Trinity College, ‘proper Irish’ and printing in the Irish language 1602–1685

Recorded April 5, 2022. A talk by Mícheál Hoyne (TCD) as part of
the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies Research
Seminar Series in association with Trinity Long Room Hub. In 1563,
Queen Elizabeth I made funding available ‘for making of Carecter to
printe the New Testament in Irish’. At that point, not a single
book had ever been printed in the language. The Irish New Testament
finally appeared on 10 February 1602/3. Elizabeth died on 23 March
the same year, perhaps without ever having seen the finished
product. The project of translating and publishing the New
Testament in Irish had languished for years. No real progress was
made until Trinity College was founded: one of the very first
Scholars of the College, Uilliam Ó Domhnaill, was key to bringing
it to fruition last, and a good portion of the work of translating
and printing was carried out on the grounds of the College itself.
All of these books (and more) are an important source for the
history of the Irish language and the attitudes of Irish writers to
what characterized ‘correct’ and ‘plain’ Irish in a time of great
change and stress for the language. This seminar will retell the
story of Trinity College and printing in the Irish language in the
seventeenth century and examine some of the challenges that faced
those involved and the linguistic decisions they made on the path
to printing the entire Bible in Irish. Learn more at:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/