Life
1795; one issue only; published in Belfast by Northern
Star office.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1991), Vol. 2, 1016: the first issue of Bolg an Tsolair (Gaelic
Magazine) was issued from the offices of the United Irishman newspaper The Northern Star; do. FDA3 606n. [Err.? one issue only]
Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fior-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, Its Development and Literary Expression Prior To The Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co. 1986): Gaelic Magazine, Bolg an tsolair, 1795, published in Belfast by the Northern Star, revivalist in purpose as ‘recommend[ing] the Irish language to the notie [sic] of Irishmen’; it contains Ossianic poems, with translations by Charlotte Brooke, and a learner’s grammar. [424-25]. A grammar was later issued in 1837 likewise called Bolg an t-solair, with the title-page motto: ‘Eirinn go brath and the distych, ‘Is tir gan tlacht, gan reacht, can fhéile/Nach ttuigin treabh aon Mhathara chéile’ [‘it is a land without sheen, without order or joy, where the children of one mother cannot understand each other’], being the closing lines of a poem by Paul O’Brien, professor of Irish at the Catholic seminary of Maynooth, and member of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, published in an Irish grammar (A practical grammar of the Irish language, 1809, p.x), intended for Maynooth students.
Musical Irish: ‘The Irish will be found by the unprejudiced ear, to excell in the harmony of its cadence; nor was ever any language fitter to express the feelings of its heart; nor need it to be wondered at, when we consider that their country was the seat of the muses, from times of the remotest antiquity, and that no nation ever encouraged poets and musicians, more than the ancient Irish .. (p.iv; quoted in J. Th. Leerson, op. cit., 1986, p.427.)
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