Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:33:33.704Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Language Which Will Move Their Hearts”: Speaking Power, Performance, and the Lay-Clerical Relationship in Modern Catholic Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2014

Cara Delay
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the lay-clerical relationship in Catholic Ireland from 1850 to the 1930s through an analysis of oratory, rhetoric, and storytelling. It examines how words, speech, and storytelling constructed and complicated the lay-clerical relationship. The Catholic priest's spoken word was a valuable tool in his parish mission; by preaching and making announcements from the pulpit, he transmitted the ideas of Ireland's postfamine Catholic revival, known as the “devotional revolution,” to the laity. Yet as the Catholic Church came to dominate much of cultural life and the position of the parish priest expanded, he sometimes found his authority undermined by parishioners who challenged his clerical performances and who employed their own forceful words and long-standing oral traditions, including legends and storytelling, to qualify clerical power. As a result, the local existence of the Irish Catholic priest was complicated and contested, and the Catholic laity successfully tempered and moderated clerical power.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 426 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lankford, Siobhán, The Hope and the Sadness: Personal Recollections of Troubled Times in Ireland (Cork, 1980)Google Scholar, 67.

2 John O'Sullivan, Praxis Parochi in Hibernia, vol. 1, 1850–1852, 151. Unpublished manuscript at the Kerry Diocesan Archive, Killarney.

3 Fox, Adam, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar, 51. See also Burke, Peter and Porter, Roy, eds., The Social History of Language (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Fox, Adam and Woolf, Daniel, eds., The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain, 1500–1850 (Manchester, 2002)Google Scholar; Tebbutt, Melanie, Women's Talk: A Social History of Gossip in Working-Class Neighborhoods, 1880–1960 (London, 1997)Google Scholar.

4 On the devotional revolution, see Larkin, Emmet, “The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–1875,” American Historical Review 77, no. 3 (June 1972): 625–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 On the roles of the postfamine priest, see O'Shea, James, Priests, Politics and Society in Post-famine Ireland: A Study of County Tipperary, 1850–1891 (Dublin, 1983)Google Scholar; Kerr, Donal A., The Catholic Church and the Famine (Blackrock, 1996)Google Scholar; Kerr, Donal A., A “Nation of Beggars”? Priests, People and Politics in Famine Ireland, 1846–1852 (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar; Connolly, S. J., Priests and People in Pre-famine Ireland, 1750–1845, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 2001 [1982])Google Scholar.

6 Catholic Record of Waterford and Lismore 6 (January 1919): 182–83.Google Scholar

7 Although this attention to the importance of preaching evolved in the nineteenth century, it was not new to Catholic Ireland. According to Bernadette Cunningham, seventeenth-century Irish Catholic priests were known for their “talent for preaching.” Cunningham, Bernadette, “‘Zeal for God and for Souls’: Counter-Reformation Preaching in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland,” in Irish Preaching, 700–1700, ed. Fletcher, Alan J. and Gillespie, Raymond (Dublin, 2001)Google Scholar, 108.

8 Ian Dickson, J. N., Beyond Religious Discourse: Sermons, Preaching and Evangelical Protestants in Nineteenth-Century Irish Society (Milton Keynes, 2007)Google Scholar, 1. For a comparative perspective, see Stout, Harry S., The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar, and Davis, Gerald L., I Got the Word in Me and I Can Sing It, You Know: A Study of the Performed African-American Sermon (Philadelphia, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For works on Ireland, see Dickson, Beyond Religious Discourse; Holmes, Andrew R., The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief and Practice, 1770–1840 (Oxford, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fletcher and Gillespie, Irish Preaching.

10 Wolf, Nicholas M., “The Irish-Speaking Clergy in the Nineteenth Century: Education, Trends, and Timing,” New Hibernia Review 12, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 62–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Nicholas M. Wolf, “Language Change and the Evolution of Religion, Community, and Culture in Ireland, 1800–1900” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2008). See also Daly, Mary, “Literacy and Language Change in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in The Origins of Popular Literacy in Ireland: Language Change and Educational Development, 1700–1920, ed. Daly, Mary and Dickson, David (Dublin, 1990), 153–66.Google Scholar

11 Wolf, “Language Change,” 98–99.

12 Ibid., 117, 149.

13 Ibid., 147.

14 See Cuív, Brian Ó, “Irish Language and Literature, 1845–1921,” in A New History of Ireland: Volume VI, Ireland Under the Union; II, 1870–1921, ed. Vaughan, W. E. (Oxford, 1996), 385–435Google Scholar. Wolf argues that many clerics remained Irish speaking through at least the 1860s, making communication between priests and people easier in some places. “The Irish-Speaking Clergy,” 64–65.

15 For a sample list of sermons preached by the bishop of Kerry in the nineteenth century, see Moriarty, David, Sermons by the Most Rev. Dr. Moriarty, Late Bishop of Kerry, new ed. (Dublin, 1907 [1901])Google Scholar. Ulster evangelicals in the nineteenth century also focused on the importance of preaching and catechizing; see Dickson, Beyond Religious Discourse, 19.

16 McNamara, Thomas, Allocutions or Short Addresses on Liturgical Observances and Ritual Functions, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 1892)Google Scholar, xii–xiii.

17 Rev. Zualdi, Felix C.M., The Sacred Ceremonies of Low Mass, According to the Roman Rite, ed. O'Callaghan, M., 5th ed. (Dublin, 1899)Google Scholar, 3.

18 For a discussion of how the rhetorical powers of preaching affected the era of the Counter-Reformation, see Cunningham, “Zeal for God and for Souls,” 112–13.

19 Edwards, O. C. Jr., A History of Preaching (Nashville, 2004), 426–33.Google Scholar

20 Rev. Potter, Thomas J., Sacred Eloquence; or, the Theory and Practice of Preaching, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 1866)Google Scholar, 15, 19.

21 Rev. Potter, Thomas J., The Spoken Word; or, the Art of Extemporary Preaching, Its Utility, Its Danger, and Its True Idea; With an Easy and Practical Method for Its Attainment (Boston, 1872)Google Scholar, 4.

22 Ibid., 31.

23 Ibid., 45.

24 Potter, Sacred Eloquence, 188.

25 Mountford, Roxanne, The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces (Carbondale, IL, 2005)Google Scholar, 5.

26 Potter, Sacred Eloquence, 189.

27 In his work on the medieval Irish popular sermon, Alan J. Fletcher argues similarly: “The late medieval popular sermon, then, needed to engage its audience if it were not to remain an arid exercise and wither on the vine. Consequently, preachers might find themselves treading a fine line between disaffecting their audiences and affecting them too much. The content and structure of the sermon had to be well prepared, of course, but only in delivery would it stand or fall in the moment that its preacher's rhetorical mettle was finally put to the proof.” Fletcher, Alan J., Late Medieval Popular Preaching in Britain and Ireland: Texts, Studies, and Interpretations (Turnhout, Belgium, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 312.

28 Larkin, “Devotional Revolution.” Under Pope Pius IX (1792–1878, pope from 1846 to 1878), Ultramontanism, a hierarchical and centralized form of Catholicism focused around Roman authority and papal infallibility, predominated in Catholic Europe. See the essays in Von Arx, Jeffrey, ed., Varieties of Ultramontanism (Washington, DC, 1998)Google Scholar. For more on the prefamine Irish Church and clergy, see Connolly, Priests and People.

29 Inglis, Tom, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland (Dublin, 1998), 102–03Google Scholar, 118.

30 Taylor, Lawrence J., Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics (Philadelphia, 1995)Google Scholar, 58.

31 Malcolm, Elizabeth, “The Rise of the Pub: A Study in the Disciplining of Popular Culture,” in Irish Popular Culture, 1650–1850, ed. Donnelly, James S. Jr. and Miller, Kerby A. (Dublin, 1998)Google Scholar, 72.

32 Bourke, Angela, The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (London, 1999)Google Scholar, 46.

33 Kennedy, Thomas, “Church Building,” in A History of Irish Catholicism: Vol. 5, The Church Since Emancipation, no. 8 (Dublin, 1970)Google Scholar, 2, 8; Delay, Cara, “‘The Gates Were Shut’: Catholics, Chapels, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” New Hibernia Review 14, no. 1 (March 2010): 16–17Google Scholar.

34 Miller, David W., “Landscape and Religious Practice: A Study of Mass Attendance in Pre-famine Ireland,” Éire-Ireland 40, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2005): 90–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Kelly, James, “Part IV: From Splendor to Famine,” in The Macmillan Atlas of Irish History, ed. Duffy, Seán (New York, 1997)Google Scholar, 86.

36 Murphy, Ignatius, The Diocese of Killaloe, 1850–1904 (Dublin, 1995)Google Scholar, 400.

37 Ibid.

38 Connolly, Priests and People, 78–90; Corish, Patrick, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey (Dublin, 1985)Google Scholar, 135, 158–60; Joseph Nugent, “Producing Priestliness” (PhD diss., University of California–Berkeley, 2004), 13.

39 Connolly, Priests and People, 78–79.

40 Barry, P. C., “The Legislation of the Synod of Thurles 1850,” Irish Theological Quarterly 26 (1959): 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Paul Cullen to Dr. John MacHale, 24 March 1850, cited in MacSuibhne, Peadar, ed., Paul Cullen and His Contemporaries: With Their Letters from 1820–1902, 5 vols. (Naas, Ireland, 1961)Google Scholar, 1:336.

42 Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, “The ‘Merry Wake,’” in Irish Popular Culture, 1650–1850, 173–200, and Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, “The Pattern,” in idem., 201–21.

43 Barry, “The Legislation of the Synod of Thurles,” 148.

44 Cullen and others disagreed over the specifics of moving the sacraments into the chapel. While Cullen pushed for all occasions, including all marriages and Masses, to occur only in the chapel, the Thurles legislation did leave some room for some flexibility. Ignatius Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe, 23–24.

45 Ibid., 30.

46 Nugent, “Producing Priestliness,” 1, 16.

47 Barry, “The Legislation of the Synod of Thurles,” 141.

48 Slattery to Rev. P. Canty, Maycarkey. Archbishop William Slattery Papers, File 1852/16, microfilm reel 6004, Archives of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emily on microfilm at the National Library of Ireland.

49 Mountford, The Gendered Pulpit, 5.

50 Ibid., 51, 54.

51 McDevitt, Patrick, “Muscular Catholicism: Nationalism, Masculinity, and Gaelic Team Sports, 1884–1916,” Gender and History 9, no. 2 (1997): 262–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Nugent, “Producing Priestliness,” 16.

53 Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience, 201.

54 Nugent, “Producing Priestliness,” 15.

55 MacDonald, Walter, Reminiscences of a Maynooth Professor (London, 1926)Google Scholar, 31, 43, 50.

56 Bourke, Angela, “The Baby and the Bathwater: Cultural Loss in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” in Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Foley, Tadhg and Ryder, Seán (Dublin, 1998), 79–92Google Scholar; Dhomhnaill, Nuala Ní, “A Ghostly Alhambra,” in Irish Hunger: Personal Reflections on the Legacy of the Famine, ed. Hayden, Tom (Dublin, 1997), 68–78Google Scholar.

57 Bourke, “The Baby and the Bathwater,” 84. For more on the effects of the shift from orality to literacy, see Ong, Walter, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Bourke, “The Baby and the Bathwater,” 89. In 1911, two-thirds of Ireland's people still lived in rural areas. Hill, Myrtle, Women in Ireland: A Century of Change (Belfast, 2003)Google Scholar, 16.

59 Ní Dhomhnaill, “A Ghostly Alhambra,” 68. For comparative analyses, see Bob Bushaway, “‘Things Said or Sung a Thousand Times’: Customary Society and Oral Culture in Rural England, 1700–1900,” in The Spoken Word, 256–77, and Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge, MA, 1979)Google Scholar.

60 Donald E. Meek argues that clergy “have been of great importance to the creation, maintenance and growth of literacy within the Celtic cultures of Britain and Ireland” from the Middle Ages to the late nineteenth century. Donald E. Meek, “The Pulpit and the Pen: Clergy, Orality and Print in the Scottish Gaelic World,” in The Spoken Word, 84.

61 On the clergy and the Irish language, see Wolf, Language Change, and McMahon, Timothy G., Grand Opportunity: The Gaelic Revival and Irish Society, 1893–1910 (Syracuse, 2008)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

62 Wolf, “The Irish-Speaking Clergy,” 66–67.

63 See Tynan, Michael, Catholic Instruction in Ireland, 1720–1950: The O'Reilly/Donlevy Catechetical Tradition (Dublin, 1985)Google Scholar, and The Christian Brothers, A Companion to the Catechism: Designed Chiefly for the Use of Catechists and Heads of Families, by The Christian Brothers, 10th ed. (Dublin, 1906)Google Scholar. According to Patrick Corish, John Hagan's Compendium of Catechetical Instruction (1911) was the Irish “preacher's standby.” The Irish Catholic Experience, 231. In the nineteenth century, the Irish-language catechism published in 1800 by Michael O'Reilly was still in use in many areas. See the discussion of O'Reilly, Michael, An Teagask Creestye, agus Paidreagha na Mainne agus an Tranona (Dublin, 1800)Google Scholar, in Wolf, Language Change, 96–97.

64 Oral history, Stephen Conroy (1912–91), County Mayo, 1920s, cited in No Shoes in Summer: Days to Remember, ed. Ryan, Mary, Gilmour, Kevin, and Brown, Seán (Dublin, 1995)Google Scholar, 59.

65 Although newspaper readership figures for the 1850s are difficult to come by, the great increase in the numbers of newspapers suggests an expanding readership. Comerford, R. V., “Ireland, 1850–70: Post-famine and Mid-Victorian,” in A New History of Ireland: Volume V, Ireland Under the Union; I, 1801–1870, ed. Vaughan, W. E. (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar, 376. See also Corish, Irish Catholic Experience, 131.

66 For a sampling of Catholic publications available for purchase in the mid-nineteenth century, see “A Catalogue of Standard Catholic Works,” Irish Catholic Directory (1852): 445–85.

67 Catholic Record of Waterford and Lismore 1, no. 2 (April 1913): 28–29Google Scholar.

68 Literacy rates for Catholics increased in the nineteenth century, although by 1861, “46 per cent of Catholics aged five years and over [still] were unable to read or write.” Sean Connolly, Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Studies in Irish Economic and Social History 3 (Dundalk, 1985), 5.

69 Carbery, Mary, The Farm by Lough Gur: The Story of Mary Fogarty (Sissy O'Brien) (Cork, 1973)Google Scholar, 27. For a discussion of how reading aloud impacted the transmission of religious ideas in the age of the Reformation, see Scribner, Robert, “Oral Culture and the Diffusion of Reformation Ideas,” History of European Ideas 5, no. 3 (1984): 237–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 John O'Sullivan, Praxis Parochi in Hibernia, 2 vols. (1850–52), 1:151. Unpublished manuscript at the Kerry Diocesan Archive, Killarney.

71 Ibid., 7.

72 Ibid., 2:707–08.

73 Donald E. Meek, “The Pulpit and the Pen,” 111.

74 Scribner, “Oral Culture and the Diffusion of Reformation Ideas,” 237–38.

75 Corish, Patrick J., Maynooth College, 1795–1995 (Dublin, 1995)Google Scholar, 116.

76 Sheehan's works sold well; in Ireland, for example, sales of My New Curate exceeded 30,000 in the first year and a half of its publication. Barry, Michael, By Pen and Pulpit: The Life and Times of the Author Canon Sheehan (Fermoy, County Cork, 1990)Google Scholar. For more on the life and literature of Sheehan, see McBride, Lawrence, “A Literary Life of a Socially and Politically Engaged Priest: Canon Patrick Augustine Sheehan (1852–1913),” in Radical Irish Priests, 1660–1970, ed. Moran, Gerard (Dublin, 1998)Google Scholar, and Candy, Catherine, Priestly Fictions: Popular Irish Novelists of the Early Twentieth Century (Dublin, 1995)Google Scholar.

77 Barry, By Pen and Pulpit, 36.

78 “Dingle, 1851,” John O'Sullivan's Diaries and Papers, 1851, 12, Kerry Diocesan Archive, Killarney.

79 Connolly, Priests and People, 180; Delay, “The Gates Were Shut,” 30–31; Barry, “The Legislation of the Synod of Thurles,” 149.

80 Swords, Liam, A Hidden Church: The Diocese of Achonry, 1689–1818 (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1997), 394–95Google Scholar.

81 White, Richard, Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories (New York, 1998)Google Scholar, 109.

82 Connolly, Priests and People, 180.

83 For more on the twentieth-century childhood memoir, see Ferriter, Diarmaid, “Suffer Little Children? The Historical Validity of Memoirs of Irish Childhood,” in Childhood and Its Discontents: The First Seamus Heaney Lectures, ed. Dunne, Joseph and Kelly, James (Dublin, 2002)Google Scholar.

84 Oral history of Patricia Kelly, b. 1916, Oxmanstown Road, North Circular Road, Dublin, 1920s–30s, cited in No Shoes in Summer, 34.

85 Lankford, The Hope and the Sadness, 21–22.

86 Ibid., 37–38.

87 Barry, “The Legislation of the Synod of Thurles,” 149.

88 O'Sullivan, Praxis, 1:532–34.

89 Delay, “The Gates Were Shut,” 31–32.

90 Mountford, The Gendered Pulpit, 17, 26.

91 Larkin, Emmet, “The Parish Mission Movement, 1850–1880,” in Christianity in Ireland: Revisiting the Story, ed. Bradshaw, Brendan and Keogh, Dáire (Dublin, 2002)Google Scholar, 195.

92 Murphy, James H., “The Role of Vincentian Parish Missions in the ‘Irish Counter-Reformation’ of the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Irish Historical Studies 24, no. 94 (November 1984): 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid., 155, 159. The first Irish mission, a Vincentian mission, occurred in the Dublin Diocese in 1842.

95 Rev. Guinan, Joseph, The Island Parish (Dublin, 1908)Google Scholar, 135.

96 Larkin, “The Parish Mission Movement,” 200–01.

97 Lawrence Taylor, Occasions of Faith, 177. According to John Sharp, several Redemptorists were “unfitted for the specific work of their order,” proving incompetent when it came to preaching. Sharp, John, Reapers of the Harvest: The Redemptorists in Great Britain and Ireland, 1843–1898 (Dublin, 1989)Google Scholar, 110.

98 Oral history, Molly McDermott (b. 1921), Ballinaheglish, County Roscommon, in No Shoes in Summer, 183.

99 Lawrence Taylor, Occasions of Faith, 173–74.

100 Ibid., 183.

101 Guinan, The Island Parish, 141.

102 Potter, Sacred Eloquence, 212.

103 Taylor, Alice, Quench the Lamp (Dingle, 1990)Google Scholar, 51.

104 “Mission in Galway,” notes written on the 1852 Galway mission, author and date unknown, Bishop Michael Browne (bishop from 1937 to 1976) Papers, B/11/49 (2), Galway Diocesan Archive, Galway.

105 A Short Ecclesiastical Survey of Golden/Kilfeacle to Serve as a Memory of the Re-opening of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Golden (Golden/Kilfeacle, 1991), 71–72.Google Scholar

106 O'Brien, Edna, Mother Ireland (New York, 1999 [1976]), 80–81.Google Scholar

107 Kohl, J. G., Travels in Ireland (London, 1844)Google Scholar, 97, 104, quoted in Malcolm, Elizabeth, “Ireland Sober, Ireland Free”: Drink and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Syracuse, 1986)Google Scholar, 107. See also Kerrigan, Colm, Father Mathew and the Irish Temperance Movement, 1838–1849 (Cork, 1992)Google Scholar.

108 Gary Owens, “Nationalism Without Words: Symbolism and Ritual Behavior in the Repeal ‘Monster Meetings’ of 1843–5,” in Irish Popular Culture, 1650–1850, 247.

109 Wyse, Thomas, Historical Sketch of the Late Catholic Association of Ireland (London, 1829)Google Scholar, quoted in Owens, “Nationalism Without Words,” 243.

110 John Sharp, Reapers of the Harvest, 191.

111 Ignatius Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe, 53.

112 Ibid., 268, 264.

113 Sharp, Reapers of the Harvest, 24–25.

114 James H. Murphy, “The Role of Vincentian Parish Missions,” 166–67.

115 Lawrence Taylor, Occasions of Faith, 170.

116 Guinan, Joseph, Scenes and Sketches in an Irish Parish; or, Priests and People in Doon (Dublin, 1903), 70–71.Google Scholar

117 Delay, Cara, “Confidantes or Competitors? Women, Priests, and Conflict in Post-famine Ireland,” Éire-Ireland 40, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2005): 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

118 Hynes, Eugene, Knock: The Virgin's Apparition in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Cork, 2008)Google Scholar, 121.

119 Rev. Thomas Duggan, Abington, Munroe, to Leahy, Archbishop Patrick Leahy Papers, 1870/17, microfilm reel 6009, Archives of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emily on microfilm at the National Library of Ireland.

120 Ibid.

121 Delay, “Confidantes or Competitors?” 120.

122 William Watson, Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), to Archbishop McCabe, 11 April 1878, McCabe Papers, 337/3/II/35, Dublin Diocesan Archive, Dumcondra. All misspellings in original.

123 Ibid.

124 Here, Adam Fox's arguments on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England are useful. Fox maintains that early modern England “was a society in which the three media of speech, script, and print infused and interacted with each other in a myriad of ways.” The religious changes of Reformation-era England also have parallels with the reforming agenda of the nineteenth-century Irish devotional revolution. The intersections of orality and literacy proved locally vital during both times of upheaval. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 5. Although it is more difficult to record the ways in which nonliterate or semiliterate Catholics interacted with the literacy of the devotional revolution, Gearóid Ó Crualaoich has argued that the lines between orality and literacy were quite blurred, and that even those rural Irish folk who were most wedded to orality also were savvy enough to understand literacy and its uses: “Séan Ó Conaill, despite his inability to read or write, despite his never having been at school, participated in a culture that was literate to a degree. He was aware of and recognized that world of literacy. He knew and had dealings with its agencies and its representative agents: the priest, the schoolmaster, the policeman and the folklore collector.” Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer (Cork, 2003)Google Scholar, 17. For a comparative perspective, see Goody, Jack, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar, and Fielding, Penny, Writing and Orality: Nationality, Culture, and Nineteenth-Century Scottish Fiction (Oxford, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Edna O'Brien, Mother Ireland, 44.

126 MSS 517, 419, National Folklore Collection, Dublin (hereafter NFC).

127 Hynes, Knock, 42.

128 NFC 520, 247–48.

129 See Hynes, Knock, chap. 3.

130 NFC 437, 396.

131 NFC 560, 415.

132 NFC 560, 545.

133 NFC 37, 90.

134 Oral history, Patricia Kelly, Oxmanstown Road, North Circular Road, Dublin, 1920s–30s, cited in No Shoes in Summer, 36–37.

135 Lawrence Taylor, Occasions of Faith, 161, 149. Folklorist Diarmuid Ó Giolláin expresses a similar theory, claiming that “[s]uch accounts show an ambivalence towards the idea of Christianity having an absolute superiority of power.” “The Fairy Belief and Official Religion in Ireland,” in The Good People, 204.

136 Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore, 159.

137 Ibid., citing Satriani, Luigi M. Lombardi, Antropologia Culturale e Analisi della Cultura Subalterna, 2nd ed. (Milano, 1997)Google Scholar, 91.

138 Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore, 159–60.

139 Hynes, Knock, 41. In her work on the legend of the dead priest's midnight Mass, Patricia Lysaght argues that Irish people used legendry to comment on priests who failed to uphold their clerical responsibilities. The most popular legend, according to Lysaght, was one in which a priest who failed to say Mass in his lifetime—after accepting payment for that Mass—must return after his death to fulfill his priestly duties. In order to be released from purgatory, the cleric must return and then have a living person serve Mass for him. In this case, the dead priest must rely on the assistance of his former parishioners. This narrative, as Lysaght elucidates, “makes the utter dependence of the dead priest on human goodwill really evident.” Lysaght, Patricia, “‘Is There Anyone Here to Serve My Mass?’: The Legend of ‘The Dead Priest's Midnight Mass’ in Ireland,” Arv, Scandanavian Yearbook of Folklore 47 (1991): 193Google Scholar, 205.

140 NFC 517, 383.

141 NFC 560, 138.

142 For other examples of the ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish Catholics contested and negotiated the power of the state, the Catholic Church, and Protestant missionaries, see McLoughlin, Dympna, “Workhouses & Irish Female Paupers, 1840–70,” in Women Surviving: Studies in Irish Women's History in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Luddy, Maria and Murphy, Cliona (Dublin, 1989), 117–47Google Scholar; Earner-Byrne, Lindsey, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin, 1922–60 (Manchester, 2007)Google Scholar, particularly chap. 3, and Moffit, Miriam, The Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics, 1849–1950 (Manchester, 2010)Google Scholar.

143 See, for example, Turpin, John, “Visual Culture and Catholicism in the Irish Free State, 1922–1949,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57, no. 1 (January 2006): 55–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Godson, Lisa, “Catholicism and Material Culture in Ireland, 1840–1880,” Circa: Contemporary Visual Culture In Ireland 103 (Spring 2003): 38–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.