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Life
[David Patrick Moran; occas. pseud. ‘Tom O’Kelly’]; b. 22 March, 1869, in Manor [area], Co. Waterford, son of building contractor; ed. CBS, Waterford City, fnd. by Edmund Rice; and Castleknock College (‘Cawstleknock’) at age of 10; Moran worked on The Star, edited by T. P. O’Connor, in London (est. 1887), from 1888; studied Extension Economics course in University of London, studying under Sydney Smith; served as Secretary of London branch of Irish National League, formed when Land League was suppressed; supported Parnell in the Split; disillusioned by factionalism; attended Irish Literary Society in 1890s; joined London branch of Gaelic League, 1896; revisited Ireland, and wrote article denouncing anglicisation in New Ireland Review (ed. Fr. Tom Finlay, SJ), 1898; published in the same journal an extended series in the same vein, at the behest of the editor (later published as Philosophy of Irish Ireland, 1905); |
worked in London on Estates Gazette after a rupture with O’Connor; contributed further to The New Ireland Review, attacking cant in Irish papers; toured Munster and observed rural demoralisation; fnd.-ed. The Leader, 1 Sept., 1900-36; m. Catherine O’Toole, dg. of shipping agent and former Parnellite mayor of Waterford, Rathmines, 9 Jan. 1901; contrib. “The Battle of Two Civilisations” to Lady Gregory’s edited collection Ideals in Ireland (1901); promoted “Buy Irish” campaign and participated in Gaelic League Industrial Revival Committee; attacked Protestants and Unionists, but also occasionally the literary revival (‘Celtic Note’); compared Abbey Theatre début to ‘a prayer meeting for a foreign element in Ireland’; Irish Parliamentary Party, and Sinn Féin, inspiring a counter-attack by Arthur Griffith; supported Catholic Association and Catholic Defence Society, criticising sectarianism in Protestant businesses; issued The Philosophy of Irish Ireland (1905), being earlier articles rep. from New Ireland Review [1899-1900]; |
publ. a novel, Tom O’Kelly (1905), set in Ballytown, and descriptive of Irish politics; engaged in Gaelic League controversy, siding with Peadar Ó Laoghaire against the executive, and particularly opposing the Eoin MacNeill; antagonised Arthur Griffith with denigratory attacks on his Dual Monarchy idea (‘the Green Hungarian Band’); Moran refused to join National Council formed in 1903 to protest welcome to Edward VII planned by Dublin Council; Moran’s criticism of treatment of Irish by school managers resulted in attack on his carriage by irate crowd during Gaelic League Language Procession, Dublin March 1905; trenchantly denounced Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Féin policy and romantic advocacy of Grattan’s parliament; gave space on The Leader for Patrick Pearse and Daniel Corkery, the latter assisting editorially; wrote vitriolically against Synge’s Playboy of the Western World (1907); supported Vigilance Committees and censorhip of music-hall and immoral papers; suffered the destruction of The Leader premises, 1916 Rising; |
| closed down by British authorities, 1919; campaigned vigorously for Irish protectionism before his death; lived in Donnybrook, Clontarf, and finally Skerries, Co. Dublin; six children of whom a dg. died in childhood, and two sons (Eoghan and Ciaran) died within the same year of 1929; promoted cultural, political, and economic nationalism; supported Blue Shirts in opposition to the supposed dictatorship of de Valera; d. Sutton, Co. Dublin; another dg. Nuala founded An Realt, a conservative praesidium of the Legion of Mary devoted to Catholic principles; Moran called the ‘dark genius of Catholic nationalism’ by Conor Cruise O’Brien; lived in Donnybrook, Clontarf, and finally Skerries; d. 1 Feb., Nual inheriting The Leader which only ceased publication in 1971; Moran was later cited by Seán Lemass as the source of his economic theories. IF DIW DIB DIH FDA OCIL |
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Bibliographical details
The Philosophy of Irish Ireland [rep. from New Ireland Review, 1899-1900] (Dublin: The Leader /James Duffy & Co.; 1905); CONTENTS, Chap. 1, ‘Is the Irish Nation Dying?’; Chap. 2, ‘The Future of the Irish Nation’; Chap. 3, ‘The Pale and the Gael’; Chap. 4, ‘Politics, Nationality and Snobs’; Chap. 5, ‘The Gaelic Revival’; Chap. 6, ‘The Battle of Two Civilisations’ [See under Quotations - as infra.]
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Criticism
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Commentary
See separate file, infra.
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Quotations
See separate file, infra.
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References
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists Tom O’Kelly (Duffy 1905), 232pp. [an ugly picture of lower middle class life in provincial town; depicts shoneenism of this class, aping the Protestant well-to-do better classes; unsparing ridicule showered on nationalist politics and politics; unpleasantness of picture somewhat relieved by doings of Tom O’Kelly and the juvenile Ballytowners. Very slight plot [acc. Brown].
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, extracts from The Philosophy of Irish Ireland [553-56]; also ‘More Muddle’ [970-72] and ‘Our Reply’ [974-75], being his exchange over the Rolleston/Brooke anthology of 1900; ‘West-British’, a term coined by D. P. Moran to describe members of the IPP [253n.; but see under Hyde, Rx.]; his idea of the ‘Battle of Two Civilizations’ caught the widespread mood, viz.: ‘Ireland’s authentic cultural identity was unquestionably as a Gaelic and Catholic nation in which the Anglo-Irish, English-speaking Protestant could have no part.’ (Terence Brown, ‘Cultural Nationalism 1880-1930; FDA Sect. intro., p.517]; D. P. Moran directed the barrage of his aggressive scorn against the fey trivialities of the Celtic twilight ... for whom Ireland is an occult secret whose mysteries are best glimpsed in the crepuscular lyric [ibid., 520]; ‘battle of two civilizations’ - Moran’s phrase [Luke Gibbon, ed., 952-53]; Rolleston/Brooke controversy [969, & ftn.]; ‘West Briton’ as derogatory term for Irish anglophiles, [973]; Arthur Clery, on the cultural exclusivism of Irish Ireland, writes: ‘My friend and frequent editor, Mr D. P. Moran, in his brilliant philosophy of Irish Ireland and in the weekly paper in which he hammered home its doctrines, did much to win acceptance for this point of view. The name IRISH IRELAND itself very justly expresses it. / The new movement drew its strength from discipline and self-restraint.’ (Dublin Essays, 1919) [978]; also 1019 [in biog. of Arthur Clery]; The Leader (1904) [1026]. Note that FDA dates The Leader 1900-26 [cf. Lyons, infra]; FDA3 remarks on ‘West Briton’, a derogatory term coined by D. P. Moran of The Leader [527n]; also raimeis, ‘nonsense’, term popularised by DP Moran [693n.] See also the term ‘West-Briton’ (FDA2, p.253).
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James Joyce held in his Library in Trieste a copy of Tom O’Kelly (Dublin: Cahill, James Duffy 1905), stamped “J.J.”. (See Richard Ellmann, The Consciousness of James Joyce, Faber, p.117 [Appendix].)
Ulster Libraries: Belfast Central Public Library and University of Ulster Library (Morris Collection) hold Philosophy of Irish Ireland (1904).
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Notes
Henry Grattan: Grattan’s Parliament was regarded by Moran as ‘family dispute’ in which the real Irish had no concern; looked to Irish language for its ‘potent isolating power’; called for a thorough-going nationalism in which Ireland would be a self-governing country ‘living, moving and having its being in its own language, self-reliant ... developing its own manners and customs, creating its own literature out of its distinct consciousness.’ [quoted in Doherty & Hickey, A Chronology of Irish History since 1500 (Gill & Macmillan 1989); cited in Bernie Leacock, UU Diss., as supra.]
Canon Sheehan: Fr P. A. Sheehan contributed an essay entitled ‘The Two Civilisations’ to Irish Monthly, 18, 199 (Jan. 1890), pp.293, 358 - which anticipates the title-idea of Chap. 6 in Moran's Philosophy of Irish Ireland (1905) [see further under Sheehan - infra.]
Thomas Davis: Declan Kiberd attributes the origin of this phrase ‘the battle of two civilisations’ to Thomas Davis, though without reference (Inventing Ireland, 1995, p.162).
The Yeats-Moore version of Diarmuid and Grania was attacked by Moran’s Leader for writing about ‘degenerate and unwholesome sex problems’ (cited in Thomas W. Flannery, Yeats and the Idea of the Irish Theatre, 1976, p.165.)
The alcoholic priest in George Moore’s The Lake is called Moran, in opposition to the liberationist priest and central character Oliver Gogarty, named after Moore’s Dublin friend and literary companion Oliver St John Gogarty - the Buck Mulligan of Joyce’s Ulysses.
Stanislaus Joyce wrote: ‘a former classmate of mine at Belvedere, whose father was on terms of close friendship with a prominent Jesuit, Father Finlay ... told me in great secrecy of the coming publication of a paper with Jesuit backing. some months later another weekly paper called the Leader, which had clerical support, was started under the editorship of a blatant nullity, D. P. Moran by name’; calls The Leader a Jesuit foil to Griffith’s United Irishman, suspected of being anti-clerical. [See My Brother’s Keeper, London: Faber 1958, p.171.]
Moran on Swift: Robert Mahony, cites ‘The Pale and the Gael’, in New Ireland Review (June 1899), an article in which Moran excoriates Swift as an ‘Englishman, whom, with characteristic latter-day Irish cringe we claim for ourselves.’ See in ‘Jonathan Swift as the Patriot Dean’, History Ireland (Winter 1995) [q.pp.]
Máirín Nic Eoin, An Litríocht Réigiúnach (Baile Átha Cliath: An Clóchomhar Tta 1982), makes reference to Philosophy of Irish-Ireland, ed. D. P. Moran [Liosta Leabhar agus Foilseacháin, p.231].
John Horgan cites the economic ideals of D. P. Moran as the blueprint for the era of Seán Lemass in Irish government and society (Seán Lemass: Enigmatic Patriot, Gill & Macmillan, 1997, p.9; quoted by Leacock, op. cit. 2001 [supra], p.159.
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