DCU Conduct Research on Irish Language Manuscript from the Burns Library, Boston

Dr. Pádraig Ó Liatháin, Assistant Professor at Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge, DCU has been working extensively with one of John J. Burns library Irish language manuscripts in Boston College.

This week the library featured a guest post from Dr. Pádraig Ó Liatháin, as a visiting researcher, . He considers himself extremely fortunate to have witnessed and examined the Gallagher manuscript. It is evident from this, and from other manuscripts in Boston College, and in libraries across the US, that estimations of the education and literacy of the Irish-speaking population who emigrated were often misguided, as there are tens of thousands of pages of literature in the Irish language now housed in various repositories in the USA.

This book was one of many that were written in Ireland and brought across the Atlantic, but some were also transcribed in the New World, particularly in New England. Much work remains to be done on these.

Therefore, although there are certain uncommon elements to the Gallagher manuscript which give it an unique importance within the tradition in Ireland, it is also a small part of a larger movement of texts about which we are ever learning more and more; an Irish language manuscript tradition stubbornly persisting and surviving in the New World.

Thanks in large part to the DCU conference funding to attend the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS), Dr. Pádraig Ó Liatháin thus proposes the Gallagher Manuscript as a valuable case study, and he looks forward to returning to undertake further research in the Burns library.