The late 17th and early 18th centuries
saw small pockets of a budding interest in Gaelic literature by the Protestant
settlers. Quite a bit of this interest was centred around Protestant clergy who
wanted to use the language to further their own evangelisation at this time,
but there were some who developed a true love for the native culture. The
upcoming generations who grew up alongside the native tenants, realising that
the Gaelic Catholics weren’t the barbarians that they were portrayed to be. At
this early stage the idea that Irish and English people were meant to be some
kind of different race had not yet entered into the common mindset but the idea
that the Irish were so intellectually inferior that they could not see the problems
of Catholicism and accept the reformation was around for over a century and a
half. The second and third generations of settlers began to mix with the
natives and eventually some decided to start learning and translating the
traditional songs and stories, one of the most relevant being Charlotte Brooke.
Charlotte Brooke was born sometime in the
1740s at Rantavan House, Mullagh, Co. Cavan to Henry Brooke and Catherine
Meares as part of the Protestant community with the true date of her birth yet
to be discovered. She and her sibling were only two of twenty-two children born
to survive to adulthood. Her father educated her at home and taught her in
English, French and Italian literature. Charlotte showed signs of great
intellect from a young age and excelled in her studies. Growing up Charlotte
would listen to the stories told by the local seanachaithe in her spare time,
fuelling her imagination and her growing inspiration to learn the native
language. As Charlotte grew older, she began to collect manuscripts and started
to go out and record the oral poetry being told. Henry, who had an interest in
the native culture of his own encouraged her work, he started to introduce her
to even more Gaelic scholars from around the country including Charles O’Conor.
Charlotte never married or had any children and always remained devoted to her
parents. When her mother died in 1772, she put it upon herself to care for her
father and she continued to work on her manuscripts. She stayed doing this
until Henrys death in 1783 which devastated her.
Charlottes
father Henry (born in 1706) was a writer and dramatist, he studied and
graduated from Trinity College and then moved on to study law in London. Henry quickly
grew popular in London as a dramatic genius, gaining the affection of even the
most famous people London had to offer. Henry returned to Ireland in order to
settle some personal affairs but while he was there, his aunt passed away,
leaving her daughter Catherine Meares in his care. Catherine was only eleven
years old at this stage and Henry placed her in a boarding school in Dublin,
not before growing a fancy towards her though. Henry married Catherine in
secret two years later, only to marry her publicly soon after when their
marriage was found out. Henry and Catherine went on to have conceive twenty-two
children in total throughout their lives. After attempting their third child,
Henry returned to London where he continued to study the work of Pope,
Lyttleton and Pitt. He later gave up chasing fame and fortune in London and
returned to Ireland and continued to write.
Henry had what seems to be a
confrontational yet anonymous history with Charles O’Conor. Their prior
anonymous feud with each other’s pseudonyms quickly changed after Henry was
approached by Charles O’Conor and the Catholic Committee to write for them,
which he did until 1763. This however was not their first encounter as in the
1740’s Henry’s cousin Robert Digby approached O’Conor with the goal of
publishing a book of Irish tales written in English. O’Conor provided Digby
with the Ogygian Tales but Digby discovered that he did not have the
required written skills to produce such a work however and handed them to Henry
who began writing a history of Ireland. He never published the book though as
doing so as it would have been considered plagiarism against O’Conor. The two
men grew into friendship and O’Conor and spent considerable time with Henry and
would have met Charlotte on several occasions. O’Conor being a Gaelic scholar
would have provided tips and inspiration to the young Charlotte who was working
away at her own studies in the native language. Henry died in 1783 with O’Conor
having grown to hold him in high regard and a dear friend and his daughter keen
to keep his memory alive.
Charlotte
had her first publication released in 1786 when three of her translations of
Irish poems were included in Joseph Cooper Walker’s Historical memoirs of Irish bards. Her own publication was released
in 1789 titled The Reliques of Irish
Poetry. ‘This was the first time that a wide selection of Irish verse
appeared in print.’ In The Reliques of
Irish Poetry, Brookes translates a large collection of heroic poems, odes,
elegies and songs into English. She provides commentary sections before,
in-between and after the translations detailing the meanings behind certain phrases
and provides the story behind the different works. The book offers the
historical relevance of each translation, meaning that the book is not only
important in poetic and theatrical circles but in historical documentation of
ancient Gaelic history.
Brookes was among the first generations of
Protestant antiquarians to work with Gaelic scholars. Before the first generations
of Protestant to partake in Gaelic studies, the community saw the native
culture as a competing threat to their own. As soon as the threat of the Gaelic
culture becoming the dominant one again fell from between the fingers of the
people after the collapse of the Confederacy, like sand spilling between the
hands of the nation, the culture could be looked at with safety. Along with the
growing foundations laid down by the Celtic revival of the 1750s, Brookes
collection, along with the work of Charles O’Conor provided a platform for
Irish history to be correctly documented. The work may have also been a
response to James Mac Phersons Ossianic controversy which opened the door to a
wave of interest building up around Gaelic history.
In 1791 Brooke’s published a book called The
school for Christians in dialogue for the use of children. Her reason for
writing was for the happiness it brought her to see it become useful to the
poor whose parents could not afford to provide them with a Christian education.
The book consists of a dialogue between a father and his child which may have
been based on her own conversations with her father. This book was her last
publication, a memory to her father to who she showed great devotion to
throughout her life, one that could last forever in her works. Brooke ran into
financial difficulties in 1787 when her cousin Captain Robert Brooke went
bankrupt after trying to establish an industrial village in County Kildare
which forced her to move back to Longford in 1792. She moved into a cottage
with some friends and had to rely upon her publications as her sole income. Brooke
was always physically frail and fell to malignant fever on the 29th
of March 1793 and died from the illness. Brooke had some of her work re-published after her death as in 1795 when some
of her translations were entered into the Irish and English magazine Bolg an
tSolair.
While Brooke
did not live a long and healthy life, she provided a foundation and an
attraction for future Anglo-Irish antiquarians to continue working with Gaelic
scholars. The establishment of societies which collected manuscripts and built
libraries to give easy access to all who would wish to access them. These
societies were mostly established around Dublin and Belfast where the
Protestant gentry would converge from the surrounding counties to establish
their learned organisations. Brooke’s work provided a single book of the
nation’s most famous tales, to bring them to all who wished to hear them, and
most importantly, helping to retrieve Irelands native Gaelic identity which had
been overshadowed by the Anglicisation of Ireland. No longer was Gaelic Ireland
on the path to a forgotten memory, it was a culture and a people to remember,
to maybe even one day step out of the historical setting and give the native
people a chance to regain some semblance of our Gaelic past.
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