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Abstract
This essay investigates the development of the boys’ magazine, Our Boys, and how this became a powerful auxiliary to the Christian Brothers’ work in schools. It championed the values that the Christian Brothers had propagated since their foundation in 1802. Often characterised as Celtic and Romantic, it was neither, but aimed at promoting Catholic values to a global audience, in schools across the English-speaking world. Within the fledgling Irish State, however, it had a special role in fostering the Irish, Catholic values, which the founders of the state hoped would distinguish it from the old British regime. Yet, while Our Boys appeared triumphalist, in reality it was rooted in a chronic fear that those values would be rejected by the youth.
Declaration of interest
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 C. S. Andrews, Dublin Made Me (Cork, 1979), 74.
2 The classic study of the genre is Patrick A. Dunae, ‘Boys’ Literature and the Idea of Empire, 1870–1914’, Victorian Studies 24, no. 1 (Autumn, 1980): 105–21. See also Kirsten Drotner, English Children and their Magazines (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Joseph McAteer, Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain 1914–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
3 Jubilee Editorial, Our Boys, September 14, 1939.
4 Fr J. S. Sheehy CM, ‘The Need for an Irish Boys Paper’, in The College Chronicle, Castleknock, 2, no. 24 (June, 1909). cited in Ciarán O’Neill, ‘The Irish Schoolboy Novel’, in Eire-Ireland 44 (Spring/Summer 2009): 151.
5 [Michael O’Donovan] Frank O’Connor, An Only Child (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1993), 155; Janette Condon, ‘“A Quaking Sod”: Ireland, Empire and Children’s Literary Culture’, in New Voices in Irish Criticism, ed. P. J. Matthews (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 190.
6 Owen Dudley Edwards, cited in Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ancestral Voices: Religion and Nationalism in Ireland (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1994), 97.
7 P. J. H[ennessy]., ‘A Boys’ Paper’, in Christian Brothers Education Record (hereafter CBER) (Dublin, 1913), 47–51.
8 Ibid.
9 These figures are derived from J. D. Fitzpatrick, Edmund Rice (Dublin: M. H. Gill, 1945), 349.
10 P.J.H., ‘A Boys Paper’, 47–51.
11 Fintan O’Toole, The Ex-ile of Erin (Dublin: New Island Books, 1997), 83.
12 For this contrast, see Patrick O’Sullivan, ‘On First Looking into Mercier’s The Irish Comic Tradition’, New Hibernia Review 8, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 153.
13 Editorial, Our Boys, September 14, 1939.
14 P.J.H., ‘Our Boys’, CBER (1915).
15 Ibid.
16 John Coolahan, Irish Education: History and Structure (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1981), 46; Tony Fahey, ‘State, Family and Compulsory Schooling in Ireland’, Economic and Social Review 23, no. 4 (July, 1992): 375–8.
17 David Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003), 100.
18 Daire Keogh, Edmund Rice and the First Christian Brothers (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008), 110–36.
19 Cruise O’Brien, Ancestral Voices, 97; Elizabeth Russell, ‘Holy Crosses, Guns and Roses; Themes in Popular Reading Material’, in Ireland in the 1930s, ed. Joost Augusteijn (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999), 25; B. M. Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland: The Christian Brothers and the Development of Irish Nationalism 1838–1921 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988), 125–8.
20 Our Boys, December 1943.
21 Kitty the Hare stories were published in Ireland’s Own in a further illustration of the extent to which Our Boys transcended the Boys Own genre.
22 O’Toole, The Ex-ile of Erin, 83; Russell, ‘Holy Crosses, Guns and Roses’, 25.
23 Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland, 27.
24 Ben Novick, ‘Propaganda I: Advanced Nationalist Propaganda and Moralistic Revolution 1914–18’, in The Irish Revolution, 1913–23, ed. Joost Augusteijn (London: Palgrave, 2002), 47.
25 Alvin Jackson, Ireland: 1798–1998 (Oxford: : John Wiley, 1999), 250.
26 Br J. C. Whitty, Marino, to Br P. J. Ryan, New Rochelle, October 27, 1916, CBGA, 170/1932.
27 P.J.H., ‘Our Boys’.
28 ‘Michael Xavier Weston’, CBER (Dublin, 1934–35), 385.
29 Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland, 254; Cruise O’Brien, Ancestral Voices, 96; Our Boys, September 1921.
30 Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party 1916–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 193.
31 Denis McLaughlin, ‘The Irish Christian Brothers and the National Board of Education: Challenging the Myths’, History of Education 37, no. 1 (2008): 43–70.
32 Aine Hyland, ‘The Recognition of the Christian Brothers Schools as National Schools 1924–25’, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (Dublin, 1979), 257.
33 Brian Titley, Church, State and the Control of Schooling in Ireland 1900–1944 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press, 1983), 115.
34 See Gavin M. Foster, The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class and Conflict (London, 2015).
35 Anthony Keating, ‘Church, State and Sexual Crime against Children in Ireland after 1922’, Radharc: a Journal of Irish and Irish American Studies 5–7 (2004–06): 163.
36 W. T. Cosgrave, Edmund Rice Centenary Address, Mansion House Dublin, May 26, 1944, ibid., 25.
37 Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838) to John Foster, March 1, 1805, cited in Timothy Corcoran, ed., Education Systems in Ireland (Dublin: University College, 1928), 104–5; Our Boys, January 1943.
38 ‘Canice Craven’, CBER (Dublin, 1930), 451–2.
39 Our Boys, April 1923.
40 Peter Martin, Censorship in the Two Irelands 1922–1939 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006).
41 Kevin O’Higgins to Army Inquiry Committee, May 12, 1924, Mulcahy Papers UCD Archives PT/C/21 cited in P. Murray, The Roman Catholic Church and Irish Politics, 1922–37 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2000), 109.
42 Dáil Debates, vol. 3, col. 762, May 10, 1923.
43 Martin, Censorship in the Two Irelands, 228; Catholic Bulletin, March 1927, 233. See Brian Murphy, ‘J. J. O’Kelly, the Catholic Bulletin and Contemporary Irish Cultural Historians’, Archivium Hibernicum 44 (1989): 71–88.
44 Our Boys, December 9, 1929.
45 Jack Yeats had earlier published the carol, Broadside No. 7 (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1909); Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, ‘The Erotics of the Ballad’, in Tumult of Images: Essays on W. B. Yeats and Politics, ed. Peter Liebregts and Peter Van de Kamp (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 119–20; Michael Adams, Censorship: The Irish experience (Dublin, 1968), 204, fn29; Tom Quinlan, ‘Ferreting out Evil: The Records of the Committee on Evil Literature’, Irish Archives Journal 2, no. 2 (Autumn, 1995), 49–56.
46 Martin, Censorship in the Two Irelands, 59.
47 Adams, Censorship, 48; Martin, Censorship in the Two Irelands.
48 CBER (Dublin, 1930), 453.
49 Irish Independent, December 21, 1929; Irish Catholic, December 28, 1929.
50 Michael Browne, cited in Diarmaid Ferriter, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (London: Profile, 2009), 140; John Horgan, ‘Saving us from Ourselves: Contraception, Censorship and the “Evil Literature” Controversy’, Irish Communications Review 5 (1995): 61–7.
51 Our Boys, January 7, 1937.
52 Benedict Kiely, All the Way to Bantry Bay (London: Gollancz, 1978), 170–1.
53 Susan Cannon Harris, Gender and Modern Irish Drama (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), cited in Sarah McKibben, ‘The Poor Mouth: A Parody of (Post) Colonial Irish Manhood’, Research in African Literature 34, no. 4, (Winter 2003): 101.
54 Hugh Kearney, ‘Visions and Revisions: Views of Irish History’, Irish Review 27 (2001): 114.
55 Our Boys, January 1937; A. Kelly, Compulsory Irish, Language and Education in Ireland 1870–1970 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2002), 88–92.
56 Our Boys, September 14, 1939.
57 Visitation Report, North Brunswick Street, 1943, Christian Brothers General Archive, Rome, 100/1153.
58 Ibid.
59 Our Boys, April 11, 1930.
60 Our Boys, December 9, 1929.
61 Jack Cox, Take a Cold Tub Sir! The Story of the Boy’s Own Paper (London: Lutterworth, 1982), 107.
62 J. Matthew Feheney, Gentlemen of the Presentation (Dublin: Veritas, 1999), 89.
63 John F. Kenny, Fortifying Youth, 2nd ed. (Dublin: Cahill, 1946), vi.
64 [M. P. Riordan, T. J. Hearn, J. B. Duggan], A Manual of School Government; being a complete analysis of the system of education pursued in the Christian Schools. Designed chiefly for the junior members of the society (Dublin, 1845).
65 Pius XI, Studiourm Ducem (1923); idem, Divini Illius Magistri (1929).
66 ‘Notes on New Books’, Irish Monthly 55, no. 651 (1927): 501–3.
67 Our Boys, April 1945.
68 R. W. Maslen, ‘Flann O’Brien’s Bombshells: At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman’, New Hibernia Review 10, no. 49 (Winter, 2006): 84–104.
69 Finnane, ‘The Carrigan Committee’, 523–5; ‘Canice Craven’, CBER (Dublin, 1930), 451–2; Our Boys, November 1941.
70 Joseph Nugent, ‘The Sword and the Prayer Book: Ideals of Authentic Irish Manliness’, Victorian Studies 50, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 589.
71 Our Boys, October 24, 1940.
72 Fortifying Youth, 212.
73 Fortifying Youth, 231.
74 Our Boys, October 1952.
75 Our Boys, October 1935.
76 Our Boys, March 4, 1937.
77 Our Boys, May 1936; ibid., January 1937.
78 Irish Independent, August 6, 1936; Fearghal McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999).
79 Our Boys, March 1937.
80 Fearghal McGarry, ‘Irish Newspapers and the Spanish Civil War’, Irish Historical Studies xxxiii, no. 129 (May 2002): 83.
81 Our Boys, January 1937; Mary Vincent, ‘The Martyrs and the Saints: Masculinity and the Construction of the Francoist Crusade’, History Workshop Journal, no. 47 (Spring, 1999): 68–98.
82 Our Boys, October 14, 1937; ibid., February 2, 1939.
83 Fearghal McGarry, ‘Ireland and the Spanish Civil War’, History Ireland (Autumn 2001): 37.
84 Our Boys, September 26, 1935.
85 ‘The Men of Tomorrow’, Our Boys, November 1948.
86 Our Boys, October 1940.
87 Our Boys, January 1945, October 10, 1935, November 1941; October 1940.
88 Our Boys, March 30, 1939; February 1942.
89 Our Boys, October 1, 1931.
90 Ibid.
91 Patrick McDevitt, ‘Muscular Catholicism: Nationalism, Masculinity and Gaelic Team Sports, 1884–1916’, in Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History, ed. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 209.
92 Our Boys, February 1937.
93 McDevitt, ‘Muscular Catholicism’, 207.
94 Our Boys, February 1937.
95 [A Christian Brother], Treatise on Modern Geography (Dublin, 1875), 89.
96 James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Dublin, 1972), 71; Patrick. J. Ledden, ‘Education and Social Class in Joyce’s Dublin’, Journal of Modern Literature 22, no. 2 (Winter, 1998–99): 329–36; see Ciaran O’Neill, Catholics of Consequence: Transnational Education, Social Mobility, and the Irish Catholic Elite 1850–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
97 [M. B. Duggan], Christian Politeness (Dublin: Powell, n.d. [1859]).
98 Br William Swan], Christian Politeness and Counsels for Youth (Dublin: M. H. Gill, 1912); [Br Christopher Martin Devlin and John Vincent Horan], Courtesy for Boys and Girls (Dublin: M. H. Gill, 1962).
99 Christian Politeness (Dublin, 1946), 8; Aodh de Blacan, ‘A Short History of Snobbery’, Irish Monthly 68, no. 809 (Nov. 1940): 629. Similar criticisms of this ‘fatal ambivalence’ were made more recently by O’Toole, The Ex-Isle of Erin, 73–88.
100 Mr and Mrs Hall, Ireland its Scenery and Character (London: How & Parsons, 1841), i, 306.
101 [Br William Swan], Christian Politeness and Counsels for Youth, 20th ed. (Dublin: Gill & Son, 1946), 43.
102 Kenny, Fortifying Youth, iii.
103 Our Boys, February 20, 1930.
104 Our Boys, April 15, 1930; ibid., February 20, 1930.
105 Tony Farmer, Ordinary Lives: Three Generations of Irish Middle-Class Experience, 1907, 1932, 1963 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1991).
106 Our Boys, October 1943; ibid., March 6, 1930.
107 Our Boys, April 1936; Kelly Boyd, Manliness and the Boys’ Story Paper in Britain: A Cultural History, 1855–1940 (New York: Palgrave, 2003); Julia Grant, ‘A “Real Boy” and not a Sissy: Gender, Childhood and Masculinity 1890–1940’, Journal of Social History 37, no. 4 (Summer, 2004): 829–51.
108 McKibben, ‘The Poor Mouth’, 101; McDevitt, ‘Muscular Catholicism’, 200–19.
109 Our Boys, December 1948.
110 Our Boys, November 7, 1935.
111 Our Boys, February 1936.
112 Ibid.
113 Our Boys, March 1936.
114 Our Boys, February 20, 1930; ibid., March 1949.
115 Dr Michael Browne, November 1932, cited in Mark Finnane, ‘The Carrigan Committee of 1930–31 and the ‘Moral Condition’ of the Saorstát’, Irish Historical Studies xxxii, no. 128 (November 2001): 527.
116 Kevin Rockett, Irish Film Censorship: A Cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), 19.
117 OB, October 1943, 7.
118 Declan Kiberd, Irish Classics (London: Granta, 2000), 513.
119 Our Boys, November 1936; ibid, August 1945.
120 Our Boys, November 7, 1935; ibid., March 26, 1936.
121 Our Boys, August 21, 1930.
122 Our Boys, January 21, 1937: James Plunkett, ‘A Great Occasion’, Sewanee Review 84, no. 1 (Winter, 1976): 23.
123 Visitation Report, North Brunswick Street, 1941, CBGA, Rome, 100/1153; L. M. Cullen, Eason and Son: A History (Dublin: Eason & Son, 1989), 358.
124 Our Boys, January 5, 1938.
125 T. A. O’Donoghue, ‘Catholic Influence and the Secondary School Curriculum in Ireland 1922–62’, in The Routledge Reader in History of Education, ed. Gary McCulloch (Oxford: Routledge, 2005), 180.