Bolg an Tsolair : Or, Gaelic Magazine

This is two books in one. Book One comprises a "Gaelic Magazine, Bolg an Tsolair", published by the United Irishmen in 1795.

Only one issue was produced. The Editor was Patrick Lynch, who taught Irish to Thomas Russell and other Belfast reformers.

He put together an interesting magazine. Apart from an Irish Grammer, there are some Dialogues, in Irish and English, more rooted in the life of the country that such texts usually are.

To fill out the magazine, Lynch included some Gaelic poetry which had been collected and translated by Charlotte Brooke.

Again these appear in Irish and English. Book Two offers a biographical profile of Patrick Lynch and Charlotte Brooke, who in their different ways represented two aspects of Ireland as it then was. (Charlotte Brooke's family were cousins to the Brookes of Brookeborough).

As there is little information about Charlotte, the authors have reconstructed her world, the two guiding stars of which are Henry Brooke, the litterateur, and William Law, a writer of theological/philosophical works as well as devotional ones which were fundamentally at variance with the tendency of English Christianity. The combination of these very different influences served to produce a very unusual lady who become absorbed by the Gaelic culture.