Acknowledgments i N O RT H A M E R I C A N G A E L S m c g i l l - q u e e n ’ s s t u d i e s i n e t h n i c h i s t o r y s e r i e s o n e : d o n a l d h a r m a n a k e n s o n , e d i t o r 1 Irish Migrants in the Canadas A New Approach Bruce S. Elliott (Second edition, 2004) 2 Critical Years in Immigration Canada and Australia Compared Freda Hawkins (Second edition, 1991) 3 Italians in Toronto Development of a National Identity, 1875–1935 John E. Zucchi 4 Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs Essays in Honour of the Sesquicenten- nial of the Birth of Kr. Barons Vaira Vikis-Freibergs 5 Johan Schroder’s Travels in Canada, 1863 Orm Overland 6 Class, Ethnicity, and Social Inequality Christopher McAll 7 The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars James Belich 8 White Canada Forever Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British Columbia W. Peter Ward (Third edition, 2002) 9 The People of Glengarry Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820 Marianne McLean 10 Vancouver’s Chinatown Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980 Kay J. Anderson 11 Best Left as Indians Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840–1973 Ken Coates 12 Such Hardworking People Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto Franca Iacovetta 13 The Little Slaves of the Harp Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York John E. Zucchi 14 The Light of Nature and the Law of God Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877 Allen P. Stouffer 15 Drum Songs Glimpses of Dene History Kerry Abel 16 Canada’s Jews (Reprint of 1939 original) Louis Rosenberg Edited by Morton Weinfeld 17 A New Lease on Life Landlords, Tenants, and Immigrants in Ireland and Canada Catharine Anne Wilson 18 In Search of Paradise The Odyssey of an Italian Family Susan Gabori 19 Ethnicity in the Mainstream Three Studies of English Canadian Culture in Ontario Pauline Greenhill 20 Patriots and Proletarians The Politicization of Hungarian Immigrants in Canada, 1923–1939 Carmela Patrias 21 The Four Quarters of the Night The Life-Journey of an Emigrant Sikh Tara Singh Bains and Hugh Johnston 22 Cultural Power, Resistance, and Pluralism Colonial Guyana, 1838–1900 Brian L. Moore 23 Search Out the Land The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740–1867 Sheldon J. Godfrey and Judith C. Godfrey Acknowledgments iii 24 The Development of Elites in Acadian New Brunswick, 1861–1881 Sheila M. Andrew 25 Journey to Vaja Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family Elaine Kalman Naves m c g i l l - q u e e n ’ s s t u d i e s i n e t h n i c h i s t o r y s e r i e s t w o : j o h n z u c c h i , e d i t o r 1 Inside Ethnic Families Three Generations of Portuguese- Canadians Edite Noivo 2 A House of Words Jewish Writing, Identity, and Memory Norman Ravvin 3 Oatmeal and the Catechism Scottish Gaelic Settlers in Quebec Margaret Bennett 4 With Scarcely a Ripple Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880–1920 Randy William Widdis 5 Creating Societies Immigrant Lives in Canada Dirk Hoerder 6 Social Discredit Anti-Semitism, Social Credit, and the Jewish Response Janine Stingel 7 Coalescence of Styles The Ethnic Heritage of St John River Valley Regional Furniture, 1763–1851 Jane L. Cook 8 Brigh an Orain / A Story in Every Song The Songs and Tales of Lauchie MacLellan Translated and edited by John Shaw 9 Demography, State and Society Irish Migration to Britain, 1921–1971 Enda Delaney 10 The West Indians of Costa Rica Race, Class, and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority Ronald N. Harpelle 11 Canada and the Ukrainian Question, 1939–1945 Bohdan S. Kordan 12 Tortillas and Tomatoes Transmigrant Mexican Harvesters in Canada Tanya Basok 13 Old and New World Highland Bagpiping John G. Gibson 14 Nationalism from the Margins The Negotiation of Nationalism and Ethnic Identities among Italian Immigrants in Alberta and British Columbia Patricia Wood 15 Colonization and Community The Vancouver Island Coalfield and the Making of the British Columbia Working Class John Douglas Belshaw 16 Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War Internment in Canada during the Great War Bohdan S. Kordan 17 Like Our Mountains A History of Armenians in Canada Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill 18 Exiles and Islanders The Irish Settlers of Prince Edward Island Brendan O’Grady 19 Ethnic Relations in Canada Institutional Dynamics Raymond Breton Edited by Jeffrey G. Reitz iv Acknowledgments 20 A Kingdom of the Mind The Scots’ Impact on the Development of Canada Edited by Peter Rider and Heather McNabb 21 Vikings to U-Boats The German Experience in Newfound- land and Labrador Gerhard P. Bassler 22 Being Arab Ethnic and Religious Identity Building among Second Generation Youth in Montreal Paul Eid 23 From Peasants to Labourers Ukrainian and Belarusan Immigra- tion from the Russian Empire to Canada Vadim Kukushkin 24 Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities Migration to Upper Canada in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Elizabeth Jane Errington 25 Jerusalem on the Amur Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924–1951 Henry Felix Srebrnik 26 Irish Nationalism in Canada Edited by David A. Wilson 27 Managing the Canadian Mosaic in Wartime Shaping Citizenship Policy, 1939–1945 Ivana Caccia 28 Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905–1945 Rebecca Margolis 29 Imposing Their Will An Organizational History of Jewish Toronto, 1933–1948 Jack Lipinsky 30 Ireland, Sweden, and the Great European Migration, 1815–1914 Donald H. Akenson 31 The Punjabis in British Columbia Location, Labour, First Nations, and Multiculturalism Kamala Elizabeth Nayar 32 Growing Up Canadian Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists Edited by Peter Beyer and Rubina Ramji 33 Between Raid and Rebellion The Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1867–1916 William Jenkins 34 Unpacking the Kists The Scots in New Zealand Brad Patterson, Tom Brooking, and Jim McAloon 35 Building Nations from Diversity Canadian and American Experience Compared Garth Stevenson 36 Hurrah Revolutionaries The Polish Canadian Communist Movement, 1918–1948 Patryk Polec 37 Alice in Shandehland Scandal and Scorn in the Edel- son/Horwitz Murder Case Monda Halpern 38 Creating Kashubia History, Memory, and Identity in Canada’s First Polish Community Joshua C. Blank 39 No Free Man Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience Bohdan S. Kordan 40 Between Dispersion and Belonging Global Approaches to Diaspora in Practice Edited by Amitava Chowdhury and Donald Harman Akenson 41 Running on Empty Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975–1980 Michael J. Molloy, Peter Duschinsky, Kurt F. Jensen, and Robert J. Shalka Acknowledgments v 42 Twenty-First-Century Immigration to North America Newcomers in Turbulent Times Edited by Victoria M. Esses and Donald E. Abelson 43 Gaelic Cape Breton Step-Dancing An Historical and Ethnographic Per- spective John G. Gibson 44 Witness to Loss Race, Culpability, and Memory in the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians Edited by Jordan Stanger-Ross and Pamela Sugiman 45 Mad Flight? The Quebec Emigration to the Coffee Plantations of Brazil John Zucchi 46 A Land of Dreams Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Irish in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Maine, 1880–1923 Patrick Mannion 47 Strategic Friends Canada-Ukraine Relations from Inde- pendence to the Euromaidan Bohdan S. Kordan 48 From Righteousness to Far Right An Anthropological Rethinking of Critical Security Studies Emma Mc Cluskey 49 North American Gaels Speech, Story, and Song in the Diaspora Edited by Natasha Sumner and Aidan Doyle vi Acknowledgments preface vii North American Gaels Speech, Story, and Song in the Diaspora EDITED BY N ATA S H A SUMNER AND AIDAN DOYLE McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago viii preface © McGill-Queen’s University Press 2020 isbn 978-0-2280-0378-6 (cloth) isbn 978-0-2280-0379-3 (paper) isbn 978-0-2280-0517-9 (epdf) isbn 978-0-2280-0518-6 (epub) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2020 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding was also received from from the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Fund for Humanities Research at Harvard University, from the National University of Ireland, and from the College of Arts, Celtic Studies, and Social Sciences, University College, Cork. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: North American Gaels : speech, story, and song in the diaspora / edited by Natasha Sumner and Aidan Doyle. Names: Sumner, Natasha, editor. | Doyle, Aidan (Lecturer in Irish), editor. | Nilsen, Kenneth E., 1947–2012, honoree. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series two ; 49. Description: Series statement: McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series two ; 49 | This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Kenneth E. Nilsen, who held the Sister Saint Veronica Chair in Gaelic Studies at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, for twenty eight years before his death in 2012. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200275143 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200275410 | isbn 9780228003793 (paper) | isbn 9780228003786 (cloth) | isbn 9780228005179 (e pdf ) | isbn 9780228005186 (e pub ) Subjects: LCSH: Irish literature—History and criticism. | lcsh : Scottish Gaelic litera- ture—History and criticism. | lcsh : Folk literature, Irish—History and criticism. | lcsh: Folk literature, Scottish Gaelic—History and criticism. | lcsh : Irish—Cana- da—History. | lcsh : Scots—Canada—History. | lcsh : Irish—United States—Histo- ry. | lcsh: Scots—United States—History. | lcgft : Festschriften. Classification: lcc pb1306 . n 67 2020 | ddc 891.6/209—dc23 This book was typeset by True to Type in 10.5/13 Sabon Contents Foreword xi Sister Margaret MacDonell Acknowledgments xiii North American Gaels 3 Natasha Sumner and Aidan Doyle 1 Kenneth E. Nilsen (1947–2012): Gaisgeach nan Gàidheal (Champion of the Gaels) 37 Natasha Sumner I R I S H G A E L S 2 “An tan do bhidh Donchadh Ruadh a tTalamh an Éisg” (The Time That Donncha Rua Was in Newfoundland]: An Eighteenth-Century Irish Poet in the New World 73 Pádraig Ó Liatháin 3 Vernacular Irish Orthographies in the United States 92 Nancy Stenson 4 Pádraig Phiarais Cúndún in America: Poet without a Public? 109 Tony Ó Floinn 5 Irish-Language Folklore in An Gaodhal 137 Tomás Ó hÍde 6 Forming and Training an Army of Vindication: The Irish Echo , 1886–1894 163 Matthew Knight preface ix 7 Early Use of Phonograph Recordings for Instruction in the Irish Language 201 William Mahon 8 Seán “Irish” Ó Súilleabháin: Butte’s Irish Bard 228 Ciara Ryan 9 “Agus cé’n chaoi ar thaithnigh na Canadas leat?” (And How Did You Like Canada?): Irish-Language Canadian Novels from the 1920s and 1930s 250 Pádraig Ó Siadhail S C OT T I S H G A E L S 10 John MacLean’s “New World” Secular Songs: A Poet, His Print Editors, and Oral Tradition 281 Robert Dunbar 11 Two Satires, Three Men, and a Gaelic Newspaper: A Nineteenth- Century Tale 315 Michael Linkletter 12 “Rachainn Fhathast air m’Eòlas” (I’d Go Yet by My Experience): (Re)collecting Nineteenth-Century Scottish Gaelic Songs and Singing from Prince Edward Island 339 Tiber F.M. Falzett 13 Gaelic Heroes of the True North: Alexander Fraser’s Literary Interventions in Canadian Gaeldom 371 Michael Newton 14 Betraying Beetles and Guarding Geese: Animal Apocrypha in Scottish and Nova Scotian Gaelic Folklore 400 Kathleen Reddy 15 Annie Johnston and Nova Scotia 424 Lorrie MacKinnon 16 “Togaidh an Obair an Fhianais” (The Work Bears Witness): Kenneth Nilsen’s Gaelic Columns in the Casket , 1987–1996 442 Catrìona NicÌomhair Parsons Folklore Notes by Gregory Darwin Publications by Kenneth E. Nilsen 475 Contributors 483 Index 489 x Contents Foreword In 1983, with the support, moral and financial, of the late Hon. Allan J. MacEachen, mp , St Francis Xavier University was awarded one of the ethnic chairs funded by the Canadian Department of Multicultural- ism. Ken Nilsen was the successful applicant for the Sister Saint Veronica Chair in Gaelic Studies. It was my privilege to welcome Ken to join me in the effort to enhance the quality and scope of our small Celtic department. For the next two decades his intelligence, industry, and integrity, hallmarks of the true scholar, inspired respect and gratitude among students, fac- ulty, and the numerous local tradition bearers he valued and treated with such courtesy. This memorial volume will, I hope, serve to give due honour to a fellow traveller in the pursuit of veritas , and a truly good and faithful servant of s tfx. Sister Margaret MacDonell PhD Harvard ’69 Contents xi xii François Crépeau Acknowledgments The editors would like to thank the following institutions and people: Harvard University; the National University of Ireland; University College, Cork; Mark Abley, our editor at McGill-Queen’s University Press, for his help and support in the publication of this work; Matthew Kudelka for copy editing the text; our indexer, Eileen O’Neill; and last but not least, the contributors. Foreword xiii xiv Figures and Tables N O RT H A M E R I C A N G A E L S The Backstory 1 2 On the House North American Gaels Natasha Sumner and Aidan Doyle Irish and Scottish Gaelic have been spoken in North America since the earliest days of colonization, yet knowledge of the lengthy history of Gaelic speakers – or Gaels – on the North American continent is hardly widespread. Indeed, a survey conducted of the Canadian or American public – or, for that matter, among members of any univer- sity Humanities division – would likely register surprise that Scottish Gaelic was the third most widely spoken language in Canada at the time of Confederation (1867), or that the United States was home to hundreds of thousands of Irish speakers around the same time. 1 One does not need to look far to discover a reason for the general lack of awareness of these once sizable diasporas: despite numerous accounts of Irish and Scottish emigration to North America, historical scholar- ship of the first three quarters of the twentieth century often con- tained little or no information on the linguistic background of the immigrants. (This absence is particularly notable in sources pertain- ing to the Irish.) Moreover, Irish and Scottish Gaelic texts were, and to some extent continue to be, all but invisible in reference works about, and canonical anthologies of, the multi-ethnic literature and folklore of North America. 2 That North American Gaels were long overlooked by historians, folklorists, and literary anthologists is lamentable but to some extent understandable. Then, as now, very few academics possessed the re- quisite language skills to make informed judgments about Gaelic lit- erature and culture, and other topics of inquiry held sway among Gaelic scholars. As a result, few collections, translations, or studies of North American Scottish Gaelic narrative, and none of Irish narra- tive, were published before the final quarter of the last century. 3 For- tunately, interest has been growing since the 1970s, and considerable work has been done over the past fifty years to elucidate Canadian and American Gaels’ history, culture, and language use. Much of the effort has been exerted by North American-born or -resident acade- mics, 4 but the topic is gaining in popularity among scholars with less obvious personal connections to the regions in question. It is a promising sign that in 2014, several papers on North American top- ics were given at a large conference in Dublin dedicated to “Litríocht na Gaeilge ar fud an Domhain” (Irish-language Literature through- out the World), which resulted in two published volumes of essays. 5 These volumes can be added to a growing number of articles and books pertaining to diasporic Gaels that have lately appeared. 6 In October 2017, another step forward was taken with the Harvard Sym- posium on North American Gaelic Literature – the first academic event specifically designed to consider North American Irish and Scottish Gaelic literature in tandem. 7 Even with increasing scholarly activity, however, the Irish and Scottish Gaelic diasporas in Canada and the United States remain understudied, and they continue to receive little recognition outside of the fields of Irish, Scottish, and Celtic Studies. 8 This book represents a concerted effort to advance the study of the Gaelic diasporic experience, drawing together research by established and emerging scholars on aspects of Irish and Scottish Gaelic narra- tive in North America. Our choice to explore the Irish and Scottish Gaelic diasporas in the same volume was deliberate. Although the two are usually considered separately, the modes of literary and oral expression in both languages are closely related. However, rather than conflating ethnic groups – as in the Canadian census’s failure to dis- tinguish between the Gaelic languages after 1941, or the early twenti- eth-century US Census’s grouping of Celtic languages together with English – we have divided the book into two sections, focusing first on Irish Gaels, and then on Scottish Gaels. 9 The division encourages the reader to view each group as unique and cohesive. The cultural and experiential similarities of Irish and Scottish Gaels are nonethe- less evident when the two are presented alongside each other, and we hope the juxtaposition will lead to a deeper understanding of these diasporic communities and their place in North American history, lit- erature, and culture. The chapters in each section progress chronolog- 4 Natasha Sumner and Aidan Doyle ically from early literature to recent literature and folklore, in which order they are introduced below. The book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Kenneth E. Nilsen, who held the Sister Saint Veronica Chair in Gaelic Studies at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, for twenty-eight years before his death in 2012. As the first chapter illustrates, Ken Nilsen had a deep knowledge of both Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and he worked tire- lessly to document the languages, literatures, and lived traditions of North American Gaels across the eastern United States and the Cana- dian Maritimes. His work was deeply influential and highly deserving of honour, and it is referenced frequently by our contributors. We regret the loss of a kind, generous, and erudite scholar and of the wealth of fur- ther research that his untimely death prevented him from completing. a shared cultural heritage Irish and Scottish Gaelic narrative traditions are grounded in a shared cultural heritage. Until the seventeenth century, the North Channel (Sruth na Maoile) separating Ireland and Scotland did not act as a bar- rier to population movement and cultural exchange; rather, this well- traversed thoroughfare facilitated a network of connections within a Gaelic cultural zone that stretched from County Cork in the south to Sutherland and Caithness in the north. Without overemphasizing the unity of Gaelic-speaking people or the fixity of their social practices, it can generally be said that during the late medieval period (ca. 1200– 1600), Gaels across Ireland and Scotland shared a similar social struc- ture and cultural institutions. 10 Of greatest relevance here is that learned Gaels often trained in the same professional schools and that, despite dialectal differences among spoken Irish and Scottish Gaelic, they shared a common literary language (Classical Gaelic). 11 Poetry was the most elevated literary form, and among the elite it served as a vehicle primarily for public rather than private expression. The pre- eminent poets acted as diplomats and advisers to chieftains, and their compositions were directly relevant to statecraft. 12 The connection between Ireland and Scotland weakened in the half-century following the defeat and departure overseas of the fore- most Gaelic nobility in Ulster in 1607 and the plantation of their forfeited lands in 1609. As patrons of the arts in both regions subse- quently came under more stringent government control, the centuries- North American Gaels 5