Irish language outside Ireland
In the late 19th century, English became widespread in Ireland, but Irish-speakers had already shown their ability to deal with modern political and social changes through their own language at a time when emigration was strongest.
Many arrived from such counties as Mayo, Cork, Waterford and Limerick to Liverpool, Bristol, and the towns of South Wales and Lancashire, and often moved on to London.
[13] In the aftermath of the Second World War there were a large number of Irish working in Britain in the construction industry, rebuilding the cities destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs, and as nurses.
[14] While rebuilding the bombed damaged cities of postwar Britain, Dónall Mac Amhlaigh, a native of Barna, Connemara, kept an Irish-language diary, which he published as, Dialann Deoraí.
While living in Liverpool, Stowell attended Irish language classes arranged by Conradh na Gaeilge,[15] as he felt that they were "the next best thing to Manx."
Stowell ultimately became fluent in Irish and taught classes in the language in Liverpool, although not without difficulty during the Troubles:And when the troubles came in Northern Ireland it was a bit difficult because people threatened the office in Liverpool about the class in Irish and it was....well they had to laugh in the end because I said, 'Change the name to Celtic Studies,' and they did that and they made other threats because they thought that was the football club Celtic in Glasgow.
The writer and linguist George Borrow gives an account (1851) of his father venturing into the Irish-speaking slums of London in the early years of the nineteenth century.
[19] The Gaeilgeoir community in Victorian era London is particularly important for having produced the prolific poet Tomás 'an tSneachta' Ó Conchubair, whose literary translation of Book I of John Milton's Paradise Lost into Modern Irish was made c.1860.
During the 21st century, however, linguists discovered that several of Donnchadh Ruadh's poems in the Irish language Gaelicize many words and terms known to be unique to Newfoundland English.
[31] In Philadelphia, County Galway-born lexicographer Maitias Ó Conbhuí spent thirty years attempting to compile a dictionary of the Irish language, which remained unfinished upon his death in 1842.
[32] The Irish language poet and monoglot speaker Pádraig Phiarais Cúndún (1777–1856), a native of Ballymacoda, County Cork, emigrated to America around 1826 and settled with his family on a homestead near Deerfield, New York.
[34] Cúndún's many works of American poetry composed in Munster Irish have survived through the letters he wrote to his relatives and former neighbors in Ballymacoda and due to the fact that his son, "Mr. Pierce Condon of South Brooklyn", arranged for two of his father's poems to be published by the Irish-American in 1858.
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.
"[37] In 1881, "An Gaodhal [ga]", the first newspaper anywhere which was largely in Irish, was founded as part of the Gaelic revival by Mícheál Ó Lócháin and the Philo-Celtic Society chapter in Brooklyn, New York.
According to Tomás Ó hÍde, however, old issues of An Gaodhal, while a priceless resource, are very difficult for modern readers of Irish to understand due to the publishers' use of Gaelic type and an obsolete orthography.
[42] Also during the Gaelic revival, a regular Irish-language column titled Ón dhomhan diar, generally about the hardships faced by immigrants to the United States, was contributed to Patrick Pearse's An Claidheamh Soluis by Pádraig Ó hÉigeartaigh (1871–1936).
Ó hÉigeartaigh, an immigrant from Uíbh Ráthach, County Kerry, worked in the clothing business and lived with his family in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Although the early authors of the Gaelic revival preferred to write in the literary language once common to both Ireland and Scotland and felt scorn for the oral poetry of the Gaeltachtaí, Ó hÉigeartaigh drew upon that very tradition to express his grief and proved that it could still be used effectively by a 20th-century poet.
Ó Súilleabháin, whom literary scholar Ciara Ryan has dubbed "Butte's Irish Bard", was born into the Irish-speaking fishing community upon Inishfarnard, a now-uninhabited island off the Beara Peninsula in West County Cork.
In 1905, Ó Súilleabháin sailed aboard the ocean liner RMS Lucania from Queenstown to Ellis Island and settled in the heavily Irish-American mining community in Butte, Montana.
In the State of Montana, however, he learned through classes taught by the Butte chapter of Conradh na Gaeilge to read and write in his native language for the first time.
Seán Ó Súilleabháin remained a very influential figure in Butte's Irish-American literary, Irish republican, and Pro-Fianna Fáil circles for the rest of his life.
[44] In the O'Sullivan Collection in the Butte-Silver Bow Archives, Ó Súilleabháin is also revealed to have transcribed many folksongs and oral poetry from his childhood memories of Inishfarnard and the Beara Peninsula.
Sars") of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena, his father read the Aisling poem Dáil Éireann aloud during Éamon de Valera's 1919 visit to Butte.
[46] Seán Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin's papers in the Butte-Silver Bow Archives also include many transcriptions of the verse of other local Irish-language poets.
One example is the poem Amhrán na Mianach ("The Song of the Mining"), which, "lays bare the hardships of a miner's life", was composed in Butte by Séamus Feiritéar (1897–1919), his brother Mícheál, and their childhood friend Seán Ruiséal.
After making a fortune mining gold from his claim in the Yukon, Mac Gabhann returned to Cloughaneely, married, and bought the estate of a penniless Anglo-Irish landlord, and raised a family there.
The association has won several prestigious prizes (the last in 2009 in a global competition run by Glór na nGael and sponsored by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs).
[76] Two collections of his poetry have been published by Coiscéim: Corraí na Nathrach (2017)[77] and Rogha (2022)[78] Julie Breathnach-Banwait is an Australian citizen of Irish origin living in Western Australia.
[87] Such migrants tended to be younger sons and daughters of the larger tenant farmers and leaseholders, but labourers also came, their fares paid by sheep-farmers seeking skilled shepherds.
