Irish language in Newfoundland

{{main|Irish Newfoundlanders}}

File:NLE Trinity1 tango7174.jpg by 1675]]

The Irish language (also known as Gaelic) arrived in Newfoundland as a consequence of the English migratory cod fishery. While Sir Humphrey Gilbert formally claimed Newfoundland as an English overseas possession in 1583, this did not lead to permanent European settlement. A number of unsuccessful attempts at settlement followed, and the migratory fishery continued to grow. By 1620, fishermen from South West England dominated most of the east coast of Newfoundland, with the French dominant along the south coast and Great Northern Peninsula. After 1713, with the Treaty of Utrecht, the French ceded control of the south and north shores of the island to the British, keeping only the nearby islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the south coast.{{Cite web |title=Newfoundland Settlement and the Migratory Fishery |url=https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/exploration/settlement-migratory-fishery.php |access-date=2023-02-10 |website=Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador}}

Irish labourers were recruited for the fishery from southeast Ireland. Irish settlers were reported to be residing at Ireland's Eye, Trinity Bay, by 1675, at Heart's Content in 1696, and at St. John's by 1705.{{cite journal |last=Nemec |first=Thomas F. |date=1972 |title=The Irish Emigration to Newfoundland |journal=Newfoundland Quarterly |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=16–17}} Quoted in {{cite journal |last=McGinn |first=Brian |date=2000 |title=Newfoundland: The Most Irish Place Outside of Ireland |url=http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=ids&folder=158&paper=159 |journal=Irish Diaspora Studies |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716052800/http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=ids&folder=158&paper=159 |archive-date=2011-07-16 |url-status=dead}} Thomas Nash, an Irish Roman Catholic, was one of the later pioneers of Irish settlement in Newfoundland. A native of County Kilkenny, he arrived on the Southern Shore in 1765 and eventually settled in the Branch area.{{Cite web |title=Branch {{!}} Intangible Cultural Heritage |url=https://www.mun.ca/ich/search-ich-collections/hearts-content/branch/ |access-date=2023-02-10 |website=Memorial University of Newfoundland |language=en-CA}}

Between 1750 and 1830, and particularly between 1793 and 1815, large numbers of Irish people, including many Irish speakers, emigrated to Newfoundland, known colloquially simply as {{lang|ga|an tOileán}}, 'the Island'. An account dating from 1776 describes how seasonal workers from Cork, Kerry, and elsewhere would come to Waterford to take passage to Newfoundland, taking with them all they needed.{{sfnp|Young|1780|loc=pp. 131–132: "October 17 [1776]. Accompanied Lord Tyrone to Waterford; made some inquiries into the state of their trade... The number of people who go as passengers in the Newfoundland ships is amazing: from sixty to eighty ships, and from three thousand to five thousand annually. They come from most parts of Ireland, from Cork, Kerry, etc. Experienced men will get eighteen to twenty-five pounds for the season, from March to November. A man who never went will have five to seven pounds and his passage, and others rise to twenty pounds; the passage out they get but pay home two pounds. An industrious man in a year will bring home twelve to sixteen pounds with him, and some more. A great point for them is to be able to carry out all their slops, for everything, there is exceedingly dear, one or two hundred per cent. dearer than they can get them at home. They are not allowed to take out any woollen goods but for their own use. The ships go loaded with pork, beef, butter, and some salt; and bring home passengers, or get freights where they can; sometimes rum".}}

In the oral tradition of County Waterford, the poet Donnchadh Ruadh Mac Conmara, a former hedge school teacher, is said to have sailed for Newfoundland around 1754.{{cite journal |title=Beatha Donnchadha Ruadh Mac Conmara |language=Irish |trans-title=Life of Donncha Rua Mac Conmara |last=Ní Chrotaigh |first=Eibhlín |journal=Journal of the Waterford Archaeological & Historical Society |issue=59 |year=2003 |orig-year=1928 |pages=142–143 |url=http://snap.waterfordcoco.ie/collections/ejournals/100773/100773.pdf}} For a long time, it was doubted whether the poet ever made the trip. During the 21st century, however, linguists discovered that several of Donnchadh Ruadh's poems in the Irish language contain multiple Gaelicized words and terms known to be unique to Newfoundland English. For this reason, Donnchadh Ruadh's poems are considered the earliest solid evidence that the Irish language was spoken in Newfoundland.{{sfnp|Ó Liatháin|2020|pp=73–91}}

Donnchadh Ruadh provides a description of the rewards of going to Newfoundland (with a burlesque flavour) in a poem describing his deep sea-chest filled with eggs, butter, bacon and other necessities:

{{Cite web |title=Creed and Culture, 1784–1830 |url=https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/creed-culture.php |access-date=2023-02-10 |website=Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador}}

By 1815, the Irish in Newfoundland numbered over 19,000. Emigration was encouraged by political discontent at home, overpopulation and impoverishment. It was also aided by the fact that legislation of 1803 designed to regulate conditions on British passenger vessels, making the passage too expensive for the poorest, such as the Irish, did not apply to Newfoundland, which was viewed as a fishery rather than a colony.{{Cite web |title=Immigration |url=https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/exploration/immigration.php |access-date=2023-02-10 |website=Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador}}

Image:Shoal Bay.jpg]]

The use of the Irish language in Newfoundland was closely tied to the persistence of an ancestral culture preserved in scores of enclaves along the coast.{{Cite web |last=Driscoll |first=Marilyn |title=The Irish Language in New Brunswick |url=https://newirelandnb.ca/culture/the-irish-language-in-new-brunswick |access-date=2023-02-11 |website=The Irish Canadian Cultural Association of New Brunswick}} That culture, in the Avalon Peninsula and elsewhere, included feast days, holy wells, games, mumming, Irish bardic poetry, faction fighting, and Gaelic games such as hurling. Church services were often conducted in the Irish language.{{sfnp|O'Grady|2004|p=56}} The post-1815 economic collapse in Newfoundland after the Napoleonic Wars caused many of these Irish-speaking settlers to flee to the nearby Maritime colonies, taking their language with them.{{sfnp|O'Grady|2004|p=57}}

Court records show that defendants sometimes required Irish-speaking interpreters, as in the case of an Irishman in Fermeuse in 1752.{{sfnp|Kirwan|1993|p=68}}

Ecclesiastical records also illustrate the prevalence of Irish. In the mid-1760s the Reverend Laurence Coughlan, a Methodist preacher, converted most of the North Shore of Newfoundland to Protestantism. Observers credited the success of his evangelical revival at Carbonear and Harbour Grace to the fact that he was fluent in Irish.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}} There are references to the need for Irish-speaking priests between 1784 and 1807.{{sfnp|Kirwan|1993|p=68}} In letters to Dublin, the Catholic Bishop James Louis O'Donel, when requesting a Franciscan missionary for the parishes of St. Mary's and Trepassey, said that it was absolutely necessary that he should be able to speak Irish.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}} O'Donel himself was an Irish speaker, and the fact that his successor Bishop Patrick Lambert (a Leinsterman and coadjutor bishop of St. John's from 1806) had no Irish may have contributed to the mistrust shown towards him by Irish-speaking Newfoundlanders.

Beginning in the 1870s, the more politicized Irish-Americans began taking interest in their ancestral language. Gaelic revival organizations like the Philo-Celtic Society began springing up throughout the United States. Irish-American newspapers and magazines also began adding columns in the Irish language. These same publications also circulated widely among Irish-Canadians. Furthermore, the sixth President of St. Bonaventure's College in St. John's, Newfoundland was not only a member of the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, but also taught Irish-language classes there during the 1870s. Although the subject still remains to be explored, Kenneth E. Nilsen, an American linguist specializing in the Celtic languages in North America, argued in a posthumously published essay that "closer inspection would likely reveal a Canadian counterpart to the American language revival movement."{{cite book |last1=Sumner |first1=Natasha |last2=Doyle |first2=Aidan |chapter=North American Gaels |title=North American Gaels: Speech, Song, and Story in the Diaspora |date=2020 |pages=10–11}}

File:George street st. john's 2.jpg along with the Irish flag in St. John's, 2005]]

The identities of the last speakers of Newfoundland Irish are unknown. There is a lack of information of the sort available from the adjacent Province of New Brunswick (where, in the 1901 Census, several individuals and families listed Irish as their mother tongue and as a language still spoken by them). The question of how far Newfoundland Irish evolved as a separate dialect remains open. Newfoundland Irish has left traces in Newfoundland English, such as the following: scrob 'scratch' ({{langx|ga|scríob}}), sleveen 'rascal' ({{lang|ga|slíbhín}}) and streel 'slovenly person' ({{lang|ga|sraoill}}), along with grammatical features like the "after" perfect as in "she's already after leavin{{'"}} ({{lang|ga|tá sí tar éis imeachta}}).

The most notable scholar of the Irish language in Newfoundland was St. John's native Aloysius (Aly) O'Brien (16 June 1915{{snd}}8 August 2008). O'Brien's paternal grandmother, Bridget Conway, had spoken Irish (which she had learned growing up in Ireland) but his father did not speak it. O'Brien taught himself Irish by means of language records, cassette tapes, and the booklets of Eugene O'Growney, a notable figure in Ireland's Gaelic revival. O'Brien was thus enabled to become an authority on the many Irish words used in Newfoundland English and became a teacher of the language at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He claimed, despite this, that he was not fluent in Irish, lacking opportunities for immersion.{{Cite news |last=Sullivan |first=J.M. |date=2008-10-13 |title=Aloysius O'Brien; Newfoundland's last Gaelic speaker |work=The Globe & Mail |url=https://groups.google.com/g/alt.obituaries/c/uxWBbFilwxg |access-date=2023-02-10 |via=Google Groups}}

There is interest in the Irish language, as indicated by the fact that Memorial University in St. John's, employs one of the Irish language instructors appointed every year by the Ireland Canada University Foundation to work in Canadian universities and support the Irish language in the wider community.{{cite web |title=Irish Language Instructors |url=https://www.icuf.ie/scholarships/clar-gaeilge/teagascoiri/#english |website=Ireland Canada University Foundation}} Memorial University's Digital Learning Centre provides resources for learning the Irish language.{{cite web |title=Irish Student Resources |url=https://www.mun.ca/dlc/resources_students/gaelic.php |website=Digital Learning Centre, Memorial University}}

Efforts to revive the Irish language in Newfoundland are taking place, however.

In a 2016 article for The Irish Times, Sinéad Ní Mheallaigh, who teaches Irish at Memorial University, wrote, "There is a strong interest in the Irish language. Irish descendent and farmer Aloy O'Brien, who died in 2008 at the age of 93, taught himself Irish using the Buntús Cainte books and with help from his Irish-speaking grandmother. Aloy taught Irish in Memorial University for a number of years, and a group of his students still come together on Monday nights. One of his first students, Carla Furlong, invites the others to her house to speak Irish together as the 'Aloy O'Brien Conradh na Gaeilge' group."

Ní Mheallaigh further wrote, "An important part of my role here in Newfoundland is organising Irish language events, both in the university and the community. We held an Irish language film festival on four consecutive Mondays throughout November. Each evening consisted of a short film, and a TG4 feature-length film, preceded by an Irish lesson. These events attracted people from all parts of society, not just those interested in Ireland and the language. The students took part in the international Conradh na Gaeilge events for 'Gaeilge 24' and we will have Gaelic sports and a huge Céilí mór later in March."

• Irish language outside Ireland
• Irish Newfoundlanders
• Canadian Gaelic
• Newfoundland English

{{Reflist}}

• {{Cite book|title=The Hidden Ireland: A Study of Gaelic Munster in the Eighteenth Century |last=Corkery |first=Daniel |year=1925 |publisher=M.H. Gill and Son Ltd. |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22387/22387-h/22387-h.htm}}
• {{Cite book|title=Scriptural Instruction in the Vernacular: The Irish Society and Its Teachers 1818–1827 |last=De Brún |first=Pádraig |year=2009 |publisher=Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies |isbn=9781855002128}}
• {{Cite journal |last=FitzGerald |first=Garrett |title=Estimates for baronies of minimal level of Irish-speaking amongst successive decennial cohorts, 1771–1781 to 1861–1871 |volume=84 |journal=Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature |date=1984 |pages=117–155}}
• {{Cite book |last=Kirwan |first=William J. |date=1993 |chapter=The planting of Anglo-Irish in Newfoundland |title=Focus on Canada |editor-first=Sandra |editor-last=Clark |publisher=John Benjamin's Publishing Co. |isbn=90-272-4869-9}}
• {{Cite book|title=Exiles and Islanders: The Irish Settlers of Prince Edward Island |last=O'Grady |first=Brendan |year=2004 |publisher=McGill-Queen's Press |isbn=9780773572003 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LPGke767ISUC |via=Google Books}}
• {{Cite book|last=Young |first=Arthur |date=1780 |title=A Tour in Ireland: 1776–1779 |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22387/22387-h/22387-h.htm}}

• {{Cite book|title=Na Gaeil i dTalamh an Éisc |language=Irish |trans-title=The Irish in Newfoundland |last=Ó hEadhra |first=Aogán |year=1998 |publisher=Coiscéim |lccn=98168254}}

• [http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=ids&folder=158&paper=159 Newfoundland: The Most Irish Place Outside of Ireland]
• [http://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/ Dictionary of Newfoundland English Online]

{{Irish linguistics}}

Category:Irish dialects

Category:Irish language outside Ireland

Category:Language conflict in Canada

Category:Languages of Canada

Category:Irish diaspora in Canada

Category:Diaspora languages

Category:Extinct Celtic languages

Category:Extinct languages of North America

Category:Languages extinct in the 20th century

Category:Irish-Canadian culture in Newfoundland and Labrador

Category:Languages attested from the 18th century

Category:18th-century establishments in Newfoundland