The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian (16 page)

While the government made little progress in their endeavours to solve the specific dispute in Mayo, there were also discussions on the general issue of libraries and how they should be run. A proposal was floated that responsibility for the library system in the Free State be taken out of the hands of the local authorities and run instead by central government. However, the bishops made a counter-suggestion that the library service should be treated in a similar fashion to the school system. In the Free State at the time, schools came under clerical control. Libraries would be subject to a form of denominational apartheid. Protestant libraries for Protestant people, and separate Catholic libraries for Catholic people. If libraries were seen as solely educational institutions, this was perhaps the logical extension of that line of reasoning but it was not one that President Cosgrave could agree to. He threatened to resign if the bishops forced him to make a decision on this issue, as did another member of his cabinet, Desmond Fitzgerald, who had also been involved in the negotiations.

It would be a mistake, however, to believe that the government was without support in its stance. An editorial in the
Enniscorthy Echo
declared, ‘As a Catholic country we give control of education, so far as Catholics are concerned, to the Catholic church, and from that some people argued that the library service, being an educational service, should be strictly Catholic. But a library service is primarily a social amenity and can no more be called an educational service than a theatre or a picture house.

‘It may and does serve an educational purpose, but unless it is a specialised or propaganda library its educational aspect is only incidental. The average user of a general library reads to amuse himself, not primarily for educational purposes.'
9

The Church of Ireland Gazette
took a much less combative stance on the dispute than had
The Irish Times
. In December 1930 the
Gazette
welcomed ‘various indications that Fianna Fáil is growing more moderate and less prone to adventures. We welcome also the declaration, by some of its spokesmen (in connection with the Mayo librarian case), that they intend to give fair play to all Irish people irrespective of their religious beliefs.'
10
One week later the
Gazette
returned to the issue. ‘The Free State Minister for Local Government,' it wrote, ‘has given Mayo County Council an opportunity to reconsider its attitude at a meeting to be held by the end of this year but makes it plain that the government will insist on the appointment of Miss Dunbar as librarian for the county.'
11
The
Gazette
seemed content to trust the Cumann na nGaedheal government to protect the rights of the Protestant minority in the Free State. Wary of their place in the newly formed country, they tended to keep a low profile when it came to controversies such as this.

In her book
The Church of Ireland Community of Killala and Achonry, 1870-1940
, Miriam Moffitt writes that ‘with the establishment of the Free State, the Protestant community felt more isolated from the affairs of state than ever before. The victimisation of Protestants in the early days of the Irish Free State persuaded many to move to Northern Ireland, or to emigrate. Those who remained became, of necessity, a silent minority.'
12
Little wonder that it was so, given Miss Dunbar Harrison's experience in Mayo.

Notes

1.
Catholic Bulletin
, January 1931, vol. xxi, no. 1, pp.6-7.

2.
Brigid Redmond, op. cit., p.173.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Henry Dixon, ‘The Corporation and the Bible in Irish',
An Leabharlann
, March 1907, vol. ii, no. 2, pp.188-189.

5.
R.J. Bennett,
Seán na Sagart, the priest hunter,
pp.5-6.

6.
R.J. Bennett, postscript p.21. The author notes that these placenames were related to him by an old storyteller from Tourmakeady, which may account for the phonetic spellings of the townlands.

7.
Matthew Archdeacon,
Shawn na Soggart,
p.415.

8.
Ibid.

9.
Enniscorthy Echo
, 3 January 1931, p.6.

10.
The Church of Ireland Gazette
, 19 December 1930, p.727.

11.
Ibid., 24 December 1930, p.736.

12.
Miriam Moffitt,
The Church of Ireland Community of Killala & Achonry, 1870-1940,
p.10.

The Irish language, ostensibly the reason for the furore surrounding Letitia Dunbar Harrison's appointment, tended to get lost in the ensuing debate. Most of the letters published concentrated on Miss Dunbar Harrison's religion or her Trinity College education. As previously mentioned, Kathleen White had a similar lack of Irish yet this did not prove a barrier to her being appointed as librarian in Leitrim. However, it would be a mistake to think that the language aspect was overlooked entirely. Rev. Malachy Mac Branain, PP, Ahascragh, was one of those who focused on it.

As one who many years ago took a successful part in the fight for compulsory Irish in the National University, allow me to express my wholehearted appreciation of the action of the Co. Mayo library committee in refusing to accept the recommendation of the Local Appointments Commissioners to the effect that a graduate of Trinity College should be appointed as librarian for the Irish-speaking Co. Mayo.

… The Local Appointments Commissioners by their action in this and similar cases are giving a new lease of influence and power to Trinity College and to the West British ideals it was founded to establish.

The procedure is inconsistent with the principle of compulsory Irish advocated by the government of An Saorstát and most unfair to the National University and its constituent colleges … To make the position still more inconsistent the chairman of the Gaeltacht Commission, Gen. Mulcahy, is the member of the government responsible for insisting that the person appointed as librarian for the Irish-speaking Co. Mayo must be a graduate of Trinity College.

It is difficult to understand how our people have tolerated this whole policy of centralisation, which in practice has taken away from our local representatives on public boards whatever powers they had, and transferred those powers to an unknown body in Dublin, who are responsible to nobody.

The policy is opposed to all democratic principles and is the exact opposite of what we would expect from a new government, which after years of foreign domination now claims to have full control of its own affairs … The rights of the people … have been handed over to an intolerant minority, whose real sentiments regarding this country have been so eloquently expressed by the Protestant archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, in their recent pronouncement on the veto of the English Privy Council over all the disputed questions in the Free State.
1

The
Catholic Bulletin
had always taken a hard-line stance when it came to the question of Irish identity. This excerpt from an editorial in 1924 gives a flavour of its attitude. ‘The Irish nation,' the
Catholic Bulletin
wrote, ‘is the Gaelic nation, its language and literature is the Gaelic language; its history is the history of the Gael.'
2
The question of the Irish language and Miss Dunbar Harrison was by no means black and white. Even the Irish language organisations were split on the issue. As the
Cork Examiner
reported, the Gaelic League received a letter from Rev. Mac Evilly, Claremorris, in which he stated that in his opinion ‘the appointment of a commissioner for Mayo was the best thing for the Irish language that has happened yet. He had had a conversation with the commissioner, P.J. Bartley, who asked him to suggest two members of the Gaelic League and two members of the Gaelic Athletic Association for membership of the Vocational Education Committee.'

‘I complained that the old vocational committee had dropped the scheme of scholarships in the Gaeltacht,' he said.

Commissioner Bartley had promised to remedy this situation. Rev. Mac Evilly concluded that ‘he is the first friend the Irish language has had on the county committee.'
3

The chairman of the meeting, Seán Ó hÚadaigh, said that the reason why the Gaelic League had not intervened in the public debate about the Mayo librarianship was because they knew that the people who were taking part were not friends of the Irish language.

The dispute did not go away and later that year the annual congress of the Gaelic League passed a motion ‘that a change should be made in the methods of the Public Appointments Commissioners because by their selection of applicants for public posts, they were not doing justice to Irish'. Mr Ó Maoláin, who proposed the motion, referred specifically to the Mayo case. Mr P. O'Mulkerrin, Killaloe, said that the appointment of the librarian for County Mayo was one of the worst things done since Cromwell.
The Irish Times
were so taken by the phrase that they used it as the headline for their report on the congress.
4

The Gaelic League was formed in 1893 to promote knowledge and interest in the Irish language. That the Mayo librarian controversy had posed problems for it is evident from another motion discussed at their 1931 congress. A motion from the Pádraig Pearse branch was moved requesting the congress to condemn the action of those who prevented discussion at the executive committee of the appointment of a non-Irish speaking librarian for a post in the Gaeltacht, as the objectives of the league were not advanced on that occasion.
5
Mr O'Mulkerrin, seconding the motion, said that when the executive committee was negligent in matters affecting the language and nationality, other organisations could not be blamed. Seán Ó hÚadaigh, who had presided over the December 1930 meeting of the executive committee referred to in the motion of censure, said he had accepted a number of motions on the issue but had declined to accept another resolution because a portion of it was connected not with the Gaelic League but with political and state matters. He believed then, as he still did, that his decision was correct. There were in the Gaelic League persons of different religions. When the question of the Mayo appointment was first raised, it was based on the principle of the language, but after that the religious aspect had been raised and it had assumed a larger degree of attention than the language itself. He made no apology for his action. Mr McGinley said that he thought the congress ought to thank the executive committee for its action in the matter, and for declining to drag religion into the discussion. The motion was defeated by a large majority.
6

The ructions in the Gaelic League reflect certain unease among some language enthusiasts who felt that language was being used as a pawn in a political game. As Councillor Pat O'Hara pointed out, a stricter regulation was being used in Miss Dunbar Harrison's case. The language requirement was a law more honoured in the breach than the observance and there were numerous cases of staff in local authorities who had been allowed take up their posts while being unable to speak Irish. Many were also uncomfortable with the support Irish was getting from people who had previously shown no great interest in reviving the language. Dean D'Alton's attitude to Irish at the library committee meeting had been somewhat resentful of its compulsory requirement for certain jobs. He had made the flippant joke with regard to blacksmiths being required to know Irish, it was a wonder the horses weren't expected to know the language as well. As one eminent Irish historian has pointed out, Dean D'Alton was not an entirely uncritical supporter of literature in Irish. At one time he even persuaded the Mayo library committee to ban the books of Pádraig Pearse.
7

This was a common thread in arguments amongst proponents of the Irish language.
An Phoblacht
, the Sinn Féin newspaper, had been supportive of the original rejection of Miss Dunbar Harrison. ‘Every Irish nationalist,' the newspaper wrote, ‘was behind the Mayo County Council when it refused to accept the Staters' Jobs Commission's appointment of a non-Gaelic speaker to a Gaeltacht position.'
8
An Phoblacht
, however, deplored what they saw as the cynical opportunism of many of her critics. It condemned the introduction of the sectarian argument ‘by such anti-Irish exponents as the Very Rev. Canon D'Alton. He and his friends have been soundly trounced now by the very party which they helped to place in power. As for Canon D'Alton and his confrères – Devil mend them.'
9

One of the most eloquent speeches given at the Mayo County Council meeting was by J.T. Morahan. However, ‘the indignation expressed about the appointment of a non-Irish speaker as librarian for Mayo would prove no bar to Mr Morahan successfully proposing a candidate for a post as teacher, despite her lack of Irish [in 1932].'
10

Many people had an ambivalent attitude towards the Irish language; they wished to speak their native tongue yet were unable to do so. It was an aspiration rather than a reality. In general more people claimed to speak Irish and understand it than actually did. It was more alive in theory than in practice.

At the special meeting of Mayo County Council on 27 December 1930 just two speakers used Irish, Councillors Munnelly and Campbell, even though the language issue was the apparent cause of the crisis. The meeting received extensive coverage in the local papers; yet, none of them carried the text of the speeches in Irish. For instance
The
C
onnaught Telegraph
merely stated that ‘Mr John Munnelly spoke in very eloquent Irish', leading one to believe that the newspapers knew their readership would not be able to read big blocks of text in Irish or else it was simply that their reporters did not understand the language well enough to transcribe it.
11

Fr Stephen J. Brown, SJ, sponsor of Ellen Burke and librarian of the Central Catholic Library, was the author of a number of books on Irish literature. In the introduction to his
Guide to Books on Ireland
he explained that one of the reasons why he hadn't included books in the Irish language on his list was that his ‘own knowledge of the Irish language is not yet sufficient to enable me even to edit notes of books in Irish.'
12
In Brown's preface to
Ireland in Fiction
, the first edition of which was ‘destroyed by fire in the course of the Rising in Dublin at Easter 1916', Brown repeated this explanation, adding the comment, ‘Nevertheless, the omission of books in the Irish language from a guide to Irish fiction remains an anomaly, one of the many anomalies produced by the historic causes that have all but destroyed the Irish language as the living speech of Ireland.'
13

Canon Hegarty from Belmullet, who spoke against Miss Dunbar Harrison's appointment at the meetings of the Mayo library committee, was no great devotee of the Irish language either. He was reported to have referred to Irish language classes in the Gaeltacht as cesspools of infamy.

To a certain extent the problem was of the government's own making. In 1928 it had issued an order that all future appointees to local government positions in Gaeltacht areas would be required to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of Irish to enable them to conduct their business through the medium of the language. Initially only tradesmen and labourers were to be exempt but the list of exemptions was extended at a later date as the basic unreality of the measure dawned on the government.
14
There were simply not enough qualified speakers of the language to fill the various positions, in particular, specialised ones like that of county librarian. In one of the many ironies that political life throws up, it was Richard Mulcahy, the minister in charge of a commission for the promotion of the Irish language, who originally came up with the proposal and who then, as Minister for Local Government, must have felt honour-bound to implement it. Yet Mayo was a Gaeltacht area, so designated. It did have a substantial Irish-speaking population around Tourmakeady and also some pockets of Irish speakers around Erris in the north of Mayo.

The Irish language had been exploited by evangelical Protestants in the past and a deep sense of distrust now pervaded. As the ever-zealous
Catholic Bulletin
put it, ‘Mayo knows well and remembers well the uses made of the Irish language by many emissaries of Trinity College Dublin, from Ballina to Ballaghderreen, from Dugort to Tourmakeady in the epoch 1820 to 1870.'
15

For many, language was a badge of identity and the reason that Miss Dunbar Harrison was turned down was not so much that she didn't speak Irish but because of what that represented. She was an outsider. Language was simply just an obvious manifestation of this difference. As F.S. Lyons argued, it was a case of ‘Irish Ireland versus Anglo-Irish Ireland … Catholicism and Gaelicism, and the nationalism they nourished, were reacting primarily against England. It was English manners and morals, English influences, English Protestantism, English rule, that they sought to eradicate.'
16

John O'Mahony of the Fenian movement had stated many years previously that ‘our duty is to de-Anglicise Ireland, Gaelicise Ireland and Catholicise Ireland.' It was Letitia Dunbar Harrison's bad fortune that she had become entangled in one of the skirmishes of that unfinished conflict.

Notes

1.
Irish Independent
, 8 December 1930, p.11.

2.
Catholic Bulletin
, vol. xiv, no. 4, April 1924, p.269.

3.
Cork Examiner
, 12 January 1931, p.7.

4.
The Irish Times
, 9 April 1931, p.8.

5.
Ibid.

6.
Ibid.

7.
J.J. Lee,
Ireland 1912-1985: Politics and Society
, p.164.

8.
An Phoblacht
, Xmas Number 1930, p.4.

9.
An Phoblacht
, 10 January 1931, p.1.

10.
J.J. Lee, op. cit., p.164.

11.
The Connaught Telegraph
, 3 January 1931, p.8.