This is a study of the local development of Irish Tower houses in West Cork that were built between c.1400-1650; these buildings were mostly built by Gaelic clans or Hibernicised Norman families. The study is based on fieldwork and published historical research. A corpus of individual tower house reports provide the raw data. The purpose has been to date these structures by reconstructing the development of their layout. The internal layout of these features is analysed in terms of function; apparent role changes indicated by these are related to changes in Gaelic society known from text-based research. Where possible, inferences are made from the layout of the regional tower houses to better understand the role they played in Gaelic society. The western part of the Survey region has an exceptionally high concentration of fifteenth-century tower houses. These 'raised entrance' tower houses are argued to be an archaic form directly inspired by relic Anglo-Norman hall houses; another ancestral form in the east part of the Survey region is the 'refuge tower'. The role of the tower house and its associated settlements in post-medieval seigneurial settlement and Gaelic/planter interaction is discussed. Sophisticated construction technology, including the systematic use of ratios and units, has to be considered against perceived notions of Gaelic society. The relationship of tower house construction to a wave of Friary construction in the Fifteenth Century is considered; it is argued that an undocumented fifteenth-century economic boom and population expansion in the Gaelic regions was connected with a need for the elite to define land holdings; the latter was an important departure from traditional Gaelic social organisation. The importance of 'castle studies' as a major tool of Irish archaeology is emphasised and possible inter-disciplinary avenues for further research are suggested.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2008. / Title from web page (viewed on July 1, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

The study of place-names containing personal names is a neglected field in onomastics, despite being of great significance in various areas of name-studies. At its core, this thesis will begin to bridge the gap between the study of place-names and personal names, both practically and theoretically. The first step is to introduce a formally accepted terminology for the study of these names. Here, the term used to describe a place-name containing a personal name is anthropo-toponym. The acknowledgement of such a term would aid and indeed encourage future studies of anthropo-toponyms, both in Scotland and elsewhere. The study is approached through a close investigation of name material from the Isle of Lewis. The toponyms in question are characterised by two main linguistic layers, Old Norse and Scottish Gaelic, both of which have been included here. Although this material is partially an exercise in investigating the characteristics and properties of anthropo-toponyms, it also sheds considerable light on the social and linguistic history of Lewis place-names. Additionally, the study draws on a considerable amount of comparative evidence. This is primarily collected from the comprehensive survey of The Place-Names of Fife by Simon Taylor with Gilbert Márkus (2006-12). However, when studying the Norse dimension further, material from Landnámabók, one of the key sources for the medieval settlement of Iceland, has also been included. One of the most significant proposals made in this thesis is the concept of using a variant of the name-semantic approach, previously discussed by Peder Gammeltoft (2001a) in a Scottish context. At its core, this means that rather than emphasising the etymology of individual place-name elements, the motivation for coining is emphasised. It will become evident that using this approach makes it possible to view anthropo-toponyms in a different light. Through this method, we find that there is considerable variety to be found within the name-material, particularly when we look at the social and cognitive factors at play when place-names are coined and transmitted. Place-names that, on the surface appear to be relatively homogenous, can prove to be the opposite. For example, names such as Creagan Iain Ruaidh, Geodha Bean, Mhurchaidh, Stac Dhomhnuill Chaim and Tigh Mhaoldònuich, which are all coined in a comparable social Gaelic setting in the early modern period, appear to represent motivations relating to a birth, a drowning, the abode of a notorious outlaw, and the temporary hideout of a sheep thief respectively. By emphasising these micro-narratives, it is possible to shed light on the name material from a new perspective and to provide a greater understanding of the process of coining place-names.

This thesis deals with the topic of compounding in Scottish Gaelic, in particular the relationship between marked adjective + noun compounds (e.g. deagh oidhche ‘good night’) and their unmarked noun + adjective alternatives (e.g. oidhche mhath, literally ‘night good’). The first part of the thesis surveys the relevant linguistic literature on compounding, with a specific focus on compounding in Celtic languages, and the research question for the investigation is specified as follows: in which circumstances do Gaelic speakers use the marked adjective + noun constructions in contrast to the umarked alternatives? The investigation itself consists of two experimental studies. The first of these is a corpus study using a 2.5 million word, mainly 20th century subcorpus of Corpas na Gàidhlig, a 19 million word corpus of Scottish Gaelic texts covering a range of genres, dialects and historical periods. In the course of this study, all phrases in which these adjectives occurred were collected and analysed. To annotate data the freeware AntConc concordance package was used, followed by a statistic analysis of the annotated phrases. A range of hypotheses were developed as a result of the corpus study, for example: (a) the role of conceptuality, subjectivity and emphasis in the use of preposed adjectives as opposed to their plain counterpart; (b) the religious register of ma(i)th good; and (c) the role of contrast in the use of attributive plain adjective aosta compared with the highly productive use of the preposed adjective seann- to convey the meaning ʻold’. The second experimental study involved interviews with native speakers, with the aim of providing further evidence relating to these hypotheses. 10 interviews were conducted with native speakers of Gaelic, mainly applying pictures and translations of the relevant adjectival phrases, investigating the meaning, stress pattern and hyphenation of these, as well as the default adjectives in loan words or with tangible nouns (e.g. vehicles, animals), etc. This combined methodology revealed various factors that influence the choice between marked adjective + noun and unmarked noun + adjective constructions, including: (a) dialect (with the overall use of preceding adjectives in South Uist, but the preference for math ʻgood’ in Lewis); (b) register (ma(i)th in religious texts); (c) conceptualisation in the vocabulary (by the preceding adjectives deagh- ʻgood’ and droch- ʻbad’ qualifying abstract concepts, whereas the plain adjectives math ʻgood’ and dona ʻbad’ tangible and countable nouns); (d) pragmatic factors such as the emphatic nature of deagh- as opposed to math; and (e) grammatical factors (see the use of deagh-/droch- in subjunctive clauses, particularly in time expressions).

Tha an tràchdas seo na eachdraidh chultarach air Ìle, eilean ann an ceann an iar-dheas na Gàidhealtachd, le cuideam air 1890 gu 1960. Tha e ag amas air cultar Gàidhlig nan Ìleach a chur na cho-theacs sòisealta, le bhith a’ beachdachadh air an t-suidheachadh anns an nochdadh cuid de na gnèithean cultarach a bu chudromaiche, agus air na daoine a bha an sàs ann a bhith gan cumail suas. Tha e airson an dàimh eadar cultar agus an comann-sòisealta nas fharsainge a sgrùdadh, le a bhith a’ smaoineachadh air cultar mar dhòigh air coimhead air an t-saoghal, agus mar phàirt bhunaiteach den t-saoghal sin. Tha obair a’ Mharxaich Eadailtich, Antonio Gramsci, a’ toirt buaidh mhòr air an rannsachadh, agus ’s ann air ceistean a thaobh cumhachd, clas agus gnè a thathas gu tric a’ cnuasachadh. ’S e prìomh amas na h-obrach atharrachadh taobh a-staigh a’ chultair a thuigsinn anns an àm-sgrùdaidh shònraichte seo, nuair a b’ urrainnear fhathast bruidhinn air ‘coimhearsnachd Ghàidhlig’ ach far an robh a’ Bheurla a’ sìor fhaighinn làmh an uachdair. ’S ann air trì prìomh chuspairean a tha an rannsachadh: beul-aithris, bàrdachd agus creideamh. Tha caibideil air cruinneachadh beul-aithris Eachainn MhicGillEathain agus Iain Òg Ìle (1859-1862) rud beag ron phrìomh àm-sgrùdaidh, agus tha seo a’ coimhead air obair a’ chruinneachaidh fhèin, àite nan seann sgeulachdan ann an Ìle, agus air na sgeulaichean Ìleach. Thathas an uair sin a’ gluasad gu cruinneachadh beul-aithris Elizabeth Kerr a bha stèidhichte ann am Port Sioba, san Roinn Ìlich, eadar mu 1893 agus 1910, agus a’ sireadh fiosrachadh air cuimse eadar-dhealaichte a’ chruinneachaidh seo agus na tha toraidhean na beul-aithris ag innse mun chomann-shòisealta. Anns a’ chaibideil air bàrdachd san 20mh linn, thathas a’ faighinn a-mach mun cheathrar bhàrd mu dheireadh a bha foillsichte, air na bha aca ann an cumantas agus àite romansachais agus impirileis nan cuid obrach. Às dèidh seo, tha caibideil air òrain anns na clàraidhean-fuaim Ìleach a rinn Sgoil Eòlais na h-Alba eadar 1953 agus 1969. Thathas a’ beachdachadh air na fiosraichean, air na seòrsaichean òran a bha rim faotainn – agus nach robh – agus làthaireachd òrain nam bàrd Ìleach foillisichte. Bithear cuideachd a’ toirt cunntas air buaidh mhòr a’ Chomuinn Ghàidhealaich anns an eilean. Mu dheireadh, anns a’ chaibideil air creideamh tha ceist oirnn mu dè cho eadar-dhealaichte ’s a bha suidheachadh a’ chreideimh ann an Ìle an taca ri ceàrnaidhean Gàidhealach eile, thathas a’ cleachdadh staitistig airson obrachadh a-mach dè cho cudromach ’s a bha gach buidheann-eaglais, a bharrachd air fianais beul-eachdraidh airson smaoineachadh air àite a’ chreideimh ann am beatha dhaoine.

Finn mac Cumaill (Fionn Mac Cumhaill) has always been a popular figure in Gaelic tradition, coming to full prominence during the Early Modern period, as Fenian stories (tales of Finn and his fían, or fianna, known as fianaigecht in Old Irish and fiannaíocht in Modern Irish) become ever more popular in manuscript form. Despite the popularity that both Finn and the Finn Cycle have enjoyed in Gaelic literature, mentions of Finn's death are scant and tales recounting the event are even rarer. In the extant medieval Irish literature, the pinnacle of the corpus, Acallam na Senórach, not only holds the events in relative obscurity but its presentation of the circumstances of Finn's death may even be said to be conflicting. In looking at other tales in the fíanaigecht corpus, while we find a number of references to the fact than Finn dies, only a few depict his demise, namely Aided Finn and Tesmolta Cormaic ocus Aided Finn. To this short list of narratives detailing Finn's death and the events preceding it, we can add the tale designated 'The Chase of Síd na mBan Finn and the Death of Finn' (henceforth 'The Chase') preserved in a single manuscript, London, British Library, MS Egerton 1782. Although the tale breaks off with Finn still alive, albeit weary and bloodied and standing alone encircled by his adversaries, his death is a logical next element in the narrative, not least because there is repeated mention of a prophecy of his demise throughout the tale. This tale, which spans eight manuscript pages, seems to be the longest engagement with the idea of Finn's death in the medieval and Early Modern Irish corpora, yet has been the subject of very little scholarly investigation to date. This regrettable lacuna in scholarship on Fenian literature is the starting point for this thesis, which presents a three-pronged investigation of 'The Chase'. Following a fuller introduction to the topic in Chapter 1, the history of the manuscript is examined afresh in Chapter 2 as new evidence, particularly from the works of the scribe Muiris Ó Gormáin, has shed new light on the manuscript's history and on the tale of 'The Chase'. This is then employed to examine the section of the manuscript in which 'The Chase' is to be found, a section consisting of four tales thought to be from the now lost manuscript, Cín Dromma Snechtai, and four fíanaigecht tales. It is investigated if the unit may be considered a deliberate anthology and whether thematic and/or other concerns motivated the unit's compilation. Next, the study turns to the tale of 'The Chase' itself, examining its place within a continuum of traditions found in Old, Middle and Early Modern Irish treatments of Finn's death. Based on my own linguistic work on 'The Chase', a semi-diplomatic edition of which is included as an appendix to this thesis, it is demonstrated in Chapter 3 that the author of 'The Chase' seems to have been aware of several accounts of Finn's death, either those which are now extant or sources akin to them, and sought to bring together many of the elements present in other accounts of Finn's death in a single tale, perhaps in what was intended to be a comprehensive death tale for Finn. The various elements of the tale which resonate with the event of or events leading up to Finn's death, however, have not merely been cobbled together. Rather it is illustrated that the composition skilfully treats of the themes of death, prophecy and youth versus age, making regular allusion to the audience's presumed knowledge of other tales of the Fenian corpus, while adhering to the norms of earlier written fíanaigecht literature, a trait not always found in Early Modern tales of the Finn Cycle. The last study which forms part of this thesis, Chapter 4, arose from the recognition that although 'The Chase' appears to be the longest extant engagement with Finn's death, there exists no study that details what material on Finn's death has circulated in the modern period. This section provides a comprehensive overview of modern engagements with Finn's death in post-1650 manuscripts and folklore collections. All the modern accounts that I have found to date in which Finn's death is recounted or in which it is presumed that Finn is dead, which are usually mentions of Finn's grave, are therefore identified, presented, and where applicable, translated. While it becomes clear that no other engagement with Finn's demise across the eleven centuries during which his death excited the Gaelic imagination is as long or as complex as 'The Chase', common or notable motifs in the modern accounts are identified, and similarities between the different treatments of Finn's death in the modern narratives are discussed. It is shown that a small number of the motifs and events treated in the medieval accounts of Finn’s death and in 'The Chase' are also treated in the modern tales of his demise, thus indicating some thematic continuity between medieval and modern approaches to relating how Finn died. With this in mind, some further relationships between the modern accounts of Finn's death and other medieval and modern Fenian literature are explored.

abstract: Culture played an intrinsic role in the conquest of Ireland in the sixteenth century, and the English colonial project, so often described in political and military terms, must be reexamined in this context. By examining sixteenth century spatial and literary representations of Ireland and Irish culture it becomes evident that the process described by Timothy Mitchell, called enframement, was being imposed upon the Irish. Enframement is the convergence of two aspects of power, the metaphysical and the microphysical. Metaphysical power worked through maps and literature to bring order in the conceptual realm, allowing the English to imagine Ireland as they wished it to be. Microphysical power created order in the material world, by physically changing the appearance of the landscape and people to conform to England's laws and norms. The English justified their policy of colonization by representing Ireland and Gaelic culture as wild or barbarous, and hoped to achieve their colonial ambition by physically coercing the Irish into adopting the "superior" English culture. When the Irish continued to rebel against English rule, the colonizers began employing methods of extreme violence to subdue the Gaelic people. At the same time, they began to practice more extreme forms of cultural colonization by attacking those aspects of Gaelic culture which most resisted conformity to English standards of civility. The Gaelic legal system, called Brehon law, redistributive inheritance, cattle herding and traditional forms of Irish dress were denigrated to assert English authority over the Irish people. English fear of the negative effects of Gaelic culture were exemplified by the Anglo-Irish lords, who were originally of English descent, but had "degenerated" into Irish barbarians through the use of Gaelic culture. This retrograde process could also occurred when an English person practiced marriage, childbirth, wet-nursing or fosterage with Irish persons. These interactions, and the consequences which came from them, were often described in terms of infection and disease. Thus culture, operating on multiple levels, and how that culture was represented, became a powerful site for colonial power to operate. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis History 2015

This thesis focuses on the historical development of dialectal variation in the Gaelic languages with special reference to Irish. As a point of departure, competing scholarly theories concerning the historical relationships between Goidelic dialects are laid out. Next, these theories are tested using dialectometric methods of linguistic analysis. Dialectometry clearly suggests the Irish of Ulster is the most linguistically distinctive of Irish dialects. This perspective on the modern dialects is utilised in subsequent chapters to clarify our understanding of the history of Gaelic dialectal variation, especially during the Old Irish period (AD 600–900). Theoretical and methodological frameworks that have been used in the study of the historical dialectology of Gaelic are next outlined. It is argued that these frameworks may not be the most appropriate for investigating dialectal variation during the Old Irish period. For the first time, principles from historical sociolinguistics are here applied in investigating the language of the Old Irish period. In particular, the social and institutional structures which supported the stability of Old Irish as a text language during the 8th and 9th centuries are scrutinised from this perspective. The role of the ecclesiastical and political centre of Armagh as the principal and central actor in the relevant network structures is highlighted. Focus then shifts to the processes through which ‘standard’ languages emerge, with special reference to Old Irish. The evidence of a small number of texts upon which modern understandings of Old Irish was based is assessed; it is argued that these texts most likely emerged from monasteries in the northeast of Ireland and the southwest of Scotland. Secondly, the processes through which the standard of the Old Irish period is likely to have come about are investigated. It is concluded that the standard language of the period arose primarily through the agency of monastic schools in the northeast of Ireland, particularly Armagh and Bangor. It is argued that this fact, and the subsequent prominence of Armagh as a stable and supremely prestigious centre of learning throughout the period, offers a sociolinguistically robust explanation for the apparent lack of dialectal variation in the language. Finally, the socio-political situation of the Old Irish period is discussed. Models of new-dialect formation are applied to historical evidence, and combined with later linguistic evidence, in an attempt to enunciate dialectal divisions which may have existed during the period.

The present research utilised five tasks to investigate non-musicians' perception of phrase, rhythm, pitch and beat structure in unaccompanied Gaelic melodies and musical sequences. Perception of phrase structure was examined using: i) a segmentation task in which listeners segmented Gaelic melodies into a series of meaningful units and ii) a novel click localisation task whereby listeners indicated where they perceived a superimposed click in the melody had occurred. Listeners consistently segmented the melodies into units of 2.4 - 5.4 seconds. Clicks which were positioned before and after perceived boundaries (identified by segmentation) were perceptually migrated towards the boundary. These results suggest that listeners perceptually differentiate between phrasal groups in melodies (See Sloboda & Gregory, 1980; Stoffer, 1985, for similar results with musicians). Short term memory for rhythmic structure was examined using rhythm recall of computer generated sequences and Gaelic melodies. Computer generated rhythms with small tonal pitch intervals (1 - 4 semitones) were easier to recall than large atonal intervals (predominantly greater than 4 semitones). Recall of Gaelic melodies, containing repetitive rhythmic units, was better than recall of computer sequences. Pitch reversal of Gaelic melodies did not effect recall. Beat-tapping with three Gaelic melodies revealed that the majority of listeners established the underlying beat 1.5 - 3 seconds (5 - 6 notes) after the start of the melodies. Perception of meaning and content in two note melodic intervals and three Gaelic melodies was examined using an adjective pair two-alternative forced choice task. Responses to musical intervals showed evidence of perceptual similarity based mainly on interval size. Perceived information content in the melodies increased significantly by the fourth note. The results suggest that the amounts of Gaelic melody which are: i) required to establish an underlying beat, ii) remembered after one hearing, and iii) perceptually grouped into a meaningful unit, include the unit of melody which is necessary to establish a basic meaning.

abstract: Languages have long been studied through the rhythm class framework, which discriminates them into separate classes on the basis of shared rhythmic properties. Originally these differences were attributed to the isochronous timing of different prosodic units, such as stress intervals in “stress-timed” languages and syllables in “syllable-timed” languages. More recent work has turned to durational metrics as a means of evaluating rhythm class, by measuring the variability and proportion of segmental intervals in the speech stream. Both isochrony and durational metrics are no longer viewed as correlative with natural language rhythm, but durational metrics in particular have remained prevalent in the literature. So long as the conclusions of durational metrics are not overextended, their analysis can provide a useful mechanism for assessing the compatibility of a language with a given rhythm class by way of comparative analysis. This study therefore presents a durational-metric comparison of Scottish Gaelic, a language which has frequently been described as stress-timed but has never been empirically tested for rhythm class, with English, a prototypical and well-studied example of a stress-timed language. The Gaelic metric scores for %V (percentage of vocalic content), ΔV (standard deviation in vocalic interval length), and ΔC (standard deviation in consonantal interval length) (Ramus et al. 1999) are shown to be very similar to those measured for English, indicating that the language displays similar patterns of durational variability and segmental proportion typically ascribed to a rhythmically stress-timed language. This provides clear support for the classification of Scottish Gaelic as stress-timed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Linguistics and Applied Linguistics 2020