Gaelic revival

Important writers of the Gaelic revival include Peadar Ua Laoghaire, Patrick Pearse (Pádraig Mac Piarais) and Pádraic Ó Conaire.

[4] In 1795, with the aim of preventing "the total neglect and to diffuse the beauties of this ancient and much-acclaimed language", the Northern Star, the newspaper of the United Irishmen, produced the Irish-language grammar, dictionary and anthology, Bolg an tSolair.

[5] In the same year, the Star advertised classes in the language offered by Pádraig Ó Loingsigh (Patrick Lynch) at the Belfast Academy.

[14] The society focussed on the contemporary Irish vernacular, rather than in the classical language of manuscripts, but abjured the religious evangelism that persuaded other Protestants to pursue a similar interest.

[18][19] After the Ulster Gaelic Society ceased to operate in 1843, MacAdam employed the poet Aodh Mac Domhnaill (Hugh McDonnell)[20] as a full-time scribe and collector of songs, folklore, and Irish-language manuscripts.

[21] Early pioneers of more rigorous Irish scholarship were John O'Donovan (who was to become professor of Celtic Languages at Queen's College, Belfast), Eugene O'Curry and George Petrie.

[22] The secretary of that society, Father John Nolan, split with it in 1880 and formed the Gaelic Union, of which the president was The O'Conor Don, and whose members included Douglas Hyde and Michael Cusack.

[26] In November 1892 Douglas Hyde gave a lecture to the National Literary Society entitled "The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland.

Pan-Celticism was viewed with suspicion by many members because its leaders in Ireland, especially Lord Castletown, were closely associated with the Irish establishment.

"[40] Patrick Pearse said of the Irish Literary Theatre, recently founded by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, that it should be "strangled at birth".

[40] An tAthair Peadar Ua Laoghaire (Father Peter O'Leary), a parish priest from Castlelyons in County Cork, began contributing to the Gaelic Journal in 1894, and in November of that year he published the first instalment of Séadna, which was to become his best-known work.

[42] Patrick Pearse (Pádraig Mac Piarais), the editor of An Claidheamh Soluis—and later a revolutionary leader in the Easter Rising—wrote poetry, short stories and plays.

According to his entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, they deal with "isolation, conflict between good and evil, the tragedy of life, hatred, blindness, despair, and madness.

"[47] He wrote one novel, Deoraíocht (Exile), described by John T. Koch as a "strange and brooding psychological novel, the first of the genre in Irish", about a Connemara man living in London.

[44] Ó Conaire's works were controversial, addressing themes such as alcoholism and prostitution, which Ua Laoghaire and others within the movement found objectionable.