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R.B. English Linguistic Imperialism, the caerimonia nominationis, and Translations of English across the Irish Sea Poet Richard Tillinghast wrote that “after eight hundred years of invasion, military occupation, economic plundering, and systematic attempts to eradicate their native religion and culture, what has been left to the Irish other than talk? Talk is the national pastime.”1 Indeed, Ireland has had the unfortunate history of being conquered and reconquered, invaded and reinvaded, occupied and reoccupied, and each time, beyond the usual human casualties suffered as a natural consequence of imperialism, a little bit of Ireland’s ties to the past—its culture, its religion, its language—have found their names on a long list of the wounded and perished. Tragically, any effort to resuscitate the Gaelic language has failed due to massive hemorrhaging. In the face of such tragedy, what options are the Irish left with if they cannot conserve their language and all of the history that is inextricably bound to it? Lauded Irish playwright and prolific short-story author Brian Friel seems to have an answer. By the end of his 1980 play Translations, after examining the caerimonia nominatione ‘naming ceremony’ as a linguistic form of power, he comes to a conclusion that may seem antithetical to the argument that language, culture, and history are interwoven like a delicate Celtic braid: the appropriation of English in order to reappropriate Ireland. After all, Translations serves to show how language once operated in terms of a cultural rootedness and centeredness”2 (my emphasis), but imperialism has changed the rules of the game. To fully understand the reasoning behind such a seemingly wrong answer, we must first consider the history of English linguistic imperialism in Ireland. After the defeat of the powerful Spanish Armada by the significantly smaller English naval fleet, England’s rise to naval superstar status and imperial superpower had begun. One of the first military endeavors occurred just over the Irish Sea to the west of England. The conquest of Ireland by the British during the Tudor monarchy “marks the inaugural episode of [English] imperialist expansion,” and is a “point in history where the fortunes of two languages briefly intersect.”3 Prior to this, in the Middle Ages, Ireland been taken by the English after being granted the right to invade Ireland to sort out the Irish Church by Pope Adrian IV in 1155. By the middle of the thirteenth century to about the middle of the fourteenth century, the English king began to lose grip on Ireland, and the English landowners who immigrated to Ireland under English rule gradually integrated themselves into Irish society, though disputes between the Anglo-Irish and native Irish were common. The native Irish gradually wrested control of the territory from the Anglo-Irish, and in 1361, the English King Edward III attempted to regain total control of Ireland by sending his son. This attempt to seize control ultimately failed, and by the fifteenth century, England had lost all control over Ireland except for the area surrounding Dublin, called the Pale. This brings us to the aforementioned reconquest of Ireland by the Tudor monarchs. Following King Henry VIII’s split with the Catholic Church, with the consent of the Irish Parliament, he is installed as the head of the Church of Ireland (the majority of the Irish were, however, still Catholic), and then as the King of Ireland. After King Henry VIII’s death, Queens Mary and Elizabeth I successfully sent settlers to Ireland to occupy the lands confiscated from Irish rebels during this period of unrest.4 After the death of Queen Elizabeth I, with the instatement of the Stuart monarchy in England, native Irish landholdings became redistributed,5 and, in the Cromwellian interregnum, the Catholic-based educational system was suppressed.6 After the Restoration, under the short reign of King James II, “Catholic schools…flourished...when for the first time in the history of Ireland, a Catholic was appointed Provost of Trinity College, Dublin.”7 However, with the accession of King William III and the installation of the Penal Laws, Catholic education was again forbidden and thus, with no traditional outlets for Irish-run institutionalized education, education “had become, in the eighteenth century, the heritage of the tiller of the soil.”8 Why would the English go to such great lengths to stamp out Irish education? The fact that England was Protestant and that tensions between Catholic and Protestants were always high in Ireland is only one part of the answer. The other part deals with “the uncanny congruity between pushing back the frontiers of English and expanding the geopolitical boundaries within which it operated.”9 In other words, the English language was used as a sort of imperial weapon, aimed at stamping out Irish language in order to achieve what Patricia Palmer calls “cultural amnesia, the erasure of names and associations.”10 After all, “the fundamental anglicizing assumptions behind the Reformation sought to eliminate the use of the Irish language” in order to proselytize the Irish,11 which was a major reason why the efforts to install institutions of learning like Trinity College in Dublin ultimately failed at attracting many students (that is, until a Catholic was put in charge of the school). Thus, faced with a lack of official places of learning from the time of the Elizabethan conquest until the early 1800’s, the Hedge Schools were born into existence, and by the nineteenth century, they “[outnumbered] all other schools, and [were] so profoundly national as to hasten the introduction of a [British run] State system of education in 1831.”12 In these Hedge Schools, “Latin, Greek, Mathematics and other subjects were taught…entirely through the medium of the Irish language.”13 The use of the Irish language as a medium for education was extremely threatening to the English, not only because of its incomprehensibility, but because it was an affront to the linguistic control that was so inextricably tied to the use of English. As aforementioned, the English language was bound to English imperialism: the geographical area in which English is spoken is indicative and, one may argue, a root of the might of the British Empire. As an example, the poet Samuel Daniels says of classical Greek and Latin that they “may thanke their sword that made their tongues so famous and vniuersall as they are,”14 indicating the link between imperialism and the hardiness of a language. The use of English in Ireland, then, would be a testament to the imperial power of England, but with the widespread use of Gaelic in its stead, with English as nothing more than a would-be lingua franca that the majority of the Irish rarely spoke (if they did at all), the English grip over Ireland appeared to be slipping faster and faster. Enter the introduction of the State-run educational institution, courtesy of Chief Secretary Stanley in 1831: “The system became a great success as an educational one, but it had fatal effects on the Irish language and the old Gaelic tradition.”15 Concurrent with the establishment of National Education was the formation of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland—an official government outfit designed to “establish a standard orthography…for future reference” of the place names of Ireland.16 It is at this time of change in Ireland, at a doomed Hedge School, where Friel’s Translations takes place. This transition period is a particularly fitting setting for the play, as it was during this time that the most egregious offenses against the Irish language were committed: the bastardization of Irish place names to anglicized approximations or, in some cases, the direct translation from Gaelic to English. Of course, engaging in a caerimonia nominatione by either of these translational methods changes the essential meaning of the word to the Irish, and gives control of its meaning to the English. Early in the play, Friel hints at this essential truth of language with the introduction of one of the tools of the Ordnance Survey, the Theodolite: JIMMY: Theodolite—what’s the etymology of that word, Manus? Jimmy, though learned at both Latin and Greek, fails to correctly identify the etymology of the word; the correct root is probably the Greek theorein ‘to look at,’ as in the case of the word “theory.”18 The uncertainty of the etymology of “theodolite,” however, shows the disorientation that even those most familiar with a source language can experience when the connection between the original and the translated words is not readily apparent. Later in the play, Owen—after spending many continuous hours renaming places on the map in English (or at least, English-friendly Irish), and fed up with his father Hugh’s waxing poetic about the beauty and richness of the Gaelic language—tells his father of the name changes: OWEN: Do you know where the priest lives? Here, Owen is not simply asking if his father will be able to find his way geographically—chances are, he will be able to—but rather, Owen is echoing a sentiment that the English harbor: Will the Irish be able to find their way through this new geopolitical landscape we have invented, just as we will be able to do? The English hope not, but in having this hope, they ironically forget the outcome of their own conquest by the Roman Empire. When the officers of the Ordnance Survey first arrive at Baile Beag/Ballybeg and attempt to communicate with the locals, Jimmy asks, “Nonne Latine loquitur? [Does he not speak Latin?]”20 The answer is obvious when Lancey replies, “I do not speak Gaelic, sir.”21 The irony here is painfully funny, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the Irish people. Just as Hugh reminds Owen and Yolland that words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen—to use an image you’ll understand—it can happen that a civilization can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape of…fact,22 we are reminded that the English were able to survive the same brand of linguistic imperialism that they are using on the Irish. The mark that the Roman Empire left on England is undeniable and is seen through the English adoption of Latin root words into its lexicon. Likewise, the hope of the Irish people lies in this possibility: the cooption of English first for survival, and second for the preservation and reappropriation of Irish identity. At the end of the play, as English soldiers arrive in response to the disappearance of Lieutenant Yolland—implied to have been murdered by the Donnelly twins—Hugh, in a round of drunken clarity, further drives home the point that English must be used as a medium for communicating Irishness. Hugh says, “We must learn those new names [in the Name-Book]….We must learn where we live. We must learn to make them our own. We must make them our new home”23 (my emphasis). Then, Owen replies: OWEN: I know where I live. The new English “linguistic contours” no longer match the Irish “landscape of fact,” and as a result, the necessity for the cooption of the English language evolved. Hugh, who at the beginning refused to teach English to Maire, at this point consents to teaching her,25 lest the “fossilization”—the rendering obsolete as an artifact of the past—of the Irish culture and people occur. He implores that the Irish “renew images of the past” by making English an acceptable medium for communicating these images of Ireland’s past. Josephine Lee adds that “Hugh’s words articulate in English—clearly, unambiguously, and powerfully—the desire for national unity which does not die with Irish as a language.”26 The history, the “images of the past” that are imprinted and reflected in the Irish place names that have now been anglicized is immutable and immortal, as long as there is somebody who remembers these images and makes the appropriate translations. After all, as evidenced by the linguistic imperialism of England, the success of the National schools, and “Maire’s intentions to emigrate to America,”27 language is in a constant state of flux, hence Hugh’s reply to Maire’s inquiry as to the meaning of “always”: “Semper—per omnia saecula. [Always—for all time.]”28 Hugh reminds us that no language is forever—not even Gaelic—and this fact should not be the cause of the “fossilization” of the Irish people. In a review of Translations, Martin Esslin wrote that “the ultimate irony of the play is that it is written entirely in English, in a convention by which we must believe that the Irish characters speak Erse [and] the English [speak] English.”29 This is a testament to the vision for the future of an Irish Ireland that Friel wrote into the character of Hugh. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, as Ireland sought to de-anglicize itself and reestablish its own identity, Gaelic was chosen as the language for its literature and drama. However, this only served to produce works that were “Irish in language only,”30 and not Irish at its core. Thus, out of a necessity to produce truly Irish plays, Hiberno-English was used. Lee reported that “English could now be ‘Irish’ not only because it sounded like the real speech of real peasants, but also because it reflected the spiritual, sensitive temperament that such a discourse itself marked as being truly ‘Irish’ in nature.”31 The cooption of English had occurred, just as Hugh desired in Translations. The Irish culture and language, which had been ravaged by the forces of English linguistic imperialism, found a way to save face that recalls the revenge planned by Aoife on Cuchulain: Hiberno-English, which largely uses standard vocabulary, has taken on the rhythms, syntax, intonations, and often even the grammar of Irish, which, though almost extinct, has managed while dying to inseminate another linguistic organism with its inventiveness, its evasions and qualifications, its elaborate and ambiguous courtesies.32 It is this Hiberno-English that is the embodiment of Friel’s conclusion in Tranlsations. Though written at a point in history where he can conveniently revise the Irish nationalistic mindset through Hugh’s (stereotypically Irish) drunken response at the end of Translations, he is able to make the audience—and the modern Irish people—see that in the end, they are the true winners of the perpetual struggle between the English and themselves. Through Hiberno-English and through the nationalistic Irish literary renaissance, we can bear witness to the fact that the Irish were successful at maintaining their culture and an understanding of their history, even if their language is going the way of the Latin and Greek taught at their Hedge Schools. And while the stereotype of the Irish persists—that of “the brilliant failure, the great talker who accomplishes nothing”33—Friel is able to show that the Irish are not failures, that they did accomplish something, and that it was indeed brilliant. Through insurmountable odds—despite the constant cultural conquests and the linguistic lickings they suffered, they were able to translate the images of their history and their culture, and the subtle nuances of their language that made Gaelic something uniquely Irish into the language of their conquerors, thus reappropriating Ireland for the Irish and redefining (and reclaiming) their sense of identity. 1. Richard Tillinghast, “Brian Friel: Transcending the Irish National Pastime,” The New Criterion, Vol. 10, October 1991, 35-41; excerpted and reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 115, ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Timothy J. White (Detroit, MI: Gale, 1999), 232. 2. Richard Kearney, “Friel and the Politics of Language Play,” The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, Autumn 1987, 510-515; excerpted and reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 115, 223. 3. Patricia Palmer, Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland: English Renaissance literature and Elizabethan imperial expansion (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1. 4. All preceding historical content from Tim Lambert, “Irish History Timeline” [electronic resource] (2001 [cited 7 December 2005]); available from World Wide Web @ http://www.localhistories.org/irishtime.html 5. Patrick John Dowling, The Hedge Schools of Ireland (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1935), 8. 6. Ibid., 18. 7. Ibid., 19. 8. Ibid., 11. 9. Palmer, 111. 10. Ibid., 138. 11. Alan Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590-1641 (Frankfurt, Germany: Verlag Peter Lang, 1985); quoted in Palmer, 127. 12. Dowling, 21. 13. Ibid., 20-21. 14. Samuel Daniel, Poems and a Defence of Ryme, ed. A.C. Sprague (London, UK: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950), 136; quoted in Palmer, 113. 15. Edmund Curtis, A History of Ireland, 6th ed. (London, UK: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1950), 362. 16. Thomas Colby, Ordnance Survey of Ireland (1835); excerpted and quoted by the Field Day Theatre Company in the program notes for Translations; reprinted in John P. Harrington ed., Modern Irish Drama (New York, NY: W.W. Norton Company, 1991), 553. 17. Brian Friel, Translations; reprinted in Harrington, 326. 18. Take Our Word For It, Issue 16 [electronic resource] (22 July 2000 [cited 10 December 2005]); available from World Wide Web @ http://www.takeourword.com/Issue016.html 19. Friel, 350. 20. Ibid., 340. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 351. 23. Ibid., 372. 24. Ibid., 373. 25. Ibid. 26. Josephine Lee, “Linguistic Imperialism, the Early Abbey Theatre, and the Translations of Brian Friel,” Imperialism and Theatre: Essays on world theatre, drama and performance 1795-1995, ed. J. Ellen Gainor (New York, NY: Routledge, 1995), 178. 27. Ibid., 173. 28. Friel, 374. 29. Martin Esslin, a review of “Translations,” Plays & Players, No. 29, November 1981, 36; excerpted and reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 42, ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz (Detroit, MI: Gale, 1987), 173. 30. Philip O’Leary, “Poor Relations: Gaelic Drama and the Abbey Threater, 1899-1913,” Journal of Irish Literature, Vol. 18 (1989), 3-24; quoted in Lee, 166. 31. Lee, 169. 32. Tillinghast, 232. 33. Ibid., 233. |