Note: Did you have any difficult choices in panel attendance at the 2016 national meeting? Curious about what you missed? Below is a series of brief reports from panelists at this year’s meeting that will keep us up to date on what was presented and discussed.

Local Archives and Public Engagement with the Easter Rising

Focusing on the archives of Milwaukee Irish Fest, our panel demonstrated the many ways that archives encourage public and scholarly engagement with Irish and Irish-American history.

Jeff Ksiazek, archivist at the Ward Irish Music Archives (WIMA, CelticMKE Center), presented “On the Road to Online: Making Collections Public at the Ward Irish Music Archives.” Founded in 1992, WIMA houses the largest collection of Irish American musical resources in North America. Through its website, WIMA provides access to early sound recordings, sheet music, and manuscripts. In addition, WIMA connects to the public through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Soundcloud. Traveling exhibits such as the current “Postcards from the 1916 Irish Rebellion” bring the holdings of the archives to new audiences at Irish festivals and events around the Midwest.

Catherine Lewis, a graduate student in English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, created the public exhibition of postcards from the Easter Rising using the Bob Burke Collection at WIMA. In her presentation “World at War, Country in Uprising: Postcards from the 1916 Irish Rebellion,” she contextualized the well-known images of a destroyed Dublin as a form of rhetorical communication. The postcards were used as collectibles after the Rising and the profits from their sales went to the widows of the rebels who lost their lives during Easter Week. However, several of the images were originally taken by photographers working for the British tabloid The Daily Sketch, where they were published under headlines such as “Dublin’s Splendid Buildings in Ruins,” “The Whole of Ireland Under Martial Law,” and “The Smoking Ruins of Dublin’s Big Buildings.” Although the images may seem to be merely informative, when they are placed next to the editorials and articles in The Daily Sketch, a strong bias against the rebellion emerges and the images are shown to be anti-Irish propaganda arguing to an English audience, as one sender of the postcards wrote, that “the brutes made a mess of things.”

Marguerite Helmers, professor of English at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, made extensive use of the sheet music and sound recording collections at WIMA to research the history of the well-known song “The Foggy Dew.” Her presentation “‘The Foggy Dew,’ 1916, and the First World War” traced the tune from its first print and recorded versions through modern “rebel” songbooks. The song’s resurgence as a popular tune in the 1960s coincided with the Civil Rights movements in the United States and Northern Ireland. While there are several versions of “The Foggy Dew,” the rebel tune familiar today was published in sheet music form sometime after 1919, under the pseudonym “Iascaire.” The first (known) recording of the political song was by one James O’Neill from 1922. Following the initial publication and recording, the song seems to have moved into the oral tradition; newspapers suggest that “The Foggy Dew” was popular in militant Irish street culture and used as Catholic opposition to the celebratory Orange anthem “Derry’s Walls.” Eventually, the references to the battles at Gallipoli during the First World War became more and more obscure, so that when the Clancy Brothers released the LP The Rising of the Moon in 1956 — reintroducing “The Foggy Dew” for a new generation — the liner notes read, “Sud-el-bar probably refers to some battle in the middle-east.”

The presenters welcome comments and questions. Jeff can be reached at [email protected]; Catherine is available at [email protected]; Marguerite can be emailed at [email protected].

1916: An International and American Effort for Revolution in Ireland

Operating on the assumption that the American connection to the Easter Rising deserved more scholarly attention, this panel, composed of M.A. students from the Glucksman Ireland House center for Irish and Irish American Studies at New York University, set out to examine what impact the Irish diaspora in America had on the events that culminated in the Rising. Even in the earliest stages of their research, it became evident that America’s role in the Rising has not only been undervalued in the historiography of the Rising, but has also been under-researched. Though each panelist’s paper had a different focus, the panel remained cohesive as each subject that was examined was related not only to the American dimensions of the rising but also to each other.

Utilizing the German-language press, German archives of the Auswärtiges Amt, and other public documents, R. Bryan Willits examined the role of militant Irish nationalists, the links between German and Irish diasporas, and the collusion between the official representatives of the German government in America and the Clan na Gael. His paper, “The Deed and the Word: German Support in America for the Easter Rising in Practice and Print,” also showed that the decades-old ties between the German and Irish diasporas proved to be the groundwork upon which the Casement mission to Germany was built. This facilitated an extensive propaganda mission that promoted the actions of the Irish rebels both before and after the Rising to the extensive German-speaking population of the United States.

In his paper “‘Bursts of Impassioned Eloquence’: An Analysis of William Bourke Cockran’s Call for American Intervention in Ireland from his Speeches of May and June 1916,” Patrick Sweeney examined Irish-born New York congressman William Bourke Cockran, a man from the highest tier of American political and social strata who served as the inimitable voice of anguish and rage expressed by several Americans following the Rising. Cockran marshaled his considerable influence on both sides of the Atlantic, taking to concert halls and civic forums to rail against the actions of the British. Hugely influenced by the American intervention in Cuba years before, Cockran called on all who believed in liberty and self-determination to support the cause of Irish independence through direct U.S. intervention.

Maura Anand’s paper, “Pearse in America: A Significant Step on his Revolutionary Path,” showed how Pearse’s three-month-long visit to the United States in 1914 was crucial in his development from cultural nationalist to radical revolutionary. Pearse traveled across New York, Philadelphia, and other Irish American strongholds on what was ostensibly a fundraising trip for St. Enda’s. Along the way, he was considerably influenced by his association with John Devoy, Joseph McGarrity and various other supporters of revolution in Ireland to such an extent that he returned home with a new fixity of purpose and zeal for rebellion.

Finally, Andrew Hicks explored the relationships that developed between Clan boss Joseph McGarrity and the many Irish nationalists who played a significant role in the Rising. Focusing in particular on 1914, his paper, “McGarrity’s Web: How an Irish American Magnate Helped Spin the Easter Rising,” analyzed the impact that McGarrity had on the guests he entertained at his Philadelphia home. McGarrity hosted Hobson, Casement, and Pearse in that year, and continued to operate as a main point of contact, especially for Casement, in the years leading up to the Rising.

While the panel showed the crucial impact America had on the Rising in terms of influencing the weltanschauung of key leaders who spent time in America, it also demonstrated the role America played in funding and planning the rebellion, ultimately showcasing why America earned the designation of being the only other country specifically named in the proclamation of the Irish Republic.

The Irish and the Caribbean

Exploring the use of the Caribbean as a setting for literary expression, Kathryn Artuso and Tramble T. Turner each presented their research on key novels that draw on Barbados and Cuba. Following the papers, the audience engaged in an eclectic and fascinating discussion regarding religious syncretism in the novels as well as touching upon larger ecumenical concerns, drawing upon personal experiences and memories regarding Catholic and Protestant upbringings. A third panelist, Dúnyer Pérez, was unable to attend the conference but presents a summary of his paper below.

Kathryn Artuso discussed Kate McCafferty’s historical novel Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl, which offers a fictionalized account of the 1675 Coromantee slave revolt in Barbados that is told from the perspective of a trepanned Irish servant who marries the West African slave who leads the rebellion. Published by Viking in 2002, the novel did not gain widespread appeal and fell out of print for a while, perhaps as a result of its surprising adulation of Islamic jihad as a force to fight colonial oppression. Artuso argued that the complex interrelations between black slavery and white indenture in McCafferty’s provocative novel encourage readers to explore the extent to which a political insurrection fueled by religious foundations breaks barriers between races and classes, genders and genres, and colonizer and colonized within the novel—even as it reinforces those barriers at the unfortunate moment of its post-9/11 debut and in the troubled reception by its readership. The paper investigated the motif of the mask that permeates the novel, a motif that defamiliarizes slavery, indenture, creolization, and jihad through the use of an estranging strategy of divided and reunited self-perception, underscoring and revising the dialectical processes at the heart of decolonization, collective solidarity, and self-liberation.

Tramble T. Turner focused on William J. Kennedy’s use of oral, narrative history of the 1898 and 1957 Revolutions in Cuba within the novel Chango’s Beads and Two-Toned Shoes. Kennedy’s Daniel Quinn, a reporter who hopes to become a novelist, interviews a fictive Fidel Castro about the role of José Martí in the 1898 Revolution. Based on a passage from the novel and biographical details about Martí, Turner drew parallels between Martí’s “blood sacrifice” and his early career as a poet, a journalist, and a songwriter with the career of Patrick Pearse.

Dúnyer Pérez’s paper focused on the Irish presence in Cuba during the Spanish occupation, with a consideration of this community’s economics, politics, society, religion, trade in slaves, and other facets. The first reference to this community indicates a presence in Santiago de Cuba as early as 1665. In that year Juan (John) Duany, who was born in Connacht, was working in military construction. In later years, there were four captain generals of Irish descent: Nicolás Mahy (1821-1822), Sebastián Kindelán O’Regan (1822-1823), Leopoldo O’Donnell (1844-1848), and Luis Prendergast Gordon (1881-1883). Massive waves of Irish immigrants arrived via a number of routes, including Ireland, Canada, the United States, and other Caribbean islands. This community subsequently played an important part in the construction of the first railroad line in Cuba, the Havana to Guines line, the second in America and seventh in the world. Notable families in the area included the O’Farrill and O’Reilly families; the first was a wealthy and powerful family with connections (by marriage, economic interests, etc.) with other members of the Cuban aristocracy. Also of note was Juan Bernardo O’Gavan y Guerra, a Cuban bishop (1832-1838) who left a considerable impact on the lives of his flock. Irish connections were also significant in the push for Cuban independence from Spain, as the United States was an important supporter of this cause; Colonel T. O’Hara and W. C. Ryan were among these notable advocates. Pérez concluded his paper with an account of the visit to Cuba of the journalist James O’Kelly, publisher of The Mambi Land.

New interpretations of the life of Douglas Hyde

Douglas Hyde, Dúbhglas de hÍde, an Craoibhín Aoibhinn, was born on the 17 January 1860 and died on the 12 July 1949. He was founding president of the Gaelic league, first professor of modern Irish in University College Dublin, and first president of an independent Irish state (1938–45). His inner thoughts and ideas, his linguistic development, and his coming of age in County Roscommon, can be seen through his own pen in thirteen diaries that are housed in the National Library of Ireland (manuscripts G1036–48). Hyde was an adolescent of fourteen years (1874) when he embarked upon his diary writing, and he continued this practice throughout his formative years, completing his final diary in 1912.

The diaries give the reader an understanding of the varying degrees of influence that key figures in Hyde’s life had upon him; notable among these are Séamus Hart (a local worker from Frenchpark, Co. Roscommon) who was a father figure to Hyde as documented in his first diary of 1874, and Nelly O’Brien (4 June 1864, died 1 April 1925), an influential Gaelic League activist and landscape artist. The important roles which they played with regards to both his linguistic and political growth are evident. Letters written by Nelly O’Brien to Douglas Hyde in 1906, also housed in the National Library Ireland (MS 18,252), when Hyde was on his tour of America, and indeed her very own Easter diary 1916 (TCD 10343/1), give an insight into the development of this public figure who would have such an influence as regards the formation of modern Ireland.

Douglas Hyde’s championing of a non-political, non-sectarian Gaelic League is well-known, as is the eventual defeat of his neutral policy with regard to Ireland’s independence at the League’s 1915 Ardfheis in Dundalk and his immediate resignation as president of the organization. However, this received outline does not do justice to the complexity of Hyde’s attitude to the question of Irish independence. The men from whom he learned Irish in County Roscommon in the 1870s, as documented in his diaries, were all staunch Fenian supporters and he absorbed their nationalist outlook. Many of the poems he composed from 1879 on were strongly nationalist in tenor. Indeed, Hyde composed several poems in praise of Diarmuid O’Donovan Rossa, preeminent of Fenians, and he went to considerable lengths to meet him in New York in 1891. However, Hyde was quite unaware of the plans for the 1916 Easter Rising. At noon on Easter Monday, he states in his diary, he happened upon the Irish Volunteers as they barred the gates and set up camp in St. Stephen’s Green in central Dublin. For the next ten days, he maintained this vivid diary of the revolutionary events which he witnessed at first hand, also housed in the National Library Ireland (MS 17,700). He later wrote another account reflecting upon these events that is housed in the manuscript library in Trinity College Dublin (TCD 10343/7).

Drawing on the evidence of Hyde’s diaries in Irish and English, as well as his other writings, cartoons, sketches, scrapbooks and artwork of his wife, Lucy Cometina Kurz, Hyde’s evolving views on Irish freedom from his first steps at learning Irish as a fourteen-year-old in 1874 are evident. His quasi-journalistic chronicling of the 1916 Easter Rising, as a Dublin citizen who also happened to be professor of modern Irish at UCD and founding President of the Gaelic League gives us another important insight into the mind of Ireland’s first President.
 

Irish Mothers and Children: from Dublin to New Orleans

This panel used the lenses of gender and life cycles to thematically explore the ways in which poor women dealt with motherhood in very trying circumstances in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It presented three case studies that exemplified the strategies used by vulnerable Irish families to ensure economic buoyancy at home and in the transnational context.

Laura D. Kelley opened the discussion with her findings about female headed households (FHH) in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Her meticulously researched paper showed the ingenuity of immigrant Irish women and how they managed to negotiate with charity, governance, religious orders, employers, and newly found community to keep their families intact. Kelley’s findings contrasted sharply with the papers that followed.

The second case study presented by Sarah-Anne Buckley examined the experiences of poor female migrants in Britain at the turn of the century. Her fascinating paper showed how class, religion, and emigration were recurring themes in the petitions to the London Foundling Hospital, which was one of the few options for poor migrant mothers.

Ciara Breathnach’s paper concluded the session with a case study of economic disadvantage and health inequality in early twentieth-century Dublin. Her presentation used coroners’ courts records to discuss family breakdown and the grim realities of motherhood.