Tag Archives: IrishCentral

IrishCentral agus Bliain na Gaeilge/IrishCentral and the Year of the Irish Language

De réir cosúlachta, is é Bliain na Gaeilge é 2018. Táthar ag ceiliúradh thús Athbheochan na teanga 125 ó shin. Tá súil agam go n-éireoidh leis an fheachtas seo agus go dtiocfaidh méadú ar líon na gcainteoirí agus ar mheas an phobail ar an teanga agus ar an chultúr s’againne mar gheall air.

Cé gur blag Béarla atá sa bhlag seo, den chuid is mó, bíonn corralt ann sa dá theanga nó i nGaeilge amháin. (2% nó 3% den ábhar, is dócha.) Déanfaidh mé mo dhícheall níos mó Gaeilge a fhoilsiú ar an bhlag seo i mbliana.

Tá IrishCentral i ndiaidh cúpla alt a fhoilsiú ó thús na míosa le tacú le Bliain na Gaeilge. Ar an 4ú lá de Mhí Eanáir, bhí alt darbh ainm 2018 to become the year of the Irish language agus ar an 5ú lá de Mhí Eanáir, d’fhoilsigh siad Favorite Irish phrases for the official year of the Irish language.

Mar is eol daoibh, ní maith liom IrishCentral ar chor ar bith. Sa bhliain 2010, d’fhoilsigh siad alt amaideach le Brendan Patrick Keane atá bunaithe ar shaothar Daniel Cassidy. Is masla uafásach é an t-alt sin don teanga s’againne agus do lucht labhartha na teanga. Cé go bhfuil an t-alt sin agus na bréaga loma atá ann cáinte go mór agus go minic agam ar an bhlag seo, rinne Niall O’Dowd agus an chuid eile de na bómáin ag IrishCentral an post sin a athfhoilsiú arís agus arís eile. Léiríonn sin nach bhfuil meas dá laghad acu ar an Ghaeilge.

Ní hamháin sin, ach ó chuir Niall O’Dowd IrishCentral ar bun sa bhliain 2009, ní dóigh liom gur fhoilsigh IC oiread agus alt amháin i nGaeilge, dírithe ar lucht labhartha na teanga. Tá corrphíosa ann faoin Ghaeilge, corrphíosa dírithe ar fhoghlaimeoirí na teanga. Ach nach bhfuil pobal Gaeilge i measc na nGael i gcéin? Cad chuige nach bhfuil IC ag freastal ar lucht na Gaeilge?

Agus fiú nuair a dhéanann IC píosaí atá dírithe ar an fhoghlaimeoir, bíonn siad amaitéarach go leor. Mar shampla, san alt a foilsíodh ar an 5ú lá den mhí seo, tá an frása “Ní chainteoir líofa mé” ann. “Ní cainteoir líofa mé” an leagan ceart. Is leagan diúltach den chopail é sa chás seo agus ní chuireann sé séimhiú ar an ainmfhocal a leanann é. Mionphointe, b’fhéidir, ach léiríonn sé gur cuma sa tsioc leis na daoine seo faoin Ghaeilge nó faoina lucht labhartha. Níl sa Ghaeilge ar IrishCentral ach cur i gcéill agus béalghrá.


It seems that 2018 is the Year of the Irish Language. It is celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Irish Revival. I hope that this campaign will succeed and that the number of speakers and the Irish people’s respect for our language and culture will grow as a result.

Although this is an English blog for the most part, there are occasional articles in both languages or solely in Irish. (Probably about 2% or 3% of the material.) I will do my utmost to increase the amount of Irish published on the blog this year.

IrishCentral has just published a couple of articles since the start of the year to support Bliain na Gaeilge. On the 4th of January, there was an article called 2018 to become the year of the Irish language and on the 5th of January, they published Favorite Irish phrases for the official year of the Irish language.

As you know, I don’t like IrishCentral at all. In the year 2010, they published a stupid article by Brendan Patrick Keane which is based on the work of Daniel Cassidy. This article is a gross insult to our language and its speakers. Although I have criticised these bare-faced lies often and strongly on this blog, Niall O’Dowd and the other morons at IrishCentral have republished the post again and again. That shows how little respect they have for the Irish language.

That’s not all. Since Niall O’Dowd established IrishCentral in the year 2009, I don’t think that IC has published so much as one article in Irish, aimed at speakers of the language. There are occasional pieces about Irish or aimed at learners of the language. But isn’t there a community of Irish speakers in the Irish diaspora? Why doesn’t IC cater for Irish speakers?

And even when IC do pieces which are aimed at the learner, they are amateurish enough. For example, in the article which was published on the 5th of this month, there is the phrase “Ní chainteoir líofa mé.” (I’m not a fluent speaker.) “Ní cainteoir líofa mé” is the correct version. in this case is a negative version of the copula and it doesn’t lenite the noun which follows it. A minor point, perhaps, but it shows that these people don’t give a shit about the Irish language or its speakers. The Irish on IrishCentral is nothing but tokenism and lip-service.





According to Cassidy, this word, which means a disturbance or trouble, is derived from the Irish word maidhm, which means an outbreak. Sounds plausible enough when you first hear it but let’s examine the evidence carefully. First of all, what does the word maidhm mean?

Maidhm is pronounced  similarly to the English word mime. It is used of something which has been held in and suddenly breaks through. So a maidhm shneachta is a maidhm of snow, an avalanche. A landslide is a maidhm thalún, while a maidhm phortaigh is a distinctly Irish natural disaster, the bogslide.

So, can maidhm be used for riot or civil disturbance? Irish is very rich in words and phrases for disturbances or hubbub. Trioblóid, ciréib, cíor thuathail, cath, ruaille-buaille, rí-rá, fuirse má rabhdaileamMaidhm is not one that would normally be used.  If someone said “Bhí maidhmeanna i mBéal Feirste aréir”, an Irish speaker would take this to mean that there were landslides of some kind in Belfast, not that there were riots.

When maidhm is used about warfare, it has a very specific meaning, namely that your defensive line has broken and that your troops are running away. In other words, it means a rout or catastrophic defeat. This is not at all what the word mayhem means, of course.

And in any case, the word mayhem doesn’t sound much like maidhm and it has an unassailable history in English going back to the 13th century, before any Irish ghettoes appeared in the English-speaking world. It derives from Norman French and is a legal term.  Cassidy mentions the dictionary derivation but obviously prefers his own fantasy version to reality.

As we linguists say, etymology by sound is not sound etymology!

November’s Twit of the Month – James Wilson of IrishCentral



James Wilson wrote an article recently in IrishCentral which irritated me beyond measure. You can find it here: (https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/how-the-irish-became-white-is-a-history-book-that-fails-the-history-test)









Of Irish Slaves and Irish Slang

I have recently had cause to criticise the absurd ‘Irish Slavery Meme’ which has been challenged by a number of historians, most notably Liam Hogan of Limerick. While this may seem like a deviation from the aims of CassidySlangScam, which is primarily about the Irish language and more specifically about the ridiculous fake Irish etymologies produced by the late Daniel Cassidy, there are clear parallels between these two dishonest sets of claims.

In both cases, a meme which is almost entirely rubbish is being circulated virally, often by horrible people with a particular agenda. With Cassidy’s work, many of his supporters are naïve and foolish people who believe they are defending the Irish language when they support Cassidy’s ridiculous made-up rubbish. With the Irish Slavery Meme, many of them are White Supremacists who claim that their ancestors had it worse than African slaves but you won’t find them bitching and moaning and asking for positive discrimination, blah blah blah …

In both cases, the meme is of relatively recent origin. Cassidy’s ludicrous nonsense first started to spread when he published his first articles in 2003. The Irish slavery meme has precursors going back over a hundred years in the work of Thomas Addis Emmett but didn’t go mainstream until  the publication of To Hell or Barbados, a highly inaccurate book written by a journalist (not a historian) and published in 2001. It has never had any currency among genuine historians.

In both cases, there is a core of genuine information surrounded by immense quantities of guff. In both cases, the genuine information is non-controversial and accepted by both sides. In the Cassidy case, there is a handful of derivations which are accepted (shebeen, puss, phoney etc.) by all dictionaries but most of Cassidy’s claims link English expressions to made-up ‘Irish’ phrases. In the Irish Slavery meme, there is no doubt that a certain number of people were essentially kidnapped from Ireland and transported against their will to the colonies (especially for a few years in the 1650s) where they were forced to work as indentured servants for a number of years. The followers of this meme vastly inflate the numbers involved, claim that the indentured servants were slaves or were treated worse than slaves, and that this ‘Irish slave trade’ continued for hundreds of years.

In both cases, we find some of the same names supporting this rubbish: IrishCentral and Niall O’Dowd; Donnacha DeLong; Mike McCormack.

In both cases, the fakeness of most of the evidence presented can easily be established. It’s just that people are either too lazy to go looking for it or unwilling to have their fantasy version of the world challenged by facts.

In both cases, anyone who argues that this meme is fake news and completely untrue is verbally attacked by people who claim that their position is ‘anti-Irish’ or Anglophile, or that they are ‘deniers’, as if denial of lies is a bad thing!

In both cases, this results in the claim that orthodox academia has somehow suppressed the truth about the Irish origins of American slang or the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Irish slaves and that these ‘truths’ should be acknowledged by academics or taught in schools – even though there isn’t a shred of evidence that these things happened.








A Great Article By Liam Hogan

A couple of days ago, Liam Hogan posted a link to a great article of his which comprehensively slams the egregious Niall O’Dowd and his role in spreading the myth of Irish Slavery on IrishCentral:

FYI. The founder of Irish Central attempts to whitewash their influential role in spreading ahistorical “Irish slaves” propaganda https://medium.com/@Limerick1914/niall-odowd-whitewashes-history-by-denying-the-role-irish-central-continue-to-play-spreading-b602522a11f8

Please follow the link! I heartily recommend it to anyone who is interested in the history of our country and especially the way that our history has been misused in the service of various dim-witted ideologies which have little or nothing to do with Irishness.

A Brief Update










Nár laga Dia do lámh, a Mhaitiú!

I notice that the appalling IrishCentral has changed its system of comments. Unfortunately it hasn’t changed its policy with regard to publishing complete crap. Anyway, the comments have disappeared and a note states that the old comments will gradually be restored. Brendan Patrick Keane’s ridiculous article on Cassidy’s ‘research’ has only one comment at present, a newly-added comment from Maitiú Ó Coimín, who says simply that “Cassidy was a fraud and his book is nonsense.” You took the words right out of my mouth, Maitiú!  Once again, it is members of the Irish-speaking community who are stepping up to the plate to defend our beautiful language against Cassidy’s lies.

Tugaim faoi deara go bhfuil an tobar caca sin IrishCentral i ndiaidh a chóras tuairimí a athrú. Ar an drochuair, níor athraigh sé a bheartas maidir le cacamas lom a fhoilsiú. Cibé, tá na tuairimí a bhí ann ar shiúl anois agus deir nóta go gcuirfear ar ais iad de réir a chéile. Níl ach an t-aon tuairim le léamh faoi bhun an ailt áiféisigh a scríobh Brendan Patrick Keane ar ‘thaighde’ Cassidy, tuairim le Maitiú Ó Coimín a cuireadh ann ó rinneadh na hathruithe. Ní deir Maitiú ach an méid seo: “Cassidy was a fraud and his book is nonsense.” (Ba chaimiléir é Cassidy agus is raiméis a leabhar.)  Maith thú, a Mhaitiú! Mar a déarfadh mo bhéal féin é! Arís eile, is baill de phobal na Gaeilge atá ag seasamh an fhóid leis an teanga álainn s’againne a chosaint ar bhréaga Cassidy.

More on Niall O’Dowd …






He reiterates the same point later on in the same article.












Niall O’Dowd Answers Critics!

A couple of days ago, Niall O’Dowd published a reply to those academics who put their name to Liam Hogan’s open letter criticising him for an article on IrishCentral which supports the idea that the seventeenth-century Irish were victims of enslavement and pointing out that the word slave is an emotive one with a specific meaning. You can find the reply here: http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/niallodowd/why-the-irish-were-both-slaves-and-indentured-servants-in-colonial-america These Irish people were indentured servants or bonded labourers. Their plight was bad, the circumstances of their kidnap and deportation distressing. But Liam Hogan and others are at pains to point out that they were not chattel slaves the way generations of African-Americans were.

O’Dowd pretty much admits this and claims to deplore the way that the slave label has been used by right-wing groups to play down the legacy of slavery among African Americans.

The controversy has arisen because some far-right groups have claimed that the experience of Irish slaves was interchangeable with (or even in some cases worse than) the experience of black slaves, and have used that as justification for an array of abhorrent racist statements and ideas.

O’Dowd’s answer to his critics is every bit as feeble and incompetent as I would have expected. He mentions a well-known court case where a couple of young men, who were abducted by soldiers and shipped to the Americas against their will from the East Cork area, were effectively sued by their master for a breach of a contract to which they had never consented. To quote O’Dowd:

If we accept that a slave is someone “who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them,” as does the Oxford Dictionary, then I say let’s call it what it was according to those who lived and reported it: slavery AND indentured servitude.


Let’s take a  look at this one case of the Irish experience in the 17th Century in Massachusetts which certainly looked an awful lot like slavery to me.

That the boys were abducted by British soldiers at the end of the Cromwellian Wars is not in doubt. That this was about money and profit is also well known. That it was inhumane and wrong is also obvious. All the actions of the English in overrunning areas of Ireland which had previously been under native control and oppressing and exploiting the people of Ireland in the seventeenth century were immoral. Of course they were!

But we need to be careful about definitions, or we play into the hands of the racists who will claim that the Irish and the African experience are equivalent. In both the court case and the article below, the boys are referred to as slaves. (See the comment below from Liam Hogan. Apparently they were not referred to as slaves in the original document – this is a modern addition.) But when we look at the circumstances, it looks a lot less like chattel slavery as known among African Americans.

Here’s how the court case between William Downing and Philip Welch and their master Mr Symonds came about:


William Downing concurred that they had worked for free long enough and both boys reiterated their demands to Samuel Symonds. They knew of other stolen Irish children sent to Barbados who had been released from slavery after just four years. “If you will free us,” said Philip, “and pay us as other men we will plant your corn and mend your fences but we will not work with you upon the same terms as before.”

When one of the servant girls chastised the lads for troubling their master, Mrs. Symonds was heard to say, “let them alone; now they are speaking let them speak their own minds.” Samuel Symonds was not as tolerant of their protests as his wife. “You must work for me still, unless you run away,” he said, leaving no room for further discussion.

The following morning a constable arrived to arrest the boys. Philip Welch softened slightly at the prospect of incarceration and agreed to serve out his time if his master would promise to give him as good a portion of food as any of his children. Even the constable encouraged Symonds to reconsider his strict stance, but the master wouldn’t budge an inch. He filed charges against both slaves and held his ground.

I don’t know about you, but I would have thought that if any black slaves quibbled about their conditions, they would have been flogged to within an inch of their lives. Another point worth considering is that the boys lost the case and were returned to their servitude and O’Dowd leaves it at that. But that isn’t the end of the story. At least two of the four Irish boys mentioned in the case, Phillip Welch the defendant and John Downing, a witness, survived, married and had free children as free men in New England. Their descendants didn’t have to wait until the 19th century to own themselves, and they didn’t have to wait until the 1960s before they were allowed to register to vote. The point is, the very fact that there was a court case at all shows that this was different from chattel slavery. And did you notice the comment about Barbados? The kidnapped children there were apparently released after four years. Nobody disputes that these abductions were disgusting. But the servitude of the Irish exiles was time-limited. And we have to remember that most indentured servants in the colonies were voluntary. They signed up to it of their own volition and the majority of them weren’t Irish.

So, why is Niall O’Dowd sticking to his guns and refusing to back down? Well, I’m still waiting for an apology or retraction for his promotion of Cassidy’s insane book after two years. I personally don’t believe that O’Dowd has the decency to apologise. I believe that because that’s my experience of his behaviour. He’ll keep on splitting hairs and distorting the truth and dissembling, because being Niall O’Dowd means never having to say you got it wrong – even if everybody else can see you got it wrong.

Anyway, I look forward to reading Liam Hogan’s reply to O’Dowd! Hogan is a competent, intelligent man and a genuine historian and I’m sure he’ll make mincemeat out of him …