Irish language in Montserrat

found here

One thing leads to another and I’m reading about how there were black people on the Caribbean island of Montserrat who were said to speak Irish Gaelic:

Irish language in Montserrat

The Irish constituted the largest proportion of the white population from the founding of the colony in 1628. Many were indentured labourers; others were merchants or plantation owners. The geographer Thomas Jeffrey claimed in The West India Atlas (1780) that the majority of those on Montserrat were either Irish or of Irish descent, “so that the use of the Irish language is preserved on the island, even among the Negroes”.

African slaves and Irish colonists of all classes were in constant contact, with sexual relationships being common and a population of mixed descent appearing as a consequence.  The Irish were also prominent in Caribbean commerce, with their merchants importing Irish goods such as beef, pork, butter and herring, and also importing slaves.

There is indirect evidence that the use of the Irish language continued in Montserrat until at least the middle of the nineteenth century. The Kilkenny diarist and Irish scholar Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin noted in 1831 that he had heard that Irish was still spoken in Montserrat by both black and white inhabitants. A letter by W.F. Butler in The Atheneum (15 July 1905) quotes an account by a Cork civil servant, C. Cremen, of what he had heard from a retired sailor called John O’Donovan, a fluent Irish speaker:

He frequently told me that in the year 1852, when mate of the brig Kaloolah, he went ashore on the island of Montserrat which was then out of the usual track of shipping. He said he was much surprised to hear the negroes actually talking Irish among themselves, and that he joined in the conversation…

There is no evidence for the survival of the Irish language in Montserrat into the twentieth century.

The wiki page for Amhlaoibh has several interesting quotes:

“February 3, 1828 …There is a lonely path near Uisce Dun and Móinteán na Cisi which is called the MassBoreen. The name comes from the time when the Catholic Church was persecuted in Ireland, and Mass had to be said in woods and on moors, on wattled places in bogs, and in caves. But as the proverb says, It is better to look forward with one eye than to look backwards with two…“

Amhlaoibh lived out in Callan, in Kilkenny:

Photo taken from “The Bridge”, Bridge St, Callan Co Kilkenny 2004 by Barry Somers

Nearby was born James Hoban, who designed The White House:

Elevation of the north side of the White House, by James Hoban, c. 1793. Progress drawing after having won the competition for architect of the White House. Collection of the Maryland Historical Society.

On a trip to DC once I brought along this book, which I recommend to any DC visitor:

Applewhite might’ve been the first to put in my head the idea that the The White House is modeled on Irish country mansions:

source

The entire southern half of Montserrat got pretty messed up by volcanic eruptions and was abandoned in 1997:

The former capital, Plymouth

And is now an “exclusion zone”:

Montserrat’s national dish is Goat water, a thick goat meat stew served with crusty bread rolls.

found on the goat water facebook page

for more interesting oddities of Western Hemisphere geography and history, I recommend:

Available at Amazon or your local indie bookstore.