Ethnohistorical Preservation and Persuasion in "Foras Feasa Ar Éirinn"

University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)

Ethnohistorical Preservation and Persuasion in "Foras Feasa Ar Éirinn"Author(s): Ray CashmanSource: New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 147-152Published by: University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557783 .

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A Backward Glance

torical narrative thus forged a powerful Irish Catholic mythology out of an atmosphere of conflicting political and religious interests.

Foras Feasa ar ?irinr?s simple, flexible framework for Irish history effec

tively dictated for subsequent generations what the canon of Irish history should be. The heroic stories Keating popularized and, more crucially, the cen tral myth of a special relationship between Catholicism and irishness, which found expression in FF?} continued to find a place in Irish school curricula and in Irish historical memory down to the mid-twentieth century. While his torians may no longer rely on Foras Feasa ar ?irinn as a source of factual information about ancient Ireland, it still provides a fascinating expression of

seventeenth-century perceptions of Irishness. For those who seek to under

stand the interlinking of Irishness and Catholicism as an enduring social and cultural phenomenon, the formative influence of the writings of Geoffrey Keating should not be overlooked.

r^r ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY, DUBUN

RayCashman Ethnohistorical Preservation

and Persuasion in Foras Feasa ar ?irinn

Although the title of Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar ?irinn has often been

translated as "The History of Ireland" it more accurately translates-as "The

Basis of Knowledge about Ireland." The distinction is worth noting because it

raises the question: To what extent can we consider Keating's work a history?

What constitutes Keating's basis of knowledge about the Irish past?that is,

the range of sources he employs?is telling. Because Keating includes a great

deal of myth, legend, hagiography, and genealogy shaped by successive gener

ations to suit changing political agendas, the conventional wisdom about FF?

is that it cannot be relied upon for historical accuracy1 Yet Keating's FF?

reveals a complicated vision of historical truth that cannot be narrowed to the

merely factual. For a better understanding of this vision, 1 will examine

Keating's methodology for choosing and presenting his source materials. This

may provide some insight into early developments in Irish historiography.

However, my ultimate goal is to present FF? as an example of one form of his

tory with very different objectives than modern academic history, but one that

is no less contemporary or consequential

i. See, for example, Joep Leerssen, Mere Irish and F?ar-Ghael (Cork: Cork University Press,;

1996), pp. 274-75.

' '

:.: . 147' ,'



A Backward Glance

Like an ethnohistorian investigating a recently literate culture, Keating

asserts that three types of evidence are valuable in reconstructing the past:

"oral traditions of the ancients, old documents, and antique remains, called in

Latin monumental1 However, Keating tends to privilege written sources over

oral traditions and archaeological evidence. As a priest trained on the conti

nent, Keating was influenced by Renaissance historiographie methods, which

emphasized the authority of written sources and presupposed chronology to

be the organizing principle of history as a narrative genre, Keating cites Italian

historian Polydore Vergil (1470-1555?) for the duties of the responsible histori

an. These include reporting only facts proven by primary sources and never

omitting any available fact. Keating also paraphrases Vergil to describe the

broad, nearly ethnographic purview of the historian who should "explain the

customs and way of life, the counsels, causes, resolves, acts, and development, whether good or bad, of every people who dwell in the country about which

he has undertaken to write" (FF? i s?) <3

As Joep Leerssen asserts, Keating is "notoriously uncritical of his source

material,"4 yet Keating deserves more credit for the amount of scrutiny he

brings to bear on the sources he accepts as reliable. Throughout FF? Keating is concerned with factuality and is critical, by the standards of his day, of pre

vious histories of Ireland and of his own evidence. In his introduction, Keating attacks several foreign, mostly British, commentators for spreading malicious

falsehoods about Ireland by demonstrating how they fail to live up to accept ed historiographie principles. For example, Richard Stanihurst must be dis

missed because "he was blindly ignorant in the language of the country" and

therefore could not access the "ancient records and transactions of the territo

ry" (FF? i 43). In his own account of the Irish past, Keating is critical enough of native sources to point out, for example, that the lengthy reigns of pre Christian kings set down in R?im R?oghra?dhe ("The Role of the Kings") are

improbable (FF? i 83). He makes a case for more plausible years and blames

the mistake on the carelessness of copyists rather than on the ignorance of the

original authors (FF? i 85). Keating consistently argues that the Irish primary written sources are as reliable as those in any country (FF? i 83> iii 35, Hi 37).

2. Geoffrey Keating, Foras Feasa ar: ?ireann: The History of Ireland, e& David Comyn> R S.

Dinneen, 4 Vols. (London; Irish Texts Society, l^o^-i^), 11:32,4-25; hereafter cited parenthetical

ly, thus: (FP??i 324-25). For a more complete consideration of Keating's source materials and for other secondary sources oh & topic, see Bernadette Curuungham, The World of Geoffrey Treating (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), pp. 8-9, rt?-W}.

3. For further commentary on Keating's historiography, see Breand?n ? Buachalk? "Foreward to 1987 Reprint" in {FF? i 3-5).

4. Leerssen, p, 275.

!#.



A Backward Glance

Still, he is critical enough of these sources to note exceptions and to offer com

peting versions of his evidence along with his reasons for the credibility of one version over another (e.g., FF? ii 99).

Keating may privilege written sources, but he is as critical about his oral sources as he is about his written ones. Although of Norman extraction,

Keating uses of language that demonstrates his familiarity with the Gaelic bardic tradition, and his use of oral traditions as evidence demonstrates a cer tain amount of trust in the factual reliability of specific genres of Irish folklore.5

He cites folklore or hialoideas (literally "ora! learning") as evidence to claim, for

example, that the legendary hero Fionn MacCumhall was an actual person CEHS ii 325), Aware that this may seem implausible, as it may today Keating demonstrates how much that has been said and recorded is exaggerated (FF? ii

327), and he insists that there is a core of truthful narrative obscured in part by the excesses of foreign writers (FF? ii 331). Moreover? he shrewdly observes that oral traditions encompass a wide range of genres, some of which were never considered to be based in fact but exist for the purpose of entertainment (FF? i 51), He takes Meredith Hanmer to task for deceitfully citing an example of

"poetical romance" as an example of Irish historical lore, Keating argues that native historians or seanchaidhe were well aware of the difference between gen uine history (st?ir fh?rinnea?i) and stories "invented as a pastime" (FF?i si),6

Keating's running commentary about the relative reliability of both his oral and written sources demonstrates he, too, is keenly aware of this difference.

Even though Keating may live up to the historiographie standards of his

time, several reasons to question the value of his work as history remain for

contemporary audiences. For example, in several places {e.g., FF? i 147, ii 205, ii 325) Keating defers to the Bible as the final authority proving or disproving the chronology asserted in Irish manuscript sources, which were themselves

already altered by monastics to articulate with biblical time lines and genealo

5. Rosiyn Biyn-Ladrew, "Geoffrey Keating* William Thorns? Raymond Williams, m? the

Terminology of Folklore: 'B?aloideas' as a 'Keyword."' Polkkm Foram,-37, % (1996)? vu Bernadette

Cunningham, "Seventeenth-century interpretations of the Pmi: the Cm of Geoffrey toting," Irish Historical $tudiest 25,9S (1986), 119; Leerssen, p, 74

6. Although in modern Irish lseanchaithe\ {singular: seanthai) translates traditional storytellers?

Keating uses the term "seanchaidhe" to denote Irish literati charged with the keeping of seamhas

or written history. Today seamhas is associated with legends and other oral historical genres, but

daring Keating's time seamhas consisted of recorded genealogies* clan histories and origin leg

ends, heroic sagas, place lore> and law. However, the strict division between the written and the

oral breaks down, considering that a significant quantity of this seanchas was a record of orally

composed and transmitted lore. Por more, see John Francis Byrne, *$encha$; The Nature of Gaelic

Historical Tradition," Historical Studies, 9 (i974)> *37~59 and Kathleen Hughes, The Barly Celtic

Idea of History and the Modern Historian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 197?).

14$



A Backward Glance

gies. Many scholars simply acquit Keating of bad methodology, arguing that he

compares favorably with his European contemporaries and should not be

measured by present historiographie standards.7 Others dismiss FF? as histo

ry but focus on its value as a timely assemblage of Irish textual heritage, as a

watershed moment for modern Irish prose, or as catalyst for an emergent

national self-consciousness.8 Whether scholars defend FF? from presentistic

judgment or construct arguments that compensate for its apparent shortcom

ings, the factor that consistently bars FF? from consideration as valid history is Keating's inclusion of so much fantastic material. What place in a factual

account of the past have tales of a pagan sorcerer reviving the dead or of a

magical harp revealing a king's secrets? The motivations for and consequences

of Keating's intermingling of history, mythology, and fable deserve more seri

ous consideration.

Given Keating's stated interest in marshalling reliable sources for telling the

truth, it is striking that he nonetheless includes a great deal of narrative that

even he does not believe to be factual (e.g., FF? i 149, ii 35, ii 149, ii 175).

However, Keating's conception of history is comprehensive enough to include

stories that may be considered truthful or authentic but not factual What

Keating has to offer is, in effect, ethnohistory motivated and shaped by a pal

pable sense of loss. Living in a society faced with defeat and dispossession,

Keating emerges as a curator of native learning that 'seems under threat of

extinction. This antiquarian impulse during a time of social upheaval was

nothing new. Proinsias Mac Cana states that twelfth-century compilations such as the Dinnseanchas ("Place Lore") and the Uabhar Gabh??a ?treann

("The Book of Invasions of Ireland") were the result of % conscious effort to

regroup and consolidate the resources of native learning.*9 likewise? the

impulse toward salvage ethnography focused on collecting Irish language tra

ditions would be articulated again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

in the works of such folklorists and literary scholars as Douglas Hyde, In part,

Keating includes fantastic materials, labeled a$ such* in an effort to preserve elements of Irish heritage and to make it accessible.

Of course, Keating's project is invested as much in persuasion as it is in

preservation. His specific selections of episodes and evidence impose an inter

pretation of the Irish past that advances several seventeenth-century political agendas, which have been masterfully elucidated in Cunningham's The World

7? See for example, Diarmaid ? Cath?in, "Derrnot O'Connor* ltaj?da&>r ?? Keating,"

Eighteenth-Century Ireland, % (1987), 69 and David Comyn* **Prefoce* (FF? i, ?Mv)< 8, These arguments are made in ? Buachaila*? "Ftoewaid* arid Comynfc *"'P??feae* to FP? md

throughout Cunningham's The World of Geoffrey Keating, 9. Cited in Cunningham (1986), 122.

*50

'



A Backward Glance

of Geoffrey Keating. Generalizing from the many agendas informing Keating s

project, one may understand that a primary function of FF? is to bolster a spe cific vision of collective identity. Due to encroachments of the New English Protestants, the Catholic Irish elite of both Gaelic and Norman descent had more reason than ever to imagine themselves as one people joined by shared culture. Keating's contribution is to make this imagining possible by drawing from certain sources of native learning that enjoyed the authority of tradition, The Leabhar Gabh?la ?ireann, for example, provides more than an origin leg end for the Gaelic community and a convenient framework for Keating's his

tory of pre-Christian Ireland. It provides Keating a model of Irish history as a

succession of disparate groups assimilating into the population of Ireland.

Keating's extension of the Gaelic origin legend to accommodate the

Normans as the last legitimate invasion de-emphasizes the distinction between

Gael and Sean Ghaill ("Old Foreigner") by recasting them in one category as

?irennaigh?persons born in Ireland sharing the Catholic faith and the Irish

language regardless of genealogical descent. At the same time, Foras Feasa

excludes the foreign-born, English-speaking planters from consideration as

legitimate settlers in Ireland. Whereas the Old English undertook a "Christian

conquest" of Ireland, the New English are engaged in a "pagan conquest." Not

satisfied with "submission and fidelity," the New English are opponents of the

true faith and seek to destroy the language and culture of Ireland's inhabitants

{FF? i 35-37). In part, Keating's FF? asserts newly relevant social boundaries

by focusing on elements of culture common to the ?irennaigh?language, reli

gion, and oral and textual traditions. Moreover, FF? is a pointed defense of

endangered culture accomplished through selective preservation.

What confuses modern academics is that Keating so convincingly

employs historiography that looks familiar by today's standards in the service

of a form of history more concerned with typology and stability than with

chronology and change.10 Foras Feasa may be sequentially ordered in accor

dance with the continental historiography of day, but it is primarily invested

in establishing collective identity through a sense of continuity Like what

Maurice Halbwachs refers to as collective memory, FF? is a representation of

the past, a form of history, more concerned with generating meaning than

with presenting a lineal narrative of cause and effect.11 In FF? pagan chieftains

and Norman lords separated by time and descent fulfill the same heroic role

10. See Henry Glassie, History's Dark Places (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998) for a

consideration of two equally valid models of history?one the familiar chronicle of change and

the other a reiteration of the unchanging and ultimately of cosmology and morality.

11; Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory*, trans, by Lewis A, Coser (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1992).

v



A Backward Glance

with the same moral responsibilities to society. Like a gable-end mural in

Belfast depicting C?chullain surrounded by the 1916 martyrs, Keating's account

of the Irish past allows his audience to draw inspiration from a continuity of

past and present. More than a history, rather than less, Foras Feasa ar ?irinn is

the basis of knowledge about Ireland in both its factual and fanciful manifesta

tions, a polemical ethnography of broad temporal scope. Keating does not

credulously indulge in silly fables, forcing us to dismiss Foras Feasa ar Eirinn as

pseudohistory.12 He refuses to omit stories that push beyond the merely factu

al and point to ideas of great consequence to people reeling from upheaval and

seeking the meaning granted by a sense of permanence and belonging.

o^ INDIANA UNIVERSITY

12. See Byrne, 147-48 and Hughes, 19-22 for discussions of FF? as an example of pseudo-histo

ry, the valiant but "unscientific" blending ofseanchas with continental models of history.

Henry Glassie

Keating Hero

At that time, it was said, the woods were so dense that a squirrel could travel

from the mountain to the lough, hopping from branch to branch, and never

touch the ground. Through the shadowy forest, Hugh Maguire led the men of

Fermanagh, Donegal, and Tyrone into position on the northern banks of the

Arney, a slip of a river that falls from the west and flows into Upper Lough Erne at Ballymenone. On the Arney, in ambush, the army of Ireland waited.

All unaware, Sir Henry Duke marched north from Dublin to relieve the

shriveling garrison at Enniskillen Castle, the fair seat of the Lion of Erne, taken

by the English and besieged by the chiefs of Ulster: Maguire* O'Donnell, and

O'Neill. Duke's troops waded into the stream at the place called the Ford of

Biscuits, where their sodden provisions would drift with the current, and they died in the fields, called still the Red Meadows* where their blood soaked into

the clay So it was recorded, for the year 1594, in the annals of the Pour Masters* and so it was told in my day by Hugh Nolan, the sage historian of

Ballymenone.

"Defeature" it was termed by the English historian of the era. The Four Masters proclaimed it ua great victory" For a giddy moment it seemed that Patrick's island would be saved for Patrick's faith, that the Irish would shape a

nation once again. Then Hugh Maguire; of Fermanagh was killed in Cork?

Hugh O'Donnell of Donegal was killed in Spain, and? old man among the

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Documents

Ethnohistorical Preservation and Persuasion in "Foras Feasa Ar Éirinn"