Eco-Gaelicism: The Aesthetic of Resistance
Environmental ideology does not necessitate a belief in international Neoliberalism, it actually negates it.
Awakening a resistance
‘Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad? Tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár
Níl trácht ar Chill Chais ná a teaghlach 'S ní chluinfear a cling go brách’—Cill Chais.
The recent Buncrana Energy Plant and the older Rossport Five controversies are certainly evidence that the Gael is ready to stand up for our land once again. The spirit of revolt is still within us, we simply do not have a coherent national vehicle of resistance established yet. This will need sophistication and hard-work, but certainly can be done. A true ecologically and environmentally conscious movement in this country can only take charge from a people who are deeply engrained and steeped in the roots of this island. That is in part what this essay will attempt to do, to reawaken the ethnic memory of our rightful ownership over all this island, as against the multinationals, speculators and foreign political forces which currently rule over us. If we become conscious of who we are, this false world will be wiped away, with us left standing.
Anglicisation as biowarfare
‘Is bocht mo bheatha i gcreathaibh éaga, i gcor nach faicim taithneamh gréine’—Is Bocht Mo Bheatha le Dáibhidh Ó Bruadair.1
Easily the most obvious reason for the cultural importance of land and physical geography in Irish history stems from the British erasure of our organic bond with the landscape of our home. Colonialism and imperialism always run the risk of globalising and alienating the natives from their own ethnic home, but the British invasions of the late medieval period were unique in their attempt to remake an entire nation in their technocratic image. Due to fear of integrating as the Normans did, the British administrators of the post-Plantation period specifically sought to Anglicise the minds and culture of the country—most notably through renaming and defining the landscape, placenames and natural geography of the country into English.
In a strikingly Orwellian approach, the British believed if they could nominalistically redefine the land upon which Irish people lived, they could erase the ethnic consciousness of the Gael. If one’s own home was given alien titles, ruled by alien lords speaking an alien tongue, one would be forced to become a foreigner themselves if they were to fit in. As William J. Smyth reports, this culminated in the metaphysical battle for one’s conception of Ireland—the British seeing it as a technocratic economic zone, while the Gaels saw it as a mystical homeland steeped in oidhreacht:
‘the uneven battle between the power to shape and flatten worlds which are defined more by accounting, geometry, mathematics and perspective mapping, on the one hand, and on the other, a gaelicized/Gaelic world, where such maps were either unknown or not formally used and where territories and peoples were ruled and administered mainly by the words and living images associated with manuscripts, memory, local lore and myth.’2
As Giles Deleuze would put it, his was deterritorialization at work.
“Mountjoy’s Harvest” represented the classic example of British ecological warfare on our country’s natural habitat. After the patriots of the great Ó Mórdha clan from the Contae na Banríona managed to capture the invader “Black Thomas”, the British resorted to outright scorched earth policies as a way of striking at the heart of the nation. As Fogarty describes, in her wonderful biography on James Fintan Lalor (found here):
‘The Deputy marched with his forces into Leix, armed with spiked harrows, reaping hooks, and scythes. They cut down the green corn as it grew; the portions of the crop that had matured they harvested and bore away. The fields, alien records say, were ‘well-manured and orderly fenced’ in spite of the long-continued strife Mountjoy revelled in the fiendish work, wrote to Carew saying:—‘I am busy at harvest, cutting down the honest gentlemen’s corn.’ In the wake of the ‘harvesters’ there remained a countryside ravaged and denuded of the fruit of much labour, populated by starving women and children.’3
The Gael as the owner of this Island
‘Faoiseamh a gheobhadsa, Seal beag gairid, I measc mo dhaoine, Ar oileán mara’—Faoiseamh a Gheobhadsa.
Naturally, the counterpoint to this Anglicisation of our land is the recognition of our people’s ancient roots here, harkening back millennia. Important to note, when I say ‘our people’ I do not merely mean the Gaels who are currently residing within the confines of the 32 counties today, but the wider diaspora as well, who’s proper home and roots lie deeply embedded under our feet. From the royal majesty of Emain Macha and the Northern glens, to banríon Méabh’s ethereal fairy mounds of Ráth Cruachan, no people could know this land quite like the Gael can. Our inner being as a people is sown into the gentle fabric of hills like Dún Ailinne, as our rebellious spirit in the face of adversity stands tall like Caiseal.
The Gael is Ireland and Ireland is the Gael. We are inseparable.
Of course, this is nothing new, it is simply the basic understanding of Irish rebels for centuries. Mac Piarais viewed the Gaels’ ownership of the land and physicality of the island as being the essential starting-off point of all Irish nationalism. His philosophy and that of his compatriots in ‘16 could only conceive of their dream of a future Ireland from the deep roots of this country itself:
‘Gaelicism is the birthright of everyone who springs from the soil of Ireland. Gaelicism, as we put it last week, is the traditional spirit of this land, the thing which gives continuity to Irish history, the thing whose possession as something still vital and energetic makes the Ireland of today the same Ireland as the Ireland of history; the thing on whose loss would ensue the death of Ireland.’4
This itself being a repetition of an older tradition of the 19th Centuries, of great figures like those of Young Ireland, as well as the radical agrarianism of the later part of that century from figures like Parnell and Davitt. Scholars have understand the Land War in this tradition as being the culmination of the ‘populist form’ of environmentalism which is based around ‘rural sentiment’. As a nation’s citizenry begin to feel totally isolated and depersoned from their own home, the subject of Land in politics becomes a ‘discourse of fundamentalism’:
‘in the face of external threats to local communities or landscapes which are etched within the subconsciousness of rural dwellers. When locals invoke the ancient battle cry and song 'the West's Awake' during episodes of resistance to the degradation of outsiders, it is the landscape, hills and coastline of the west of Ireland that is alive for its inhabitants, in a manner that has parallels with aboriginal tribes globally.’5
The vitalism at the heart of this type of populist revolt is the absolute nexus of its’ power. However, despite this raw energy, it is worth emphasising the dangers of undirected populism. For centuries in this country we have had sporadic instances of disorganised land revolts, sometimes ending in violence, which achieve essentially nothing—if anything they hurt Irish resistance movements. The Whiteboys are perhaps the classic example of this, creating a the tension between the Irish Nationalist intellectual class and the common Gael:
‘Whiteboyism was essentially a collection of local rural protests by the poorer class while, as late as the 1860s, Fenians regarded tenant farmers’ obsession with the land as an unwelcome diversion from the real political struggle for independence. Until the 1870s, nationalism was essentially a sophisticated, urban movement supported by the relatively wealthy and upwardly socially mobile. Only with the Land War after 1879 was there any concerted attempt to bring the two movements together.’6
While one must have some sympathy reading accounts of the brutal conditions which spurred Whiteboyism—and perhaps less sympathy for the often-Protestant Trinity intellectuals who condemned them—the reality is that their naïve radicalism accomplished nothing. If the country’s land and resources are to be reclaimed by the people of Ireland, it will require far more collaboration between the intellectual and sophisticated dimension of opposition, with the spontaneous mass. In many ways, the Land War is one of the best historical examples of this synthesis working. In my view this Romantic and vitalist attachment to our island as a spiritual force is something best channelled through the intellectualism of Gaelicism.
Re-Gaelicising our landscape
‘My son. Remember me, in your songs and stories. And know that I will always love you’—Song of the Sea.
If we are to reclaim our rivers, lakes and mountains, we must know the nation we know the Soul or Geist of the world we are fighting for. To know this nation, as to speak to the Tuath Dé who still lurk underneath the ground we walk, we must integrate ourselves into its Being, culture and of course, language. In heavily Viconian terms, Mac Piarais views our teanga dúchasach as the most true and beautiful emanation of our country’s soul, something which sprung from the ground of this land as naturally as a crann fuinseoige (ash-tree) would:
‘Seeing that the language of a nation, as to its sounds, its idioms, its grammatical forms, and still more, as to its literature and folklore, is indelibly stamped with the personality of the nation, it is obvious that by coming into touch with the language, we come into touch with that personality. Thus, to get at the real Ireland, we must go to the Irish language. The language sums up what the Gaelic race has been thinking ever since there was a Gaelic race. It contains Ireland’s message to her children and to the world.’7
This is the Romantic and vitalist approach to the salvation of our country, one that at its core is not proven through rational argumentation or derived from statistics, but something which is felt and experienced in a more subtle, yet cosmic way. This path of persuasion is best expressed through the enmeshing of our cultural, spiritual and natural worlds, as in this land’s vast pilgrimage tradition. Sites like Loch Dearg i (Thír Chonaill) nó Slí Chaoimhín (Cill Mhantáin) are overflowing with a holy, national and natural power that can only directly experienced in the flesh.
Beyond simple preservation however, if we are to reclaim large swathes of the rest of the nation, currently under foreign occupation, we will have to begin the process through subversive means of enchanting art. There are already some exhilarating examples of this process beginning to take shape.
For instance, the Tír Sáile sculpture trail across Tuaisceart Mhaigh Eo is allowing locals there to reimagine the landscape through the artistic and cultural image of local Gaels. There’s also the architectural marvels of works such as the Tulach a’ tSolais i Loch Garman, a bicentenary celebration of the Rising of 1798. Situated on Vinegar Hill, one of the battle sites of that great but tragic epoch in modern Irish history, the structure of the monument is set up in a such way as to pay homage to the revolutionary ideals of the United Irishmen, as well to allow physical light to blend into the tomb so as to inspire the visitor to dream of a fully liberated Irish future.
When one considers the spiritual power of living beside such altogether national integrations of our culture and landscape, one wonders what the impact is on those of who are forced to live in our wholly denationalised concrete jungles such as Belfast, Cork and Dublin—as well as the decultureised and abandoned small towns across the interior and coasts of the island. The first step to establishing a true opposition to the cultural and aesthetic apathy of modern Ireland is in reimagining what a re-Gaelicised landscape would look like, all across this land.
Beyond the aforementioned examples, perhaps the best way of realising this in one’s mind is equating ourselves as a people with the rest of our island’s native wildlife. If you encounter the noble gentility of na giorriacha agus na cait chrainn of Sliabh Bladhma—know that you really are witnessing the austere majesty of the Gael. If, while swimming Loch nEathach you eye a keen crotach swooping down to seize a shimmering bradán—know that you beholding Éireann’s avenging steel. And know that when you hear of the gallant old Irish Elk, long-extinct and neglected, that is our future if we fail to reestablish we ourselves within our own minds.
‘Far more effective than the mere didactic preaching of patriotism would be well-directed efforts to bring the children into some direct relation with the country they inhabit—its natural beauty, its wild living things, its rocks, its rivers, its ruins…Again, the children should be taught to know and to love every wild thing that flies in the air or creeps in the grass—to know their names, their haunts, their habits, to recognise their form and cries. They should, above all, be taught that the lives of animals are sacred.’8
Translation: “My life is now so poor, alas! so passed in death-throes, That I can behold no more the pleasant sunlight” in Mac Erlean, p. 50-51.
Quoted in Ó Tuathaigh, p. 4.
Fogarty in Lalor, p. 127.
Mac Piarais, p. 44.
Leonard, p. 471.
Winstanley, p. 44.
Mac Piarais, p. 53.
Ibid, p. 36-7.