Scriptural Instruction in the Vernacular: The Irish Society and Its Teachers, 1818-1827 Pádraig de Brún

This is a revised and augmented version of work originally published in seven parts in Eigse A Journal of Irish Studies between 1983 and 1993.This book researches the activities of the early nineteenth-century evangelical organisation known as The Irish Society for the Promotion of the Education of the Native Irish through the Medium of their own Language (1818-27). The Irish Society was founded with the object of enabling illiterate Irish speakers to read the Scriptures in their own tongue and of proving them with the means to obtain a a knowledge of English in the process. The author has assembled an annotated list of some 750 Bible teachers recruited by the Society to teach the Scriptures to their neighbours, young and old, in their native language, thereby furthering the Society's proselytising policies."