Análisis descriptivo de resultados

Up until 1921 and the partition of Ireland into two different political entities,

“Irish was used by a number of residual communities of native speakers in Northern Ireland” (Mercator 2004: 2). These were scattered across all six counties, and in the previous decades had already begun to decline. Even though

small Irish communities were to be found in […] the north-east of Ulster, in Central Ulster, […] in the southern reaches of Armagh and Down […], in southern and western Tyrone […] and in south Fermanagh (Mac Giolla Chríost, 2002: 434)

they had almost disappeared by the middle of the century (Mac Póilin, 1997: 183).

Before the Ulster plantations took place, the Irish language in Ulster was not under any particular threat of decline. The latter had been brought about by a series of

policies, which focused on allocating the lands owned by the Catholic, mainly Irish-speaking, natives, and developing urban centres inhabited by the non Irish-speaking settlers with the aim of “introducing new patterns of land ownership which disrupted the established social network structures of its rural communities” (Corrigan, 1999: 60).

Thus the Plantations in Ulster caused a shift of power, which was particularly relevant in the economic, political, and religious spheres.

As Mac Giolla Chriost observes, following the Plantation “the territory of Ulster, the former heartland of the Great Irishry, [was] marked by several zones of penetration by other languages, [...] namely English, Scots Gaelic and Scots or Lallans” (2002:

429), with English being the prominent language in most areas of the Plantation scheme and making inroads in the surrounding areas.

According to Ó Casaide’s (1930) report on the Irish language situation in Belfast and County Down between 1601 and 1850, “[t]he decline of the Irish language in County Down – in so far as it was due to the intrusion of “planters” or other foreigners – may probably be traced back as far as the early part of the 17th century, though its decay as a spoken language did not become serious until two hundred years later”

(1930: 3). In 1851, the total number of Irish speakers for County Down and Belfast were respectively 1153 and 295.

However, as Ó Casaide and other authors point out (e.g. Ó Cuív, 1951), before the 1881 census the language question was included only in a footnote and not in a separate column. The implications are that the number of Irish speakers may have been understated because no specific question on Irish-speaking was included in the official census of population.

As the Census returns from 1851 and 1891 in Table 1.1 indicate, a comparison between the number of both Irish speakers as a whole and of monoglot speakers in particular shows that over a period of four decades the Irish language had undergone a steady and drastic decline.

Table 1.1: Irish language decline in Northern Ireland 1851-1891 (adapted from Ó Cuív, 1951)

COUNTY 1851 Monoglot

speakers % 1891 Monoglot

speakers %

ANTRIM 3,033 11 1.2 885 - 0.4

ARMAGH 13,736 148 7 3,486 2 2.4

DERRY 5,406 28 2.8 2,723 5 1.8

DOWN 1,153 2 0.4 590 - 0.3

FERMANAGH 2,704 10 2.3 561 - 0.8

TYRONE 12,892 450 5 6,687 7 3.9

BELFAST CITY 295 - 0.3 917 - 0.4

While an examination of the Censuses of 1851 and 1891 gives us an idea of the change that was taking place in the six counties that were soon to become a separate political and territorial unit, it does not give us any idea of the distribution of Irish speakers since up to 1901 the smallest administrative units taken into consideration for statistical purposes were the baronies (which were quite large geographical areas).

Figure 1.6: Early 20^th century Irish-speaking Ulster (from Corrigan, 2010: 127)

Therefore, as Ó Cuív notes “it is often difficult [...] when the number of Irish speakers in a barony is small, to say whether they represent an Irish-speaking community or were simply isolated individuals who retained Irish speech in spite of their Anglicised surroundings” (1951: 22-23). Indeed, “although there was probably no county in Ulster without an Irish-speaking community of some sort, it was only in Donegal, especially in the west and north, that Irish was the prevailing language” (Ó Cuív, 1951: 24-25). The high numbers of Irish speakers were present mainly in four counties, namely Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, and Cavan (each one with over 10,000 Irish speakers), and they were concentrated in those areas that were closer to what eventually became the border and the Irish-speaking areas in Donegal (see figure 1.6 above).¹¹

11 “Namely Upper Orior and Upper Fews in Armagh, Farney in Monaghan, and Upper Strabane in Tyrone. (...) Derry, which had over 5,000 Irish speakers in Loughinsholin Barony, while nearly all of the 3,000 Irish speakers in Antrim were in Lower Glenarm and in Cary which includes Rathlin Island. Fermanagh had a number of Irish-speaking areas, while in Down, the county with the least number of Irish speakers, there seems to have been an Irish-speaking community in Upper Iveagh” (Ó Cuív, 1951: 24-25).

After 1921 there is a shortage of data on the number of Irish speakers in the six counties comprising Northern Ireland due to the fact, as noted above, that the language question was deliberately removed from the Census of Northern Ireland after this time and was not restored until 1991.

Following the Government of Ireland Act (1920) and the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, six out of the nine Ulster counties in the northeast of the island became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. A different political treatment of the Irish language caused a rapid decline and its disappearance over a very short period.¹² However, as noted by Mac Giolla Chríost:

The abandonment of the language by the Irish is an act, however, which is not explicable in terms of the necessity of the acquisition of the English language. […] The Census returns from the 19^th century suggest that it is more likely that these events merely contributed to the momentum of a process that was already underway (2002: 431-432).

The last available data (with an increase from 1.3 in 1891 to 2.3 in 1911) from the 1921 census show an increase in self-reported Irish speakers which, however, was probably influenced, as in the rest of the island, by the language revival movement and Gaelic League activities¹³ (Mac Giolla Chriost, 2002) or as a result of underreporting beforehand.

Nowadays, Irish in Northern Ireland is spoken by a number of families and communities scattered throughout the six counties, which comprise three categories of speakers: i) second language learners (i.e. all those people who learnt Irish in school or in adult classes); ii) Irish language speakers from one of the Gaeltacht areas in the Republic; and iii) children who have been brought up in Irish-speaking homes (by parents who had learnt Irish as a second language).

According to the 2001 UK census of population, and as shown in table 1.2 below, the highest numbers of persons aged 3 and over who reported some knowledge of Irish live in the Local Government Districts of Belfast (36,317) and Newry and Mourne (16,965), while the lowest numbers, unsurprisingly perhaps given their majority Protestant populations, were recorded in the Districts of Carrickfergus (705) and Larne (1,309).

12 The last available official censal data on the Irish language in the six counties comprising Northern Ireland date back to 1911.

13 The first branch of the Gaelic League was founded in Belfast in 1895 and “Protestants were members from the beginning in Belfast” (Ó Snodaigh, 1995: 85). In 1899, nine branches had been set up.

In general terms, all the districts¹⁴ that recorded the lowest numbers of people reporting some knowledge of Irish are located in the two counties, Antrim and Down, that were located on the eastern edge of the areas subjected to the plantation and that constituted a Scottish Pale before 1609:

[i]t is plausible, therefore, that [these] two counties [...] acted as a cultural entrepot for many Scottish settlers. This Scottish Pale undoubtedly eased the way for the undertakers and their tenants from one hard land into another (Hill, 1993: 29).¹⁵

14 The six counties of Northern Ireland (Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh,

Londonderry and Tyrone) are no longer used for local government purposes. Following the establishment in 1973 of the Local Government (Boundaries) Act (Northern Ireland) 1971 and the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972 the previous system was replaced by an administrative division based on districts. County Antrim is divided into the following nine district councils: Antrim, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Belfast City, Carrickfergus, Larne, Lisburn, Moyle and Newtownabbey. County Armagh is divided between three district councils: Armagh City and District Council, part of Craigavon Borough Council, and part of Newry and Mourne District Council. County Down: Ards, Banbridge, Craigavon, Down, Lisburn, Newry and Mourne, North Down. Fermanagh District Council is the only district council in Northern Ireland that contains all of the county it is named after. The district councils covering Londonderry County are

Coleraine, Derry City, Limavady, Magherafelt; and part of Cookstown District Council, which is largely in County Tyrone. County Tyrone is split into four districts: Strabane, Cookstown, Dungannon and South Tyrone and Omagh.

15 See also Corrigan (2010) for a detailed account of the pre-Plantation period in Northern Ireland.

29

Table 1.2: Irish language speaking in Northern Ireland for District Council Areas (from www.nisra.gov.uk¹⁶, last accessed 29 June 2011) Persons aged 3 and over who:

All persons aged

Northern Ireland 1617957 36479 24536 7183 75125 24167 167490 1450467

Antrim 46220 795 524 188 1630 500 3637 42583