Eoin MacNeill: The pen and the sword

By Emer Purcell

Eoin MacNeill (1867-1945) was a founding figure in the Gaelic League, the Irish Volunteers, and the government of Ireland. As Professor of Early (including Mediaeval) History at University College Dublin was also one of the foremost Irish historians of his generation. As a professor, a politician, and the leader of a paramilitary organisation, MacNeill fused scholarship and activism into a complex life that both followed and led the course of Irish independence from gestation to maturation.

• A comprehensive reappraisal of MacNeill which humanises, complicates, and even softens the image of someone who has been cast as a founding father and leading intellectual within the Irish independence movement.

• An appraisal of one of the Irish revolution’s central figures which brings scholarship on him up to date after over forty years of relative scholarly neglect.

MacNeill is arguably best known as the man who tried to stop the 1916 Rising. However, as this book shows, as a newspaper editor, a language teacher, a historian, a paramilitary leader, a parliamentarian, a convict, and a cabinet minister, he crafted both the ideas and institutions of his own time while revising scholarly understandings of the society and institutions of medieval Ireland through his teaching and writings. MacNeill was also a political theorist and even a propagandist who moulded the Irish-Ireland and Sinn Féin movements through his writings and his oratory. A supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Free State’s first minister for education, MacNeill lost his son Brian who was killed fighting on the anti-Treaty side of Ireland’s Civil War. After independence, MacNeill was centrally involved in the attempt to redraw the Irish border in his role as the Free State’s representative on the Irish Boundary Commission. Its collapse took MacNeill’s political career down with it and he reverted to his passion for scholarship, drafted his memoirs, founded the Irish Manuscripts Commission, and delivered a landmark lecture tour in the United States. While he received adulation as a scholar in his last years, his contribution to politics and state formation was variously marginalised and maligned, a pattern that persisted in the decades after his death.

This collection confronts the complexities and apparent contradictions of MacNeill’s life, work, and ideas. It explores the ways in which MacNeill’s activities and interests overlapped, his contribution to the Irish language and to Irish history, his evolving political outlook, and the contribution he made to the shaping of modern Ireland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cork University Press
• Release date: May 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781782054771

Emer Purcell

Emer Purcell is at the National University of Ireland

Book preview

Eoin MacNeill: The pen and the sword

Eoin MacNeill: The pen

and the sword

CONOR MULVAGH

AND

EMER PURCELL

EDITORS

NUI

CENTENARY PUBLICATION

First published in 2022 by

Cork University Press

Boole Library

University College Cork

CORK

T12 ND89

Ireland

© the authors, 2022

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932768

Distribution in the USA: Longleaf Services, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying in Ireland issued by the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd., 25 Denzille Lane, Dublin 2.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978–1-78205–460-3

Printed by Hussar Books in Poland.

Print origination & design by Carrigboy Typesetting Services

www.carrigboy.co.uk

COVER IMAGE – ‘Portrait photograph of Eoin MacNeill seated at a desk with an open book.’ [c.1900–09] (UCDA LA30/PH/325).

www.corkuniversitypress.com

Contents

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF PLATES

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHRONOLOGY

FOREWORD

Maurice Manning, Chancellor, National University of Ireland

Introduction: reassessing Eoin MacNeill

Conor Mulvagh and Emer Purcell

Eoin MacNeill: a family perspective

Michael McDowell

SCHOLAR

Eoin MacNeill’s Contribution to the Study of Medieval Irish law

Kevin Murray

Eoin MacNeill and a ‘Celtic’ Church in Early Medieval Ireland?

Niamh Wycherley

Eoin MacNeill: the scholar and his critics

Dáibhí Ó Cróinín

‘By blood and by tradition’: race and empire in Eoin MacNeill’s interpretation of early Ireland

Elva Johnston

‘Bold and imaginative’: Eoin MacNeill’s Irish Manuscripts Commission

Michael Kennedy

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Eoin MacNeill’s Pioneering Role in the Irish Language Movement

Liam Mac Mathúna

Eoin Mac Néill: scríobhaí forásach agus iriseoir fadradharcach i bpróiseas na hAthbheochana

Regina Uí Chollatáin

A Plea for Irish Education: Eoin MacNeill and the university question

Ruairí Cullen

Eoin MacNeill and the idea of an ‘Irish Cultural Republic’

Mairéad Carew

REVOLUTIONARY

Countermand and Imprisonment, 1916–17

Michael Laffan

Eoin MacNeill and Nationalism

Shane Nagle

Eoin MacNeill and the Irish Boundary Commission

Ted Hallett

HISTORY, MEMORY, LEGACY

Writing Home: understanding the domestic in the life of Eoin MacNeill

Conor Mulvagh

His Own Words: MacNeill in autobiography and memoir

Brian Hughes

The Political Legacy: an insider on the outside

Diarmaid Ferriter

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

1. Eoin MacNeill and Agnes Moore’s wedding, Ballymena, County Antrim, 19 April 1898 (UCDA LA30/PH/346).

2. Rosetta McNeill, Eoin’s mother, with her grandchildren (L–R) Brian, Eibhlín and Niall, on the steps of Hazelbrook House, Malahide, County Dublin, 1902 (UCDA LA30/PH/349).

3. Eoin MacNeill at his desk in the Accountant General’s Office, Four Courts, Dublin [n.d., pre-1908] (UCDA LA30/PH/378).

4. Photograph of a sketch of Eoin MacNeill attributed to his son Séamus [n.d.] (UCDA LA30/PH/322).

5. Eoin MacNeill teaching a class at the Irish College in Omeath, County Louth [c.1911–13] (UCDA LA30/PH/386).

6. Group portrait of released 1916 prisoners outside Mansion House, Dawson Street, Dublin, MacNeill seated near the centre of the group with his arm around de Valera’s shoulder [June 1917] (UCDA LA30/PH/392).

7. Letter to the Senate of the National University of Ireland from Cork County Council demanding that Eoin MacNeill be restored to his professorship at University College Dublin, 9 March 1918 (NUI Archives).

8. Eoin MacNeill at a picnic on Rostrevor Mountain, County Down [c.1919–20] (UCDA LA30/PH/324).

9. Letter from John Ryan (Hofgartenstraße 9, Bonn am Rhein) to the Senate of the National University of Ireland requesting an extension to his Travelling Studentship, in which he acknowledges the work of Eoin MacNeill while detailing his own studies in Bonn, including the study of Old Irish with Rudolf Thurneysen, who provides a reference, 13 November 1922 (NUI Archives).

10. ‘At liberty again: Professor Eoin MacNeill photographed with his family after his release from Mountjoy Prison’, Freeman’s Journal, 8 July 1921 [newscutting] (L–R standing: Niall, Brian; seated, middle row: Agnes, Eoin, Eibhlín; seated, front row: Róisín, Séamus, Máire (Turlough MacNeill was still in Mountjoy when this photograph was taken) (UCDA LA30/PH/417).

11. Róisín, Brian, Eibhlín MacNeill (seated L–R) with a dog and (standing) Turlough MacNeill in uniform and an unidentified man [c.1921–2] (UCDA LA30/PH/359).

12. Photographed on the steps of the Club House and Commercial Hotel, Kilkenny, MacNeill accompanies Cosgrave on the latter’s first visit to his constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny since his election as President of the Executive Council. Cosgrave will use this visit to launch Cumann na nGaedheal’s 1923 general election campaign. L–R, front row: Vincent White, Mayor of Waterford; Peter de Loughrey, Mayor of Kilkenny; W.T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council; Hugh Kennedy TD, Attorney General; Senator John MacLoughlin; MacNeill. Back row (not in order) includes Dan McCarthy TD, Chief Whip and President of the GAA; James Dolan TD; and Colonel-Commandant J. O’Reilly [27 May 1923] (UCDA LA30/PH/395).

13. Members of the Boundary Commission on the first day of their tour, Armagh, 9 December 1924. L–R: Dr Eoin MacNeill, Free State; Mr J.R. Fisher, Northern Ireland; Mr T.E. Read, OBE, JD, Secretary to Armagh County Council; Mr T.E. Montgomery; and Mr Justice Richard Feetham. Photographer: W.D. Hogan (NLI, National Photographic Archive, HOG 181).

14. MacNeill and members of the Catholic University of America, Washington DC [May 1930] (UCDA LA30/PH/398).

15. Máire Sweeney (MacNeill) and Michael Tierney standing underneath a portrait of Eoin MacNeill, 1964 (UCDA LA30/PH/105).

16. Group photograph on the occasion of the publication of The Scholar Revolutionary: Eoin MacNeill, 1867–1945, edited by F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne, 1973. L–R: Thomas Murphy, President of UCD; Éilis McDowell; Francis John Byrne; Máire Sweeney; Séamus MacNeill; Eibhlín Tierney; F.X. Martin; Róisín Coyle (UCDA LA30/PH/377).

List of Abbreviations

List of Plates

1. Eoin MacNeill and Agnes Moore’s wedding, Ballymena, County Antrim, 19 April 1898 (UCDA LA30/PH/346).

2. Rosetta McNeill, Eoin’s mother, with her grandchildren (L-R) Brian, Eibhlín and Niall on the steps of Hazelbrook House, Malahide, County Dublin, 1902 (UCDA LA30/PH/349).

3. Eoin MacNeill at his desk in the Accountant General’s Office, Four Courts, Dublin [n.d., pre-1908] (UCDA LA30/PH/378).

4. Photograph of a sketch of Eoin MacNeill attributed to his son Séamus [n.d.] (UCDA LA30/PH/322).

5. Eoin MacNeill teaching a class at the Irish College in Omeath, County Louth [ c. 1911–13] (UCDA LA30/PH/386).

6. Group portrait of released 1916 prisoners outside Mansion House, Dawson Street, Dublin, MacNeill seated near the centre of the group with his arm around de Valera’s shoulder [June 1917] (UCDA LA30/ PH/392).

7. Letter to the Senate of the National University of Ireland from Cork County Council demanding that Eoin MacNeill be restored to his professorship at University College Dublin, 9 March 1918 (NUI Archives).

8. Eoin MacNeill at a picnic on Rostrevor Mountain, County Down [ c. 1919–20] (UCDA LA30/PH/324).

9. Letter from John Ryan (Hofgartenstraße 9, Bonn am Rhein) to the Senate of the National University of Ireland requesting an extension to his Travelling Studentship, in which he acknowledges the work of Eoin MacNeill while detailing his own studies in Bonn, including the study of Old Irish with Rudolf Thurneysen, who provides a reference, 13 November 1922 (NUI Archives).

10. ‘At liberty again: Professor Eoin MacNeill photographed with his family after his release from Mountjoy Prison’, Freeman’s Journal, 8 July 1921 [newscutting] (L–R standing: Niall, Brian; seated, middle row: Agnes, Eoin, Eibhlín; seated, front row: Róisín, Séamus, Máire (Turlough MacNeill was still in Mountjoy when this photograph was taken) (UCDA LA30/PH/417).

11. Róisín, Brian, Eibhlín MacNeill (seated L–R) with a dog and (standing) Turlough MacNeill in uniform and an unidentified man [ c. 1921–2] (UCDA LA30/PH/359).

12. Photographed on the steps of the Club House and Commercial Hotel, Kilkenny, MacNeill accompanies Cosgrave on the latter’s first visit to his constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny since his election as President of the Executive Council. Cosgrave will use this visit to launch Cumann na nGaedheal’s 1923 general election campaign. L–R, front row: Vincent White, Mayor of Waterford; Peter de Loughrey, Mayor of Kilkenny; W.T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council; Hugh Kennedy TD, Attorney General; Senator John MacLoughlin; MacNeill. Back row (not in order) includes Dan McCarthy TD, Chief Whip and President of the GAA; James Dolan TD; and Colonel-Commandant J. O’Reilly [27 May 1923] (UCDA LA30/PH/395).

13. Members of the Boundary Commission on the first day of their tour, Armagh, 9 December 1924. L–R: Dr Eoin MacNeill, Free State; Mr J.R. Fisher, Northern Ireland; Mr T.E. Read, OBE, JD, Secretary to Armagh County Council; Mr T.E. Montgomery; and Mr Justice Richard Feetham. Photographer: W.D. Hogan (NLI, National Photographic Archive, HOG 181).

14. MacNeill and members of the Catholic University of America, Washington DC [May 1930] (UCDA LA30/PH/398).

15. Máire Sweeney (MacNeill) and Michael Tierney standing underneath a portrait of Eoin MacNeill, 1964 (UCDA LA30/PH/105).

16. Group photograph on the occasion of the publication of The Scholar Revolutionary: Eoin MacNeill, 1867–1945, edited by F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne, 1973. L–R: Thomas Murphy, President of UCD; Éilis McDowell; Francis John Byrne; Máire Sweeney; Séamus MacNeill; Eibhlín Tierney; F.X. Martin; Róisín Coyle (UCDA LA30/PH/377).

Author Biographies

Mairéad Carew is an archaeologist and cultural historian. She is author of Tara and the Ark of the Covenant: A search for the Ark of the Covenant by British Israelites, 1899–1902 (2003); Tara: The guidebook (2016) and The Quest for the Irish Celt: The Harvard Archaeological Mission to Ireland, 1932–1936 (2018).

Ruairí Cullen received his PhD in history from Queen’s University Belfast in 2017. His doctorate was entitled ‘Contention and Innovation: The medieval period in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish historiography’. Ruairí now works in policy and public affairs in London.

Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD. His books include The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (2004); Judging Dev: A reassessment of the life and legacy of Éamon de Valera (2007); Occasions of Sin: Sex and society in modern Ireland (2009); Ambiguous Republic: Ireland in the 1970s (2012); A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish revolution 1913–23 (2015); On the Edge: Ireland’s offshore islands, a modern history (2018); The Border: The legacy of a century of Anglo-Irish relations (2019) and Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War (2021). He is a regular television and radio broadcaster and a columnist with the Irish Times. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2019.

Ted Hallett is a graduate of Aberystwyth University, 1965–71. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1971 as a research analyst. He was posted to the British embassy, Bonn 1972–5, the British embassy, Dublin 1984–5 and seconded to the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), 1988–91. He was attached to the Northern Ireland Office political talks team, 1996–8. He was head of the FCO Western & Southern Europe Research Group 1998–2003, and deputy head of mission, British embassy, Dublin 2003–6. He retired from FCO in 2006. He was re-employed as a sensitivity reviewer at the FCO (2007) and the NIO (2010), reviewing departmental files prior to their transfer to the National Archives.

Brian Hughes lectures in the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. His edition of Eoin MacNeill’s memoir was published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 2016 as Eoin MacNeill: Memoir of a revolutionary scholar. Other recent publications include Defying the IRA? Intimidation, coercion, and communities during the Irish revolution (2016 [repr. 2019]) and, with Conor Morrissey (eds), Southern Irish Loyalism, 1912–1949 (2020).

Elva Johnston is an associate professor in the School of History, University College Dublin. Her monograph Literacy and Identity in Early Medieval Ireland (2013) was awarded the Irish Historical Research Prize (2015) for the best new work of Irish historical research. She was general editor of Peritia: The Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland and currently edits Analecta Hibernica, the periodical of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, of which she is a member.

Michael Kennedy has for almost three decades written and published widely on modern Irish history, in particular on Irish military and diplomatic history and on Irish foreign policy. He has been the executive editor of the RIA’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy series since 1997 (12 volumes published to date). Previously he lectured in Irish and European history at Queen’s University Belfast and received his doctorate from the NUI in 1994 on the early history of Ireland’s relationship with the League of Nations. As well as having published twelve volumes as executive editor of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy to date, Michael’s wide range of books and articles include: Ireland, the United Nations and the Congo (2014) (with Art Magennis); Guarding Neutral Ireland (2008); Division and Consensus: The politics of cross-border relations in Ireland 1921–1969 (2000); Ireland and the League of Nations, 1919–46 (1996). Edited volumes include: Irish Foreign Policy (2012) (with Noel Dorr, Ben Tonra and John Doyle); Reconstructing Ireland’s Past: A history of the Irish Manuscripts Commission (2009) (with Deirdre McMahon).

Michael Laffan studied at University College Dublin, Trinity Hall Cambridge and the Institute for European History in Mainz. Having lectured briefly at the University of East Anglia he took up a post in UCD, where he taught for over three decades and served in various positions, including as head of the School of History and Archives, before retiring in 2010. From 2010 to 2012 he was president of the Irish Historical Society; he is now an emeritus professor in UCD. He has published widely on modern Irish history. His writings include The Partition of Ireland 1911–1925 (1983); The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin party, 1916–1923 (1999) and Judging W.T. Cosgrove and the Foundation of the Irish State (2014), and he has edited The Burden of German History: 1919–1945 (1988).

Liam Mac Mathúna is Professor Emeritus of Irish at University College Dublin. He has published over a hundred articles on Irish language, literature and culture. His book publications include Béarla sa Ghaeilge on Irish/English literary code-mixing 1600–1900 (2007); a new edition of Peadar Ua Laoghaire’s ground-breaking novel Séadna (2011); Saothrú na Gaeilge Scríofa i Suímh Uirbeacha na hÉireann, 1700–1850 on the cultivation of written Irish in urban areas (co-ed., 2016); Douglas Hyde: My American journey on Hyde’s highly successful tour of America in 1905–6 (co-ed., 2019) and Éigse, vol. 40, 2019. He is editor of Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies, published by the National University of Ireland. He delivered the NUI/UCD Hyde Lecture/Léacht de hÍde in 2019. Together with Dr Máire Nic an Bhaird, he is currently researching the life and work of Dr Douglas Hyde. His monograph The Ó Neachtain Window on Gaelic Dublin, 1700–1750 was published in 2021.

Michael McDowell is the youngest grandson of Eoin MacNeill. He graduated from King’s Inns in 1974 and is currently a senior counsel and an adjunct professor in the UCD Sutherland School of Law. He was elected as a TD for Dublin South-East (now the constituency of Dublin Bay South) in 1987, 1992 and 2002. He served as Attorney General from 1999 to 2002, as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform from 2002 until 2007, and as Tánaiste from 2006 until 2007. He was first elected to Seanad Éireann in 2016 as an Independent member on the NUI panel and was re-elected in 2020.

Conor Mulvagh is an associate professor in modern Irish history at the School of History, University College Dublin with special responsibility for the Decade of Centenaries (2012–23). His research centres primarily on British and Irish political history and the history of Ireland during the decade of the Irish revolution and the First World War. His current research focuses on a comparative study of partitions. He lectures on memory and commemoration; the Irish revolution; and Northern Ireland. He is the author of Irish Days, Indian Memories: V.V. Giri and Indian law students at University College Dublin, 1913–1916 (2016) and The Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster, 1900–18 (2016), which was awarded the 2017 NUI Special Commendation Prize in Irish History. He is a contributor to the Cambridge History of Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Kevin Murray lectures in the Department of Early and Medieval Irish (Scoil Léann na Gaeilge), University College Cork. He is one of the editors of the Locus Project (www.ucc.ie/en/locus) which is engaged in producing a new historical dictionary of Irish placenames and tribal names; eight volumes of the dictionary have been published to date. His other research interests include editing and analysing medieval Irish legal and literary texts. He is the author of Baile in Scáil (2004) and The Early Finn Cycle (2017).

Shane Nagle attained his PhD from the University of London with a thesis on the comparative study of nationalist history writing in Ireland and Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This was published as Histories of Nationalism in Ireland and Germany: A comparative study from 1800 to 1932 by Bloomsbury Academic in 2016. He has also published on Eoin MacNeill and nationalisms in Ireland and Germany in History Ireland, European History Quarterly and Labour History Review.

Dáibhí Ó Cróinín is Professor Emeritus, National University of Ireland, Galway. Among his numerous publications are The Irish Sex Aetates Mundi (1983); Cummian’s Letter De Controversia Paschali: Together with a related Irish computistical tract De Ratione Conputandi (1988); The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin, Irish Traditional Singer (2000; repr. 2021); Early Irish History and Chronology (2003); vol. 1 of the Royal Irish Academy’s New History of Ireland: Prehistoric and early medieval (2005) and, most recently, Whitley Stokes (1830–1909): The lost Celtic notebooks rediscovered (2011). Since 2015 he has been chief-editor of Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland (with Elva Johnston, UCD, and Máirín MacCarron, UCC). He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and chairman of a number of RIA committees and a former Member the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

Emer Purcell is an administration officer in the Publications Office of the National University of Ireland with special responsibility for the commemoration of the Decade of Centenaries. She has published widely on Viking-Age Ireland and medieval Dublin. She is the general editor of Clerics, Kings and Vikings: Essays on medieval Ireland (2015), a collection of forty-four essays in honour of Donnchadh Ó Corráin, and co-editor with Carrie Griffin of Text, Transmission and Transformation in the European Middle Ages, c.1000–1500, Cursor Mundi Series 34 (2018). She is also a coordinator of the Forum for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Ireland: https://fmrsi.wordpress.com/.

Regina Uí Chollatáin is Senior Professor of Modern Irish and former head of the UCD School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore (2015–2021). She has published widely on Irish language revival, media and print culture. Recent publications include chapters in The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, vols 2 & 3 (2020). She was awarded the Nicholas O’Donnell Fellowship, Melbourne University (2019) and ICUF Senior Visiting Professor (2011–12). She is a member of the Irish Language Scholarship, Irish Literature and Celtic Culture Royal Irish Academy committee (2015–); the National Academic Advisory Board of the Museum of Literature of Ireland (MoLI), the National Folklore Commission, former Chair of the National Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland (2015–18) and a former board member of TG4. She is the current president of the Global Irish Diaspora Congress, which she co-founded in 2017. She was appointed Chair of Foras na Gaeilge, the North South Irish language state body, in 2021.

Niamh Wycherley lectures in medieval Irish history, culture and literature in the Department of Early Irish, Maynooth University. Her current research focuses on a philological approach to history, in particular in relation to the role of the Church in medieval society. She is a former Irish Research Council and NUI awardee and has completed postdoctoral research fellowships in UCD and NUI Galway. She won the NUI Publication Prize in Irish History 2017 for her monograph The Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland (2015).

Acknowledgements

This collection of essays is born of a collaboration between the National University of Ireland and the School of History UCD in the publication of lectures given as part of a UCD History Hub series in 2013 and a symposium held in NUI in 2016; the titles of both focused on Eoin MacNeill as scholar and revolutionary. With the addition of some invited essays, the structure and themes of the book took shape. Five years later, as editors we would like to express our sincere thanks to the sixteen scholars who have contributed to this volume. Each essay presented here has helped realise our aim to produce a book that would do justice to the complex figure of Eoin MacNeill.

We are very grateful to the National Library of Ireland and UCD Archives and Special Collections, for their permission to reproduce the images used in this book, which help contextualise and bring the subject matter to life. We would also like to thank the staff of the following libraries and repositories: Military Archives, Ireland; National Archives of Ireland; National Library of Ireland; Parliamentary Archives, House of Lords, UK; UCD Archives; and United Kingdom National Archives.

We acknowledge with thanks the grant received from the NUI towards publication.

We would also like to thank: Attracta Halpin, Elva Johnston, Maurice Manning, Kevin Murray and Dáibhí Ó Crónín for their support and assistance with the text. It remains to record our sincere gratitude to the two readers who reviewed the text as part of the Cork University Press peer review process. They both made invaluable suggestions which have greatly enhanced the book; in particular, their recommendation to reorganise and retitle some sections proved central to the cohesive presentation of the multi-faceted Eoin MacNeill you will find here.

We are very grateful to Cork University Press for the guidance and advice we received from Maria O’Donovan, Mike Collins and all the team in bringing this volume to publication.

Chronology

Chronologies of the life of Eoin MacNeill can be found in F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne (eds), The Scholar Revolutionary: Eoin MacNeill, 1867–1945 and the making of the new Ireland (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1973) and Michael Tierney, Eoin MacNeill: Scholar and man of action, 1867–1945, ed. F.X. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Additionally, the published writings of Eoin MacNeill have been compiled, first as F.X. Martin (comp., ed.), ‘The Writings of Eoin MacNeill’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 6, no. 21, March 1948, pp. 44–62 and subsequently in an expanded version in The Scholar Revolutionary (pp. 327–53).

What follows amalgamates information from the previously published timelines of MacNeill’s life with information from his biographers – Michael Tierney, Patrick Maume, Thomas Charles-Edwards and Brian Hughes – along with further information from the present volume and additional primary sources.

The most comprehensive bibliography of MacNeill’s scholarship and journalism is ‘The Published Writings of Eoin MacNeill’ (in Scholar Revolutionary, pp. 325–53). Although some additional writings by Eoin MacNeill have been uncovered since 1973 (notably MacNeill’s chapter in the Handbook of the Ulster Question, co–authored (anonymously) with J.W. Good and published by the North Eastern Boundary Bureau in 1923), the editors have not attempted to incorporate MacNeill’s writings into the present chronology with the exception of his four major monograph works (1919, 1921, 1934 and 1935).

Foreword

The National University of Ireland has always been proud of, and has greatly valued, its relationship with Eoin MacNeill. He was a strong supporter of the idea of a national university long before it became a reality in 1908, was a member of the first university Senate and remained an active member and supporter for many years thereafter. He was foundation Professor of Early (including Medieval) Irish History in the university and was elected to the first Dáil from the NUI constituency in 1918.

NUI planned an ambitious and broad-based commemorative programme for the Decade of Centenaries. From the outset it was decided that, as part of the programme, the university would honour figures associated with NUI who had made significant contributions to the building of the new Irish state. Four names stood out – Douglas Hyde, Eoin MacNeill, Éamon de Valera and Patrick McGilligan.

This series began in 2013 with a seminar ‘Douglas Hyde: The professor who became president of Ireland’, and these proceedings were published in 2016. In 2013 NUI published a facsimile reproduction of Lia Fáil: Irisleabhar Gaeilge Ollscoil na hÉireann launched by President Michael D. Higgins. In 2018 the inaugural Hyde lecture/Léacht de hÍde (in partnership with UCD) took place when a paper ‘The Legacy of Douglas Hyde’ was delivered in UCD by President Higgins. The second Hyde lecture ‘Douglas Hyde’s American Tour 1905–6’ was delivered by Professor Liam Mac Mathúna in UCD in 2019.

In 2016 two additional travelling scholarships in Mathematics were offered to honour Éamon de Valera, the second chancellor of the university who presided over its affairs from his election in 1921 until his death in 1975. In that year also a special Éamon de Valera medal was commissioned and presented to each of the 2016 NUI award winners. 2021 marks the centenary of de Valera’s election as chancellor. A lecture series, ‘DevTalks: towards an assessment of his legacy’, was jointly hosted by the NUI and DIAS.

Two events were held in the National Gallery in 2018. In March, ‘John Redmond and the Irish Party: A centenary symposium’ was a state commemoration to mark 100 years since the death of Redmond. A book based on the symposium is in preparation. In December, in collaboration with Maynooth University, NUI marked the centenary of women’s suffrage with a symposium, ‘Political Voices: The participation of women in Irish public life, 1918–2018’.

Publication is at an advanced stage of the ‘National University of Ireland World War 1 Honour Roll’, an extended reproduction of the original 1919 volume accompanied by a collection of essays, one of which examines the contribution of NUI women to the war effort.

Future events will include a seminar to examine the contribution of Patrick McGilligan who succeeded MacNeill as TD for NUI in 1923. He also served on the NUI Senate. McGilligan was a key player in two of the major developments of the 1920s: the establishment of the ESB and the constitutional developments that led to the Statute of Westminster in 1931.

Given his very strong personal and continuing family connections with NUI, the university felt it particularly appropriate to honour Eoin MacNeill. To mark the centenary of the publication of MacNeill’s ‘The North Began’, HistoryHub.ie, UCD’s public history website, produced an eight-part online series, ‘Eoin MacNeill: Revolutionary and scholar’ beginning on 1 November 2013. In 2016, NUI held a seminar ‘Eoin MacNeill: A reassessment of the scholar revolutionary’. These two programmes combined provided a ready-made framework for a publication that, with the addition of some invited contributions, forms a fresh re-evaluation of MacNeill’s contribution to the shaping of modern Ireland and Irish academia.

This volume commemorates Eoin MacNeill. Indeed, the volume is not so much a reassessment as a rediscovery of MacNeill. As never before we get a fuller picture of his personality, MacNeill the family man, the pride and delight he took in his wife and family and the hardships and dangers his life inflicted on them, the long absences due to various imprisonments, the frequent house moves, the military harassments and, most of all, the personal anguish of the Civil War, which saw his son Brian killed by the soldiers of the government of which he was a member. We get a sense of MacNeill the man, gentle but steely, absent-minded but clear-headed when there was a job to be done, wily in the ways of academic politics, good at getting his way and always with a quiet sense of humour.

The emphasis in this book is, quite rightly, on MacNeill the scholar, for that is, first and foremost, what he was and that was how he saw himself. His scholarship has had its detractors and what this volume seeks to do is to put both his achievements and its critics into a wider context. Some of the criticisms were indeed justified, others not, but the overall conclusion of this volume is just how substantial and innovative the bulk of his work is and how well it has stood the scrutiny of time and of a newer generation of scholars.

MacNeill was a public intellectual long before that phrase came into vogue and he probably would not have approved of it. He was prepared not just to contribute but to lead on the great public issues of the day: education and the university question; nationality and identity; language; and self-government. Revelling in public debate, he was a clever debater and could strike a low blow if he thought it necessary in an era when rough and robust public exchanges were not uncommon. But he was not just a talker, he was prepared to get stuck in and lead, whether as a driving force in the Gaelic League, as the inspirer of the Irish Volunteers, as a gunrunner, as a man with a price on his head, as a man who went to jail, fought elections, served in government at a dangerous time, arrived on the scene shortly after his colleague and friend Kevin O’Higgins was assassinated and ultimately accepted the poisoned chalice that was membership of the Boundary Commission.

He could never be accused of being, in Belloc’s words, ‘a remote and ineffectual don’ or of living in an ivory tower. The accepted wisdom has been that he was not a success as a politician and we can see why this has been so. The two major black marks against him are the countermanding of Pearse’s orders in 1916 and the failure of the Boundary Commission to meet the expectations of nationalist Ireland. It is unlikely that this view will greatly change, but both issues were more complex than first appears. Each is examined in this volume and each helps explain why he did as he did.

It is important to note that in neither case – nor elsewhere over a long career – was MacNeill’s integrity ever questioned, not by his colleagues or his opponents. His judgement was sometimes questioned, but never his honesty or patriotism.

The fact that he felt obliged to resign after the Boundary Commission fiasco was to have very important consequences for Irish historical and legal scholarship. Such was his standing, and the genuine respect there was for him, that he was the only politician who could possibly have persuaded a beleaguered and cash-starved administration – and against the entrenched advice of its civil servants – to establish the Irish Manuscripts Commission. It was an unparalleled deed of foresight which did so much to ameliorate the consequences of the destruction of the Public Record Office at the Four Courts. But not alone did he cause it to be established; he led it for the rest of his life and did his best to protect it against its enemies in the civil service. For this alone, Irish history and those who study it will forever be in his debt.

This volume, so superbly edited by Dr Conor Mulvagh and Dr Emer Purcell, is a hugely important and timely contribution to the scholarly and personal rediscovery of Eoin MacNeill.

MAURICE MANNING,

Chancellor, National University of Ireland,

25 February 2021

Introduction: reassessing Eoin MacNeill

CONOR MULVAGH AND EMER PURCELL

The story of the Irish revolution cannot be told without Eoin MacNeill. From its long gestation through its protracted dénouement to its muffled cadence with the collapse of the Boundary Commission, Eoin MacNeill played a central role in shaping the cultural, political, military and even geographical development of the island of Ireland in the early twentieth century. The present volume provides fresh insights, and applies new methodological approaches, to the life and times of MacNeill. It builds upon, and reacts to, both the small body of work on MacNeill himself and the broader historiographical trends in scholarship on medieval history, the Gaelic Revival, the Irish revolution, and the history of state formation on the island of Ireland. The images on the front cover and flyleaf of this book depict two different MacNeills: one the scholar, clean shaven, posing with his book; the other the bearded man of action, uniformed and armed.¹ This encapsulates the enigmatic, multi-faceted, mercurial MacNeill which this book sets out to understand.

The contributions to the present volume strike a balance between respect and iconoclasm. Our collective endeavour in this centenary volume has been to try to reconceptualise and comprehend a three-dimensional version of MacNeill. We have drawn upon scholars who know him through his academic writing, those who know him as a politician, and even one who knew him as a departed grandfather, a figure who loomed large in the family history. At all times, the written word of MacNeill himself has been to the fore as the contributors collectively re-engaged with his private papers, his scholarly publications, and his journalism.

The other image of MacNeill, which is dominant in the minds of many of the contributors to this volume, is a literal backdrop: the portrait of MacNeill which now hangs in the boardroom of the UCD School of History (see plate 15 in this volume). It is a gigantic, almost life-sized portrait of a seated MacNeill, holding a green hardbound volume in his hand and dressed in his professorial robes. For as long as any of the current staff of the school remember, it has loomed behind seminar speakers, heads of school chairing meetings, and students bravely presenting their work to their professors and peers. In the most literal sense, MacNeill has cast his presence over generations of Irish historians. Beside him is the portrait of another of the founding historians of the National University, Mary Hayden, first Professor of Modern History at the National University. They stand guard over the UCD History department and its visitors, MacNeill given the central place his successors allotted to him while Hayden, in a much smaller portrait, sits to the side, nowadays often occluded by a large presentation screen, a statement, conscious or subconscious, by the successors to these two professors on the relative hierarchy between them and the gender politics of the department since the 1940s. Recently, this imbalance has been greatly redressed by the publication of Joyce Padbury's Mary Hayden: Irish historian and feminist, 1862–1942 (Dublin: Arlen House, 2021).

The complexity and variety of MacNeill’s life has proved a challenge to biographers to date. The definitive biography of MacNeill is Michael Tierney’s posthumously published Eoin MacNeill: Scholar and man of action, 1867–1945 (1980). A shorter biography of MacNeill was published by Tierney during the latter’s lifetime as part of a thirtieth anniversary edition of Eoin MacNeill’s Saint Patrick, which had originally been published in 1934.²

Tierney opens his biography by stating that ‘In Eoin MacNeill three strands of history meet: he came of historic stock, he was a pioneer historian, and he made history’.³ One of the great values of Scholar and man of action is in its frequent and extensive use of quotation from MacNeill’s papers, not only in the provision of evidence but as a means to give the reader a first-hand impression of the subject’s voice and reasoning. It is to Tierney’s credit that he stuck rigorously to the evidence in front of him. It is to his wife Eibhlín’s credit that this evidence was available to her husband. She was cataloguing her father’s papers simultaneous to Tierney’s writing of the biography.⁴

Tierney was cognisant of the fact that he was close to the subject of his work. In opening the book, its editor F.X. Martin absolves its author of any perceived bias, stating that ‘there were sufficient differences between them [MacNeill and Tierney] to make Tierney examine aspects of MacNeill’s life with a fresh eye’.⁵ At its best, Tierney’s biography is written with a keenness to get to the heart of the matters MacNeill was best known for but about which he spoke least. Tierney explains that this curiosity about his father-in-law drove the book: ‘From that year [1923] on I met him and talked with him constantly, and found him unlimited in his interests and inexhaustible in discussion. But though we discussed almost everything, he was reticent about the ordeals he had undergone.’⁶ At its weakest, Tierney’s writings on MacNeill lack sufficient distance and dispassion from their subject and can be seen to have been written defensively, an apologia for a revered father-in-law, colleague, mentor and friend. Tierney justified his writing saying, ‘I hope … to have put in a fairer and more useful perspective the life-work of a remarkable man who has undergone both in life and afterwards a strange and systematic denigration.’⁷

The other indispensable work on the life and work of MacNeill is F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne’s The Scholar Revolutionary: Eoin MacNeill, 1867–1945 (1973).⁸ Scholar Revolutionary stands both as a loose template and a