On Barbarous Denominations in Ireland

Summary

Headnote

Probably composed after 1727; posthumously published; copy text 1765b (see Textual Account).

This posthumously published piece, printed by Davis as an appendix, shares its textual transmission with ‘Hints on Good Manners’, ‘Of the Education of Ladies’ and ‘A Discourse to Prove the Antiquity of the English Tongue’. Internal evidence for Swift's authorship includes a marked antagonism towards Whigs and Dissenters; reminiscences of time spent in London and at court; and references to ‘the misfortune of being born in Ireland, although of English parents’, to Swift's uncle's Swandlingbar investment scheme, and to the preferments, both secular and spiritual, enjoyed by Whigs under Hanoverian rule. The piece is framed as a letter, but finishes somewhat abruptly without any closing formalities, and may not be complete. As it assumes an Irish audience and postdates the passage of theWestminster Declaratory Act in 1720, a date after Swift's final return to Ireland in 1727 seems likely. The Act, strongly opposed by Archbishop King, ‘negated any pretension of the Irish propertied elite to control its own destiny’, and by it ‘British ministers could have procured a statute at Westminster to overrule any decision made by the Irish Parliament’.

‘On Barbarous Denominations’ has been widely discussed as indicative of Swift's political, cultural and linguistic views. Swift's possible knowledge of the Irish language has also been much discussed: Harrison, focusing on Swift's friend, Anthony Raymond (1675–1726), Irish language scholar and vicar of Trim, argues for his role in enabling Swift to compose ‘The Description of an Irish Feast’, a translation of the Irish poem ‘Pléaráca na Ruarcach’, known in English as ‘O’Rourke's Feast’. Harrison concludes that ‘if anyone was in a position to provide a channel between the Dean of St. Patrick's and Gaelic tradition it was likely to be Raymond’; but he adds, ‘Personally I am not convinced that he did so to any extent except in the case of “O’Rourke's Feast” for which we have both circumstantial and documentary evidence.’ Francus, noting the role of Trinity College Dublin in teaching Irish to Protestants, concludes: ‘It is unclear how much Irish Swift knew or where he learned it’; Carpenter and Harrison suggest that Swift ‘certainly knew “kitchen Irish”, that is, enough to order himself food and lodging in a predominantly Irish-speaking country’.