h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah I'm back in the pink, thanks! What I'm going to do is read a history of Ireland and take notes. That's the plan, anyway.

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Glad to hear you're fit again, Recumbentman. I look forward to progress

Thanks! But don't hold your breath. It's going to be a long research project, and I'm kept busy workshopping limericks on http://www.oedilf.com

That's a slightly bizarre project, Recumbentman - but I made sure I bookmarked it!

SB

Brilliant project

Bonkers, but brilliant.

Aren't words wonderful?

Had a thought yesterday: there are as many different shades of Anglo-Irish as there are of Sinn Féin, which recently celebrated a centenary. The name, that is; there have been so many splits that the authority of the founding group is impossible for any present group to claim (though they do, they do).

Bit like the Christian Church. Or the Popular Front of Judaea.

Well here it is, almost a year since the last postings and I can proudly report that this glorious project has progressed not a millimeter.

Occasionally I think about it and muse "what approach can I take that is not utterly boring and negligible at one extreme, or rude and hackle-raising at the other?"

Controversy would be the more interesting way to go; but I feel I don't need that at the moment. That's why I'm putting it off.

Perhaps a thought provoking letter/opinion piece for the local rag - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/thepost

Well, inspired by reading the backlog here, I have done another rewrite of A3950679.

It is short!

Which is nice, but I think there is a lot of good stuff, particularly from Chaiwallah, in the conversation here, that maybe should go in.

On the language issue have you come across http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1983434,00.html an article in the tabloid 2nd section of the Guardian last week.

That's a great article, Phil, and rings bells in all directions. We who were made to learn Irish in school, since we couldn't graduate in the State exams without it, had a hate-hate relationship with it then, which changed to a very touchy love-hate relationship with it since. I put myself down on the latest census as able to speak it, but with zero usage. I reasoned that I could speak Irish as my 96-year-old aunt could walk. I would never dare to use it in public as my hesitancy would inform my correspondent of my disability. I am able to make sense of placenames and I could tell the Guardian that they have run a few translations at the end together: "Night of boozing Oíche diúgaireachta Drunk Ar meisce Moronic Uascánta" is three definitions, but they print them as one.

I think it is interesting in the article about the useage of the irish language by the next generation. Having been taught it in schools they now have a code language that a lot of older people won't know (or at least their modern variant of it) or will ignore if heard.

My two grandsons are in a Gaelscoil. My son found that it was the best school in his district. They love it and have no hangups.

On reading your "third draft", please allow me, as an "outsider", to make the following points:

Having followed this project from early on, but not having heard the expression before you brought it onto the scene here, I am still somewhat unsure what you mean by Anglo-Irish. Are you talking about the people, the language or the culture?

[pause to read backlog] - I see Woodpigeon answered my question on this point some time back, but the question did come back to me when reading the entry.

Sorry to come up with something so basic, but the entry covers all of these aspects (language, culture and groups of people) and is not explicit on the point.

All of which makes me wonder if I'm even more dumb than I originally thought I was.

Not useful to the entry, but memorable for me:

When in Italy last October we lunched at a lovely little restaurant in Lecce devoted to many Irish writers, although the food and the staff were the same as any other local Italian. There were enlarged sepia portraits of them all round the walls, along with enlarged sepia-coloured hand-written quotes (these also decorated the menu, IIRC, with Italian translations). It made you realise how many of them there are. Irish authors, I mean, not menus.

Here's what I've been waiting for, perhaps: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/science/06brits.html?th&emc=th

In case the link doesn't work for you, it refers to two books. The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story (Carroll & Graf, 2006) is by Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford. He finds that the genetic makeup of the English Irish Scots and Welsh is very broadly the same, the invaders of the last 2,000 years accounting for less than a third of present DNA in England and an eighth in Ireland. The common ancestors of the rest (the majority on both islands) he says migrated north from Spain 16,000 years ago after the ice retreated.

The other book cited is by Bryan Sykes, another Oxford geneticist: Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland, described in the NY Times as 'his new book'. He agrees with Dr. Oppenheimer that the ancestors of 'by far the majority of people' were present in the British Isles before the Roman conquest of A.D. 43. 'The Saxons, Vikings and Normans had a minor effect, and much less than some of the medieval historical texts would indicate' he says.

There is interesting stuff about the Celtic and English language in the NY Times article too; that English perhaps predates the Anglo-Saxons, and even the Romans, and represents a fourth division of the Germanic group, which is usually classed in three divisions.

When I said "the last 2000 years" above I shuld have made it a lot more. There is no evidence of a 'Celtic invasion' and instead it seems that the Celts may have brought agriculture (but not much genetic domination) around 6.000 years ago, and the Belgae (who may be those the Irish historians called the Fir Bolg, the pre-Gaelic inhabitants (just to confuse things)) nay have brought iron, but again no great DNA input.

The upshot of which is, genes and culture are different stories. As the NY Times article concludes, 'Dr. Oppenheimer said genes "have no bearing on cultural history." There is no significant genetic difference between the people of Northern Ireland, yet they have been fighting with each other for 400 years, he said.

'As for his thesis that the British and Irish are genetically much alike, "It would be wonderful if it improved relations, but I somehow think it won’t."'

Have you heard of the English rhyme used (certainly until recently) to count sheep? Yan tan tethera pedhera pimp... The 'pimp' reveals that this is British, the language spoken by the Britons before the Anglo-Saxons arrived. Basically the same as Welsh.

I'm troubled, though, by the major difference between the so-called Celtic language spoken in Ireland and Scotland (known as Gaelic) and the so-called Celtic language spoken in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany (known as Brythonic). The differences seem too great to have arisen in only a few hundred years after the languages arrived from the continent. This suggests to me that Ireland and Great Britain were Celticised by two different routes.

Finally, there's the question of whether the Celts ever arrived in these islands at all. There's no doubt that the language spoken in 1 AD was a Celtic language, but there's no sign of a Celtic invasion. I think we're all directly descended from the original Neolithic farmers who arrived in 4,000 BC.