LL-L: "Lowlandic in Ireland" LOWLANDS-L, 02.JUN.2001 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 02.JUN.2001 (03) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 A=Afrikaans, Ap=Appalachean, D=Dutch, E=English, F=Frisian, L=Limburgish
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From: Criostoir O Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Help Needed

A chairde,

A very long time ago I enquired on the list whether
anyone had any information, no matter how great or
small, concerning what is considered a fairly "lost"
language of Ireland: Yola and Fingalian.

To give a brief history: Old English was apparently
the mother tongue of many of the troops that
accompanied the Earl of Pembroke's invasion of Ireland
in 1169, and the source area seems to have been
"little England in Wales", the Gower peninsula, which,
at that time, was fluctuating so far as I can
ascertain between Flemish and Old/Early Middle
English. Those troops who settled in segregated
baronies in Cos. Wexford, Waterford and Dublin
maintained Yola (the word is Yola for "old") as a
community language until the 19th Century. Very little
of it was recorded before it ceased. Nonetheless it is
a fascinating example of self-imposed linguistic
isolationism (there is a moving reference in Ó
Muirithe to a Yola speaker who believed her village
was all there was of the world and who, one day, fell
to her knees and wept when she ascended a ridge to
look out into the expanse of Co. Wexford beyond her)
and a fundamentalism of sociolinguistic survival. Yola
raises many questions about English in Ireland and
indeed English attitudes to Ireland and soldiers
settled therein.

In general there has been a minute amount of
literature published on the subject, the most
extensive of which was Liam Ó Muirithe's "The English
Language in Ireland" (1979; title from memory) and a
brief synopsis including the Paternoster in McCrum's
"The Story of English" (BBC Books). Ó Muirithe
contains very many examples of Yola including a
fantastic recording of the pacification of an inn
fight in Wexford and a hurling song, all in Yola.

Misfortunately there is only one copy of Ó Muirithe in
Derry City Central Library, for reference only, which
is frustrating. I would therefore beg other Lowlanders
to make known to the list anything they might have on
Yola, whether bibliographies, websites (there were
known the last time I checked), resources, excerpts,
phrases, examples, anything.

Yola and Fingalian pre-date Ulster-Scots by four
hundred years and represent one of the first
developments of English outside England. It seems to
me absurd that there is so much silence on it.

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Críostóir.

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