An Essay on Irish Swearing
William Carleton's classic work on the Oaths and Curses of the Irish People
[Comments & Reviews]
“The next thing which occurs to us in connection with the present subject, is cursing, and here again Paddy holds the first place. His imprecations are often full, bitter, and intense. Indeed, there is more poetry and epigrammatic point in them, than in those of any other country in the world.”
An Essay on Irish Swearing was included in the first edition of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, written by William Carleton in 1833.
In this quirky essay, the father of Ireland’s first literary revival reflects on the tact and extravagance of Paddy’s oath-making, the bitter beauty of his curses, and the unrivalled power of his sweet talk.
Despite the relative comfort of his early years, Carleton claimed a peasant background in order to lend an authenticity to his portrayals of the Irish ‘Paddy’. An Irish Catholic by birth, he was by no means a nationalist, converting to Protestantism and referring to Ireland as ‘a portion of the Empire’.
This essay is a bizarre combination of authentic accounts of the Irish language, customs and daily life, and the clichéd ‘envenomed caricature,’ -as a contemporary reviewer called it- of the pig-ignorant Paddy. An Essay on Irish Swearing makes for hilarious reading, not only for its jarring racial attitudes and bizarre clash of ideals, but for the genuine wit of this quirky writer. It is a consistently brilliant, charming essay of great importance to anyone interested in the Irish Language, and especially in the sea change from the use of the Irish language to the adoption of English in the years preceding the famine.
This is the first time the essay has been published in 175 years, as it was omitted from later editions of Traits and Stories of The Irish Peasantry. The cover features an important modern example of Irish Oaths and Cursing, making it a perfect gift for an easily offended family member or friend.
Short Biographical Note
William Carleton was born in 1794, the fourteenth child of a storytelling father, and a mother famous for the beauty of her voice. They lived in Prillisk, Co. Tyrone. The couple were Catholic Irish speakers, and Carleton’s mother is reported as saying that singing an English version of an Irish ballad sounded like a husband and wife quarrelling.
Although he claimed a peasant background, Carleton’s early life was one of relative comfort, punctuated by occasional persecution from Protestant neighbours. He was educated at hedge schools and spent his teen years going to dances, drinking, and reading ‘the classics’, while his father and his oldest brother worked to support the family.
In 1813, the Carleton family was evicted from their home. Carleton joined the Ribbonmen, a violent secret agrarian society, but quickly abandoned it, leaving Tyrone to look for work in 1818. Later, by converting to Protestantism, Carleton built useful contacts, receiving work as a clerk and a tutor.
His first break as a writer was with sketches published in an anti-Catholic evangelical paper Christian Examiner and Church of Ireland Gazette. In 1830 his work Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, from which An Essay on Irish Swearing derives, first appeared anonymously. It was an instant success, and went on to be widely published and acknowledged. He went on to publish a series of popular emotive novels that became bestsellers in Ireland, Britain and the U.S.
Depite these successes, Carleton was always in financial difficulty, struggling to support his children and willing to write for whoever would pay him.
William Carleton died in 1869 at the age of 75.
For a more detailed biography click here.
Cover Detail
