Éire-Ireland, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer 1971): Reading Notes

J. C. Kelly-Rogers, ‘Aviation in Ireland - 1784 to 1922’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.3-17.
‘The first balloon released in Ireland was sent up from the Rotunda Gardens in Dublin on February 4, 1784, by a Mr. Riddick. It was gas-filled and unmanned. There were several more such releases during the year by Mr. Riddick and a Mr. Dinwiddie, the most successful being that sent up by Mr. Riddick at Belfast on June 25. In this case the balloon reached the Isle of Man and was subsequently returned to Ireland.‘ (p.3) ‘Richard Crosbie's name goes down in history as Ireland's first aeronaut. The son of Sir Paul Crosbie, he was born at Crosbie Park, Co. Wicklow, in 1755 and grew to be a man of “immense stature being above six feet and three inches high.” On January 19, 1785, he ascended in his “inflammable air” balloon from Ranelagh Gardens, landing later and safely at Clontarf. This was only four months after the first manned ascent in England and eight years before the one was made in North America. The gas, of “inflammable air,” used to inflate balloons at this time was generated by the action of sulphuric acid on scrap iron and zinc.’ (p.4)

Professor George Francis Fitzgerald, Senior Fellow of TCD, carried out gliding experiments in College Park, using a glider of the Otto Lilienthal type, in 1895. ‘Pictures show the glider hovering successfully in tethered flight but his own efforts to fly were, regretfully, unsuccessful. Using a platform erected by the Nassau Street rail-(p.5)ings of the Park, and helped by tow ropes hauled on by the students, he made many attempts to launch himself into the air. Photographs show him coatless, but still wearing his top hat, running at high speed across College Park in his fruitless endeavors to become airborne. The glider hung in the College Museum until it was accidentally consumed by fire.’ (p.6)

‘[I]n 1896, the publication Nature reported that the Hon. C. A. Parsons had built a steam-powered model aeroplane weighing only 31/2 pounds and that it had flown a distance of 100 yards, rising to a height of 20 feet. Parsons, younger son of the third Earl of Rosse, was the inventor of the steam turbine; the factory bearing his name still makes them in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne to this day. A large photograph in Birr Castle, Co. Offaly, shows the model with fair clarity and efforts are being made to discover more about it. From its appearance engineers are of the opinion that it may have been a control line model and that it had VTOL capability (vertical take-off and landing).’ (p.6)

‘[O]n December 31, 1909, Harry Ferguson took off from Old Park, Hillsborough, Co. Down. He flew a distance of 130 yards at a height of about 12 feet to become the first person to fly in Ireland.// Harry Ferguson, a native of Belfast, worked in his brother's garage in Little Donegall Street but later struck out on his own in May Street.’ (p.6.) he also took up the first aeroplane passenger to be carried in Ireland (Rita Marr) and went on to make his fortune through automotive inventions. Ferguson died in Oct. 1960.

The Irish Army Air Corps had only one non-military aircraft, a 5-seater Martinsyde A2 fitted with a Rolls-Royce Falcon III engine. It was purchased by Commandant General McSweeney and Capt. Charles Russell, members of the IRA (during the truce preceding the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty), because ‘One of the Irish delegation attending the treaty talks in London was General Michael Collins on whose head the British Government had earlier placed a reward of £10,000. If the talks broke down Collins might become a fugitive and it was to facilitate his escape to Ireland that this aircraft, nick-named “The Big Fella,” was acquired. [...] A photograph shows the new Irish tricolor being painted on the fuselage - the first aircraft to carry these markings.’ (p.16)

Oliver Gogarty contributed to the first issue of Aviation, a magazine founded by Colonel Charles Russell after he retired from command of the Air Corps. (p.17) Gogarty voiced the opinion that Ireland ‘is an island in a key position between the Old World and the New. ’ (p.17)

Joseph Sweeney, ‘Why “Sinn Féin?”’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.33-40.
Notes that ‘Arthur Griffith first put forward his Sinn Féin ideas in a speech to Cummann na nGaeldheal, a Dublin political group favoring Irish independence in October 1902. He expanded them in a series of articles in his newspaper, The United Irishman, and collected them in book form as The Resurrection of Hungary, in 1904. On the premise that Ireland was a nation, Griffith held that, “the four-and-a -quarter millions of unarmed people in Ireland would be no match in the field for the British Empire. If we did not believe so, as firmly as we believe the eighty Irishmen in the British House of Commons are no match for the six hundred Britishers opposed to them, our proper residence would be a padded cell.” In a High Tory move of absolute constitutionalism, Griffith proposed Ireland restore the constitution on 1782 and not accept any subsequent British legislation, such as the repeal of the Act of Union, follow the Hungarian deputies of 1861, stay at home, reestablish an Irish parliament, and by refusing to recognise the British parliament's right to legislate for Ireland, set up a dual monarchy. This is why in its early days Sinn Féin was known as “the Hungarian policy”’ (p.33) Sweeney cites R. M. Henry, The Evolution of Sinn Féin (NY: B. W. Huebsch 1920).

Professor Robert Mitchell Henry, put forward the explanation that the name Sinn Féin may stem from Thomas Davis's saying that “The freeman's friend is self-reliance”. Henry relates that a famous Irish scholar, [unidentified by Henry, but assumed by many to be Douglas Hyde], when asked to provide a name in accordance with Davis's saying told the following story: ‘a country servant in Munster [was] sent with a horse to the fair. The horse was sold and the servant after some days appeared in his master's kitchen, worn out but happy, and seated himself on the floor. To the inquiries of some neighbours who happened to be there, as to where he had been and what he had done, he would give no answer but “sinn fein, sinn fein,” The prodigal servant's witty reply eludes the translator. To his hearers it conveyed that family matters were matters for the family; but it was no mere evasion of a temporary or personal difficulty. It was the expression of a universal truth.’ (Henry, The Evolution of Sinn Féin, 1920, p.43; Sweeney p.34) Sweeney adds that ‘This is probably the most widely accepted account of the genesis of the name Sinn Féin. Over a half century later this version was given as generally accepted by T. P. Coogan “The name Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone) is said to derive from an old Irish story about a servant who returned home drunk one day - errand unaccomplished, his master's money spent - and refused to tell what had happened to anyone outside the family. He just muttered 'sinn fein, sinn fein' - meaning, 'it's a matter for ourselves alone.'’ (Coogan, Ireland Since the Rising, 1966, p.6; Sweeney p.34.)

Douglas Hyde referred to in Irish as An Craoibhin Aoibhinn, translating as “the delightful little branch”. (p.35)

P. S. O'Hegarty implies that Douglas Hyde was responsible for the name Sinn Féin. In The Shan Van Vocht (March 1897), O'Hegarty explained ‘Dr. Douglas Hyde, who will not be accused by anyone of being a politician, has a poem in Irish, “Waiting for Help,” of which the last verse is “Is mithid fios do bheith / Ag gach aon amadán / Nac bhfuil gair-faire / Is fiú aon aire / Acht ceann, Sinn Féin Amháin!”’ O'Hegarty translates Hyde as “It is time for every fool to recognise that there is only one watchword which is worth anything - Ourselves Alone” (O'Hegarty, Sinn Féin an Illustration, 1919, p.20; Sweeney, p.35.) Sweeney also cites Emile Caillet, Les origines du mouvement sinn-fein en Irlande, 1921).

Padraic Colum states that Arthur Griffith was responsible for the name Sinn Féin. ‘Ten or twelve years after his departure [from Ireland for South America at the end of 1897] when a name was needed to express a national policy he had enunciated, a young woman gave it to him - Sinn Féin, Ourselves. He took it as an inspiration, forgetting that William Rooney had written to him in Africa, “You are right - Sinn Féin must be the motto.”’ (Colum, Ourselves Alone: The Story of Arthur Griffith and the Origin of the Irish Free State, 1959, p.32; Sweeney p.36). Colum further wrote ‘at the end of 1904 an enthusiastic lady, Miss Mary Butler, suggested the name “Sinn Fein” which Arthur Griffith, forgetting that he had used it in a letter from Africa instantly adopted.’ (Colum, Ourselves Alone, 1959, p.87; Sweeney, p.36). Sweeney notes that Colum's two accounts are not equally firm about the date, and that Sinn Féin took its name as an organisation in 1905. (p.36)

‘Eleanor Hull, a distinguished Irish scholar of [Douglas] Hyde's generation feared that [the meaning of the words] Sinn Féin had been widely misunderstood. [...] Sinn Féin's true meaning of Irish self-reliance, she suggested, could best be understood through the words of a poem by John O'Hagan, written before “the Society which called itself by the name was ever heard of.” (Hull, A History of Ireland and Her People, [1931], p.392; Sweeney, p.37). Sweeney quotes the first verse of O'Hagan's poem ‘The work that should to-day be wrought, / Defer not til to-morrow; / The help that should within be sought / Scorn from without to borrow. / Old maxims these - yet stout and true - / They speak in trumpet tone, / ’ To do at once what is to do, / And trust Ourselves Alone.’ (Sweeney, p.38.)

John O'Hagan became a prominent Justice, edited the collected poems of Samuel Ferguson, published a translation of The Song of Roland, and wrote an introduction to an edition of Thomas More's Utopia. John O'Leary, who knew him in Paris, said that he was a fine conversationalist. (O'Leary, Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism, 1806, vol.2, p.62; Sweeney, p.38.)

Cites Michael J. Lennon, ‘Douglas Hyde’, The Bell, 17 (April 1956), pp.45-46.

Bruce Arnold, ‘Nobel Deeds: Jack B. Yeats’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.48-57.
Cites John Berger, ‘The Life and Death of an Artist’, in Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing (London: Methuen 1960).

Seán Ó Suilleabháin, ‘Litríocht Chorca Dhuibhne Agus An Béaloideas’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.66-75.
Ó Suilleabháin was Archivist of the Irish Folklore Commission.

Ruth A. Roberts, ‘At Swim-Two-Birds and the Novel as Self-Evident Sham’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.76-97.
‘O'Brien himself is variously known as Brian O'Nolan, Brian Ó Nualláin, Myles na Gopaleen or Myles nagCopaleen. It is a challenge to bibliographers to settle on a standard name. Probably “Flann O'Brian” is best, for it is the name which At Swim-Two-Birds goes under, and although all of his work is interesting, it is Swim that makes his position secure. [...] At Swim-Two-Birds depends not so much on verbal virtuosity as on the manipulation of planes of reality. Each plane functions in a distinctive language mode, or style; and each is turned in on itself, self-conscious and self-critical. The machinery of the critical evaluation is - in short - laughter, or - at more length - a sense of the absurd as quick and sure and sharp as ever one dare hope to encounter.’ (p.77)