I joined Trinity’s School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies as an Assistant Professor in Irish earlier this year. Taking up the post felt like coming home: I read Modern Irish and History as an undergraduate in Trinity, was elected a Scholar in 2008, and I decided to remain in Trinity to do my PhD. My return to Trinity is particularly fortuitous because I have spent the past few years exploring the history of printing in the Irish language – a history in which our college looms large. (With the late Richard Sharpe, Professor of Diplomatic in Oxford, I co-authored a descriptive catalogue of printing in Irish down to 1871, which was published in 2020.) My interest in the early history of the Irish language in print dovetails with Trinity’s role as a world-centre in the research of Irish Bardic Poetry, the literature produced by the praise-poets employed by the aristocracy in the period 1200–1650. Bardic poetry had dominated the world of Irish-language letters for centuries before Elizabeth I gave money for the creation of an Irish font (the first cló Gaelach!) in 1563, and it quickly made the transition from manuscript to print: the first fruit of Elizabeth’s investment was probably the publication by reformers in Dublin of a bardic religious poem in 1571. The first full book they produced, a catechism which appeared the same year, begins with a short grammar of the language, drawing on the sophisticated grammatical tracts of the bardic schools. Elizabeth had hoped that her Irish font would be used to print the New Testament in Irish, but this project did not begin in earnest until Trinity was founded in 1592. The task was taken up by a small team based in college, overseen by Uilliam Ó Domhnaill, a native of Kilkenny and one of Trinity’s very first Scholars. Among the translators was Maoilín Óg Mac Bruaideadha, a famous bardic poet: I had occasion to mention him when writing my PhD (an edition of some bardic poems from manuscript), and I couldn’t but smile at the idea of a bardic poet working in Trinity four centuries earlier. One of the aspects of the early history of Irish printing that particularly appeals to me is its internationalism. (My first job after my PhD took me to the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany, where I worked on a project investigating ‘linguistic universals’, features shared by all languages.) We have a nice example in the work of Gofraidh Mac Domhnaill, a graduate of Trinity, who was employed in 1652 to preach in Irish in Carrickmines, Co Dublin, and in the same year published a brief introduction to the Irish language. Though this guide is deeply immersed in the native bardic tradition, it is also enriched by comparisons to English, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Like many of the Irish-language treasures held in our libraries – both in manuscript and print – this is a text crying out for further research. There is no shortage of work to be done. Click here for the Irish translation
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