"All creeda and all classes"? Just who made up the Gaelic League?

Timothy G. McMahon

SCHOLARS studying the role of the Gaelic revival in recasting modern Irish identity have generally focused their research on three main areas: specific controversies between Irish-Irelanders and Anglo-Irish litterateurs; descriptions of ideological polemics (such as Douglas Hyde's "The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland" and D.P. Moran's The Philosophy of Irish-Ireland); or the careers of a relatively few revivalists who gained prominence in public affairs. (1) In the main these treatments have failed to investigate who joined the major organizations associated with the revival, including the membership of the Gaelic League, choosing instead to extrapolate rather broadly from a few incidents or individuals about the part that the revival played in redefining the everyday lives of Irish men and women.

On the other hand, Tom Garvin and John Hutchinson have offered important and somewhat broader interpretations of the Gaelic revival. The former has claimed that the Dublin-based league was initially dominated by a coterie of "middle-class scholars and dilettantes," only to be overtaken by a lower-middle-class cabal whose narrow political aims distinguished them from the more broad-minded founders of the movement. (2) Hutchinson, meanwhile, has argued that the league in its mass phase became "a movement of the relatively educated young against both the established and relatively uneducated strata--farmers, publicans, and shopkeepers." (3) Men and women of the younger generation, according to Hutchinson, turned to Gaelicism (and ultimately to Sinn Fein) because they were frustrated by limited career opportunities and faced the choice of being incorporated into a modern "scientific state" or remaining loyal to their traditional culture.

Such conclusions situate the revival in the mainstream of European romantic or reactionary nationalist movements, particularly those of central and eastern Europe, where researchers have long identified members of the middle and lower-middle classes as key ideologues, organizers, and participants. Essential to these portrayals is a sense that men and women joined nationalist movements precisely because they were caught "in the middle": Although relatively well off in terms of their educations or their earnings, they recognized that their potential for significant social and political advancement was limited by the circumstances of their respective multinational states. Ultimately, when a movement developed under such conditions, widespread recognition of "blocked mobility" created the potential for revolutionary--and paradoxically conservative--events like the Anglo-Irish war of 1919-21. (4)

But three objections can be raised to this line of argument. First, Hutchinson and Garvin base their conclusions on virtually no empirical study of league membership and therefore on the untested assumption that the social composition of the league changed after an unspecified period of time, so that frustrated lower-middle-class members preponderated. Second, even if such a change occurred, it is--as Crossick, Haupt, and Koshar have shown--short-sighted to assume that persons of the lower-middle classes responded to the uncertainty of their situations in an explosive manner. (5) Third, the claims of Garvin and Hutchinson run contrary to the contemporary claim made repeatedly by league proponents that they appealed to "all creeds and all classes" in Ireland.

All of this suggests several questions central to understanding the impact of the Gaelic revival: Who joined the Gaelic League? Did the character of its membership change over time? And did the league have an impact in Irish-speaking districts, or did it remain solely an urban phenomenon confined primarily to the eastern half of Ireland? As will become clear, the answers to these questions are interrelated. After beginning with an estimate of the size of the organization at its height, I investigate the social class, gender, and religious backgrounds of several hundred Gaelic Leaguers. What these data indicate is both that the revival was very much like its European counterparts in terms of the social composition of its leadership and that it was more representative of turn-of-the-century urban Ireland than has hitherto been appreciated. Moreover, as will be seen, this very representativeness was the result, at least in part, of calculated appeals by the leadership of the league rather than simply of some predilection of various elements of society to join the movement. Finally and ironically, these calculations had the unintended effect of mitigating the impact of the revival in the very areas that it was supposed to influence most--the Irish-speaking districts.

Answering the question of who joined the league is perhaps the most difficult issue because specific information about membership is scattered and often problematic. For example, the original rosters of league branches are housed in two separate locations and display numerous weaknesses as source material. (6) Although the logs contain some valuable data, such as the names of branch officers and the dates on which a branch (or craobh) affiliated with the central executive committee (or Coisde Gnotha), the information was not entered systematically. Thus, when an officer was replaced through resignation or election, his or her name was simply crossed out and the name of the successor written in, without any recorded date. Branches were also listed sequentially, based on their date of affiliation. If, as often happened, a branch folded and later reaffiliated with a new name or new officers, the "new" craobh appeared as a separate entry. Further, branches outside Ireland, including those in Britain, the empire, or the Americas, are listed along with those in Ireland. The resulting number of craobhacha included in the final account runs to more than 1,500, while the actual number of domestic branches at any given time was considerably smaller than this total. (7) Even after the national congress (or Ard Fheis) determined to professionalize its headquarters staff in 1902, the best-informed contemporaries, such as league secretary Padraig O Dalaigh and treasurer Stiofan Bairead, inconsistently reported the number of affiliated branches. (8)

Indeed, it may never be possible to agree on the precise number of branches in any given year, since those doing the counting have compared apples to oranges. Certain contemporary writers (and historians relying on them) apparently assumed that the final entry number at the time of viewing the log represented the strength of the organization. (9) More recently, O Fearail and O'Neill have considered only those branches affiliated in a given year, but they used different criteria for their counts: O Fearail included nondomestic foundations in his 1906 total of 964, while O'Neill focused only on Irish foundations for his 1910 tally of 548. (10) The best contemporary estimates available--that is, the official statistics of the league itself--indicate that the largest single-year total of domestic branches came in 1908, when there were 671 two years after the overall peak of 964. (11) On the other hand, if one notes the growing stream of complaints from headquarters about the lack of financial support from these branches, the league was effectively weaker in 1908 than it had been in 1906. (12)

What can be established beyond doubt is the general trend of growth and decline in the number of branches. After expanding modestly between 1893 and 1899 (when there were only 80 total branches at the time of the Oireachtas), the league quintupled in size by 1902 and continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace, between 1903 and 1908. Thereafter its organization contracted until it experienced a new period of growth during the Irish war of independence. (13) At its height the league had at least one branch in every Irish county. It was thinnest on the ground in the midlands, where counties Leitrim, Longford, and Queen's had only one branch each in 1903, while the highest concentrations of branches were in counties with large Gaeltacht regions (such as Cork, Kerry, Donegal, Clare, Galway, and Mayo) and large metropolitan areas (such as counties Antrim and Dublin). (14)

If one accepts the figure of 671 branches as representing the highest domestic total, what does that mean in terms of individual membership? Mac Aodha believed that the league had about 50,000 members in 1904, and that it may have grown to as many as 75,000 at its height. (15) He does not cite a source for this information, though he may have drawn his 1904 figure from a lead article in An Claidheamh Soluis, in which the editor Patrick Pearse asserted that there were 750 branches in the United Kingdom, with an average membership of 70, which he rendered as totaling "upwards of 50,000" individuals. (16)

Pearse's pronouncement is clearly overstated, as the number of branches did not approach the figure he claimed for several years. His methodology is suggestive, however, and the average membership he posits may be near the mark. Constitutionally, local activists needed to enroll at least fifteen members before they could affiliate with the central body, but it was not unknown to have branches with as many as 500 people. (17) Not surprisingly, larger branches were concentrated in big urban areas. A tabulation of league strength put together by the Special Branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.) in December 1901 estimated membership at slightly more than 15,000 individuals in some 258 branches, rendering an average of 58 members per branch. If one looks at individual administrative areas, excluding those in which there was only one branch, one finds that those areas with the highest average branch memberships included larger urban centers: County Louth (174), where branches were concentrated around Drogheda; the West Riding of County Galway, including Galway city (143); the city of Belfast (100); the East Riding of County Cork, which included Cork city (95); and County Waterford (90, where branches were concentrated at Waterford city and at Dungarvan. (18)

The impression created by these data is substantiated when one considers branches in the city of Dublin, which were not included in the R.I.C. tabulation but which also had a higher average membership than the constabulary sample. The largest was the Central Branch (or Ard Chraobh), which had more than 440 members as early as November 1899, and which increased that total by 153 over the next seven months. (19) A more general gauge of the Dublin branches is the size of contingents marching in the city's annual Language Week procession. For 1904, when press reports first contained relevant data, the average branch contingent was 82--roughly 40 percent higher than the constabulary figure. (20)

Still, O'Neill has argued persuasively that nearly 70 percent of league branches around the country were located in communities with populations of fewer than 2,000 people, and it is likely that the larger urban branches brought the overall average up to the 58 in the constabulary sample. (21) Hence, Pearse's proposed figure is probably toward the high end of the likely spectrum of involvement. More conservatively, one can postulate a range of average membership from 50 to 70 members. And given 671 branches in 1908, this would place the single-year high-member total at between 33,550 and 47,000 people.

As useful as such calculations may be in gauging league size at a single point in time, there are several reasons why one should be cautious when extrapolating conclusions from them about the overall size and social composition of the membership. Most significantly, membership changed from one year to another. I have already noted that it was not unusual for branches to fail and then reaffiliate at a later date, often with only a modest overlapping of membership. The early experiences of the league in Galway city are illustrative. Founded in February 1894, the Galway branch had ceased to function in the middle of 1896. Local enthusiasts revived it at the end of that year, and by March 1897 it included fifty active members, who held classes three nights per week and a general meeting on Sundays. (22) In 1904, Father Peadar Ua Laoghaire despaired of this pattern in the pages of the Leader. (23) "I have seen a great many branches of the Gaelic League started in different parts of the country during the past ten years," he commented. "I have seen in connection with them one curious fact: It is the number of them that have been, from time to time, `revived,' `re-established,' `re-opened,' etc., etc. I have been watching those words as they have made their appearance in the reports of the progress of the movement. They are ugly words, and they tell an ugly story." (24)

Several factors militated against stability. Occasionally, sectarian concerns discouraged both Protestants and Catholics from attending branches. In South Galway and the Glens of Antrim, for instance, revivalists reported that priests feared that the league was secretly a Protestant prosyletizing body akin to those which had printed Irish-language pamphlets earlier in the nineteenth century. In County Down, meanwhile, Orange-men employed a variety of intimidatory tactics to keep people away from meetings--surrounding branch sites, beating drums, yelling blasphemies, and shooting off revolvers. (25) Class tensions also dissuaded some people from joining the league or from remaining associated with it for more than a short period of time. Gaelic enthusiasts repeatedly expressed the concern that members of the legal and medical professions in particular showed little active interest in the revival. Moran blamed their aloofness on snobbery and suggested that the league adjust its branch structure along class lines. "Birds of a social feather," he argued, "ought to have Irish gatherings and branches of their own, for they insist on flocking together." (26)

In fact, a pattern of class-specific or occupation-specific branch formation did take place in larger towns and cities, about which more will be said shortly, but in smaller towns and villages the demographics and the status assumptions of the era did not allow for such adjustments. Several months after offering his "birds-of-a-social-feather" formula, Moran complained splenetically about the impossibility of providing different branches for the "forty different grades of society" in the average country town. (27) To an outsider these gradations may have seemed nonexistent because, as one acute observer of town life put it, "one class shades off into another, and there is no rational excuse for social divisions." (28) Nonetheless, in spite of having similar incomes, tastes, and cultural outlets, townspeople and villagers practiced a rigid, status-based exclusivity: They "firmly and decisively refuse to associate with each other on no grounds whatsoever, except that a clerk in a bank and his wife `do not know' a clerk in a land agent's office; while the clerk in a land agent's office `does not know' a shop assistant, even though the latter asserts his quality by calling himself `a young gentleman in a business house.'" (29)

If sectarianism and class pretensions contributed to turnover, the major factor was simply the indifference of average members. When branch activities shifted from propagandist lectures or dances to classroom work, numbers dwindled because most people were drawn into the league for the craic associated with it. Both activists and outside observers noted, for example, that branches often became dissipated after starting with a flourish. In practice, the number of paying members in a branch typically dwarfed the number of language students. In June 1900, although the Dublin central branch reported a membership of about 600, its nine classes enrolled just 190 students. (30) The following year in Skerries, more than 500 people attended the meeting which inaugurated a local craobh, but only 68 attended the twice-weekly language classes. (31) In 190, according to the president of the 150-member-strong branch in Killarney, the average attendance at classes ranged from 70 to 100, but only 30 students "showed a real desire to learn the language." "The social side of the branch," he concluded, "seemed to hold a greater interest for the members in general than the more studious side of its activities." (32) Of course, a relatively small percentage of enthusiastic students learned a fair amount of book Irish and attended meetings regularly, but their very zeal drove away the mere curiosity-seekers. In 1907, Moran warned that the "fanatic Gael cannot draw the English-speaking districts; on the other hand, he may repel them." (33)

Recognition of this fluid membership situation leads to two very important conclusions about the extent and impact of the revival in early-twentieth-century Ireland. On the one hand, it meant that many more people joined the league than even the previously calculated single-year-high total suggested, for the people paying dues in one year were not necessarily the same people who paid in the next. A report from the very active Nenagh branch outlines this process succinctly: "[We] can boast but few proficient Irish speakers, but this result is easily explained by the fact that most students attending Irish classes do so only for one session or two at the most in succession and are constantly being replaced by new beginners." (34) In fact, the market for the most rudimentary instructional materials was brisk, while that for more advanced texts was much slower. If we compare the circulations of the various volumes of Father O'Growney's Simple Lessons in Irish series (the most widely used basic texts for those beginning their studies in the league), we find that the total for Volume One dwarfed that for Volume Five. By 1903, when the forty-second printing of Volume One appeared, some 320,000 copies were in circulation; in 1901-02 alone, the league sold 135,000 copies of it! By contrast, in 1902 the executive issued just the fourth printing of Volume Five, bringing its total circulation to a mere 23,000, or 17 percent of the sales for Volume One in the preceding year. (35) Obviously, not all who purchased the Simple Lessons paid dues to the league, but significantly more Irish men and women than the estimated 47,000 for 1908 had been willing to pay for their "O'Growney" and presumably would also have joined a branch for a period of time. Also, because the propaganda of the revival included very public events, like the aforementioned Language Week processions, the Oireachtas, and local festivals and concerts, participation at one level or another in Irish-Ireland activities was even broader still.

On the other hand, turnover meant that most individuals experienced the revival in an unsystematic, limited, and ephemeral way. Officers of the league and the editors of An Claidheamh Soluis repeatedly complained that members did not understand the aims of the organization, most especially its first object, which was to use Irish as a spoken language. "This point is sometimes forgotten, and sometimes slurred over," observed Eoghan O Neachtain in 1902. (36) "We think it [i.e., speaking Irish] is of sufficient importance to be printed and hung up in the rooms of every craobh. It would often prove a healthy reminder to those who are addicted overmuch to talking in English and to magnifying minor points into great questions." (37) Two years later, Pearse acknowledged that even some of the most earnest revivalists "have nevertheless no adequate, accurate, coherent idea of the philosophy of the movement. They have faith, but they are either unable to attempt a justification of their faith or else seek to justify it by arguments which are untenable." (38) Outside the ranks of those earnest few, where turnover was rapid, such apparently spurious arguments were inevitable and led to what journalist Frederick Ryan called the "curious" phenomenon that people who adhered to diametrically opposed political or cultural programs simultaneously supported the league as a boon to their own interests. (39)

In practice, therefore, the impact of the revival cannot be understood by assuming that the ideas espoused by Hyde or Moran permeated Irish society through the coherent conditioning of a generation. The terms "Irish-Irelander" and "Gaelic Leaguer" must account for those whose interest in the language was piqued enough to learn what the Irish refer to as the "cupla focal" ("few words"), but who came to see the "minor points" of the revival as of nearly equal importance to language preservation.

And who were these men and women? Waters and O'Neill have made attempts to answer this question. Waters derived his data from a series of biographical profiles of thirty-one Irish-Ireland leaders that appeared in W.P. Ryan's newspaper, the Irish Peasant. These people were a solidly middle-class, highly educated, and energetic group; about half of them came from peasant backgrounds; and three of the thirty-one were Protestants. (40) Waters also cautioned that "the people in this group were not especially typical of the population of Ireland, nor even of the whole Gaelic League membership." (41) Meanwhile, O'Neill compared the membership of the Ballinasloe branch to census returns, identifying 62 of the 125 people who joined the branch in 1902 and 1903. Among others, they included 24 engaged in commercial trade and shopkeeping, 11 professionals, and 12 skilled tradesmen. O'Neill made no attempt, however, to pay attention to gradations of status and power within these broad categories. For example, half of the people in his commercial-trade and shopkeeping category were shop assistants, and their situations would have been markedly different from those of the dozen shopkeepers in his sample. Intriguingly, the presence of both shopkeepers and shop assistants in the same branch contradicts Hutchinson's contention that the young lower intelligentsia, as represented by the assistants, joined the league as a reaction against the established elements, including the shopkeepers. Perhaps most surprisingly, O'Neill found only two clerks and one civil servant, and he noted the presence of two domestic servants and a single agricultural laborer. Thus the picture presented by the Ballinasloe sample appears a bit more diverse than Waters's leadership cadre, though in the main it was still a fairly solid middle-class constituency. (42)

But how typical are these results of the league as a whole? To answer this question one needs to develop a more extensive and geographically diverse sample of members. Given what has been established about turnover, any sample must be viewed as a mere snapshot of the membership of the league; therefore, some attempt must also be made to compare membership over time. In order to make a more extensive examination of league officers and members, I have utilized a variety of sources not employed by either O'Neill or Waters. In addition to consulting the 1901 census returns, I have turned to local directories, which were published annually and which therefore contained information about individuals who had either changed addresses or died between the time they were recorded as joining the Gaelic League and the time of census enumeration. Further, I have benefited enormously from the work of specialist writers who have published numerous works in Irish in honor of the centenary of the organization. The five-volume collection of biographical dictionaries edited by Diarmuid Breathnach and Maire Ni Mhurchu was particularly valuable as it contains entries for dozens of league officers and paid employees. (43)

I have divided membership information into two main categories--officers and general members. Included in the first category are some of the more prominent names associated with the revival, such as Douglas Hyde, Eoin MacNeill, Father Peadar Ua Laoghaire, Father Patrick Dinneen, and Agnes O'Farrelly. For the purpose of analyzing this officer category, I have chosen to examine two sets of national leaders: the executive committees for 1903-04 and for 1913-14, which were elected during two distinct periods of the early history of the league. (44) In 1903 the organization was still expanding, albeit at a slower pace than during the previous three years, and political factionalism was not yet a great concern among the leadership. (45) The Ard Fheis in 1913, on the other hand, took place after the organization had been declining in size for several years; its treasury needed constant infusions of cash from American supporters; and its councils were divided between more moderate league leaders, who wished the organization to remain nonpolitical, and those who, like Thomas Ashe, wanted it to take overtly nationalist positions on political questions. Ashe's biographer has suggested that the militants carried the day in 1913, but Ashe himself remained frustrated by the continued moderation of the executive and by its refusal to address political questions throughout 1914. (46) By comparing the social characteristics of committees elected under such different circumstances, I hope to begin testing the assumptions of Garvin and Hutchinson.

In almost every measurable way these two samples were quite similar. For example, both committees included only a small number of Protestant members--two in the first set and three in the second. (47) The range of ages for members was also comparable on the two committees (from 27 to 67 years old in 1903, and from 28 to 70 years old in 1913). (48) The 1903 committee did, however, tend to be slightly younger on average, with a mean age of 41.8 years as compared to 44.1 years in 1913. (The median age was 41 in 1903 and 43 in 1913.) One factor contributing to the higher mean and median ages of the second group is the significant overlap of members who served on both committees: seven men and one woman appear in both samples, and obviously, they were each a decade older the second time around.

Furthermore, both committees were overwhelmingly male: in 1903-04, 34 of the 38 who served (almost 90 percent) were men; ten years later, there was virtually no change, as the corresponding figures were 30 out of 34 (88 percent). (49) From year to year the number of women serving on the executive varied, but the number never grew to more than seven members of the committee. (50) At the same time women members of the executive attended meetings with greater regularity than many of their better known male counterparts. For example, between 1903 and 1913, Agnes O'Farrelly attended more than 81 percent of the executive-committee meetings. By comparison, Douglas Hyde attended only 43 percent of the meetings during the same period. (51) Women members of the executive also became prominent leaders of several phases of the revival. For example, Agnes O'Farrelly and Nelly O'Brien were instrumental in founding and serving as headmistresses of two of the summer colleges set up by the league--O'Farrelly at Cloghaneely, Co. Donegal, and O'Brien at Carrigaholt, Co. Clare.

If one looks at the occupations and family backgrounds of the committee persons, one finds significant similarities but also some notable differences between the two committees. In general, committee members pursued similar occupations. In Table One I have divided their occupations into five categories corresponding to those of Daly and Armstrong and based on the classification of occupations used by the 1851 English census commissioners. (52) On the surface there is little difference between these data sets: Neither committee had any members in Categories IV or V (the semiskilled and unskilled sectors); the later committee had only a slightly smaller representation of Category I (professionals and clergymen) members and slightly higher representations of Category II (employers and managers) and Category III (skilled artisans and black-coated workers) members. Because the sample sizes are so small, however, such differentials are not very significant, and the breakdown does not seem to indicate any marked increase in the relative importance of lower-middle-class people (who correspond roughly to Category III) on the committees. (53)

Still, there are signs that the later committee consisted of individuals who were both relatively more urbanized and relatively more provincial than the earlier committee. For example, while one-third of the members of both committees had been raised as native-speakers of Irish--a marker of a rural upbringing in Ireland in the later nineteenth century, (54) fewer members of the second committee (seven) actually came from farming backgrounds than had in 1903 (ten). Moreover, almost 79 percent of the members in 1903 evinced signs of upward mobility from their parents or had had substantial living or working experiences outside Ireland. By contrast, only about 65 percent of the members for 1913 had had similar experiences, and nearly a third of these upwardly mobile members were holdovers from the prior committee. (55) While this final contrast may suggest that the 1913 executive was comparatively less cosmopolitan than its predecessor, such a hypothesis would certainly require further investigation before being proffered for acceptance. To judge from these specific data, it would also be wrong to conclude that the later committee was necessarily more prone to political controversy, particularly given what has already been said about the continuing commitment of the league leadership to political neutrality.

With regard to the general membership, I have focused on Belfast, Cork, and Dublin because the sources consulted contain better information for members in these large urban areas, and particularly for Dublin. (56) Individuals from throughout Ireland initially joined the movement through the Dublin headquarters, and the league published their names and addresses in its first annual report in 1894. (57) Out of a recorded membership of 330, the list included 143 Dubliners and 81 people collectively from Cork city and county. Moreover, the Belfast Gaelic League recorded information about 177 new members between 1895 and 1897 in its branch minute book, which was published in 1995. (58) Lastly, between March and November 1899, An Claidheamh Soluis carried numerous reports from the Dublin Central Branch in which the names and addresses of 168 more new members appeared. (59) Information gleaned about these 570 individuals will serve as the statistical corpus of the following discussion.

To begin with, members tended to be young, but the statistical breakdown suggests that the league also attracted more mature men and women than previous accounts have assumed. (60) While nearly 37 percent of those sampled were 24 years of age or younger, more than 26 percent were aged 40 or older. The mean age was 32.6 years, and the median was 30, and members ranged in age from 6 to 76 years. (61) This broad age range is substantiated by anecdotal information from throughout the country. In South Galway, league classes included young schoolchildren who studied alongside septuagenarians, and on Achill Island old men frequented the children's classes, reading newspapers aloud and helping to teach pronunciation and grammar. (62) O Cobhthaigh noted a similar generational mix in Dublin, but he claimed that the intraclass instruction worked both ways: "It is often amusing, when it is not pathetic, to see grey-haired men and women stumbling through the first rudiments of the language while children solemnly correct their mistakes." (63) In short, when the "young men of twenty" went to language school, they did so alongside people who were of their parents' generation.

Those recorded as joining the league in its early years were overwhelmingly men--fully 85 percent of the sample. To some degree, however, the impression created by this aggregate figure is misleading. If one breaks down the numbers to account for the period in which persons joined, one finds that the number of women increased as the organization found its legs. Of the 85 women in this sample, only 9 had joined the Dublin and Cork branches in 1893-94. By contrast, 27 (or about 15 percent) of the Belfast cohort and 49 (nearly 30 percent) of the later Dublin set were women. And in the case of Cork, which had just one woman among its first 85 members, a specific factor accounts in part for women s apparent lack of involvement: many of the earliest adherents in Cork were members of the Catholic Young Men's Society, an organization that did not include women among its members. By the time that the central body sent representatives to Cork in April 1895, a large number of ladies" attended the public meeting. (64)

More important, reports from throughout the country indicate that women made up significant pluralities--if not outright majorities--of those regularly attending the branches over time. As early as September 1899, the Limerick branch reported that the "ladies easily outnumber the men two to one." In Lisdoonvarna later that fall the majority of those who enrolled in the branch were women, while in June 1900 an account from County Monaghan stated that the women students in Castleblayney were "much more serious, earnest, and persevering in the cultivation of Irish than the young men of the town." Almost three years later, when mo members reestablished the branch at Cahirciveen, Co. Kerry, the classes consisted "mostly of young ladies, boys and girls, the young men being conspicuous by their absence." (65)

Although the evidence is somewhat sketchy, there were a variety of reasons for women's involvement in the Gaelic revival. Recreation was clearly an important draw for women members, as it was for their male counterparts. The Sligo-born author Mary Maguire Colum, who joined a Dublin branch while attending University College, remarked of her experience that "like every activity in life that is a success, it was part play. A good time was had by all." (66) Women also found league committees and classes to be more democratic than Irish society as a whole. (67) Earlier, I noted that women were among the most prominent leaders of the Gaelic movement, even though they were in a minority on the executive of the league. In a country where women first received the right to vote in 1898 (and even then only in local elections), and where the largest parliamentary party would not back calls for women's suffrage out of fear that such action might derail the Home Rule cause, the Gaelic League encouraged women's participation. Local notables, such as Lady Augusta Gregory in County Galway, Lady Esmonde in County Wexford, and the Honourable Mary Spring Rice in County Limerick, founded and led branches in their communities. (68) Women who were on the cutting edge of professional education, as well as those whose careers focused on advanced nationalist politics, were also drawn to the league as an outlet for their talents. Thus Mary Hayden, a member of the faculty and the senate of the National University of Ireland, "rejoiced in the freedom" that she found in the nonsectarian, nonpolitical, and mixed-sex activities of the league. (69) Meanwhile, Jennie Wyse Power, whose political engagement began in the Ladies' Land League of the early 1880s and continued through the foundation of the Irish Free State, was elected to the committee of the Dublin Central Branch in 1900. Beginning in 1902 she served on the industrial subcommittee of the Coisde Gnotha and as an ex-officio member of the Oireachtas planning committee. (70)

Of course, single professional women and married women working outside the home were not the norm in early twentieth-century Ireland, and for all their openness, most Gaelic Leaguers accepted and reinforced traditional gender roles. It was not unusual to find branches forming separate classes for women students, even when general meetings and social events remained mixed. Similarly, women's participation in the planning of major league events was occasionally limited to an auxiliary role. For instance, in 1902 the committee of the Leinster Feis--which included men and women--established a separate "ladies'" subcommittee specifically "to deal with decorations, [the] making of badges, &c." (71)

More fundamentally, league members openly called for women to "Irishize" Ireland through their positions in the home rather than by challenging established gender roles in the public sphere. The most prominent such advocate was the novelist Mary E.L. Butler, a child of privilege, who balked at the politics of her conservative Catholic family after reading a copy of John Mitchel's Jail Journal and became affiliated with the nascent Sinn Fein movement. (72) In 1900 she published a pamphlet entitled Irishwomen and the Home Language in which she declared that "a language movement is, of all movements, one in which [a] woman is fitted to take part." (73) This was so, according to Butler, because she believed that most Irish women shared her distaste for the "'women's rights' class of work":

   Let it be thoroughly understood that when Irishwomen are invited to take
   part in the language movement, they are not required to plunge into the
   vortex of public life. No, the work which they best can do is work to be
   done at home. Their mission is to make the homes of Ireland Irish. If the
   homes are Irish, the whole country will be Irish. The spark struck on the
   hearthstone will fire the soul of the nation. (74)

Butler consistently invoked "angel of the house" imagery in her writings, berating educators who failed to instill patriotism in the future mothers of Ireland and extolling women who made sacrifices on behalf of their families and the nation. (75) But as Frank Biletz has pointed out, her arguments were not as conservative as they initially appear. Like Moran and Hyde, Butler did not view nationality as limited to political activity; instead she believed that by championing women in the private sphere, she would expand their role in shaping the "spiritual, intellectual, and economic aspects" of the nation's future. (76) With her focus on the home, therefore, Butler presented Irish women with a picture of themselves which was both personally empowering and acceptable to the wider society. (77)

One woman who dramatically exemplified this early twentieth-century Irish via media was the schoolteacher Jennie Flanagan. Flanagan was twenty-one years old when she joined the Central Branch of the league as part of the 1899 cohort. The daughter of a carpenter, she became one of the most prominent language teachers in Dublin and at Gaelic summer colleges throughout the country. (78) Years later, Sean O'Casey recalled that Flanagan had lectured to his working-class branch in Drumcondra on the role of women in society. When challenged by a member of the audience that "the woman's place was the kitchen," she responded that "the woman's place was an equal place in every movement, national, social, and political, with the men." (79) O'Casey also lamented that Flanagan "ceased to be heard in any movement" after marrying one of her former pupils, Eamon de Valera, in 1910. (80) But this reading of the situation is incorrect and most likely reflects the passage of time and O'Casey's personal enmity toward "the Long Fellow." Sinead Bean de Valera--as she came to be known--continued to teach in Gaelic colleges and to act as a judge in festival competitions even after the birth of her first two children in 1911 and 1912. In spite of her public activities, she was, according to one of her husband's biographers, a "classic Irish housewife and mother of the period "gentle and self-effacing outside the home but a power within the family. (81) A contemporary biographer, meanwhile, recalled that Sinead and Eamon "were to be met constantly in the places where the enthusiasts of the `Irish-Ireland' movement congregated, talking Irish to each other as far as a limited vocabulary would allow, buying nothing that was not of Irish manufacture, and taking an active part in all the social and educational gatherings organised by the Gaelic League." (82) When her husband's military and political activities took him away from home and family, she did withdraw from much of her language activities. Nevertheless, in addition to raising her six children and steadfastly supporting her husband's political endeavors, she found time in the 1930s to begin publishing dozens of short stories and plays for children in Irish. (83) Thus, as Flanagan/de Valera's career suggests, acceptance of a more traditional career path in the home did not preclude women from contributing to the cultural life of the country.

There is another way in which her story is typical of Gaelic Leaguers generally: she was an upwardly mobile child of the lower middle classes. In Table Two, I have collected occupational data gathered about 191 members of the league, and because more than two-thirds of them came from the two Dublin cohorts, I have included Mary Daly's occupational breakdown of the city as a point of reference. (84)

Two points are striking about these figures. First, Categories IV and V--the semiskilled and unskilled sectors--are overwhelmingly under-represented: with the exception of a single domestic servant in the Dublin cohort from 1899, they simply had not joined the league. Second, Categories I, II, and III are dramatically over-represented.

Given that Category I includes professionals and clergy and that Category II is made up of employers and managers, it is perhaps not surprising to find them joining a movement which has been portrayed as the preserve of "middle-class scholars and dilettantes" in its early years. But the presence of so many Category III persons in the sample is truly noteworthy. This category corresponds roughly to the lower middle classes, as it includes skilled artisans and black-coated workers (i.e., clerks, minor civil servants, teachers, and shop assistants). Their very presence in such numbers--making up 55 percent of the sample--refutes the claim made by Garvin and Hutchinson that the lower middle classes became a significant presence only after the league had developed into a mass-based organization. It also raises serious questions about the assertion that the move to revolutionary politics within the league followed the influx of lower-middle-class members. They were clearly present during the "liberal" early years of the revival.

If one breaks down the sample to account for the location and the date at which members joined, one can also draw conclusions about the manner in which "membership drives" affected provincial-branch make-up and about the impact of local conditions on membership. In Table Three, I have split out the individual cohorts to reflect the percentage of members in each occupational category by location and, in the case of Dublin, by time frame.

It is noteworthy that the percentage of professionals and clergy is higher in the later Dublin cohort and in both the Belfast and the Cork cohorts than in the earliest Dublin membership group. Moreover, there is a large drop-off in the percentage of employers and managers in the later Dublin cohort, which distinguishes this portion of the sample from the other three. And lastly, one finds that Category III persons continue to make up the largest single occupational grouping in each locality, though they are relatively more plentiful in the later Dublin sample and significantly less so in both the Belfast and Cork cohorts than in either of the Dublin groups.

What accounts for these distinctions? Three explanations appear likely. First, one should recognize that the Belfast and Cork samples were smaller than both of the Dublin samples, and this size differential may account in part for the apparently higher concentrations of professionals in those localities. Because "substantial" personalities are more easily identified in sources like directories, the relative percentage of persons in Categories I and II is necessarily higher in Cork and Belfast than in Dublin. It is likely that if we were able to identify more individuals in Belfast and Cork, Category III may have accounted for a higher percentage of local membership than is apparent in the present data set. (86)

Second, there was also a built-in reason for professionals and clergymen to be even more prominent in the league outside Dublin. As the organization expanded, it drew disproportionately on local notables to be the cornerstones of provincial branches, and this was by design. In 1893, in the article that preceded his call to found the league, Eoin MacNeill outlined a plan whereby Gaelic enthusiasts would appeal through local "representative men" to those whom he termed "the common people." (87) Late in 1894 and early in 1895 the Dublin leadership put this idea into practice when MacNeill sent circular letters to potential leaders in counties throughout Ireland. (88) An examination of some of the lists of recipients, which are extant in MacNeill's papers, shows that they included only those persons who had shown a prior interest in the language, through subscribing to the Gaelic Journal or through joining the fledgling league as individuals. (89) Overwhelmingly, those who can be identified were clergymen and professionals (Category I) or schoolteachers (Category III). In the specific case of Cork five of the six individuals making up the Category I sample in Table Three were on the list of "representative men" for the county. (90) The impression created by the Belfast and Cork data is further substantiated by an examination of the officers from branches in Londonderry city and county, where twelve of the twenty-two individuals identified were clergymen or professionals (i.e., almost 55 percent were from Category I), and seven others were schoolteachers (i.e., 32 percent from Category III). (91)

Thus provincial leaders came largely from the same occupational categories as the executive committees examined earlier--they were mainly professionals, clergymen, or teachers. Such a conclusion places the Irish revival in the mainstream of other European nationalist movements. Miroslav Hroch has noted similar profiles for the leaders of parallel movements in Poland, Catalonia, and Finland. (92) But as is clear from the MacNeill papers, this reliance on provincial notables in the Irish case was the result of calculated appeals. It did not emerge simply as the result of some predilection of these strata to challenge existing cultural norms. Furthermore, in the case of the Catholic clergy in question, the offer of nominal support for the revival did not translate into mounting such a challenge. Rather, it indicated their willingness to accept yet another honorific chairmanship from parishioners that required little active engagement from them. (93)

A final component of the explanation for the prominence of professionals in the Belfast sample rests in the way that early league branches often originated within existing local organizations. Thus in Belfast the league took root in the nonsectarian Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, which catered to a middle- and upper-middle-class membership interested in intellectual improvement through outdoor excursions as well as lectures on local history, botany, and archeology. (94) Since 1892 the Field Club had sponsored a weekly "Celtic" language class, and in August 1895 members of the class resolved to affiliate themselves with the Dublin organization as the Belfast Gaelic League. (95)

This connection with the Field Club was auspicious for another reason: it opened the door to cross-creed interest in the language movement in Belfast at a time when the city was experiencing explosive growth and increased denominational segregation. Both Protestants and Catholics had moved into Belfast in great numbers throughout the nineteenth century, though the Protestant portion of this migration outstripped the Catholic share, with the result that Catholics made up somewhat less than a quarter of the nearly 350,000 people in the city in 1901. Competition for jobs and living space, religious tensions, and--from the 1880s--the high-stakes political question of Home Rule for Ireland, all combined to make relations between Protestants and Catholics tense, especially in poorer neighborhoods, which became increasingly monoethnic. (96)

At an elite level, however, there remained a residue of the nondenominational cooperation that had marked relations between some Protestants, especially Dissenters, and Catholics in the eighteenth and early-nine-teenth centuries. (97) The president of the Belfast league, and a member of the original Field Club class, was Dr. John St. Clair Boyd. Belfast Leaguers considered Boyd, who was an Anglican and a unionist, to be an invaluable asset because he reassured Protestants that they could join the new organization without fear. (98) Together, he and his committee worked to achieve religious balance among their local patrons, who included the Anglican bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore, Dr. Thomas Welland; the moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, the Rev. George Buick; the future Anglican bishop of Ossory and archbishop of Armagh, Canon John Baptist Crozier; and the Presbyterian minister who had organized the massive anti-Home Rule congress in Belfast in 1892, Dr. R.R. Kane. (99) These efforts appear to have borne some fruit. At least five of the fourteen professionals in the Belfast membership sample were Presbyterians or Anglicans. (100) It may be that Boyd also helped to recruit other medical practitioners to the league, for half of the Category I entrants from Belfast (seven) were medical doctors, the highest such concentration in any of the geographical cohorts. (One of the two lay officers in the Londonderry cohort was also a doctor and a member of the Church of Ireland. (101))

The smallest proportion of each cohort can be found at the level of employers and managers (Category II), representing slightly more than one-fifth of members. The only exception to this generalization comes from the Dublin 1899 cohort, where the percentage dropped to just slightly more than one-tenth of the membership. Rather than indicating a falling-off of support among Category II persons, however, I would contend that this apparent decline in Dublin is more indicative of the type of expansion that the organization was starting to experience in that city. It should be recalled that the 1899 sample comes only from the Central Branch, and as we will see shortly, this was the very time when language enthusiasts were establishing new branches throughout metropolitan Dublin. Not only would other branches continue to attract Category II members; some appear to have consisted almost exclusively of them.

More important, although the people in Category II included a few fairly substantial business owners, such as the Cork alderman and flour merchant Thomas Creedon and the Dublin "grocer and wine merchant" J.J. Boland, most owned smaller businesses. (102) Several were individuals whose training might better have qualified them as skilled artisans under Category III, but who had apparently amassed enough capital to own their own businesses. Thus in Dublin there was the printer Patrick O'Brien, who worked as a compositor with the Irish Times and who ran a small publishing operation catering to Irish-language publications. One of the founders of the league, O'Brien raised cabbages, potatoes, and carrots outside the front door of his tenement home on Cuffe Street--in a building with the paltry rateable valuation of 19 [pounds sterling]. (103) Similarly, among Belfast members one finds the Presbyterian housepainter John Moore, who listed himself in the 1901 census as an "employer/decorator." (104)

Although the largest segment of the membership, Category III, included other skilled workers, the vast majority in this segment--about 90 percent--came from the expanding ranks of the black-coated workers. Among representatives of these "new" lower-middle classes in the league, one finds a variety of occupations, the most numerous of which can be classed as civil servants (28 percent of the Category III sample); national and intermediate schoolteachers (24 percent); clerks (14 percent); and shop assistants (n percent). Black-coated workers made up almost all of the Category III members in the Dublin cohort for 1894 (98 percent), and they were only slightly less prevalent in 1899 (87 percent); in Belfast and Cork they were still less so (72 percent and 50 percent, respectively). (105) Since several of the Dublin-area civil servants worked in the same offices (such as the Land Valuation Office, the Accountant General's Office, and the Inland Revenue Office), it is likely that recruitment into the league was based as much on personal associations as on anything else.

There are two other points worth noting about the black-coated members of the Dublin league, which are elucidated by a closer look at these early cohorts. First, one finds that some, like Jennie Flanagan, emerged from the artisanal milieu. I have traced the parental background of twenty-five members of the 1899 cohort. Of these, eleven were from Category III and one was from Category IV. Among those parents in Category III, one finds an ironmonger, two joiners, an upholsterer, a compositor, and an engine driver at a flour mill; the Category IV parent was a carrier. While these numbers are small (and therefore subject to qualification), they point toward persons striving to move into a different status category.

Second, a significant percentage of these people were not natives of Dublin city or county. Fourteen of twenty members (70 percent) traced in the 1894 cohort and twenty-seven of fifty (54 percent) in the 1899 set were born elsewhere. By contrast, two-thirds of the general city population in 1901 were born in the city or county of Dublin. (106) This over-representation of migrants is understandable, however, given the prevalence of civil servants, teachers, and shop assistants in the sample. As the home of the government administration, the central model schools, and various teacher-training colleges, Dublin was a magnet for young people engaged in what Benedict Anderson has termed administrative pilgrimages. (107) Similarly, in the retail and distributive sector both large and small establishments drew their employees disproportionately from outside the city. According to one active Gaelic Leaguer from this period, members who worked in small businesses, such as grocers' shops and public houses, came almost exclusively from country districts. (108) Large department stores, meanwhile, recruited their assistants primarily from country families who paid "employers between 40 [pounds sterling] and 50 [pounds sterling] to indenture their child for seven years" and train them for a job which was seen as socially superior to a craft or to general employment. (109) Indeed, nine of the eleven shop assistants in the 1899 cohort (82 percent) were migrants into the city. It is not possible to determine from this evidence how many of these migrants were native-speakers of Irish; nevertheless, it is noteworthy that nearly a third of those identified as migrants came from counties with significant Irish-speaking populations, which could indicate that they had at least a passing familiarity with the language before joining the league. (110)

All of these data indicate that in large urban areas the Gaelic League was, as it has been portrayed, an organization made up almost exclusively of middle-class men and women, many of whom were striving (with some apparent success) to be upwardly mobile. But this blanket characterization should itself be qualified. As we have seen, contemporaries throughout Ireland were acutely aware of status gradations, and what researchers might see as holistic occupational categories represented several distinct "classes" to many people at the time. Such distinctions were not based entirely on perceptions, as more objective criteria, such as incomes and working hours, distinguished certain Category III members from others. For example, a first-class clerk in the Accountant General's Office with an income of 300 [pounds sterling] per annum performed routine work, had a great deal of leisure time, and could afford the usual hallmarks of respectability, including a home, tailored clothes, more expensive schools, and possibly a servant. (111) By contrast, shop assistants earned anywhere from 15 [pounds sterling] to 50 [pounds sterling] per annum, toiled between 80 and 100 hours per week, and lived in cramped and often unsanitary quarters where their employers supervised and disciplined them almost twenty-four hours a day. (112)

Moreover, league members at least rubbed shoulders with people of lower status because they lived in the same milieux. No doubt, some of those in Categories I and II (and at the upper reaches of Category III) fit O'Casey's biting description of "respectable, white-collared, trim-suited" suburban Gaelic Leaguers "living rosily in Whitehall, Drumcondra, Rathgar, Donnybrook, and all the other nicer habitations of the city." (113) But an examination of 94 members of the second Dublin cohort reveals that more lived in central-city neighborhoods in apparently modest circumstances than lived in those "nicer habitations." To be sure, 27 resided in suburban areas such as Donnybrook, Pembroke, Rathmines, and Rathgar, but 39 lived in the generally squalid or declining neighborhoods bounded by the Royal Canal to the north and the Grand Canal to the south and outside the city's more affluent southeastern quadrant. (114) Furthermore, if one looks at the rateable valuations of the habitations in which these 39 members lived and compares them to the average property valuations in their respective wards, one finds that more than half of these Gaelic Leaguers lived in buildings rated below the average valuation for their neighborhoods. (115)

At this juncture it is worthwhile to refer to a recent (and inspired) Marxist critique of the revival, which lashed out at the "blindness of the Gaelic League militants when faced with the social problems" of the Dublin slums and the deprivation in most of the Gaeltacht regions. (116) Certainly, as Maurice Goldring argues, league leaders came predominantly from the upper middle classes, and prior to 1900 their halting efforts to approach working people in Dublin and other cities betrayed breathtaking paternalist arrogance. In November 1899, for example, An Claidheamh Soluis published some brief comments about approaching the Irish-speaking working men in every city in Ireland to ensure that they continued to use the language:

   The league means persevering headwork, and it is not every workingman after
   his day's toil that can be expected to join in such labour. The workingman,
   so far as thinking goes, usually just vegetates amid the surroundings
   created for him from outside. Is it possible to create Irish surroundings
   in which at least a good proportion of Irish-speaking workingmen, for at
   least an hour or two daily, could simply vegetate as Irishmen? If such a
   thing can be done, it will be a kindly and charitable act and at the same
   time a good stroke for Old Ireland. (117)

Within a year, however, the committee of the Ard Chraobh apparently found more diplomatic terms with which to address a similar suggestion to the Dublin Trades Council. At a meeting of the D.T.C. late in October 1900, the secretary read a letter from the Central Branch encouraging trade societies to start up Irish classes, which the council passed along to societies to allow them to decide for themselves. (118)

Perhaps it was this shift in emphasis--encouraging workers to set up classes for themselves--which made the difference, for as the organization expanded after 1900, its membership diversified. In metropolitan Dublin the Central Branch had been the only branch until 1899. In that year suburbanites in Blackrock and shop assistants in the city center established the first two branches of what would become an extensive network of fifty-four craobhacha in 1902-03. (119) If the addresses of their secretaries provide an accurate guide, twenty-six of these fifty-four branches were in the same central-city areas in which many of the earliest individual members resided. (120) Hence, just as branches appeared in the more affluent townships of Rathmines and Foxrock, so too branches sprouted up in the heart of the Liberties (the home of the city's declining silk industry), near Blackhall Place (the seat of metalworking), and in Inchicore (with three branches), where the Great Southern and Western Railway plant employed more than 1,200 people by the 1870s. (121) In all likelihood most members in every one of these branches would have come from the working classes.

The secretaries' addresses further indicate that organizations with class-specific or occupation-specific characteristics founded league branches. For instance, there were craobhacha in associations with Category II memberships, like the Catholic Commercial Club and the Antiquarian Cyclist Society of Ireland. (122) There were also a number of branches consisting of various types of shop assistants: a Purveyors' Assistants' Association branch; a Grocers' and Vintners' Assistants' Association branch; and a Clery's branch, composed of assistants residing in Clery's department store. At least two trade associations of skilled workers founded branches at this time as well. The Metropolitan Housepainters' Union established the St. Patrick's branch in 1900, and a printers' branch ("the Clodoiri") began meeting in the following year at the Dublin Press Club. Craobhacha also emerged in clubs which catered to consciously respectable and self-improving skilled tradesmen, such as the Wellington Quay Workingmen's Club, the Inchicore Workingmen's Club, the Dublin Total Abstinence League and Workingmen's Club, and the Father Mathew Loan Fund Society. These four clubs were exclusively Catholic in composition, but their members socialized occasionally with the (Protestant) Conservative Workingmen's Club (which was just a few doors away from the last two named bodies on York Street). (123) Such intraclass social activity is particularly noteworthy because the members of the C.W.C. maintained an active Orange lodge within their club premises, while members of the Inchicore Workingmen's Club and the Father Mathew Loan Society were sympathetic to republican and socialist politics. (124)

Eventually, the league garnered interest among general laborers in the capital as well. In November 1904, for example, Edward Martyn, Patrick Pearse, and Padraig O Dalaigh presided at the foundation of a branch in Ringsend, the old industrial and fishing village in which laborers lived in such squalid conditions that the Irish Times claimed that "not even on the west coast of Africa are the natives worse housed than are the humble residents of Irishtown, Ringsend, and Ballsbridge." (125) An Claidheamh Soluis reported that members of the branch were "sanguine" that their body would "do much to ameliorate the social and industrial conditions of the district." (126) Moreover, in 1910 and 1911 members of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union marched in the annual Language Week procession. The fiery leader of the transport workers, Jim Larkin, even addressed the public meeting after the 1911 processions, telling the assembly explicitly that "this question of the Irish language was an economic question." (127)

The growing class diversity of the membership of the Gaelic League was not limited to Dublin. Not surprisingly, local conditions elsewhere determined the specific composition of individual branches, but when viewed as a whole, the pre-1910 league had a varied membership profile. In other urban areas a healthy representation of working-class members became manifest. In Limerick city the branch paid special tribute to railway workers and the Pork Butchers' Society for supporting the language cause. (128) The constabulary, meanwhile, reported in 1902 that the four Derry city branches included "young men and girls" of "the shop assistant and factory hand class," and that membership was "almost exclusively confined to the working-class element." (129) In the following year, while visiting branches in County Down, league organizer Tomas Ban O Concheanainn found that the Gilford branch consisted of 150 people, "nearly all millworkers--and their energy in regard to Irish is in great contrast to the spirit in several of the larger towns adjoining." (130) And in Belfast, where (as previously noted) the leadership tended to be more elite than in Dublin, a correspondent wrote to An Claidheamh Soluis that "it is mostly the popular classes, seemingly the more intellectual, that have grasped the significance of the movement and welcomed it." (131)

Information from two communities in the west and the north is also suggestive of the ways in which language activists garnered interest across the social spectrum. Fr. John M. O'Reilly, who founded the branch on Achill Island, told a Maynooth audience in 1900 that "crowds" of pupils "from every side and from every distance" flocked to his classes to study Irish: "The shop assistants, the artisans, the schoolteachers, and the police sat down side by side with the commonest and lowliest of the people." (132) The "main element" among his pupils, he observed, were "the very poor." As a result, the numbers in his classes ebbed when the young adults of the island made their annual migration to Britain as harvesters, leaving the very old and the very young to attend. (133) In December 1900, An Claidheamh Soluis carried a further report from Achill stating that many of the harvesters that summer had taken copies of Fr. O'Growney's primers and Archbishop John MacHale's Gaelic translation of "Moore's Melodies" to study while abroad. According to the story, they had "not only retained but improved that knowledge of Irish acquired while attending the classes" in the preceding year. (134)

Similarly, six years later, Fr. Matthew Maguire became parish priest in Kilskeery, Co. Tyrone, and created a model branch in this rural northern district. The largest village in the parish, Trillick, had a population of only 269 people, but it was the commercial center of this rural area, (135) and according to D.P. Moran, it became the base from which Maguire "Irishized" his community. Maguire arrived in Kilskeery a convinced Gaelic enthusiast, having led a branch during his previous posting as a curate in the neighboring parish of Dromore. Within four months of his arrival 230 boys and 180 girls were attending Irish classes in the national schools under his management. Local shops began stocking Irish-Ireland literature, and ceilithe and Irish concerts provided regular evening entertainment. Maguire also oversaw four night schools in which children and adults took Irish-language and history classes, along with courses in domestic science and horticulture. Within a year, more than 900 people of this farming community were studying Irish, and at the first feis held under his supervision, some 3,000 people entered its various competitions. (136)

More important than his attracting large numbers of raw recruits to the cause, Maguire used the Gaelic platform to reach out to his Protestant neighbors--a move which contrasts sharply with the received notion of priests dictating Catholic exclusivism through the league. For instance, he encouraged the Anglican minister of another of the local schools to institute Irish classes in Kilskeery, just as he had worked with a minister in Dromore to introduce Irish instruction for the children in the two schools under Presbyterian management in 1905. (137) Protestants also attended Maguire's night schools alongside their Catholic neighbors, where they received instruction in Irish singing and dancing from three Oireachtas prize-winners. (138)

To be sure, lingering suspicions about the language cause made it difficult for Maguire and other enthusiasts to encourage Irish Protestants to take an interest in the revival. In 1906 the outspoken clerical conservative Fr. Patrick Dinneen claimed that most Protestants remained aloof from the movement because they had no traditional associations with Gaelic and because many of them feared that the league was "in reality a political society of a virulent and dangerous kind." (139) And as Garvin points out, the unionist press did voice such ideas. (140) Moreover, various spokespersons--from Anglican bishops to Protestant school managers and teachers--argued that the inclusion of Irish as an extra subject in the school curriculum after 1901 was a "foolish" and impractical imposition on Protestant youths in an English-speaking country. (141) Such positions seemed irrefutable to many, but the contorted logic of some spokesmen occasionally damaged their arguments. Thus in 1902, when school managers in Portadown stated that they preferred teaching Latin to Irish because Irish was no longer a spoken language, An Claidheamh Soluis observed with some amusement that, "needless to say, the tenor of the discussion was rather anti-Irish than pro-Latin." (142) Six years later, a league-sponsored survey of the Dublin schools found that the most cited reason for not placing Irish in the curricula of fifty-seven schools under Protestant management was the hostility of the parents to the language. (143) In 1911, An Claidheamh Soluis carried word that "a big number" of Presbyterian clergymen had forbidden children in their congregations to study the language. (144)

Nevertheless, Protestants made up an important minority of members and supporters throughout the period under review. Perhaps no group of Protestant revivalists is better known than those who were members of the Craobh na gCuig gCuigi, or Branch of the Five Provinces, in Dublin. Founded in 1904 by Nelly O'Brien, an Anglican and a granddaughter of the Young Irelander William Smith O'Brien, the branch included a significant proportion of non-Catholic members. Among them were Margaret and Sadhbh Trench, near relations of the former archbishop of Dublin; the artist Lily Williams; and Lil Nic Dhonnachadha, who in later years became principal of Colaiste Moibhi, the training college for Protestant primary-school teachers. (145) In fact, contemporaries believed that the branch was composed almost entirely of Protestants, and some referred to it rather derisively as "the Branch of the Five Protestants." (146) When, however, its work was lauded by a Catholic priest in County Cork in 1907 as a worthy example for nationally minded Protestants, the former president of the branch, T.W. Rolleston, stated flatly in a letter to the Freeman's Journal that "the branch never was a Protestant branch in my time, and I am sure that it is not so now. I believe Catholics predominate in membership. Certainly, I do not know any Protestant member who would not have strongly objected to such a proceeding as the formation of a Protestant branch of the league." (147)

What had in all likelihood inspired the Cork priest's comments were press reports about an ongoing informal effort to recruit Protestants into the revival. This "Gaelic Mission to Protestants" met in a room provided by the craobh, hence the confusion with the branch itself. (148) The mission was led by several Protestant republicans, including George Irvine, Seamus Deakon, Sean O'Casey, and Ernest Blythe. At the time even D.P. Moran gave the mission some favorable coverage in the Leader. (149) O'Casey later maintained that their efforts quickly came to naught after the league leadership expressed concern that they were introducing sectarianism into the revival, though I have found no evidence to corroborate O'Casey's claim. (150) Alternatively, Blythe has suggested that the mission disintegrated after some of its own members objected to the tone of "boastful advertising" about their work in essays submitted by one of their number, Maire de Faoite, to the Irish Peasant. (151)

In spite of its relatively quick demise, the mission did achieve some notable successes, and several of its participants continued to press for a more liberal attitude toward the language among city Protestants. For example, in 1905 they convinced the rector of St. Kevin's church to hold the first Gaelic-language St. Patrick's Day service in an Anglican parish. (152) And in 1914, Irvine and O'Brien were among the Gaelic Leaguers who founded the Irish Guild of the Church (or An Cumann Gaodhalach na h-Eaglaise) to encourage Irish-language services within the Church of Ireland. (153)

Aside from Douglas Hyde, the best-known Protestant advocate of the Gaelic cause was the Rev. J.O. Hannay, Anglican rector of Westport, Co. Mayo, but his association with the movement has been read as confirmation of growing religious intolerance within the league. (154) Beginning in 1904, Hannay displayed genuine enthusiasm for the movement, defending the league to his doubting co-religionists in numerous articles and letters to the editor. (155) The organization gratefully acknowledged his support by co-opting him onto the Coisde Gnotha in 1905 and re-electing him in 1906. At a meeting of the Branch of the Five Provinces in January 1906 Hannay reciprocated their affection by describing the league as an organization in which "men and women of different creeds meet in friendliness; where priest and parson love one another--why, the golden age when lion and lamb feed together is nothing to this." (156) When, however, it was revealed just days later that Hannay had been pursuing another avocation (i.e., writing novels under the pseudonym George Birmingham), he found himself surrounded by biting criticism from Catholic priests and threats from lay people who took offense at his portrayals of small-town life. (157)

Then, at the end of September, the chairman of a feis planning-meeting at Claremorris (Canon T.F. Macken, a parish priest from Tuam) sought to exclude Hannay for having violated "a higher constitution" than that of the nonsectarian Gaelic League. Although Irish-Irelanders (including another priest in attendance) rushed to his defense, the Coisde Gnotha delayed censuring Macken after committee member Stephen Gwynn defended his action. This move incensed Hannay, who was convinced that Gwynn had based his stance less on a belief in the propriety of Macken's deed than on a desire not to upset Connacht priests while running for parliament in County Galway. Hannay himself chose not to run for re-election to the Coisde Gnotha in 1907, and he expressed the concern that "some of its leaders are becoming cowardly and truckling to priests and politicians." (158)

These incidents did not signal his complete dissociation from the revival, however. In his next novel Benedict Kavanagh (which appeared in 1907), Hannay not only chided his detractors in a brief foreword, but he also created an episodic tale in which the Protestant hero ultimately faced a choice between devotion to Irish nationalism or to the Conservative politics of his mother's family. Critically, his flirtation with nationalism comes after a brief association with the Gaelic League, and his guide is a young priest, Fr. Lawrence O'Meara. (159) Furthermore, in the midst of the Claremorris controversy, when the Church of Ireland Gazette opined that the event had marked a strong confirmation of their fears concerning the Gaelic League, Hannay rebutted their charge and denied that Macken represented the league mainstream. (160) Most significantly, he also asserted that Protestant interest in the revival was growing:"A very large number of the clergy and laity of the Church of Ireland are now taking a sympathetic interest in the Gaelic League, and the number of Protestant members of the league is rapidly increasing." (161)

Whether this opinion can be substantiated is debatable, but there is considerable evidence that Protestants had been interested in the language movement prior to 1906 and remained so after that date. I have already noted a few individuals who had played leadership roles in Belfast and Derry, and the language movement in the north retained a Protestant presence well past the turn of the century. For example, a number of artists and journalists who shaped the Ulster cultural "renaissance" joined the Belfast league in the late 1890s. (162) Among the best known were James H. Cousins, Joseph Campbell, Robert Lynd, and Alice Milligan, the last of whom gave the league its first regular coverage in the monthly newspaper, the Shah Van Vocht. (163) The Quaker Bulmer Hobson, a founder of the Ulster Literary Theatre and (later) a key organizer of the republican movement, also served as the secretary of the Belfast district committee and encouraged Gaelic games in local craobhacha. (164)

Although these prominent individuals tended to support some variety of nationalist politics and were therefore not representative of the Protestant population of Belfast (or of the north generally), it should also be recognized that not all Protestants who patronized Gaelic activities were nationalists. Thus, Robert Lindsay Crawford, editor of the Irish Protestant and from 1903 to 1908 the Imperial Grand Master of the Independent Orange Order, editorialized in October 1905 that the language movement was "the awakening of Irishmen to the needs of their country and to their responsibilities as citizens. Protestant Ulster could not consistently object to the published aims and objects of the Gaelic League." (165) Crawford's engagement with the league was more than theoretical, as he was a candidate for the Coisde Gnotha in 1906 and, even more impressively, he appeared in Strabane in January 1909 to advocate the adoption of compulsory Irish in the National University of Ireland. (166)

Other Protestants also found constructive ways to support the revival and to mix with their Catholic neighbors. Some created alternative Gaelic societies, such as the College Gaelic Society in Queen's College (Belfast), which formed in 1906 under the patronage of a prominent unionist, the Rev. Thomas Hamilton. (167) Still others participated in public functions, such as feiseanna, which provided a neutral social ground on which curiosity-seekers could tread without transgressing community taboos. For instance, beginning in 1904, when the branches of Belfast and County Antrim started the "Feis of the Nine Glens," Protestants and Catholics mixed cordially each year. (Surprisingly, among those on the dais at the inaugural event were Sir Hugh Smiley, J.P., the chairman of the Northern Whig newspaper, and Sir Daniel Dixon, the timber and shipping merchant who had served several terms as lord mayor of Belfast and would win a parliamentary by-election in the following year on a staunchly Conservative anti-Home Rule platform.) (168) In 1905, Hyde told a New York audience of still another festival which had taken place at Toomebridge: "Under our aegis Catholic and Orangeman came into that place in a spirit of brotherhood unexampled in that part of the world ever before, and I could not tell which was the most numerous at it." (169) Similar reports from locales as disparate as Clones, Newry, and Tralee stated that Protestants made up sizable portions of the crowds addressed by league officials or attending concerts and prize ceremonies. (170) In keeping with Hannay's optimistic assessment, the same 1908 survey of Dublin schools mentioned earlier indicated that "the teachers in many of the Protestant schools and the managers of some are favourable to the language." (171) And in County Clare in 1911 the ubiquitous Nelly O'Brien played the central role in bringing together Catholics and Protestants from Kilrush and Kilkee to found the Gaelic summer college at Carrigaholt. (172)

Thus, although doubts about the language movement persisted for many Protestants in Ireland, Protestant involvement with the Irish-Ireland campaign was clearly more complicated than previous accounts have recognized. To be sure, Catholics made up the vast majority of Gaelic League members: Dinneen estimated in 1906 that Catholics constituted "probably 95 percent" of the league. (173) At the same time some Protestants were active and committed members into the 1910s, while others supported local league activities as patrons or joined parallel organizations which were less suspect in the eyes of their own communities. Given the emphasis placed by Garvin, MacDonagh, and others on the "Catholicity" of the movement, it is crucial to recognize that this range of interest mirrored the range that we have already noted for the general membership.

Of course, the most important constituency to which the league appealed was the Irish-speaking population concentrated on the western and southern seaboards of the island. Gaelic Leaguers successfully established high concentrations of branches in counties such as Cork, Kerry, Donegal, Clare, Galway, and Mayo, all of which had large numbers of Gaelic-speakers, though most of these foundations did not originate with local people. In the main they resulted from a combination of unofficial visits by enthusiasts from larger communities, such as Dublin, and of the official efforts of league employees who prosyletized on behalf of the language. (174)

The league hired its first timire (or organizer), Tomas Bin O Concheanainn, at the end of 1898, but the scope of his task encouraged the Coisde Gnotha to expand its staff shortly after the turn of the century. (175) By 1905 the executive had hired eleven full-time timiri who were each to shepherd branches in a given county or region of Ireland. According to Fainne an Lae, the timiri were to "form Irish classes and branches of the Gaelic League, to teach suitable persons to read Irish with a view to their carrying on Irish classes, to canvass for the support for the movement of the clergy, professional gentlemen, merchants, and other leading persons of each district visited, and to distribute Irish literature." (176) Besides promoting general goodwill toward the language, therefore, Concannon and his compatriots were to put MacNeill's program of expansion via local notables into practice throughout the Gaeltacht. The pressure of time precluded them from spending more than a few weeks in any particular locality, however, and local district councils therefore began hiring traveling teachers (or muinteoiri taistil) to concentrate on smaller areas. These men and women were paid through a combination of funds from local and national sources, and by 1908 there were in traveling teachers working throughout the island. (177) The league considered the efforts of the timiri and muinteoiri to be so vital that nearly half of the annual outlay of the central executive went toward their expenses. (178)

One can surmise that the league intended its staff to project a familiar, yet respectable image to Irish-speaking audiences. Advertisements for organizing positions called for individuals who were fluent speakers and writers of Irish, able to "stand their ground" in public disputations about the need to revive the language. According to one expert, the league laid particular stress on a candidate's ability to encourage others to work on behalf of the language. (179) Of the twenty-two men who served as timiri between 1899 and 1915 fifteen of them (63 percent) had grown up in Irish-speaking homes, and exactly the same number grew up on farms, either as the son of a farmer or of a farm laborer. Two others were the children of shopkeepers; while still others were respectively the sons of a baker, a game-warden, a shoemaker, and a laborer on a fishing boat. Thirteen of them (57 percent) showed signs of upward mobility, either because they had toiled outside Ireland prior to working as an organizer or because they had pursued educational opportunities or (prior) careers of higher status than their parents. (180) Impressionistic evidence suggests that traveling teachers tended to come from farming backgrounds, and they often taught in or near their home localities. (181) Possessing substantial familiarity with their neighborhoods, these men and women usually received their certification to teach Irish from one of the nearly twenty Gaelic summer colleges established by the league after 1904. (182)

Both official and unofficial league visitors to the Gaeltacht faced generations of ingrained ambivalence about the language. Thus, while organizers encountered enthusiastic crowds at public meetings, they also reported continually confronting a generalized indifference toward Gaelic. Like all branches throughout the country, Gaeltacht craobhacha often fell to naught shortly after they had been founded. Indeed, when the league hired two organizers in 1901 to revisit areas worked by Concannon in the preceding year, both Peadar O hAnnrachain and Padraig O Maille noted that the people they met had taken few practical steps to follow up on their predecessor's spadework. (183) These reports so troubled the Ard Fheis of May 1902 that the league hired four more timiri in the autumn. (184) What is remarkable in light of these concerns is the net growth of the league in the Gaeltacht in spite of branch atrophy. In the eleven counties visited by Concannon between 1898 and 1902, the number of branches had increased from 37 to 173. (185)

Even if branch foundations were not permanent, organizers and holiday visitors played a vital role in fostering revival in the Gaeltacht. For example, when the playwright J.M. Synge visited County Mayo as a reporter for the Manchester Guardian in 1905, he discovered a number of branches founded by the organizer Padraig O Maille. Synge recorded that the branch at Gweesalia (near Belmullet) received especially strong support from the local people because its classes and ceilithe provided them with welcome entertainment. He claimed, moreover, that "for the present the Gaelic League is probably doing more than any other movement to check" emigration from the region. (186) Meanwhile, on Achill Island, where the branch had attracted broad support in 1899 and 1900, residents relied on outsiders to reinvigorate and sustain their spirits. In May 1911, for instance, an islander wrote to An Claidheamh Soluis that indifference had overtaken former members in the preceding summer and that "the cause was nearly lost" until two "young men from the south" energized them. (187) "Following up their success," she added, "the Gaelic League wisely sent us down a man who has kept alive the flame they revived in our hearts and in our midst. Gaelic classes, Gaelic dances, concerts, and plays are following each other, and now we are building for ourselves a Gaelic hall. There is no limit to our ambition." (188)

Nevertheless, even when enthusiasts successfully overcame apathy and suspicion to establish a presence in the Gaeltacht, two structural blocks undermined their efforts to sustain Irish as the spoken language. First, the economic condition of the vast majority of Gaelic-speakers in the west and south precluded their active involvement in the revival. To be sure, parents wanted their children to learn English in order to overcome the ingrained social stigma that Irish-speakers were poor and backward. In one case noted by O hAnnrachain, a man who was solicited for a small donation to the Language Fund offered to pay double that amount if his children could be kept out of all Gaelic classes! (189) Fundamentally, however, Irish-speaking parents pushed children to learn English because they depended financially on the children succeeding as emigrants or as migrant workers. In the early years of the twentieth century the government had calculated that a subsistence allowance for a family of five could only be achieved on holdings with rateable valuations of at least 10 [pounds sterling] per annum. But the overwhelming proportion of farm holdings in the Gaeltacht did not meet this standard: fully half of all holdings in counties Donegal and Mayo were rated at below 4 [pounds sterling] per annum, and in the poor-law unions of Oughterard, Co. Galway, and Belmullet, Co. Mayo, three-fourths of the holdings were rated below 4 [pounds sterling]. (190) Remittances and the earnings of migratory harvesters were all that kept many families solvent. Paul-Dubois reported in 1907 that half of the amount due for rents from the 3,300 families in the Clifden union came from "American letters" alone. (191) And when the Gaelic League's chief organizer for Munster, Fionan Mac Coluim, interviewed families in the townlands on Bolus Head, Co. Kerry, he found that "they look upon education in English as essential to the advancement of their children in life, emigration to America being almost the only outlook here as in other parts of Iveragh. It must be borne in mind that nearly every household is depending to a large extent on relatives in America for sustenance." (192) Not surprisingly, Connacht and Munster contributed disproportionately to turn-of-the-century emigration. In 1901, when their combined populations represented 42 percent of the total Irish population, almost 70 percent of emigrants came from these two provinces. (193) And league observers remained acutely aware of this continuing phenomenon. When the 1911 census books appeared in 1912, An Claidheamh Soluis repeatedly referred to the "decimation" of the Irish-speaking population between the ages of 18 and 30 wrought by emigration. (194)

A second structural block related directly to the manner in which the league established itself in the Gaeltacht. Its reliance on notables significantly hampered the ability of the organization to appeal to those who spoke Irish as their everyday language by overemphasizing branch formation in towns and villages. The vast majority of Gaeltacht branches were located in communities of 1,000 or fewer inhabitants, but these communities were important commercial centers: nearly 73 percent of the branches in the congested counties were in localities which held markets or fairs. (195) Although such centers were intimately connected to their surrounding townlands through kinship and trading relationships, these very contacts were laden with tension. (196) For example, villagers were more likely to be habitual English-speakers than were farmers or laborers; (197) shopkeepers often had exploitative lending relationships with their rural customers, and in rural Connacht they also competed for grazing land with their smallholding neighbors; (198) and most parish priests--even those who paid lip service to the revival--continued in practice to discourage traditional culture in the daily lives of their parishioners. (199) In short, by looking to such "representative" men, the league worked at cross-purposes.

This situation inspired considerable debate within revivalist circles. In 1902 and 1903 the contributor of the "Mayo Notes" column to An Claidheamh Soluis repeatedly complained about the failure of the league to move outside the towns and penetrate the countryside. (200) Later in that same year, Padraig Mac Suibhne, an activist from the Waterford Gaeltacht who had moved to Fermoy, also objected to this phenomenon. In particular, he denigrated the work of the timire Donncha O Murchu near Dunmanway. According to Mac Suibhne, the timire refused to visit "the real Gaels in the country parts," preferring to remain in Dunmanway, which, "like most of the towns, is hopeless at present for the realization of Irish ideals." (201) Mac Suibhne dismissed the local leaders as "staigini" (worthless creatures) "who would be against the work in any event and who shall never be but a useless force in Irish-Ireland." (202)

On the other hand, the Coisde Gnotha remained committed to appealing to the Gaeltacht through town and village gateways. Fr. Patrick Dinneen, who complained at times that average Gaelic Leaguers were not interested enough in the Gaeltacht, summarized the prevailing sentiment on the executive. Addressing a small audience in Waterford city in December 1902, Dinneen insisted that "the real battle for the language" needed to be fought in "borderlands like Waterford": "Show me some conquered territory, show me a town or a village, one small spot of land to which Irish speech has been restored, and I will admit that your movement is making progress." (203) As late as November 1905, Dinneen repeated his stance at Dungarvan, saying that the real need was for "towns to become Irish," so that they could serve as bridges to the countryside. (204)

The issues of how to utilize the timiri and how to appeal effectively in the Gaeltacht remained contentious throughout the period under review, (205) and they assumed added piquancy when the 1911 census revealed that the number of Irish-speakers had declined significantly since 1901. In several Gaeltacht counties the percentage decline in the number of Irish-speakers was more than double that for the general population. (206) League observers, however, poured over the census data for signs that their work had borne some fruit, and they did find small pockets of improvement in a few regions where they had expended considerable energy and expense. Thus, although County Galway had experienced an overall decrease in the number and percentage of Irish-speakers, the percentage actually increased slightly around Oughterard, where more than 86 percent of the population continued to use the language. (207) Similarly, while County Mayo witnessed a significant fall in the number and percentage of Irish-speakers, the Belmullet rural district increased its population by 501 inhabitants and its Irish-speaking cohort by 460. (208)

The Coisde Gnotha responded to the census data by establishing a special committee to examine what could be done to prevent further "decay" in the Gaeltacht, but because of its increasingly precarious financial condition the league was unable to expend even the same amount of resources that it had disbursed a few years previously. (209) Since 1910 austerity measures had led to the firing of four organizers, and league coffers remained depleted as the number of active branches continued the decline that had started in 1908. (210) Even if the organization had developed a coherent plan to "save the Gaeltacht," it would not have had the resources to carry out such a program on its own.

On the other hand, numerous counties and urban areas in English-speaking parts of the island reported higher numbers of people claiming a knowledge of Irish. Significantly, several northern areas--including Belfast, Newry, and the counties of Antrim, Down, Tyrone, and Fermanagh--recorded more Irish-speakers in 1911 than in 1901. Belfast alone reported an increase of more than 4,000 speakers, and the data indicated that the growth had taken place across the age spectrum. Dublin city reported more than 2,400 additional speakers in 1911, and in Limerick city over 900 more people reported the ability to speak Irish. (211) Outside Belfast and County Antrim growth tended to be concentrated among school-aged children. (212) There is, of course, no means by which to test the fluency of any of these new "speakers," but because people self-reported their languages, and because most of the individuals studying Irish through the league received only a rudimentary introduction to the language, it is likely that many of these "speakers" were more enthusiastic than able.

Numbers alone would therefore suggest that the Gaelic League had failed in its first two decades of existence: fewer native Irish-speakers resided on the island, and most of the (comparatively) few new speakers were unable to express anything beyond basic thoughts through spoken Irish. Two things, however, should be recognized about these data. First, they do not take account of the under-reporting of Irish-speakers. In spite of revivalist efforts to instill pride in one's ability to speak the native language, many Irish-speakers remained reluctant to acknowledge their familiarity with Irish to authority figures, such as the policemen who acted as census enumerators. One could potentially add to this "under-reported" number those in the English-speaking districts who had developed a passing familiarity with the language through the revival, but who chose in all honesty not to report themselves as able to use both Irish and English. Second, the raw census data do not include those young people who had learned something of the language since 1893 but who had emigrated prior to the 1911 census. Whether or not their presence would have led to a more positive impression of the revivalists' efforts is a matter for conjecture. But because school-aged children accounted for most of the reported increases among Irish-speakers in 1911, and more than 80 percent of Irish emigrants in this era were between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five (i.e., in the immediate postschool years), it is likely that some measurable increase would have appeared in a revised census.

Finally, and most important, census data alone cannot depict the changing attitudes and opinions of Irish people toward the Irish language which the Gaelic revival fostered. As we have seen, hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women participated in the revival, at least for a short period of time. They came from a broader range of social classes and religious backgrounds than has previously been appreciated, and many of them appeared to be upwardly mobile, pursuing educations and careers that would raise their status above that of their parents. To be sure, their involvement was often limited to brief membership in a Gaelic League branch, followed by extended periods of socializing at league functions. Still, even if they did not fully appreciate what revivalist ideologues called "their duty to the language," their ongoing engagement with the league and their willingness to incorporate Gaelicism into their lives suggest that the language had attained some lasting meaning and importance for them.

TABLE ONE
Gaelic League Executives by Occupational Category
(Percentages)

CATEGORY   1903-04   1913-14

I            47.2     41.4
II           8.3      10.3
III          44.4     48.3
IV           --       --
V            --       --

Total        100      100

TABLE TWO
Gaelic League Members, 1894-99, by Occupational Category

CATEGORY   PERCENTAGE   DALY (%)

I             25.1        5.5
II            19.4        8.9
III           55          34.2
IV            0.5         13.5
V             --          25.4

Total         100.2       92.5

TABLE THREE
Occupational Categories of Gaelic League Members,
1894-99, by Location
(Percentages) (85)

CATEGORY   DALY   DUBLIN I   DUBLIN II   BELFAST   CORK

I          5.5      19.7       24.1        34.1    28.6
II         8.9      22.5       10.3        22.0    28.6
III        34.2     57.7       63.8        43.9    42.9
IV         13.5     --         1.7         --      --
V          25.4     --         --          --      --

Total      92.5     99.9       99.9        100     100.1

(1) Three works are particularly detailed in their treatments of the Gaelic revival: Ruth Dudley Edwards's biography of Patrick Pearse, Tierney's biography of Eoin MacNeill, and the Dunleavys' biography of Douglas Hyde. See Michael Tierney, Eoin MacNeilh Scholar and Man of Action, 1867-1945, ed. EX. Martin (Oxford, 1980); Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure (London and Boston, 1979 ed.); Gareth W. Dunleavy and Janet Egelson Dunleavy, Douglas Hyde: A Maker of Modern Ireland (Berkeley, Calif., 1991). Three general works also have important comments on the revival. See F.S.L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890-1939 (Oxford, 1979); Oliver MacDonagh, States of Mind: Two Centuries of Anglo-Irish Conflict, 1780-1980 (London and Boston, 1983); and D.G. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (3rd ed., London, 1995).

(2) Tom Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland 1858-1928 (Oxford, 1987), 79-80.

(3) John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism; The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (London and Boston, 1987), 179. For a brief synopsis of his views and his critique of Garvin, see John Hutchinson, "Irish Nationalism," in D. George Boyce and Alan O'Day, eds., The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy (London and New York, 1996).

(4) The literature on the role of the lower-middle classes in revolutionary and later fascist movements is extensive and originated perhaps with Marx's own writings on reactionaries among the artisanate. See Arno Mayer, "The Lower Middle Class as Historical Problem," Journal of Modern History 47:3 (Sept. 1975). For a case study which exemplifies the theme, see Robert Gellately, The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers and German Politics, 1890-1914 (London, 1974). For discussions of what has been variously called "integral nationalism," "eastern nationalism," and "ethnic nationalism," see C.J.H. Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (New York, 1968 ed.); Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Princeton, 1965 ed.); Peter Alter, Nationalism (London and New York, 1994), especially Chap. 2; Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno, Ney., 1991), Chap. 1.

(5) Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, eds., Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe (London and New York, 1984); and Rudy J. Koshar, Splintered Classes: Politics and the Lower Middle Classes in Interwar Europe (New York, 1990).

(6) The two earliest membership volumes are held by the National Library of Ireland. The third volume is held at the Gaelic League headquarters, Harcourt Street, Dublin. The first is NLI MS 11, 537: Conradh na Gaeilge, Leabhar-liosta ainmneach i Sintiuisi Cinnbliadhna na Cead Ball, 1893-1897 (i Laimh-scribhneoireacht na gCead Chisteoiri i. Seaghan O hOgain, Seosamh Laoide, agus Stiophan Bairead)/First Membership Book and List of Annual Subscriptions, 1893-1897 (in the Handwriting of the First Treasurers, John Hogan, Joseph Lloyd, and Stephen Barrett). The second is NLI MS 11,538: Conradh na Gaeilge, Leabhar-liosta na gCraobh agus na n-Oifigeach a Bhionnta ina Sintiuisi Cinnbliadhna, 1897-1898 go dti 1905-1906 (i lamh-scribhneoireacht an Chisdeora i Stiophan Bairead)/First List of Branches with Officers and Annual Subscriptions, 1897-1898 to 1905-1906 (in the Handwriting of the Treasurer Stephen Barrett). The third volume was graciously made available to the author by the league secretary Sean MacMathuna in May 1996.

(7) Gaelic League, Membership Book, Harcourt Street.

(8) In the annual report for 1906-07 the number of affiliated branches within Ireland is recorded as 480, while in a corresponding table in the annual report for 1907-08, the number given for 1906-07 is only 433. A similar disparity appears between the reports for 1907-08 and 1908-09. See Gaelic League, Imtheachta an Ard-Fheis, 1906-7 (Dublin, 1907); Gaelic League, Imtheachta an Ard-Fheis, 1907-8 (Dublin, 1908); Gaelic League, Imtheachta an Ard-Fheis, 1909 (Dublin, 1909).

(9) For example, Brooks counted 900 branches in 1906; Redmond-Howard, 1,000 in 1912; and the Times (London), 1,200 in 1913. Key and Garvin relied on Brooks and Redmond-Howard, respectively. See Sidney Brooks, The New Ireland (Dublin, 1907), 27; L.G. Redmond-Howard, The New Birth of Ireland (London, 1913), 217-18; The Times, The Ireland of Today (Boston, 1915), 38; Robert Kee, The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism (London, 1972), 431; Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries, 79.

(10) Padraig O Fearail, The Story of Conradh na Gaeilge (Dublin, 1975), 30; Shane O'Neill, "The Politics of Culture in Ireland, 1899-1910" (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1982), 43-44. For other estimates of league size, see Breandan Mac Aodha, "Was This a Social Revolution?" in Sean O Tuama, ed., The Gaelic League Idea (Cork and Dublin, 1972), 21; Brian O Cuiv, "The Gaelic Cultural Movements and the New Nationalism," in Kevin B. Nowlan, ed., The Making of 1916: Studies in the History of the Rising (Dublin, 1969), 12.

(11) Gaelic League, Imtheachta an hArd-Fheis, 1909 (Dublin, 1909), 20.

(12) The Gaelic League weekly newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis, reported on 20 June 1908 that Bairead had developed insomnia because of financial shortfalls; these would prompt austerity measures after 1910. See Timothy G. McMahon, "The Gaelic League and the Irish-Ireland Movement" (M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994), 98-99. Hereafter An Claidheamh Soluis will be cited as ACS.

(13) See Gaelic Journal 9:108 (July 1899); O Fearail, Story, 17, 42, 44; O'Neill, "Politics," 43-44. Hereafter the Gaelic Journal will be cited as GJ.

(14) Gaelic League, Annual Report of the Gaelic League, 1902-03 (Dublin, 1903), 146-60; O Cuiv, "Gaelic Cultural Movement," 12.

(15) Mac Aodha, "Was This Social Revolution?" 21-22.

(16) ACS, 5 Nov. 1904.

(17) Gaelic League Pamphlets, No. 13, The Irish Language and Irish Intermediate Education: Dr. Hyde's Evidence (Dublin, n.d. [1900?]), 1; Leader, 1 Dec. 1900.

(18) National Archives of Ireland (NAI), CBS 1902, File 26,268/S, Estimate of the Numerical Strength of Secret Societies and Other Nationalist Associations for the Year Ending 31st December 1901.

(19) ACS, 11 Nov. 1899, 9 June 1900.

(20) The total represents the average of the 36 metropolitan-area contingents for which data were available. The range of size went from a low of 24 for the Ballymullen branch to a high of 300 for the Drapers' branch. There were also eight branches for which no data appeared. See ACS, 14 March 1904.

(21) O'Neill, "Politics of Culture," 45-46.

(22) GJ 4:48 (Feb. 1894), 250; GJ 7:3 (July 1896), 33; GJ 7:8 (Dec. 1896), 126; GJ 7:11 (March 1897), 174-75.

(23) Leader, 12 Nov. 1904.

(24) Ibid.

(25) On Catholic fears that the league was a proselytizing body, see Timothy G. McMahon, "The Social Bases of the Gaelic Revival, 1893-1910" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2001), 189-93. On Orange resistance to a league presence in County Down, see ACS, 16 Dec. 19n.

(26) Leader, 2 March 1907.

(27) Leader, 7 Dec. 1907.

(28) George A. Birmingham, An Irishman Looks at His World (London and New York, 1919), 293.

(29) Ibid., 294.

(30) ACS, 9 June 1900.

(31) ACS, 6 July 1901.

(32) ACS, 21 Oct. 1911.

(33) Leader, 30 Nov. 1907.

(34) "I nAonach," ACS, 26 Oct. 1912.

(35) Rev. Eugene O'Growney, Simple Lessons in Irish, Giving the Pronunciation of Each Word, Part I (Dublin, 1903); idem, Simple Lessons in Irish, Giving the Pronunciation of Each Word, Part V (Dublin, 1902); O Fearail, Story, 17.

(36) ACS, 29 Nov. 1902.

(37) Ibid.

(38) ACS, 21 Jan. 1905.

(39) Dana 9 (Jan. 1905), 273.

(40) Martin J. Waters, "Peasants and Emigrants: Considerations of the Gaelic League as a Social Movement," in Daniel J. Casey and Robert E. Rhodes, eds., Views of the Irish Peasantry, 1800-1916(Hamden, Conn., 1977), 168-71.

(41) Ibid., 171.

(42) O'Neill, "Politics," Chap. I.

(43) See Diarmuid Breathnach and Maire Ni Mhurchu, eds., 1882-1982: Beathaisneis, A hAon (Dublin, 1986); idem, 1882-1982: Beathaisneis, A Do (Dublin, 1990); idem, 1882-1982: Beathaisneis, A Tri (Dublin, 1992); idem, 1882-1982: Beathaisneis, A Ceathair (Dublin, 1994); idem, 1882-1982: Beathaisneis, a Cuig (Dublin, 1997). Useful individual studies include Mairtin Mac Nioclais, Sein O Ruadhain: Saol agus Saothar (Dublin, 1991); Maire Ni Chinneide, Maire de Buitleir: Bean Athbheochana (Dublin, 1993); Colm O Cearuil, Aspail ar Son na Gaeilge: Timiri Chonradh na Gaeilge, 1899-1923 (Dublin, 1995); Diarmaid O Doibhlin, ed., Duanaire Gaedhilge: Rois Ni Ogain (Dublin, 1995); Padraig O Machain, ed., Riobard Bheldon, Amhrain agus Danta (Dublin, 1995); Donncha O Suilleabhain, Na Timiri i re tosaigh an Chonartha, 1893-1927 (Dublin, 1990). A general account of the league appears in Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, Ar Son na Gaeilge: Conradh na Gaeilge, 1895-1993, Stair Sheanchais (Dublin, 1993).

(44) Rosters of the Coisdi Gnotha have been taken from official lists submitted to the Ard-Fheiseanna. See Conradh na Gaeilge, Cunntas ar Ard-Fheis, 1904 (Dublin, 1904), 21-22; Conradh na Gaeilge, Imtheachta an Ard. Fheis, 1914 (Dublin, 1914), 31-32.

(45) ACS, 9, 23 May 1903.

(46) See Sean O Luing, I Die in a Good Cause: A Study of Thomas Ashe, Idealist and Revolutionary (Tralee, 1970), 48-58; McMahon, "Social Bases," 22-24.

(47) A fourth member of the 1913-14 committee had been raised a Protestant and converted to Catholicism as an adult. This was the Honourable William Gibson, later Lord Ashbourne. Gibson was a very liberal Catholic. See Breathnach and Ni Murchu, Beathaisneis, a Do, 58-59.

(48) For the 1903-04 committee, information about ages was found for 32 of the 38 committee persons; for 1913-14, 28 of 34 are included. All the data about leaders are to be found in the volumes of Breathnach and Ni Mhurchu's Beathaisneis. A comprehensive index of entries appears at the end of the fifth volume of the series.

(49) Until 1904 the stipulated number of members serving on the committee was thirty, plus three officers, but the number varied somewhat from year to year because as members resigned or died, the committee would co-opt new members to fill the roster. Moreover, between 1904 and 1913 the stipulated number was increased to forty-five members.

(50) There were seven women on the Coisde Gnotha in 1906-07; committee then had forty-five members. Thus the percentage of women serving (about 16 percent) did not markedly increase.

(51) These figures are based on attendance tables published in the annual Gaelic League reports from 1903-04 through 1913-14. O'Farrelly attended 106 of 130 meetings, while Hyde attended 56 of 130. It should be noted that Hyde's attendance improved once he moved to Dublin from County Roscommon in 1908, but in no year during this period did he attend more meetings than O'Farrelly.

(52) See Mary E. Daly, Dublin, the Deposed Capital: A Social and Economic History, 1860-1914 (Cork, 1985 ed.), 64-66; W.A. Armstrong, "The Use of Information about Occupation I as a Basis for Social Stratification," in E.A. Wrigley, ed., Nineteenth-Century Society: Essays in the Use of Quantitative Methods for the Study of Social Data (Cambridge, 1972), 191-214. Personal and familial data on occupations have been taken from entries in Beathaisneis.

(53) Sample sizes: 1903-04, n = 36; 1913-14, n = 29.

(54) For the purposes of identifying a native-speaker, I have included only those who grew up in an Irish-speaking household and/or those whose immediate or extended family made a point of speaking to them in Irish. The respective figures are 34 percent for 1903 and 32 percent for 1913.

(55) Signs of upward mobility included, for example, having Irish-speaking parents who raised the child as an English-speaker; pursuing secondary or tertiary educational opportunities; or pursuing an occupation with more social cachet than that of one's parents (such as a civil-service position when one's parents had a small farm). Significant travel experiences included journeying outside Ireland for career advancement or spending time abroad for study or employment. Here are the exact figures: thirty of thirty-eight (79 percent) in 1903 and twenty-two of thirty-four (65 percent) in 1913. Seven of the latter twenty-two had served on the 1903 executive.

(56) Recognizing this limitation, I discuss below anecdotal information (gleaned from correspondence and police and press reports) about other areas--all of which suggests that the urban data are largely representative for the rest of the country.

(57) Gaelic League, Report of the Gaelic League, 1894 (Dublin, 1894), 26-34.

(58) Gearoid Mac Giolla Domhnaigh, ed., Conradh Gaeilge Chuige Uladh ag tus an 20u cheid (Monaghan, 1995), 7-53.

(59) The first such entry appeared in ACS, 16 March 1899. The figure of 168 represents only those new members resident in Dublin.

(60) Garvin, for instance, labeled one section of his discussion of the league "Many Young Men of Twenty Go to Language School." See Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries, 86.

(61) Using biographical data gleaned from the census and the Beathaisneis collection, I have found the ages of 95 of the members from Dublin, Cork, and Belfast. In each instance I have related the age to the year in which the person joined the league. For 1894, I was able to identify 26 from Dublin and 8 from Cork. For 1895, I identified 11 from Belfast; and for 1899, 50 from the second Dublin cohort.

(62) ACS, 12 Aug. 1899; Timothy G. McMahon, ed., Padraig O Fathaigh's War of Independence: Recollections of a Galway Gaelic Leaguer (Cork, 2000), 4.

(63) Diarmid O Cobhtaigh, Douglas Hyde (Dublin and London, 1917), 57.

(64) The Catholic Young Men's Society had shown an interest in the language since the parliamentarian William O'Brien encouraged them to do so in 1892. See GJ 6:2 (May 1895). See also William O'Brien, Irish Ideas (Port Washington, N.Y., 1970 ed.), 47-77.

(65) ACS, 9 Sept., 11 Nov. 1899, 16 June 1900, 28 Feb. 1903.

(66) Mary Colum, Life and the Dream (Chester Springs, 1966 ed.), 96.

(67) W.P. Ryan, The Pope's Green Island (London, 1912), 87.

(68) On Esmonde, see ACS, 20 April 1901. For Spring Rice, see ACS, 6, 20 Dec. 1902, II July 1903; Breathnach and Ni Mhurchu, Beathaisneis, a Ceathar, 168; Colum, Life and Dream, 164.

(69) Senia Paseta, Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change, and Ireland's Catholic Elite, 1879-1922 (Cork, 1999), 140.

(70) Breathnach and Ni Mhurchu, Beathaisneis, a Do, 142. For the industrial committee, see NLI MS 9804, Conradh na Gaeilge, Minutes of the Industrial Committee, 1902-11. References to Power's attendance at Oireachtas committee meetings can be found up through 1914-15. For example, see Gaelic League, Imtheachta an Ard-Fheis, 1915 (Dublin, 1915), 34.

(71) ACS, 1 March 1902.

(72) Ni Chinneide, Maire de Buitleir, 7-18. See also Breathnach and Ni Mhurchu, Beathaisneis a hAon, 27. See also Joseph Sweeney, "Why `Sinn Fein'?" Eire-Ireland 6:2 (Summer 1971), 33-40.

(73) Mary E.L. Butler, Irishwomen and the Home Language: Gaelic League Pamphlets, No. 6(Dublin, 1900).

(74) Ibid.

(75) On education, see Mary E.L. Butler, Two Schools: A Contrast, Gaelic League Leaflets, No. 2 (Dublin, 1901), 4. For a fictional example of Butler's ideal of a woman making sacrifices for her country and her husband, see her novel The Ring of Day (London, 1906).

(76) Butler, Irishwomen, 10.

(77) On the role of Butler's thought in Irish-Ireland circles, see the fine overview in Frank Biletz, "The Boundaries of Irish National Identity, 1890-1912" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1994), 50-58.

(78) Breathnach and Ni Mhurchu, Beathaisneis, A Cuig, 51 ff. See also Sinn Fein, 4 Dec. 1907; ACS, 15 Dec. 1900, 29 Jan. 1910. Hereafter Sinn Fein will be cited as SF.

(79) Sean O'Casey to John Hutchinson, 10 Sept. 1953, in David Krause, ed., The Letters of Sean O'Casey, 1942-1954 (New York, 1980), 2:990.

(80) Ibid.

(81) Tim Pat Coogan, De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow (London, 1993), 40.

(82) Denis Gwynn, quoted ibid., 41.

(83) Breathnach and Ni Murchu, Beathaisneis, A Cuig, 53.

(84) Daly, Dublin, 64-66. Daly's percentages, when added, total only to 92.5 percent, as she also includes an "X" category made up of students not living at home, pensioners, and workhouse inmates. All occupational categories were assigned after locating the individual member in the 1901 census returns or in a local directory. See Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory for 1895 (Belfast, 1895); Guy's County and City of Cork Directory for 1894 (Cork, 1894); Thom's Official Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the Year 1894 (Dublin, 1894). In the case of the last of these directories subsequent years from 1895 through 1905 were also consulted. Hereafter, whenever citing Thom's, I will give the relevant year of publication.

(85) Gaelic League sample sizes: Dublin 1 (1894), 71; Dublin 11 (1899), 58; Belfast (1895-97), 41; Cork (1894), 21.

(86) For example, in the Belfast sample, I found several individuals whose surnames and addresses matched the householders listed in the Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory, but because they were apparently not the householder, I have not included them in my calculation. Among these, most of the householders for whom the directory included an occupation would have fallen into Category III as skilled artisans. It is likely, though not certain, that the member living in such a household would also have been included in Category III, and this would have altered the relative percentages for occupational categories significantly.

(87) Eoin MacNeill, "A Plea and a Plan for the Extension of the Movement to Preserve and Spread the Gaelic Language in Ireland," GJ 4:44 (March 1893), 177-79.

(88) GJ 5:12 (March 1895), 177.

(89) See NLI MS 10,901, Eoin MacNeill Papers, Munster Files and Connacht Files for Lists Pertaining to County Kerry and County Galway; UCD Archives, MS LAI/E/20, Eoin MacNeill Papers, for County Cork.

(90) UCD Archives, MS LAI/E/20, Eoin MacNeill Papers. The list includes four priests and one professional (Maurice Healy, the solicitor and M.P.) who are a part of the sample.

(91) The Londonderry data were collected from Gaelic League annual reports and compared to the census and directories, including the Derry Almanac and Directory (Londonderry, 1894); Derry Almanac, North-West Directory, and General Advertiser for 1901 (Londonderry, 1901); and the South Derry and District Almanac and Diary for 1902 (Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, 1902).

(92) Miroslav Hroch, "Social and Territorial Characteristics in the Composition of the Leading Groups of National Movements," in Andreas Kappeler, Fikret Adinir, and Alan O'Day, eds., The Formation of National Elites: Comparative Studies on Governments and Non-Dominant Ethnic Groups in Europe, 1850-1940 (New York, 1992), 268-69. See also Alan O'Day, "Ireland's Catholics in a British State, 1850-1922," in Kappeler, Adinir, and O'Day, Formation of National Elites, 53. O'Day analyzes the leadership of several political nationalist organizations in Ireland but touches only briefly on the cultural revival.

(93) Of the twenty-two priests joining the league in 1893-94, only thirteen paid dues for more than one session. See NLI MSS 11,537, Connradh na Gaedhilge, Leabhar Liosta. After 1898 league organizers and local activists approached priests to serve as branch presidents partly in order to secure access to the local school or church hall for meetings. Thereafter many clerical presidents took little or no active interest in branch activities. See McMahon, "Social Bases," 164, 175-77, 188-96.

(94) See Sybil Gribbon, Edwardian Belfast: A Social Profile (Belfast, 1982), 16. A sense of the varied interests of the club can be found in its publication, the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club Report and Proceedings, edited by the Gaelic enthusiast Francis Joseph Bigger.

(95) Mac Giolla Domhnaigh, Conradh Gaeilge Chuige Uladh, 7; NLI MS 10,900, Eoin MacNeill Papers, Belfast File. For a report about the classes of the Naturalists' Field Club, see GJ 5:2 (May 1894).

(96) C.E.B. Brett, "The Edwardian City: Belfast about 1900," in J.C. Beckett and R.E. Glasscock, eds., Belfast: The Origin and Growth of an Industrial City (London, 1967), 120; Gribbon, Edwardian Belfast, 47; A.C. Hepburn, A Past Apart: Studies in the History of Catholic Belfast, 1850-1950 (Belfast, 1996), 69, 144-49; Fred Heatley, "Community Relations and the Religious Geography, 1800-86," in Beckett and Glasscock, Belfast, 129-42.

(97) An example of earlier elite solidarity can be found in the subscriptions supporting construction of St. Patrick's Catholic church (completed in 1815). Of the 4,100 [pounds sterling] collected, Protestants subscribed 1,300 [pounds sterling]. See Heatley, "Community Relations," 133.

(98) Edmond Morrissey to Eoin MacNeill, 20 Nov. 1895 (NLI MS 10,901, MacNeill Papers, Belfast File).

(99) See ibid. for the printed circular letter of April 1896 about a meeting of the Belfast Gaelic League.

(100) These included Boyd himself, the attorney F.J. Bigger, two ministers, and the poet and scholar Rose Young, whose family owned more than two thousand acres of land near Glengorm, Co. Antrim.

(101) This was Dr. Walter Bernard.

(102) According to Thom's (1894), Boland had shops at No. 1 Grafton Street and on Johnson's Court, valued at 120 [pounds sterling] and 18 [pounds sterling], respectively. By comparison, others among the Category II members included Michael Maher, whose two shops had rateable valuations of 24 [pounds sterling] and 33 [pounds sterling]; the vintner Michael Flanagan, whose shop was valued at 35 [pounds sterling]; and the butcher and parliamentarian William Field, whose shop had a valuation of 28 [pounds sterling]. See Thom's (1894), 1400, 1430, 1444, 1503, 1511, 1537.

(103) Breathnach and Ni Mhurchu, Beathaisneis, a Tri, 68; Thorn's (1894), 1389.

(104) See the Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory for 1895, entry for J. Moore, at 11 Shaftesbury Square. See also the 1901 Census for Belfast, A98/88, Returns for Shaftesbury Square, Odd Numbered Addresses. In 1901, Moore was listed as the head of the household, which included his wife, five children, and a maidservant.

(105) In Dublin for 1894 black-coated workers made up 40 out of the 41 Category III members (98 percent); in Dublin for 1899, 32 of 37 (87 percent); in Belfast, 13 of 18 (72 percent); and in Cork, just 5 of 10 (50 percent).

(106) Daly, Dublin, 4.

(107) Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York, 1991 ed.), 52-58.

(108) Brian O'Higgins, "Unique Branch of the Gaelic League," Wolfe Tone Annual 13 (1944-45), 62.

(109) Dermot Keogh, The Rise of the Irish Working Class: The Dublin Trade Union Movement and Labour Leadership, 1890-1914 (Belfast, 1982), 65, 74.

(110) Using the counties of Clare, Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Mayo, and Waterford as representative of Irish-speaking counties, one finds twenty-three of the seventy identified migrants (33 percent) in this category. When these data are broken down further, the resulting totals include eleven of the twenty migrants in 1894 (55 percent) and twelve of the fifty migrants (24 percent) in 1899.

(111) Eoin MacNeill's salary as a first-class clerk in the Accountant General's Office was 300 [pounds sterling] a year. See Tierney, Eoin MacNeill, 9, 43. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries a person needed an income of about 250 [pounds sterling] to maintain what Farmar refers to as "full-blown middle-class family respectability." See Tony Farmar, Ordinary Lives: The Private Lives of Three Generations of Ireland's Professional Classes (Dublin, 1995), 25-33.

(112) O'Higgins placed the shop assistant's salary at between 15 [pounds sterling] and 25 [pounds sterling] a year, while Keogh, whose focus is primarily on assistants in larger draperies, established an assistant's income at between 40 [pounds sterling] and 50 [pounds sterling] a year. See Brian O'Higgins, "My Songs and Myself," Wolfe Tone Annual 17 (1949), 60; and Keogh, Rise of Working Class, 68-76.

(113) Sean O'Casey, Drums under the Windows (London, 1943), 8.

(114) The wards corresponding to this description and those in which the thirty-nine members resided were those of North Dock, Mountjoy, North City, South City, Rotunda, Inns Quay, Wood Quay, Merchants' Quay, Usher's Quay, and Arran Quay. See Joseph V. O'Brien, "Dear, Dirty Dublin": A City in Distress, 1899-1916 (Berkeley, Calif., 1982), 12-24.

(115) The average property valuation is based on a comparison of information from the table "Area, Valuation, Houses, and Population in Each Municipal Ward or District Electoral Division in the City or County Borough of Dublin," in Thorn's (1905), 1379. The total for the valuation contains the valuation of both houses and land in 1901. The total for the number of houses includes both inhabited and uninhabited houses. Valuations of the habitations of Gaelic Leaguers include those found in Thorn's (1894 and 1895). I have divided the total valuation by the total number of houses, without making a distinction between inhabited and uninhabited buildings; therefore, these are crude totals and should be considered only for purposes of comparison.

(116) Maurice Goldring, Pleasant the Scholar's Life: Irish Intellectuals and the Construction of the Nation State (London, 1993), 47.

(117) ACS, 18 Nov. 1899.

(118) ACS, 3 Nov. 1900.

(119) See ACS, 15 April 1899; Fainne an Lae, 4, 11 Nov. 1899. See also O'Higgins, "My Songs," 60; Gaelic League, Imtheachta an Ard-Fheis, 1903-03 (Dublin, 1903), 150-51.

(120) See the sources cited in note 119. The 26 branches were in the wards of North Dock, Mountjoy, Rotunda, Inns Quay, North City, South City, Wood Quay, Merchants' Quay, Usher's Quay, and New Kilmainham.

(121) See Daly, Dublin, 22, 33-36, 277-78.

(122) On the Catholic Commercial Club, see Paseta, Before Revolution, 105. The cost of a new bicycle was roughly 5 [pounds sterling] for a modest model, making them the virtual preserve of middle-class riders in Ireland. See Farmar, Ordinary Lives, 32.

(123) For their participation in interdenominational billiards tournaments, see Martin Maguire, "The Organisation and Activism of Dublin's Protestant Working Class, 1883-1935," Irish Historical Studies 29:113 (May 1994), 70.

(124) Maguire, "Organisation and Activism," 75-80. See also NAI, DMP, CBS, 4072/S, Report on Dublin Literary Societies from Which IRB and INA Are Recruited, 13 Nov. 1896. Attached to the file are newspaper clippings referring to meetings in Inchicore with the Lyngs, William Rooney, and Arthur Griffith.

(125) Irish Times, 4 March 1892; Daly, Dublin, 164.

(126) ACS, 5 Nov. 1904. See also Programme for a Public Meeting to Be Held in the Pembroke Industrial School, Ringsend, for the Purpose of Establishing a Branch of the Gaelic League, on Sunday, 16th October (Dublin, 1904).

(127) Irish Nation and the Peasant, 24 Sept. 1910; ACS, 24 Sept. 1910, 23 Sept. 1911.

(128) ACS, 7 Oct. 1899, 22 June 1901.

(129) NAI, RIC, CBS, File 27,855/S, Report for the County of Londonderry, "Gaelic League: New Branch Formed in Londonderry City," 11 Nov. 1902. See also the attached files dated 20, 27 Nov., 19 Dec. 1901.

(130) ACS, 5 Dec. 1903.

(131) ACS, 19 April 1902.

(132) Rev. John M. O'Reilly, Gaelic League Pamphlets, No. 24: The Threatening Metempsychosis of a Nation (Dublin, 1900), 8.

(133) Ibid.

(134) ACS, 29 Dec. 1900.

(135) Thom's (1905), 35, 41. The population figure is for 1901, and it is included in Thom's with information about market dates.

(136) Leader, 26 Oct. 1906, 2, 9 Nov. 1907.

(137) Patrick Macartan to Joseph McGarrity, 13 Jan. 1906 (NLI MS 17,457, Joseph McGarrity Papers, Letters from Patrick Macartan, 1904-11, File 3 [1906]). For published reports about Maguire's activities in Dromore, see ACS, 7 May, 11 Nov. 1904.

(138) Leader, 26 Oct. 1906, 9 Nov. 1907.

(139) Padraig Ua Duinnin, "The Gaelic League and Non-Sectarianism," Irish Rosary (Jan. 1907), 12. For a fictional account that includes similar sentiments, see George A. Birmingham [pseud., J.O. Hannay], Benedict Kavanagh (London, 1913 ed.), 59.

(140) Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries, 84; Dublin Evening Mail, 17 March 1902.

(141) ACS, 7 June, 1, 8 Nov. 1902, 12 March 1904. See also Paul Bew, Ideology and the Irish Question: Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism, 1912-1916 (Oxford, 1994), 88-89.

(142) ACS, 7 June 1902.

(143) Freeman's Journal (hereafter cited as FJ), 20 March 1908. See also Peter Murray, "Irish Cultural Nationalism in the United Kingdom State: Politics and the Gaelic League, 1900-1918," Irish Political Studies 8 (1993), 62. Parental objections were reported in twenty-five of the fifty-seven schools under Protestant management.

(144) ACS, 2 Dec. 1911.

(145) Padraig O Snodaigh, Hidden Ulster: Protestants and the Irish Language (Belfast, 1995), 89, 91.

(146) Earnan de Blaghd, Trasna na Boinne (Dublin, 1957), 128; David Green, "The Irish Language Movement," in R.B. McDowell, ed., The Church of Ireland, 1869-1969 (London and Boston, 1975), 116.

(147) FJ, 28 May 1907. The Venerable Archdeacon William Hutch, P.P. of Midleton, Co. Cork, had made his remarks at a Gaelic League feis in Midleton at which a Protestant nationalist M.P., Captain A.J.C. Donelan, addressed the gathering. See FJ, 27 May 1907.

(148) This was Rolleston's conclusion as well. See FJ, 28 May 1907.

(149) Leader, 11, 25 May 1907.

(150) O'Casey, Drums, 172.

(151) de Blaghd, Trasna na Boinne, 127-28.

(152) ACS, 11 March 1905. See also O'Casey, Drums, 171-72; de Blaghd, Trasna na Boinne, 127-30.

(153) Greene, "Irish Language Movement," 117.

(154) For example, see Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries, 85; MacDonagh, States of Mind, 114-15. A full treatment of Hannay's involvement in the league and his troubles in 1906 appears in R.B.D. French, "J.O. Hannay and the Gaelic League," Hermathena: A Dublin University Review 102 (Spring 1966), 26-52.

(155) For example, see his letters to the Church of Ireland Gazette, 3, 17, 20 June, 8 July, 28 Oct., 4 Nov. 1904, 15 Dec. 1905. See also his three-part series in the Irish Protestant, 20, 27 May, 8 June 1905.

(156) J.O. Hannay, Is the Gaelic League Political? (Dublin, 1906), 8.

(157) French, "J.O. Hannay," 45, 50.

(158) Ibid., 50.

(159) Birmingham, Benedict Kavanagh, 7.

(160) Church of Ireland Gazette, quoted in SF, 13 Oct. 1906.

(161) Ibid.

(162) On the cultural renaissance in Belfast and what distinguished it from the Dublin literary revival, see Flann Campbell, The Dissenting Voice: Protestant Democracy in Ulster from Plantation to Partition (Belfast, 1991), 361-75; John Hewitt, "The Northern Athens and After," in Beckett, Belfast, 76-82; Jonathan Bardon, Belfast:An Illustrated History (Dundonald, 1982), 167-68.

(163) On the Shah Van Vocht, see Richard Harp, "The Shan Van Vocht (Belfast, 1896-1899) and Irish Nationalism," Eire-Ireland 24:3 (Autumn 1989), 42-52.

(164) Bulmer Hobson, Ireland Yesterday and Tomorrow (Tralee, 1968), 14-15.

(165) Editorial from Irish Protestant, quoted in ACS, 14 Oct. 1905. On Crawford's colorful transition from unionist to moderate nationalist, see J.W. Boyle, "The Belfast Protestant Association and the Independent Orange Order, 1901-10," Irish Historical Studies 13:50 (Sept. 1962), 117-52; Alvin Jackson, "The Failure of Unionism in Dublin," Irish Historical Studies 26:104 (Nov. 1989), 376-95; Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Life, 1891-1918 (New York, 1999), 42-43, 101-2, 225.

(166) Irish Peasant, 5 Aug. 1906; FJ, 22 Jan. 1909.

(167) Roger Blaney, Presbyterians and the Irish Language (Belfast, 1996), 181-86.

(168) ACS, 16 July 1904. For Smiley and Dixon, see Who Was Who, Vol. I, 1897-1915 (6th ed., London, 1988), 146, 482. On the 1905 by-election, see Bardon, Belfast, 159-60; Boyle, "Belfast Protestant Association," 138-39.

(169) Douglas Hyde, Langauge, Lore, and Lyrics: Essays and Lectures, ed. Breandan O Conaire (Dublin, 1986), 179. The speech took place at Carnegie Hall on 26 November 1905.

(170) ACS, 24 June 1899, 24 Feb. 1900, 24 Nov. 1900, 12 Oct. 1901.

(171) FJ, 20 March 1908.

(172) ACS, 23, 30 Dec. 1911.

(173) Ua Duinnin, "Gaelic League and Non-Sectarianism," 9.

(174) In the years before independence large numbers of urban Gaelic Leaguers followed this advice and made repeated visits to the Irish-speaking districts. For one of MacNeill's early appeals, see GJ, 1 Oct. 1895.

(175) O Cearuil, Aspail, 9.

(176) Fainne an Lae, 12 Nov. 1898.

(177) ACS, 15 Feb. 1908. See also O Suilleabhain, Na Timiri, 11-12; O Cearuil, Aspail, 29-31, 51.

(178) For example, in 1908, ACS included a report which showed that more than 2,660 [pounds sterling] of the nearly 5,400 [pounds sterling] expended the preceding year had gone to "organisers, teachers, and subsidies to Irish-speaking districts" (ACS, 7 March 1908).

(179) O Cearuil, Aspail, 12.

(180) All biographical data and subsequent calculations are based on a comparison of information from Appendix One in O Cearuil's volume with that contained in Beathaisneis.

(181) For example, O Buachalla began teaching in County Wexford outside his home district, but he left that first position apparently because of homesickness to return to the Banteer and Millstreet areas in County Cork. Colm O Gaora worked in his home district as well, until he accepted an organizing position which covered a wider swath of Connacht. Tomas O Conba of Limerick city consistently taught in communities along the Shannon estuary. And Padraig O Fathaigh continued to live on his mother's farm at Lurgan, Co. Galway, throughout his teaching career. See NLI MS G. 672, Fionan MacColuim Papers, Letters to Tomas O Conba, 1905-20; Colm O Gaora, Mise (Dublin, 1945 ed.), 64-90; C. Quinn, ed., Descriptive List of the Papers of Liam O Buachalla, Banteer, County Cork (1882-1942) (Cork, n.d.), i-iii; McMahon, O Fathaigh's War, 4.

(182) Timothy G. McMahon, "`To Mould an Important Body of Shepherds': The Gaelic League's Summer Colleges and the Teaching of Irish History," in Lawrence W. McBride, ed., Reading Irish Histories: Texts, Contexts, and the Creation of National Memory, 1870-1922 (Dublin, forthcoming 2003).

(183) Gaelic League, Annual Report, 1901-02, 36-51

(184) The issue of how to accomplish their goals in the Gaeltacht was long a source of controversy among Gaelic Leaguers themselves. For the "anti-organizer" argument, see An Muimhneach Og 1:2 (June 1903), 4; FJ, 18, 24 Sept. 1906. For the initial decision to conduct flying visits across the widest possible area, see ACS, 23 Sept. 1899.

(185) Gaelic League Reports, 1898, 3-4; Gaelic League, Annual Report, 1901-02, 104-13.

(186) J.M. Synge, The Aran Islands and Other Writings, ed. Robert Tracy (New York, 1962), 316, 332.

(187) ACS, 4 March 1911.

(188) Ibid.

(189) Gaelic League, Annual Report, 1901-02, 48.

(190) Louis Alphonse Paul-Dubois, Contemporary Ireland (Dublin, 1911), 301-2.

(191) Ibid., 304.

(192) NLI MS 24,393, Fionan Mac Coluim Papers, 1902-03, Census of the Irish-Speaking Communities for Bolus Promontory.

(193) These calculations are based on the tables of population and emigration in Thom's (1905), 727-28

(194) For example, see the reports on the returns for the counties of Kerry, Galway, Mayo, Cork, and Donegal, appearing respectively in ACS, 13 April, 18, 25 May, 15 June, 20 July, 10 Aug. 1912.

(195) This figure is based on a comparison of the branches from 1901 with the list of market-and-fair towns in Thom's (1905), 34-41.

(196) For a discussion of the interconnections of towns with their surrounding rural hinterlands, see Joseph Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society, 1848-1918 (Dublin, 1973), 97-99.

(197) Garret FitzGerald, "Estimates for Baronies of Minimum Level of Irish-Speaking amongst Successive Decennial Cohorts: 1771-1781 to 1861-1871," Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 84c (1984), 150.

(198) The image of the "gombeenman" is a well-established one in Ireland, and the tense lending relationship has been explored in much contemporary and later scholarly literature. For example, see Synge, Aran Islands, 320; Liam Kennedy, "Farmers, Traders, and Agricultural Politics in Pre-Independence Ireland," in Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly, Jr., eds., Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780-1914 (Madison, Wis., and Manchester, 1983), 359-66; David S. Jones, "The Cleavage between Graziers and Peasants in the Land Struggle, 1890-1910," in Clark and Donnelly, Irish Peasants, 374-413.

(199) O hAnnrachain told the Ard Fheis in 1902 that many priests who were Gaelic Leaguers and who presided at league meetings nonetheless hired only English-speaking teachers in the schools that they managed. See Gaelic League, Annual Report, 1901-02, 48. A similar example of a priest-revivalist attacking native culture was Canon James MacFadden, parish priest of Glenties, Co. Donegal. See Breandan Mac Suibhne, "Soggarth Aroon and Gombeen Priest: Canon James MacFadden (1842-1917)," in Gerard Moran, ed., Radical Irish Priests, 1670-1970 (Dublin, 1998), 183-84.

(200) ACS, 1 Nov. 1902, 3, 24 Jan. 1903.

(201) An Muimhneach Og (June 1903).

(202) Ibid.

(203) Rev. P.S. Dinneen, Lectures on the Irish Language Movement Delivered under the Auspices of Various Branches of the Gaelic League (Dublin, 1904), 21. On Dinneen's complaints that not enough attention was paid to the Gaeltacht, see ibid., 52-53.

(204) ACS, 25 Nov. 1905.

(205) For example, see FJ, 18, 24 Sept. 1906. See also the extended discussion in ACS during 1912 about saving the Gaeltacht that was inspired by the release of the 1911 county census returns. For a particularly pointed statement calling on the Ard Fheis to focus its attention on the Gaeltacht, see the letter of Gobnait Ni Bhruadair in ACS, 22 June 1912.

(206) For instance, in County Kerry the general population decline was less than 4 percent, but the fall in the number of Irish-speakers was nearly 15 percent. See ACS, 13 April 1912.

(207) Ibid.

(208) ACS, 15 June 1912.

(209) ACS, 25 May 1912.

(210) McMahon, "Gaelic League," 100-1.

(211) ACS, 13 April, 1 June, 24 Aug. 1912.

(212) ACS, 24 Aug. 1912.

TIMOTHY G. McMAHON is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Marquette University, where he teaches courses on Ireland, the British empire, and Western civilization. He has published articles about the Gaelic revival and its impact on political and cultural developments in early-twentieth-century Ireland, and has edited a volume entitled Padraig O Fathaigh's War of Independence: Recollections of a Galway Gaelic Leaguer (2000) in the "Irish Narratives" series for Cork University Press. He is currently preparing his doctoral dissertation, "The Social Bases of the Gaelic Revival, 1893-1910," for publication.

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