Review
delivers his verdict on two reprinted classics of Irish history.
- A Tour in Ireland in 1775
- UCD Press
Making History
Two examples from a new series of Classics of Irish History, long out of print and now published by UCD press under the general editorship of Professor Tom Garvin.
They could hardly be more different, the one louche with 18th century condescension, the other austere, almost didactic in its seriousness.
When Davitt (1846–1906) died on 30 May, Devoy (1842–1928) published an obituary and 17 chapters of biography in his IRB newspaper, Gaelic American, mainly concentrated on their inter-Atlantic collaboration in the ‘Plan of Campaign’ that finally ended the tyranny of landlordism in Ireland. Devoy had worked well with Davitt but with his instinctive Fenianism he felt frustrated at the one-armed Mayo man’s insistence on constitutionalism. Devoy had served five years in prison (1866–71) and was released on condition of permanent exile from the UK. The time of the Land War was the period of their greatest amity and it represented the kind of operation suitably enhanced that Devoy envisaged for the final dismissal of the British from Ireland. He supported the Easter Rising but broke with its survivor, de Valera, over American autonomy – and tellingly he accepted the Treaty. His account of the Davitt years though coloured by his own agenda are detailed and well written and though 102 years old are now usefully available to students of the period.
Twiss, the 18th century traveller became so unpopular with his Irish readers that his likeness was imposed at the bottom of the necessary vessel of nocturnal hygiene, as shown on the cover, so that the useful items - which sold well - became known as Twiss-pots. The Ireland of the time was essentially Anglo-Ireland, the members of parliament notorious for venality and corruption, and its aristocracy largely absentee. He laments the lack of refinement and culture but the ascendancy were almost proud (with rare exceptions) of their philistinism. The cultural and political renaissance associated with Grattan’s parliament was a decade away and the native Irish debased to a peasantry.
West of a line from Derry to Waterford, Irish was the first - sometimes the only – language so Twiss obligingly included a list of more than a 100 ‘Iberno-Celtic’ words, including the surely unnecessary các! He thought no more of the Giant’s Causeway than did Dr Johnson but was delighted with Ballyshannon and its salmon leap, where he stayed for four days. He dismissed the Maiden City peremptorily: ‘It consists chiefly of two streets, which cross each other…I walked round the town-walls but found nothing worthy of notice.’ He admitted that Killarney was beautiful and on his way there stopped in Swanlingbar (sic) then famous, not as nowadays for the number of its pubs but, as a spa with a ‘sulphureo-nitrous’ spring. He kept out of Connacht but did more than justice to the rest
Both books are admirably edited and introduced, the Davitt by Carla King and WJ McCormack and the Twiss by Rachel Finnegan.
