I

The turn of the twentieth century saw a renewed interest in Irish language, literature, history and culture as part of what is now commonly termed the Irish or Gaelic revival. A central tenet of the philosophy of this era was that language defined nationality, and many organisations were established from the middle of the nineteenth century with the aim of reviving, promoting and re-establishing Irish culture and language.Footnote ⁵ In 1893, Conradh na Gaeilge (or the Gaelic League) was formed, and the revival began in earnest.Footnote ⁶ The Gaelic League identified national school children as vital to the dissemination of the Irish language throughout the country, yet given the omission of the language from the national school system of education since its establishment in 1831, the task which faced it was daunting.Footnote ⁷

The League’s first major success in its fight for Irish in the national school system came in 1904, when it succeeded in its campaign for a bilingual programme of instruction to be introduced in schools in both Irish-speaking and bilingual districts — if the teacher was willing and able to teach through Irish.Footnote ⁸ Certain challenges presented themselves, however, particularly since many teachers were neither fluent nor trained in appropriate methodology to teach Irish. Since the state teacher-training colleges at this time largely ignored the language, an alternative was needed to implement the bilingual programme.Footnote ⁹ Accordingly, members of the Gaelic League founded the first summer college for the training of teachers of Irish in 1904, in the Irish-speaking area of Ballingeary, County Cork.

The majority, though not all, of the Irish colleges of this period were established in Gaeltacht or ‘Irish-speaking areas’, as they were termed until the early twentieth century (though winter Irish colleges were also established in Dublin and Belfast).Footnote ¹⁰ The Irish revival had sparked a keen public interest in Gaeltacht districts, which were idealised as the last bastions of the true culture, language and morals of the Gael.Footnote ¹¹ Beliefs regarding the link between concepts of national identity and language during this period meant that nationalists of all persuasions recognised the value of Gaeltacht areas and promoted the acquisition of the language as being essential to their Irish identity.Footnote ¹² The Gaelic League’s paper, An Claidheamh Soluis, reported that the first Irish college had been deliberately established in an Irish-speaking area ‘as it is from the Irish-speaking districts the flame of “Irishisation” must spread which shall cover the whole land’.Footnote ¹³

According to Patrick Pearse, the Irish colleges of this period were ‘engines of progress’ that were doing real work for the revival of the language amongst Irish people as ‘without the language there can be no Irish nationality, and without the inspiring hope of nationhood there can be no distinctive future in store for us’.Footnote ¹⁴ That Irish colleges were indeed ‘forcing houses for separatist beliefs’ is evident from the beginning. They espoused cultural nationalist rhetoric, proclaiming the unique culture of Ireland through music classes, ‘native’ entertainments, such as dancing, singing and storytelling, and, crucially, via Irish history, as detailed by McMahon, all through the Irish language.Footnote ¹⁵ Although at this point advanced nationalism was not as widespread within the language movement as it would become in the wake of the third Home Rule Crisis, the establishment of the Volunteers in 1913, and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, cultural nationalist activities at Irish colleges are worth pointing out when tracing growing advanced nationalism in these institutions.Footnote ¹⁶ Certain noted cultural nationalists such as Pearse, who taught at or attended Irish colleges in the early years and later became more radical, continued to engage with the colleges in the years preceding and following the 1916 Rising, and ‘carried their political expectations and desires with them’, as McMahon has noted regarding the League in general.Footnote ¹⁷ Time spent at Irish colleges also transcended classroom learning, as students were provided with an opportunity to experience and live life as Gaeilge while eating, socialising, working and learning. This focus on the language as the key to national identity and expression is evident from the early years of the colleges. Writing in 1908, one student of Coláiste Chonnacht in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, recalled the nationalist spirit of the courses there:

This national duty of the teachers pertained to the ‘freeing [of] our schools from the chains of a foreign system’, and many contemporary references were made in An Claidheamh Soluis to the teachers as militaristic figures, engaged in war with the foreign ‘enemy’ of British administration.Footnote ¹⁹ Pearse in particular wrote often on this topic, culminating in his famous pamphlet The murder machine of January 1916, in which he stated that ‘It is because the English education system in Ireland has deliberately eliminated the national factor that it has so terrifically succeeded. For it has succeeded — succeeded in making slaves of us … that we no longer realise that we are slaves. Some of us even think our chains ornamental.’Footnote ²⁰ The Irish colleges, then, represented an opportunity for the cultivation of an institution that was the very antithesis of this ‘murder machine’ — an institution of cultural transformation. Teachers could be trained in the national language at independent Irish colleges, where ‘the spirit of nationality is uppermost’, where ‘there is a pride in being able to dispense with English’ and that provided a taste of what an independent, thoroughly ‘Gaelic’ education could look like.Footnote ²¹ The Irish atmosphere fostered in Irish colleges of this period also transcended social class, as those from all echelons of society came together to holiday in these institutions. Some revivalists regarded the social class system itself in Ireland during this period as ‘foreign,’ as British in nature, and far removed from the societal structure of ancient Ireland. Revivalists were not of one mind on this topic, however, and others like D. P. Moran believed in utilising class structures for revivalist work.Footnote ²² The Irish colleges, then, represented a unique glimpse into an imagined Gaelic Ireland that some hoped would be available to all once independence had been achieved, and it is perhaps unsurprising then that such institutions proffered more overt support to advanced nationalist organisations throughout the revolutionary period.

II

The establishment of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 constituted a sea change in Irish political affairs. The organisation was established as a result of Eoin Mac Neill’s publication of ‘The north began’ in An Claidheamh Soluis, on 1 November 1913.Footnote ²³ It represented a nationalist response to the formation of the unionist Ulster Volunteer Force in January that same year, which had ‘given the lead in an attempt to politicise and revolutionise the masses’.Footnote ²⁴ Members of the Gaelic League were early recruits to the Irish Volunteers, although they did not initially understand the potential threat to the language cause that the organisation posed, according to Proinsias Mac Aonghusa.Footnote ²⁵ Volunteer activities were not in the habit of utilising Irish and members would very seldom use the language with one another, even with those already fluent, a trend identified by Piaras Béaslaí in 1915 who had ‘noticed with regret that the immersion in Volunteer work has tended to diminish the habit of speaking Irish amongst Gaels in Dublin’.Footnote ²⁶ Political and military affairs could, therefore, pose a potential threat to the language cause, and much anxiety existed regarding the potential negative effect of Volunteer activities on the language in Gaeltacht areas. The Irish colleges were identified early on, therefore, as places that could support the expansion of the language amongst the Volunteers.

Cumann na mBan was established shortly after the Volunteers in April 1914 with Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh as chair, and in May 1914 Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a strongly culturally nationalistic women’s organisation, was incorporated into the organisation.Footnote ²⁷ As Ríona Nic Congáil has noted, there were many similarities between the trajectory of Ní Fhaircheallaigh and Eoin Mac Neill, leader of the Volunteers.Footnote ²⁸ Both were ardent Gaelic Leaguers who were also Ard-Ollúna (principle professors) of Irish colleges: Ní Fhaircheallaigh of Coláiste Uladh in Cloughaneely, County Donegal and Mac Neill of Coláiste Bhríde, Omeath, County Louth. It may be that the involvement of Irish colleges in the activities of both organisations was inevitable, although Ní Fhaircheallaigh was frequently criticised for the conservatism she displayed in the early days of Cumann na mBan, especially in relation to militarism.Footnote ²⁹ While no official provision was made for the Irish language in Cumann na mBan until 1917, many prominent members were enthusiastic Leaguers also involved with the Irish colleges, especially those branches of Cumann na mBan that were in Irish college vicinities such as Ring, County Waterford, as will be discussed later.Footnote ³⁰

The significant role the colleges could play in the encouragement of the use of the language amongst militarised organisations was highlighted early on. In 1914, An Claidheamh Soluis reported that:

Many Gaelic Leaguers were supportive of the scheme, with figures such as Michael Smithwick advocating for the establishment of Volunteer classes at Irish colleges, as ‘[it] would be a crying shame for Irishmen if the Volunteers administered from the capital of Ireland were, as regards the national language, but little better than the English army administered from Whitehall, London’.Footnote ³² Smithwick noted that that both the Gaelic League and the Volunteer movement ‘are included in one broad ideal. Both movements have sprung from the same source.’Footnote ³³ Smithwick was himself involved with both organisations — he was a mathematics teacher at Blackrock College and then St Enda’s, who Pearse later described as ‘embody[ing] the Gaelic League at its best’.Footnote ³⁴ He had also spent time at Coláiste Uladh, Coláiste na Rinne and Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe in the early to mid 1910s.Footnote ³⁵ It seems likely Smithwick also attended Coláiste Laighean in Dublin as he encouraged his student at Blackrock College, Éamon de Valera, to begin learning Irish there — a prime example of the influential role of teachers in the revivalist and revolutionary movements highlighted throughout this article.Footnote ³⁶

The autonomy of the Irish colleges is worth highlighting when considering their link to militaristic activities, especially in the context of the abovementioned League request for Irish colleges to establish courses for Volunteers. The League only ‘expressed the hope’ that Volunteer classes would be established and had no absolute power over individual colleges. While some colleges were directly established under the auspices of the League, such as the Ard-Sgoil Ultach in Belfast (est. 1911), colleges tended to be completely independent from one another and were not answerable to the wider League organisation. It is significant, then, that classes or courses for Volunteers were not established automatically throughout the Irish colleges, but rather sporadically, to a large extent influenced by the involvement of key revolutionary figures.

III

In July 1914, An Claidheamh Soluis reported that ‘Oglaigh (Volunteers) are being drilled in Irish at Carraig a Chabhaltaigh (Carrigaholt), Colaiste na Rinne and at Colaiste an Daingin (Dingle)’.Footnote ³⁷ By August, the paper was proclaiming that the Irish colleges were playing a significant role in the furthering of the nationalist cause, and that ‘students at the colleges will discuss more than grammar and idiom’ as ‘events in Ireland during the past year have proved that hosts of men are ready to die for the realization of the Ireland of which we have talked and sung and told stories during the past twenty years.’Footnote ³⁸ The colleges were credited with bringing together ‘isolated workers in the Gaelic League … in many hundreds’ and ‘form[ing] a new faith in Ireland than ever before inspired them’.Footnote ³⁹ In September, Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe in Carrigaholt, County Clare reported that a group of young men marched every evening and practised with a ‘gunna beag’ given to them by Father de Bhál, a professor in the college.Footnote ⁴⁰ De Bhál was also a senior figure in the Volunteer movement in County Limerick, where he had established a branch at Dromcolliher, said to be the second branch established outside of Dublin.Footnote ⁴¹ According to the same report in An Claidheamh Soluis, ‘cuireann na daoine go léir ana shuim san obair seo [máirseáil le gunnaí] mar is geal le croidhe Gaedhil i gcómhnaidhe gunna a bheith na láimh aige’.Footnote ⁴² Irish college reports detailing militaristic subject matter such as this tended to appear in Irish only, which suggests an effort to hide them from cursory notice by English-reading authorities — a common use of the language during the revolutionary period.

From its inception, Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe had been associated with those who would become high profile nationalists later on, such as Mary Spring-Rice, a cousin of Nellie Ní Bhriain, founder of the college. Spring-Rice was among the subscribers of the ‘O’Curry College Fund’ for the foundation of the college in 1912 and would also become a member of its management committee.Footnote ⁴³ Spring-Rice went on to join the Anglo-Irish committee in 1914 tasked with assisting the Irish Volunteers, alongside Alice Stopford Green, Erskine Childers, Sir Roger Casement and Conor and Hugh O’Brien.Footnote ⁴⁴ That committee organised the Howth gun running, in which she also took active part.Footnote ⁴⁵ Casement and Stopford Green had long been involved with the Irish college movement themselves. Casement gave money for the establishment of the first Irish college, Coláiste na Mumhan, in 1904, was a patron of the Irish summer school established on Tawin Island in 1909 and a great supporter of Coláiste Uladh in Cloughaneely, County Donegal (est. 1906).Footnote ⁴⁶ While McMahon credits Eoin Mac Neill with attracting ‘the well-known nationalist historian Alice Stopford Green’ to Coláiste Bhríde, Omeath, County Louth (est. 1912) where Mac Neill was principal, she had been lecturing in the Irish colleges as far back as 1905, when she gave a lecture on Irish civilisation in the fifteenth century at Coláiste Chonnacht, Tourmakeady, County Mayo.Footnote ⁴⁷ Stopford Green continued to support the colleges over the years, giving frequent guest lectures in history and even donating copies of her book The making of Ireland and its undoing to raise money for Coláiste na Rinne in 1909.Footnote ⁴⁸

Other cultural and later advanced nationalists were among visitors to Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe in the early days such as Ella Young, later a founding member of Cumann na mBan.Footnote ⁴⁹ Young is depicted amongst the figures in the fresco that lines the inner walls of the college, painted by the artist Cesca Trench.Footnote ⁵⁰ Another member of Cumann na mBan, Trench also frequented the colleges during this period, where she mixed with fellow Gaelic Leaguers and advocates of more advanced nationalism, such as Pearse.Footnote ⁵¹ This mixing of nationalists of all persuasions is emblematic of the League in general, yet it is important to point out that the colleges deliberately functioned away from wider society, thereby creating unique, more self-sufficient social environments. Whether one tended to became engaged in more intense conversations surrounding separatist ideology at Irish colleges during this period can only be speculation; yet the influence of an open atmosphere fostered by a tight-knit group of students and staff committed to the Irish language studying, eating and socialising together for the weeks or months of summer college courses cannot be ignored. Foster notes that Rosamond Jacob, feminist and republican, regarded her time in Coláiste na Rinne, Ring, County Waterford, during this period as a revelation, as

It was easy then, to make use of the Irish college structure during this period to spread advanced nationalist rhetoric, and certainly professors and students would have influenced each other during this period, like Jacob and Wyse Power.

Tellingly, the Wyse Power family were involved with Coláiste na Rinne from its very beginning. Nancy Wyse Power (daughter of Jennie) recalled that they ‘were almost the first “foreign” visitors’ to Ring when they began holidaying in the area around 1903.Footnote ⁵³ The family lent much practical support to the running of the college by investing in shares of the institute, and Jennie was also a member of the management board.Footnote ⁵⁴ Jennie’s political activism was well known at this stage (she was active from 1881 with organisations such as the Ladies Land League, Inghinidhe na hÉireann, the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association and Cumann na mBan), and her restaurant in Henry Street, Dublin — ‘The Irish Farm and Produce Company’, opened in 1899 — had ‘became a popular meeting place for many of the cultural and political organisations with which she was involved’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Jennie’s involvement with Coláiste na Rinne, then, can be regarded as an important link between Dublin activists and the Ring region, a link shared by other revolutionaries such as the Brugha family mentioned below. The Ring branch of Cumann na mBan also held various meetings in the Irish college, further evidence of college sympathy with their work — perhaps no surprise when one considers that a number of teachers, students and indeed management, such as Jennie herself, were prominent members of Cumann na mBan both locally and nationally.Footnote ⁵⁶

Although Nioclás Ó Griobhtháin has stated that very little information survives regarding the Ring branch of Cumann na mBan, it is still perhaps the most well-known Irish college-adjacent branch of the organisation. One of the founding members of the Ring Cumann na mBan branch, Máire Inghean Ní Riain, was also a student of Coláiste na Rinne, and it is highly likely that the other founding member, Brighid Ní Dhomhnaill, was also involved with the college, as she took ready part in any activity that promoted Ring, according to Ó Gríobhtháin.Footnote ⁵⁷ Another prominent member of the Ring Cumann na mBan was Cáit Ní Fhlannchadha, a teacher in Coláiste na Rinne well known locally as the first woman in the area to own a car.Footnote ⁵⁸ Other significant members of Cumann na mBan in Ring included Cáit or Caitlín Ní Chinnseamáin (Kingston) and Áine Ní Fhoghludha, daughter of Mícheál Ó Foghludha, local schoolteacher.Footnote ⁵⁹ Ní Chinnseamáin was the wife of Cathal Brugha, staunch republican, chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers (between October 1917 and April 1919) and another advocate of the Irish college movement.Footnote ⁶⁰ The family were frequent visitors to the Ring Gaeltacht.Footnote ⁶¹ Indeed in 1921, the Volunteers (now re-organised as the Irish Republican Army) spread a rumour to British soldiers that Brugha was hiding out in Coláiste na Rinne which was immediately believed — further evidence of the significance of revolutionary figures’ ties with particular Irish colleges.Footnote ⁶²

Ní Chinnseamáin was not the only member of the Ring Cumann na mBan whose partner was a military figure. Áine Ní Fhoghludha would go on to marry Séamus Ó Neill, I.R.B. leader in Cashel, who started coming on holidays to Ring in 1913.Footnote ⁶³ The unique Irish college atmosphere, where both men and women mixed freely inside of and outside of the classroom, away from wider society, is worth noting here again in the context of relationships between members of the revolutionary generation. Foster has written that one of the major attractions of Irish college-attendance was ‘the opportunity it provided for romantic and sexual contact’, a statement borne out in McMahon’s work and evident in contemporary writings. For example, an early report of Coláiste na Mumhan in the Irish Peasant in 1906 describes college attendees of both sexes taking a midnight moonlit jaunt together and also hints at certain couples spending time privately and girls expressing risqué opinions of one of the male lecturers.Footnote ⁶⁴ Indeed, the barrister and republican Arthur E. Clery recognised this unique atmosphere in 1917, although his writing is tempered by a clear ambition to state the respectability of such institutions regardless of the mixing of sexes: ‘The life at any Irish college is entirely delightful. There is a freedom, and yet a purity in it that is not known elsewhere … Both sexes, for instance, associate with a freedom that would be impossible under different circumstances.’Footnote ⁶⁵ Examples of such relationships kindled or developed at Irish colleges include Éamon de Valera and Sinéad Ní Fhlannagáin, Seán O’Faoláin and Eileen Gould, George Clancy and Máire Ní Chillín, Claude Chevasse and Máirín Ní Shionnaigh, Elizabeth Rachel Leech and Ernest McClintock Dix, and Cesca Trench and Diarmuid Coffey. Foster has also written of a sexual affair between Piaras Béaslaí and the sister of the local priest in Ballingeary while the former was attending Coláiste na Mumhan.Footnote ⁶⁶ While it goes beyond the scope of this article to further trace sexual and marital relationships fostered at Irish colleges during the early twentieth century, it provides the basis for an important future study of the revolutionary generation.

The interplay between local corps of militant organisations, high-level revolutionaries and Irish colleges is also evident in the context of Coláiste na Mumhan in Ballingeary, County Cork. I.R.B. member Piaras Béaslaí, who had been lecturing in the college since 1910, took charge of the drilling of the local Ballingeary Volunteer Corps established between July and August 1914.Footnote ⁶⁷ In fact, Béaslaí had taken an even more overt role at Ballingeary and had ‘established a language class for Volunteers’, alongside Terence MacSwiney who ‘always did his [Volunteer] business (drill, instruction, organisation) in Gaelic wherever possible’.Footnote ⁶⁸ An article in the Anglo-Celt reported retrospectively in 1920 that the class ‘had one hundred and more students and no English was spoken. It demonstrated how easily Irish lent itself to precise demands such as drill orders.’Footnote ⁶⁹ In August 1914, the Cork Examiner reported that the students of Coláiste na Mumhan had also formed ‘a corps of their own’ and that ‘even the lady students are practising drill’.Footnote ⁷⁰ While the committee of the college had not established the corps directly, its sympathy with the movement was clear as it had declared in July that year that it ‘would have no objection to the students’ establishing a Volunteer corp.Footnote ⁷¹ Indeed, the opening of the August session of the college that year was preceded by a public march of the Volunteers.Footnote ⁷²

Coláiste an Spidéil, County Galway (est. 1910) seems to have been one of the most overt supporters of militaristic organisations formed from 1913. The college advertised in 1914 that they had established a Volunteer corps and would hold classes on ‘ambulance work’ and ‘a Nursing Corps for the lady students’ through Irish during the August session.Footnote ⁷³ Accounts of Cumann na mBan’s early activity highlight the significance of such training to the organisation’s support of the Volunteers, with Máire Nic Shiúbhlaigh remembering ‘frequent classes in first aid, stretcher bearing and occasionally, field signalling’.Footnote ⁷⁴ While there is a paucity of accounts detailing more radically nationalistic work of Cumann na mBan in the Irish Colleges, it is extremely significant that these colleges were promoting the involvement of women in nationalist organisation. The provision of such classes as those provided at Coláiste an Spidéil also assumes the amenability of women attending the college to militaristic activities, just as the establishment of classes for Volunteers highlights the attractiveness of displays of advanced nationalism to a highly culturally nationalistic student body. Associations between the language and military aspirations are also evident in Belfast, where the very first meeting of the Belfast Cumann na mBan was held in the Ard-Sgoil Ultach Irish college.Footnote ⁷⁵ Elizabeth Corr recalled that both she and her sister Nell had ‘joined Cumann na mBan and also became pupils at the Irish College (An Ard-Sgoil Ultach)’ in 1915 as they were ‘so disgusted with the pro-British feeling in Belfast that we felt we must do something about it’.Footnote ⁷⁶ As was typical of the time, the Irish language was regarded as fundamental to the idea of Irish nationhood. Language activities often went hand-in-hand with more overtly nationalist movements, and, although it has not been previously fully recognised, it is clear that Irish colleges played a vital role as institutions lying at the intersection of advanced nationalism and the Irish-language revival during the period prior to partition in 1921.

Mícheál Ó Droighneáin, a professor in Coláiste an Spidéil, is a prime example of a revolutionary who acted at this intersection. Ó Droighneáin was a Volunteer and I.R.B. member who, alongside other teachers from the college, established Irish-speaking Volunteer companies amongst local communities in Spiddal and Rosmuc, County Galway.Footnote ⁷⁷ Mícheál Ó Droighneáin’s Bureau of Military History witness statement describes Pearse’s visits to the college in the summer of 1914 and 1915.Footnote ⁷⁸ A frequent visitor to the area to his holiday cottage at nearby Rosmuc, Pearse had previous interactions with the college, but by the time of these visits, he had been sworn into the I.R.B. and was deep into the radicalisation absent from his earlier engagement with Irish colleges in the early 1900s.Footnote ⁷⁹ Ó Droighneáin recalled that it was Pearse who put the Spiddal Volunteer Company through their ‘first piece of footdrill on the grounds of the Irish College’ during his 1914 visit — a striking indicator of Irish college officials’ tolerance of displays of advanced nationalism, encouraged by long-standing relationships with old friends such as Pearse.Footnote ⁸⁰ The following year, both Éamonn Ceannt (who had been heavily involved with the Leinster College of Irish in Dublin) and Pearse paid additional visits to Ó Droighneáin and the Spiddal college.Footnote ⁸¹ Ceannt taught the local I.R.B. circle the working of a revolver and spoke to them about the planned rising.Footnote ⁸² Ó Droighneáin recalled in his witness statement that Ceannt later sent him a letter in code as Gaeilge with details about the rising, a clear example of the use of Irish to disguise militaristic activities discussed later in this article.Footnote ⁸³ According to Ó Droighneáin, he spent two hours in Pearse’s company on the occasion of his visit in August, ‘walking up and down between the College and the entrance gate, talking about the coming Rising’.Footnote ⁸⁴

Ó Droighneáin played a significant role in both the local Volunteer and I.R.B. movements: in fact, he recalled in 1952 that it was he who had sworn the famed Galwegian writer Pádraic Ó Conaire into the I.R.B. in 1915. He later employed Ó Conaire in another Galway Irish college founded by himself and Seán Mac Cana in 1920.Footnote ⁸⁵ Ó Droighneáin’s role as both a key local military figure and teacher in the local Irish college at this time provides an insight to such colleges as places where advanced nationalist rhetoric could be easily spread amongst both the students and locals — contributing factors to the facilitation of membership of militant organisations. Indeed, McMahon has stated that when south Galway I.R.B. man Pádraig Ó Fathaigh joined the Volunteers in 1914 he ‘began recruiting from among his [Irish-language] students’.Footnote ⁸⁶ Ó Fathaigh had initially attended Coláiste Chonnacht, Tourmakeady in 1907, where he had received certification to teach Irish, and mixed with figures such as his later I.R.B. comrade Colm Ó Gaora (both later taught in the College).Footnote ⁸⁷ Ó Fathaigh went on to become a full-time travelling Irish teacher for the League in 1909.Footnote ⁸⁸ By 1914, then, Ó Fathaigh was in a position to be able to recruit a significant number of Irish-language students to the militant organisations he was involved with, through his position as teacher. Other revolutionaries also capitalised on their position as Irish teachers, using their certification, relationships and contacts gained at Irish colleges to increase recruitment to the cause.

IV

It is important to note at this point the change that had come over the language movement in general in the months preceding the 1916 Easter Rising. While ostensibly a non-political organisation since its inception in 1893, the Gaelic League had clearly displayed an ‘overwhelming lurch to the IRB-leaning left wing’ in its July 1915 ard-fheis (A.G.M.) and voted to amend its constitution to support a free Ireland, subsequently causing the retirement of its president, Douglas Hyde.Footnote ⁸⁹ Overt support for the separatist cause increased the apprehensions of the British administration and the R.I.C. that the League was a suspicious organisation and legitimised earlier fears that the language movement might be infiltrated by advanced nationalists.Footnote ⁹⁰ The Irish colleges provided even more ideal environments for the dissemination of advanced nationalism than the League in general, functioning independently as they did away from wider society, and it seems that attempts were made in early 1916 to address this concern. An Claidheamh Soluis reported that the National Board of Education was attempting to allow only schoolteachers to attend the colleges, so that they would not be mixing with ‘Connarthóirí’ (Gaelic Leaguers).Footnote ⁹¹ It was suspected that the board was attempting to isolate the colleges from the Gaelic League and to remove any trace of nationalism completely. While emblematic of the growing concern regarding Irish-language activities after the support expressed by the League for a free Ireland in 1915, this also suggests that Irish colleges already had a reputation in Dublin Castle as institutions that fostered and encouraged Irish nationalism — institutions that were not just teacher-training colleges. This fear was, of course, not misplaced, since, as noted, Pearse and Ceannt, later signatories of the 1916 proclamation, had been ardent supporters of the Irish colleges, as were Joseph Mary Plunkett and his former teacher, Thomas MacDonagh. Plunkett’s time in Coláiste Uladh in 1910 had a profound impact on him: he composed multiple poems and fell in love with Columba O’Carroll. Thomas Mac Donagh attended Coláiste na Mumhan in 1906, and Dr Ó Dálaigh, principle professor in the college, provided a favourable reference for him in 1908.Footnote ⁹²

Representatives from various Irish colleges were due to meet in Dublin at a scheduled meeting of the Conference of Irish Colleges on Easter Sunday, 1916. The meeting was held in the Rotunda and chaired by Seán Nunan, a member of the Irish Volunteers in London who took part in the rising and was later inducted into the I.R.B.Footnote ⁹³ Although Nunan had been a member of the London Gaelic League, he seems to have had little or no prior engagement with the Irish colleges. Eileen Costello, who was the representative for Coláiste Chonnacht at the Rotunda meeting, recalled that she thought that the meeting ‘was purposely convened for Easter Sunday, to have Mr. Nunan and Miss [Neilí] O’Brien in Dublin for the Rising’.Footnote ⁹⁴ While it seems likely that the meeting was indeed used as a cover to give Nunan a reason to be in Dublin, Neilí Ní Bhriain did not take part in the rising, though she was later ‘politicized’ by the executions, according to Maureen Murphy.Footnote ⁹⁵ As will be discussed, Irish-language activities often became a cover for military operations, and as the Irish colleges were perhaps the most prominent institutions of the language during this period, it is hardly surprising that much of this military subterfuge took place in and around Irish college activity. Moreover, the Irish language scene was a haven of cultural nationalism, where more nationalistic figures could easily be encountered. Costello recalled that it was through the Gaelic League that she herself became acquainted with certain 1916 leaders:

V

The period following the 1916 Rising saw a particular shift from constitutional nationalism towards advanced nationalism, largely propelled by the executions of the Rising leaders.Footnote ⁹⁷ Many determined to embrace the Irish language as pivotal to their own identity and as a talisman of resistance, causing the League to move ‘into a new period of activity and expansion’.Footnote ⁹⁸ Irish-language novelist Séamus Ó Grianna remarked retrospectively in 1922 that those who had joined the language movement after 1916 ‘had it baptised in blood, and had something to go on’.Footnote ⁹⁹ Just as the League was growing, so too was the attendance at Irish colleges, since the language remained fundamental to nationalist philosophy.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In 1917, An Claidheamh Soluis proclaimed that ‘[p]eople are being converted [to the language cause] so rapidly that teachers cannot be found for all the new classes and branches that are springing up’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ This statement must be further contextualised by pointing out that a high number of Irish teachers were interned in Britain after the rising at camps such as Frongoch in Wales. Coupled with the higher degree of enthusiasm, new Irish teachers were badly needed. The following year in 1918, the growth in students was evident upon the opening of Coláiste Uladh in Donegal, where

In the meantime, the internment of senior Volunteer and I.R.B. figures amongst the 1,850 Irish men sent to Frongoch had facilitated the expansion of nationalist networks and allowed them to complete military training and organisation vital to the success of the impending War of Independence at home.Footnote ¹⁰³ Crucial to this nationalistic education was the Irish language, and classes as Gaeilge became integral to daily life in Frongoch and the recruitment of men to the advanced nationalist cause:

Irish classes had also been a staple at Wandsworth prison prior to the opening of Frongoch, under the charge of Seán T. O’Kelly, Micheál Ó Droighneáin, Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin, Liam Ó Briain and Cathal Ó Seanáin.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Ó Droighneáin and Ó Súilleabháin were key figures at Coláiste an Spidéil and Coláiste Chairbre in Cork, respectively, with O’Kelly liaising with the Irish colleges frequently as part of his work with the League’s executive committee.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Ó Droighneáin remained very active in his work for the language in Frongoch, alongside others such as Brian O’Higgins, Séamus Ó Néill, Séamus Ó Tallamhain and Micheál Ó Maoláin, almost all of whom either worked or spent time at an Irish college. As Ó Torna has argued, the time spent by advanced nationalists in Frongoch alongside ardent Gaelic Leaguers facilitated further military organisation crucial to the War of Independence and also the dissemination of a nationalist ideology that was bound up inextricably with the Irish language.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

This was also the case amongst other Irish prisoners held in British prisons until the general prisoner release in June 1917. At Lewes Prison, Éamon de Valera and Austin Stack set up Irish classes during exercise, marching in fours in the format of one instructor and three students, as recommended by the Irish teacher Pádraig Ó Fathaigh.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ According to Ó Fathaigh, Mac Neill taught Old Irish, while others taught a variety of levels in modern Irish: ‘Thus Lewes prison was converted into a Gaelic college.’Footnote ¹¹⁰ The use of the term ‘Gaelic college’ is no accident, as those prominent amongst the Irish prisoners at Lewes such as de Valera, Mac Neill, Ó Fathaigh and Ó Gaora had long been involved with the Irish college movement.

The relationships and bonds fostered at Irish colleges prior to 1916, and the discipline and kinship of the prison experience post-1916, were thus both essential to the later independence movement. The internment of high-profile language enthusiasts amongst the Irish men at camps such as Frongoch allowed for a use and study of the language that would not have been possible outside of these very particular conditions.Footnote ¹¹¹ In many ways, the colleges in Ireland had already acted as mini-camps during the summer months, and role of Irish colleges in this context was enhanced after the rising and the ultimate general release of Irish prisoners in June 1917, as Home Rule was pushed aside in favour of the more radical nationalism espoused by a newly re-organised Sinn Féin party.Footnote ¹¹²

Coláiste na Rinne in Ring, County Waterford provides perhaps the clearest instance of the culmination of language learning and republican ideology as part of this new wave of advanced nationalism after 1916. While a local branch of the Volunteers was not established in the vicinity until 1917, it was an area steeped in nationalist sympathies. A member of the advisory committee of the Military Service Pensions later commenting on a statement made by Máire Bean Uí Chionnaith, member of Cumann na mBan in Ring, noted: ‘she appears to have fairly good service … typical of that district.’Footnote ¹¹³ There were also strong links between the college and the local Volunteer movement. Upon its inception in 1917, the Ring branch of the Volunteers was drilled by Michael Kenneally, a teacher in Coláiste na Rinne.Footnote ¹¹⁴ The prominent revolutionary C. S. Andrews attended the college the following year — he was one of those who had been politicised by the 1916 executions and had joined the Irish Volunteers shortly after.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Andrews recalled in his memoir, Dublin Made Me, that he had been encouraged to attend the college by his Irish teacher at school, Michael Hayes.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Andrews wrote fondly about his time in Ring, stating: ‘Ring in 1918 was a microcosm of resurgent Ireland … to me the Ring of 1918 was a fragment of the Ireland Pearse dreamed about and wrote about in An Claidheamh Soluis. Everyone appeared to be gay, good-humoured, light-hearted, companionable — all inspired by the vision of a Gaelic Ireland.’Footnote ¹¹⁷ His use of such evocative language to describe the Irish college as a uniquely Irish-Ireland space directly answering to Pearse’s envisioning, places Irish colleges at the heart of the renewed nationalist movement at the early stages of the War of Independence. It is clear that Coláiste na Rinne had gained a particular reputation amongst advanced nationalists by this stage and, describing his return to the college in 1919, Andrews mentions that: ‘Raids by the British forces created a certain tension in the college; some of the students were “wanted men”.’Footnote ¹¹⁸

Seán O’Faoláin’s memories of Coláiste na Mumhan evoke a similar situation. Like Andrews, he was initially encouraged to attend the college by his own Irish teacher, Pádraig Ó Domhnaill, a Volunteer leader.Footnote ¹¹⁹ He recalled that when attending the college with Eileen Gould in 1918, they encountered several people who had fought in the rising, and had been interned in Britain and released in the general amnesty in 1917.Footnote ¹²⁰ He recalled that while the rest of the college attendees were less ‘serious’ than these figures, ‘all of us were reborn of the Rising and all that led to it, so the language acted both as a matrix to the issues of our political faith and as its sign and password; our zeal to speak Irish bound us into a community, a new, glowing, persecuted, or about-to-be persecuted political sect’.Footnote ¹²¹ This suggests that the Irish colleges were coming to be regarded as institutions that served as a rite of passage for young nationalists, as the link between the language and national identity was further solidified after the execution of key figures in both the revolutionary and revivalist movements. Indeed, some of the children of the executed Easter Rising leaders, such as Daly Clarke, Seán Mac Bride and Séamus Mallin, were sent to Irish colleges from 1918 — a clear legitimisation of the role of the colleges amongst the revolutionary generation.Footnote ¹²²

VI

Language-learning was frequently used in Ireland to mask military activities during the War of Independence period. According to a Dundalk member of Cumann na mBan, ‘the Cumann activities were carried out under the cloak of the Gaelic League without the general public or — more importantly — the authorities being very much the wiser’.Footnote ¹²³ Another former member of Cumann na mBan, Eithne Coyle, recalled that ‘Gaelic classes became a cover for the work of the Volunteers and Cumann na mBan’.Footnote ¹²⁴ It was no accident, then, that branches of Cumann na mBan and the Volunteers were frequently established in the areas surrounding Irish colleges.Footnote ¹²⁵ Coyle herself recalls the significance of Coláiste Uladh in Cloughaneely in her own attempts to establish a branch of the organisation in north-west Donegal:

Coyle also noted that branches of Cumann na mBan remained ‘closely associated’ with the Volunteer network in the local area.Footnote ¹²⁷

Even if these organisations did not become directly involved with college work, they could easily take advantage of the numbers attending and spread their message to the students. In 1918, Seán Ó Ruadháin, former teacher of de Valera, spoke to the students in Coláiste Chonnacht and encouraged them to get to know two young men he had brought with him from Dublin: Seóirse Pluincéad and Liam Ó Lochlainn.Footnote ¹²⁸ Seóirse or George Plunkett was the brother of Joseph Plunkett, executed Easter Rising leader. Seóirse was a Volunteer Captain himself and had taken part in the Rising at his brother’s side.Footnote ¹²⁹ Liam or Colm Ó Lochlainn came from a similar background, as a former student of Mac Neill in UCD who was then inducted into the I.R.B. in 1913 and went on to play a part in the establishment of the Volunteers that same year.Footnote ¹³⁰ John Plunkett, another brother of Joe and Seóirse, had also joined the Volunteers in 1913, while still at school. He had taken part in the 1916 Rising and been imprisoned in England afterwards.Footnote ¹³¹ When John and Seóirse were released from prison in England in June 1917, John immediately went to canvas for de Valera, whom he had known in prison, in the East Clare by-election.Footnote ¹³² One of the first places he went to following his release and his work in Clare was Coláiste Chonnacht in Spiddal, where he attended classes alongside his friend and fellow Volunteer, Fergus O’Kelly.Footnote ¹³³

Eileen McGrane, former captain of the University Branch of Cumann na mBan remembered visiting branches of the organisation in County Clare in 1919 after the county was declared a military area. Amongst the places she visited was Carrigaholt, where she stayed ‘at the Irish College (Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe) with Brian O’Higgins and his wife’.Footnote ¹³⁴ By this stage, Neilí Ní Bhriain had moved on to prioritise other work for the League, such as fundraising trips to America.Footnote ¹³⁵ The appointment of the much more advanced nationalist O’Higgins as the figurehead of the college in 1917 seems to follow the broad trend amongst the colleges of a higher degree of radicalisation post-1916. O’Higgins had taken part in the Rising himself and subsequently had been interned at Frongoch, before taking up a post as residential secretary of Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe upon his release in 1917, where he lived with his wife and children.Footnote ¹³⁶ Like many other revolutionary figures, he was no stranger to the Irish colleges and had initially attended Coláiste na Mumhan, receiving certification in 1906.Footnote ¹³⁷ The year following his appointment as residential secretary of the Carrigaholt college, however, O’Higgins was arrested and sent to prison in Britain as part of the ‘German Plot’ scare.Footnote ¹³⁸ Advertisements for the college in An Claidheamh Soluis during 1918 make reference to O’Higgins’s internment and to the determination of teachers and professors to attend despite the attempts of ‘lucht Airm Shasana’ to stop them.Footnote ¹³⁹ This was largely due to the fact that in 1918, Clare in its entirety had been declared a special military area under the Defence of the Realm Act due to ‘lawlessness’, although it is likely that Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe was itself seen as an institute at the heart of such lawlessness, particularly after the appointment of O’Higgins as residential secretary.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ O’Higgins himself described an early occupation of the college by British soldiers shortly after his appointment in 1917, an event that was entirely unjustified, in his opinion, as there was a barracks only a few hundred feet away.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Writing of her visit to Clare in 1919, McGrane stated that she found ‘the nucleus of an organisation’ in all the places she visited, including Carrigaholt, and completed training exercises with each branch of Cumann na mBan.Footnote ¹⁴² She also wrote that she did ‘a good deal of propaganda to encourage the old members of the branches and to attract new recruits’.Footnote ¹⁴³ No doubt this was facilitated to some degree in Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe by O’Higgins.

These visits by members of the Volunteers/I.R.A., I.R.B. and Cumann na mBan to Irish colleges between 1917 and 1920 were far from inconsequential, as the colleges were clearly identified as places suitable for the spread of advanced nationalist rhetoric among the students, or even where new recruits might be found. At the most basic level, it is clear that certain Irish colleges welcomed advanced nationalists with open arms, where their words would fall upon sympathetic ears. Hundreds of women, men and children attended the colleges each year and gathered together in an attempt to revive what they understood to be Ireland’s ancient culture and language. Many of these staff and students were nationalists who were of the opinion that there was no better way to ensure this revival than the country’s freedom.

VII

The crown forces’ suspicion of the Irish colleges increased after 1916, and arrests and attacks on their property ensued. In 1918 three professors from Coláiste Chairbre, Glandore, County Cork were arrested and imprisoned in Britain. Peadar Ó hAnnracháin, Seán Ó Muirthile and Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin had all worked as travelling Irish teachers before the rising and had ties to the I.R.B.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ According to contemporary reports in Fáinne an Lae, Ó Súilleabháin was just about to begin teaching in the college when he was apprehended, and the arrests by the ‘peelers’ were made with the object of striking at the college work.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Coláiste Chomhghaill in Bank Street, Belfast was closed ‘by order of Dublin Castle’ in September 1918, and the College classes were moved to the nearby Christian Brothers school.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ The following year, ‘póilíní agus sgata mór saighdiúirí’ searched a house that belonged to Coláiste Chairbre in Cork and took four prisoners, ripping the tricolour down from the house and replacing it with the union flag.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ During 1920, Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe was occupied by ‘na saighdiúirí Gallda’, Coláiste Uladh in Cloughaneely, Donegal was burnt down by ‘English army forces’, and the newly opened Iolscoil Uladh in Dungloe, County Donegal was immediately taken over by soldiers.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Séamus Ó Grianna was involved with the founding of Iolscoil Uladh and claimed that those involved with the College would forever remember the attack made on the College’s opening day, with the sound of ‘English’ guns forever ringing in their ears.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ In 1921, Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe held its sessions at Kilkee and Lahinch owing to the British army occupation of the building and the ‘College Furniture having been burned last Autumn’.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ That same year, the Ballybunion college in Kerry was also threatened, as detailed by a letter from solicitor Matthew J. Byrne to the Commissioners of Education, which stated: ‘I much regret to inform you that the building which was used as school at Ballybunion was partially wrecked, some time ago by, it is alleged, Crown forces. It will not therefore be possible to hold any classes there this summer.’Footnote ¹⁵¹

The burning of Coláiste Uladh in 1920 had had an even more devastating impact on the local community. By this stage, a train was no longer running to the area and locals depended on the co-operative store neighbouring the college. According to an article in Donegal News, the store ‘served a large district, and had a membership of 300, with a turnover of nearly £500 a week’.Footnote ¹⁵² When the Irish college was burned by soldiers in November that year, the co-op store was also burned to the ground, destroying approximately £3,000 worth of stock.Footnote ¹⁵³ Contemporary reports in Misneach admonish the government and describe events such as these as evidence of its strong anti-Irish-language position.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ As Patrick Doyle has observed, many co-operative stores were destroyed in Ireland during the War of Independence ‘in reprisals aimed at local communities in the wake of IRA activities’.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ The local community in Cloughaneely was famously Irish-speaking, and the establishment of Coláiste Uladh there in 1906 had attracted many advanced nationalists over the years, such as Pearse, Casement, Plunkett and others. By 1919, attempts were being made by crown forces to destroy activities surrounding the language, and the League itself was identified as a subversive organisation.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Irish college authorities recognised the threat that such destructive activities posed to them, and in 1920 at a meeting of the Committee of Coláiste na Mumhan, it was stated ‘gurb í an Ghaedhilg falla cosanta an náisiúin agus gur cosmhail go dtuigeann Rialtas Shasana an méid sin go maith agus an fogha atá siad a thabhairt fé sna Coláistí Gaedhlacha’.Footnote ¹⁵⁷

VIII

The Irish college of the early twentieth century was an institution that provided an alternative education in Irish, independent of, although recognised by, the Westminster-controlled education system in Ireland. From an early period, the colleges coupled language-acquisition endeavours with a radical experience of Irish-Ireland independence. Between 1913 and 1921, the institutions took a more overt interest in advanced nationalism, particularly in the years following the Easter Rising as understandings of the role of language in political and military affairs developed. Given that the Irish colleges gained a reputation as centres sympathetic to advanced nationalist rhetoric, it is significant that attendance increased during the War of Independence in spite of attacks by crown forces. At the end of the final session of Coláiste na Mumhan in 1920, newspaper reports proclaimed that the college had never been so successful.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ The resilience of the Irish colleges of this time is striking, and many of those that were burnt or occupied by crown forces simply moved to another location and continued with their work. When Coláiste Uí Chomhraidhe was occupied in 1921, the college moved to Lahinch where it flourished despite all odds, with reports proclaiming that it was difficult to find the space to fulfil the demand for its courses.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ Upon the burning of Coláiste Uladh in 1920, Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh had stated that the college would continue outdoors if need be. In a letter expressing her sympathy to Canon Doyle, parish priest of Cloghaneely, she said:

Ní Fhaircheallaigh’s early moderation is worth recalling here, as such a defiant statement suggests her inclination towards a more radical nationalism by the end of the 1910s. The success of the Irish colleges indicates the interdependence between a shift towards more radical nationalism and the continued presence within their walls of key revolutionaries after the Rising. The significance of the Irish colleges as social spaces is also worth highlighting again in this context. They were spaces where people could holiday each summer and take part in enjoyable recreation. They provided an escape from the stratified rules of society in the early years of the twentieth century, and continued to provide an escape for many during the revolutionary years in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, despite the risk of their being targeted by British forces.

Thousands of students attended courses at the Irish colleges between 1904 and 1921 in an attempt to learn and revive their native language.Footnote ¹⁶¹ It is no surprise, then, that advanced nationalism began to rear its head as a natural successor to the strong cultural nationalism the colleges had espoused since their establishment. This shift was facilitated to a large extent by the presence of influential revolutionary figures amongst Irish college staff, students and visitors. During this period, they provided classes in activities that supported military societies and facilitated the dissemination of nationalist rhetoric through the close proximity of students and professors. Pádraig Ó Domhnalláin, principal of Coláiste Chonnacht Tourmakeady, County Mayo from 1906–1921, wrote an article in Misneach in 1921 recalling the friends that came together in the college each year that had been ‘ag cur síos ar Éirinn agus ag beartú cé’n chaoi a leigheasaidís an galar gallda agus an tromacht tinn treáinneach a bhí dhá chéasa agus dá cur de’n tsaol.’Footnote ¹⁶² He remembered Pearse, Mac Néill, Ó Gaora, Ó Fathaigh, Seán Mac Diarmada, Pádraic Ó Máille and others, describing them as students who worked for the sake of ‘Caitlín Ní Uallacháin’ and paid dearly for their loyalty to her.Footnote ¹⁶³ Clearly, the Irish colleges were places that could facilitate the use of language ‘as a transparent medium for political messages’, as many nationalists such as Brian O’Higgins believed.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ Their unique location at the juncture of revivalist and nationalist philosophy, the personal and political development they offered, and the networks they created, made the Irish colleges a key contributor to the growth and dissemination of advanced nationalism in the run up to the partition of Ireland in 1921.