value in this also.

The explosion of agrarian outrage in around 1845-46 was very much a realization on the peasantry's part that they had been used by O'Connell and his land grabbing supporters. Of course the famine conveniently resolved much of this.

[pedroeibar1]

Originally Posted by cormacocomhrai

Maybe peasant sounded better than strong farmer? Perhaps it was a slightly different meaning of the word itself. Again regardless of whether or not he was a peasant there must have been plenty of people in Maynooth hiding how much Irish they knew.

You probably hit the nail as ‘peasant’ suits the ’Nationalism’ cause more than ‘strong farmer’. Perhaps some young clerics hid their cupla focail faoi ‘n leaba in Maynooth, but I doubt that they did so. The Fr. O’Flynn of the A.P. Graves ballad (real name Fr. Michael Walsh c1793-1866) was PP in Sneem, Co. Kerry during the mid 1800s - he was the son of a strong farmer in Co. Cork, occasionally preached as Gaeilge and used to interpret at the local Petty Sessions. (The landlords favoured this because the witnesses & defendants were more likely to tell the truth to the PP rather than be influenced by any oath.)

My issue with the quote (from Conor McSweeny, 'Songs of the Irish', 1843) is with his use of ‘peasant’. The fees at the scholastic colleges were huge compared to the incomes of the early 1800’s – 30 guineas p.a. was normal, plus annual expenses, which were a minimum of £14 p.a. at a time when for e.g. the average value of livestock on holdings of 16 – 30 acres in the rich land of Tipperary was only £46 in 1841. Clearly no ‘peasant’ could afford any of the clerical colleges for a son.
Prior to 1845 the grant to the College in Maynooth was roughly £9k, that year it was increased to more than £26k, so bursaries became more common. But that post-dates O’Connell. (Figures quoted in Priest, Politics & Society in post famine Ireland – James O’Shea). FWIW, the first Roman Catholic priest in my family was born in 1820, son of a ‘strong farmer’ and although there is record that he spoke French, there is none that he had any Irish.


Don’t talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
Famous foriver at Greek and Latinity,
Dad and the divils and all at Divinity,
Father O’Flynn'd make hares of them all.
Come, I vinture to give you my word,
Never the likes of his logic was heard,
Down from Mythology
Into Thayology,
Troth! And Conchology if he’d the call.

[cormacocomhrai]

[QUOTE=pedroeibar1;79066430]You probably hit the nail as ‘peasant’ suits the ’Nationalism’ cause more than ‘strong farmer’. Perhaps some young clerics hid their cupla focail faoi ‘n leaba in Maynooth, but I doubt that they did so.

It's extremely likely that some clerics hid their knowledge of the language or at least the fact that they were native speakers. Off the top of my head Máirtín Ó Cadhain (I think he) mentioned it a lecture he gave in the 1960s and he was referring to it the first half of the nineteenth century. I'll dig it out and quote it if I can find the book.
Firstly the language itself was increasingly becoming a badge of poverty. Individual clerics being willing to use it doesn't mean that there wasn't hostility or indifference towards the language and its speakers. The hierarchy of the Church reflected the attitudes of Middle and upper-middle class Catholics. I'd imagine that being a native Irish speaker in Maynooth in the nineteenth century would have been similar to having a very pronounced working class accent in a private school. For some it's important to hold on to their identity for others it's about adopting the speaking habits of the group.

Secondly I'd imagine that the efforts of groups like the Irish Church Missions to use the language to convert Catholics would have further alienated the Church from the language. Anectotally I've been told that folklore has retained stories about people hiding their literacy in the language from priests for fear of being implicated in efforts to convert.

Thirdly even until recent generations (after the propagandising work of the Free State and Conradh na Gaeilge etc.) you still had Connemara people trying to show how good their English was and trying to avoid being picked out as Connemara people when they came into Galway city.

I'm just thinking out loud with the suggestions about the hiding of the language by some priests. If they did it's disappeared into the mists of time now if they hid it successfully.There'd be no way of knowing and the nearest we could come to would be suggesting that they must have had some knowledge of Irish to grow up in most of the counties west of a Derry-Waterford line etc.
Interesting anecdote about the Priest and the witnesses by the way.

[cormacocomhrai]

Hi, I found the quote I wanted from that lecture that Ó Cadhain gave. It seems that in 1834 John O`Donovan of the Ordnance Survey was told by a priest in Co. Down that the priests were able to speak Irish but "ach ba ghaigíní suimiúil óg as Maigh Nuad iad ba ghalánta leo a cheilt go raibh an Ghaeilge acu." which translates roughly as "since they were young dandies from Maynooth they hid the fact that they had Irish because of respectability".

Ó Cadhain, M., Tone: Inné agus Inniu (Coiscéim 1999), p.22

[jonniebgood1]

The reasons for decline of the launguage are wide and could be a good thread topic on their own. With the possibility of emmigration particularly after the famine people would have recognised value in speaking English- it was an advantage in getting further in the world.

Irish even has its own term to describe itself as a peasant language, Teanga na mBocht (The Language of the Poor). http://insideireland.ie/2010/06/25/archive4219-4279/

[nuac]

Re Liberator's Monstger Meetings

Tradition is that O'Connell's speeches were relayed phrase by phrase throughout the crowd by selected speakers.

[jonniebgood1]

Originally Posted by nuac

Re Liberator's Monster Meetings

Tradition is that O'Connell's speeches were relayed phrase by phrase throughout the crowd by selected speakers.

Do you have further information on this?
I am interested in how these massive crowds were managed and how the meetings progressed.

[nuac]

Originally Posted by jonniebgood1

Do you have further information on this?
I am interested in how these massive crowds were managed and how the meetings progressed.

JBG O'Connell held such a meeting at Sheeaune outside Westport. I heard that such "relay speakers" were used. If I do come across any written reference I will post it up here

[jonniebgood1]

'Daniel O'Connell, the British Press, and the Irish Famine: Killing Remarks' By Leslie Williams, W. H. A. Williams suggests that the newspaper reports of the time were influential in convincing their readers as to the 'danger' of the repeal movement. Part of that can be seen in preview here http://books.google.ie/books?id=9FoL...page&q&f=false



"Beyond the boundaries of civilised politics"

This was reinforced in punch magazines influential satirical cartoons focusing on O'Connell.

Great numbers of the Irish were enrolled as members of the National Repeal Association by Mr. Daniel O'Connell, and large sums of money collected for the purposes of the Association. This subsidy was known as 'Rent'.

http://www.irishhistorian.com/Punch/...Daniel_OConnor