Dog Day Lessons
For many years, I taught an upper-level course about Modern Irish Literature – the literature from about 1890 to 2000, at John Carroll University. We began by reading key works of cultural nationalism.
The first was the speech that Douglas Hyde delivered in November 1882, “The Necessity of De-Anglicizing Ireland,” to the Irish National Literary Society. He put forth his case that the demise of the Irish language was an inordinate cultural loss, and moreover, the degree to which Irish men and women willingly accepted English culture, and even believed it to be superior, was a dire, self-inflicted wound.
Only when all Irish men and women would embrace and preserve their own language and traditions would Ireland return to being what it once was: one of the “most classically learned and cultured nations in Europe.” How could we ever, asked Hyde, have translated our “euphonious Irish names into English monosyllables”?
Off my students went to find their original Gaelic Irish names. Alas, they came back unable to pronounce or spell them. Caoimhe? Eibhlin?
But Hyde’s speech was an easy read and persuasive to its original listeners and to my students, many of whom claimed Irish ethnicity. Yes, they assented, the Irish needed to stop all this Anglo-mania or West Britonism, as Hyde called it.
Then we turned to Yeats, who couldn’t match Hyde’s plea for the return of Gaelic since he couldn’t speak any. Instead, he took us by the hand to wander through the Celtic fog of myth and faeries.
He steeped a strong tea of Rosicrucian mysticism with the damp leaves of Sligo’s mountains and the cool waters of the lakes surrounding Ben Bulben, Knocknarea, and Innisfree. We were all invited to drink deep so that we could join this Protestant Anglo-Irishman and “accounted be/ True brother of a company/That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong,/Ballad and story, rann and song.”
Those were the happy first weeks of class. But then we had to get to work, and for students it was too late to drop the class. Now it was time to grapple with four meta-analytical questions. Yes, I called them “meta-analytical,” and dark shadows crossed the room while brows furrowed. Here they are:
1. The recovery of the myths was never a neutral undertaking; they were presented as ancient evidence of certain viewpoints the nationalists wanted the general population to accept. They were modes of distinction between Anglo identity and Celtic identity, twisted to shape a particular form of revolutionary patriotism. It was the student’s job to articulate what these myths and stories were made to express and why.
2. Next, if the use of myths and stories was self-celebration, what if all this vaunting of nativist ideas and ideals covered a lot of other ugly facts? Like the church’s treatment of Parnell? Or the suffocating triumvirate of church, country, and empire?
What if you feared the revolutionaries more than the soldiers—as most Dubliners did before the Easter Rising? All of James Joyce’s Dubliners with Dublin as the center of moral paralysis (and all of Ireland as the sow that eats its young) is part of the attempt to demystify social blindness and stasis. This was O’Casey’s project, as well, in his plays, especially Juno and the Paycock.
3. Why does nationalism frequently become divisive, exclusive, and reactionary? Recall that the Orange Order bonfires used to burn IRA figures – now they build pyres to keep out refugees. That happened this past July.
4. And finally, how can we understand the historical incident from a double perspective of its time of articulation and our contemporary perspective? I think of Yeats’ poem, “On a Political Prisoner.” It’s about a woman imprisoned for her political action, conjuring his friends Maud Gonne or Countess Constance Markievicz as the speaker mourns that her mind has becomes “a bitter abstract thing.” Our double perspective would allow us to contextualize the attitude toward women but also (on behalf of the courage of these revolutionary souls) decry Yeats’ dismissal.
These four questions are not the only ones to raise when reading a piece of literature that is a product of a particular historical moment and that self-consciously wishes to enter into the implications and estimation of that historical moment. Put another way: it is the work of an entire course on twentieth century Irish Literature to see which texts were written to extoll Irish identity.
And it is also work of the entire course to read these works for their critical revelations – for their expose of national faults or their blindness to them. These are demanding analytical tasks (and my JCU students were up to them, with a little prodding).
Dogs Native to Ireland
But the fundamental question for all lovers of Irish culture is this: Do you prefer literature or dogs? This insight came to me as I was reading The Curious History of Irish Dogs by David Blake Knox. I was entranced. I learned that there are nine breeds of dogs native to Ireland, and almost all of them have been de-valued, made nearly or extinct.
Their noble qualities have been associated with the worst stereotypes invented to insult their owners. Sometimes they have been romanticized and hence infantilized, much like Irish men and women. And they have also been rescued and cared for.
Had I known about the history of Irish dogs, I would have declared, “less Hyde! More [Wolf] Hound). I would have had the Red and White Setter run alongside Joyce on his way out of Ireland. It would have been easier going—less rough, more ruff.
Consider these facts: David Blake Knox tells us that Dr. James Renfield, a 19th century American physiognomist, saw “strong physical similarities between the Irish as a race and dogs as a species.” According to Renfield, the Irishman and the dog are comparable in their “barking, snarling, howling, begging, fawning, flattering, back-biting, quarreling, and blustering” (11).
The Irish, said Renfield, are good servants, “if you deal harshly with them as a master does his dog” (15). Renfield’s racist views, like that of the British occupiers, demonstrate the kind of insults that prompted Hyde, Yeats, and others to write new versions of Irish life, culture, and history.
Irish Wolf Hound
Enter the noble Wolf Hound, a dog so large that it was made an emblem of Irish identity. It follows on the tale of Setanta, the fearless warrior who slayed the hound of an Irish High King and then took the dog’s place as a royal protector.
Forever after, Setanta was known as Ci Chulainn, the hound of Culainn. The Irish Wolf Hound is similarly a symbol of the indomitable Celt. Wearing collars of precious metals, they were sent as a gift to kings and emperors. Stories claim the dogs even fought among the gladiators in the Coliseum.
As if it were not enough to be associated with ancient bravery and with the landowning class, Wolf Hounds are also linked to Saint Patrick. Apparently, after his escape from the Romans, Patrick fled on a ship that crashed with no food on board. In his first miracle, Patrick summoned wild pigs from the woods, and the Wolf Hounds captured them, providing rashers for man and beast.
A second cultural myth took hold with the help of the Kerry Blue Terrier. Apart from stories of how English kennel clubs sought to claim the breed, there are others which celebrate the terrier as the Wolfe Hound’s opposite. The Kerry Blue better fit the revolutionary profile.
Thought to be “of the soil, Kerry Blues were brave and cunning.” No wonder that Michael Collins loved his Kerry Blue, Jessie. He even exhibited in the 1921 St Patrick’s Day Kennel Show, which was mounted in defiance of the British Kennel Show scheduled for the same day in Dublin.
Five months later, Collins was ambushed and assassinated. Space does not allow for more stories of the pivotal roles played by dogs in Irish culture, but there are many more. David Blake Knox offers a great beginning.
