Bolg an tSolair

The growing interest and integration of the Protestant communities with the Gaelic people brought a common goal with it. Many of the Protestant gentry began to see the need to free Ireland from the grasp of the British empire. The victory of the American Revolution and the spread of the enlightenment’s ideas paved the way for the French Revolution, a revolution which brought spirit to the hearts of the integrated Protestants and put fire in their bellies. The dream of a free and independent Irish Republican was growing in the minds of the quickly radicalising elite and many of them knew that they required an outlet to spread their ideas. This brought the creation of the Northern Star, the newspaper of the United Irishmen. The newspaper grew in popularity and attracted Republicans and Nationalists from all over Ulster. When Thomas Russel and Patrick Lynch decided to print their Gaelic magazine, the Northern Star was the only place they would have wanted to print it.

Bolg an tSolair is a Gaelic magazine compiled by Patrick Lynch and Thomas Russel in 1795. The magazine contains poems, songs, dialogues in both Irish and English as well as an introduction to Irish Grammar. There was only ever one issue of the magazine produced which was printed by the Northern Star, a newspaper produced in Ulster by the United Irishmen. Russel is considered to have written the preface of the magazine and Lynch may have provided the materials to fill the contents of the magazine. The preface provides an insight into mindset of those who fought against the attempt to drive out the native language by nearly every foreign establishment in the country. The language was seen as a barbaric tongue, upholding the paganism of Irelands ancient past and the introduction of English was a supposed answer to correct our supposed inability to shed our barbaric ways, even with the evident Christianisation which took over the language to its very roots.

‘but when it is considered that the main design of the following work, is nothing else than to recommend the Irish language to the notice of Irishmen, any arguments laid down on that head, to persuade the natives that their own language is of some importance to them, would appear quite superfluous in the eyes of foreigners:- but seeing that the Gaelic has been not only banished from the court, the college and the bar, but that many tongues and pens have been employed to cry it down, and to persuade the ignorant that it was harsh and barbarous jargon, and that their ancestors, from whom they derived it, were an ignorant and uncultivated people – it becomes necessary then, to say something in reply.’

              Patrick Lynch from Loughinisland in Co. Down came from a family which ran a school for to both Catholics and Protestants and Patrick himself was a scribe and a lecturer. Lynch taught the language both publicly in the Belfast Academy and privately in his family’s school. He worked with many Protestant antiquarians to translate texts for them from Irish as well as into Irish and even taught some of them the language as many viewed knowledge of the language as a way to better communicate with the native population and break down the barriers which were dividing the country.

              Thomas Russel was born in Co. Cork in 1767 to an Anglican family and was raised in Dublin. He joined the British army at the age of 15 and served in India. In 1790 he was sent to Belfast where he continued to work as an officer until he left in 1791. Russel was in the position of having access to the newly emerging business class (many of which were radicals) before he left the army and once he was out, he quickly took to political societies. He ended up becoming involved in the foundations of the United Irishmen and drew Wolfe Tone into the business by asking him to write the resolution for the society. Russel formed key links with Catholic activists in the early stages of the society and was very necessary in trying to unite the people in order to stabilise the country enough to free it.

Russel was a devout Protestant man but always stressed the necessity of a united Christian standpoint in Ireland. After helping to establish the Belfast branch of the United Irishmen, Russel went and took part in establishing the Dublin branch in October 1791. After several months Russel accepted a job offer by the Viscount of Northland in Tyrone where he worked as a seneschal in the Northlands manor in Dungannon. The treatment of the Catholics appalled him, the anti-Catholic hatred in central Ulster led him to quickly resigning in October 1792. After his shocking experience in the heartlands of Ulster, he returned to Belfast in mid-1793 at a point where he had shed all sympathies held for the Whig’s through their reactionary policies due to the outbreak of war between Britain and France and radicalised by the sectarian divide among the people in Ulster.  Russel became popular among the radicals in Belfast and grew close to the McCracken family. He stayed with Dr. James MacDonnell who also recommended him for the post of librarian to the Belfast Society for Promoting knowledge, which later became the Linen Hall Library, a library which collected a large range of Irish history and Gaelic manuscripts. He took up the job in February 1794 and it was there that he took Irish lessons from Patrick Lynch. The two men then worked together in 1795 to co-produce Bolg an tSolair.

              The contents of magazine are made up of some of the most famous works at the time. The idea was to preserve the grammatical and critical knowledge of the language as well as seeking to try spark a new interest in the language through providing the ordinary literate person an easy access to Irish written materials while also providing a short grammatical dictionary for monolingual English speakers to pronounce the words. A large portion of the poetry in the magazine was taken from Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques of Irish Poetry produced 6 years earlier. Literacy in the language was dying by this stage and it was a difficult task to find more than a handful of people who could read and translate manuscripts.

              The Magazine provided a great source to start from for many upcoming scholars. It came at a time when new societies were being established across the island for these kinds of studies, one of which was the Gaelic society of Dublin. A society with limited information other than their own historical documents, but still an important enough society to help push the Gaelic Revival into fruition.