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Masculinity and Identity in Irish
Literature

This book addresses Irish identity in Irish literature, especially masculinity

in some of its forms through an interdisciplinary methodology. The study
of language performance through literary analysis and corpus studies
will enable readers to approach literary texts from both quantitative and
qualitative perspectives, to take advantage of the texts’ full potential as
well as examining these same texts through the perspective of gender
identity. This will be carried out through a specialised corpus composed
of 18 novels written by twentieth- and twenty-first-century male Irish
authors. Thus, the language and behaviour patterns of contemporary Irish
masculinity can be found as part of these male characters’ performance of
identity.
This book is primarily aimed at undergraduate and graduate students
who wish to introduce themselves in the study of gender and identity
in an Irish context as well as researchers looking for interdisciplinary
methodologies of study. What is more, it can present researchers with
varied options of analysis that corpus studies have not yet touched upon
so thoroughly such as masculinity and Irish literature. As a monograph
meant to show analysts new fields of study in Irish literature, this book will
sell to academic libraries and can be used in MA courses.

Cassandra S. Tully de Lope is currently researching while working as a

civil servant teaching in an Educational Centre for Adults in Extremadura
(Spain). Formerly, she worked as an Associate Lecturer at the University
of Extremadura where she received her PhD with cum laude distinction in
Contemporary Irish Literature and Masculinity in 2022.
Routledge Studies in Irish Literature
Editor: Eugene O’Brien, Mary Immaculate College,
University of Limerick, Ireland

Feminist Discourse in Irish Literature

Gender and Power in Louise O’Neill’s Young Adult Fiction
Jennifer Mooney
James Joyce’s Mandala
Colm O’Shea
The Irish Short Story at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century
Tradition, Society and Modernity
Madalina Armie
Seamus Heaney’s American Odyssey
Edward J. O’Shea
Seamus Heaney’s Mythmaking
Edited by Ian Hickey and Ellen Howley
Irish Theatre
Interrogating Intersecting Inequalities
Eamonn Jordan
Reading Paul Howard
The Art of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
Eugene O’Brien
Wallace Stevens and the Contemporary Irish Novel
Order, Form, and Creative Un-Doing
Ian Tan
The Art of Translation in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry
Toward Heaven
Edward T. Duffy
Masculinity and Identity in Irish Literature
Heroes, Lads, and Fathers
Cassandra S. Tully de Lope

For more information about this series, please visit: www​.routledge​.com​/Routledge​-Studies​

-in​-Irish​-Literature​/book​-series​/RSIL
Masculinity and Identity
in Irish Literature
Heroes, Lads, and Fathers

Cassandra S. Tully de Lope

First published 2024
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2024 Cassandra S. Tully de Lope
The right of Cassandra S. Tully de Lope to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-032-39319-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-39320-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-34918-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003349181
Typeset in Sabon
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
To David.
Contents

List of figures x
List of tables xi
Acknowledgementsxii

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Preliminary considerations 1
1.2 Using corpus studies in the analysis of literary texts 3
1.3 “Identity” as a multifaceted concept 4
1.4 Terminology 6
1.5 Organisation of this book 9
References 10

2 Irish identity, language, and masculinity 12

2.1 Introduction 12
2.2 Language as a gendered performance 13
2.3 Language in fiction 15
2.3.1 Irish English in fiction 17
2.4 Irish masculinity 18
2.4.1 Heroes, lads, father figures, and other models
of masculinity in Ireland 20
2.4.2 Irish masculinity in fiction 26
2.5 Conclusion 29
References 30

3 Interdisciplinary methodologies for literary studies 35

3.1 Introduction: Corpus linguistics and digital
humanities 35
3.2 Corpus stylistics 36
3.3 Merging discourse analysis and corpus studies 38


viii Contents

3.4 Corpus-based vs corpus-driven 40
3.5 Characterisation 42
3.6 The case of terms of address, speech acts, and body
language 43
3.7 Conclusion 46
References 47

4 The Corpus of Male Irish Writers 51

4.1 Introduction: Preliminary questions when building a
corpus 51
4.2 The creation of a corpus 52
4.3 The Corpus of Male Irish Writers (CMIW) 54
4.4 A brief insight into the novels of the CMIW 56
4.4.1 Characters against the world 57
4.4.2 Characters against each other 61
4.5 Conclusion 66
References 67

5 Introduction to corpus analysis and initial results 69

5.1 Brief insight into Sketch Engine’s interface 69
5.1.1 Wordlists and keywords 70
5.1.2 N-grams 72
5.1.3 Word sketches 74
5.1.4 Concordance: basic and advanced (CQL) 77
5.2 Initial results 80
5.2.1 Word sketches of hero, man, and lad 80
5.2.2 Collocates of like a man 82
5.3 Conclusion 84
References 84

6 Male vocatives and male hierarchy 87

6.1 Terms of address and functions of vocatives 87
6.2 Proper names (Mr Bell) 92
6.3 Nicknames (Charlie boy, wee Francy) 93
6.4 Male nouns (Father, Dad, Da) 95
6.5 Insults amongst male characters 97
6.6 Endearments 98
6.7 Conclusion 99
References 100
 Contents  ix

7 Adverbs and verbs of speech to imply domination 101

7.1 Taxonomy of verbs of speech 101
7.1.1 The dominance model 103
7.2 Queries carried out regarding verbs of speech 106
7.3 He + verbs of speech + adverb: He said
aggressively 108
7.4 I + verb of speech + adverb: I said faintly 118
7.5 You + verb of speech + adverb: You smiled cruelly 126
7.6 Proper names + verb of speech + adverb: Ruttledge said
quietly 130
7.7 Conclusion 141
References 142

8 Body language, hypermasculinity, and other models of

masculinity144
8.1 Introduction: Body language and masculinity 144
8.2 Verbs of movement 145
8.3 Parts of the body and masculinity 150
8.3.1 Eye(s) 151
8.3.2 Hand(s) 152
8.3.3 Shoulder 154
8.3.4 Arm(s) 155
8.3.5 Head 157
8.4 Conclusion 158
References 159

9 Conclusion 161
9.1 The research in this book 161
9.2 Contribution to the field of literary and linguistic
research 162
9.3 Indexicality and Irish masculinities 163
9.4 Concluding remarks and future lines of
investigation 164
Reference 165

Index167
Figures

5.1 Display of N-grams containing man in the corpus 74

5.2 Dual display of Word sketch of man 76
5.3 Display of concordance lines of query: [word= “he”]
[lemma= “say”] [ tag= “RB.?”] 79
5.4 Word Sketch Differences of man and hero, and man and lad 81
5.5 N-grams of like a …83
6.1 Occurrences of vocatives in the corpus 89
6.2 Subdivisions of vocatives in the corpus 90
7.1 Division in categories of He + VoS 110
7.2 Division in categories of I + VoS 120
7.3 Division in categories of You + VoS 127
7.4 Division in categories of proper names + VoS 132
8.1 Division in categories of body language in the corpus 148


Tables

4.1 Specifications of the Corpus of Male Irish Writers and its

subcorpus 55
5.1 Display of wordlists of verbs and their absolute frequency in
the Corpus of Male Irish Writers 71
7.1 Model of gender dominance for verbs of speech 103
7.2 Pronoun “he” plus adverbs per verb of speech 115
7.3 Pronoun “I” plus adverbs per verb of speech 123
7.4 Pronoun “you” plus adverbs per verb of speech 129
7.5 Subjects with “proper names” plus adverbs per verb of speech 137
8.1 Verbs related to body language 147
8.2 N-grams of eye(s) 152
8.3 N-grams of hand(s) 153
8.4 N-grams of shoulder(s) 154
8.5 N-grams of arm(s) 156
8.6 N-grams of head 157


Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the authors and publishers who gave me access to the
novels in online format and granted their permission to add their novels
to the Corpus of Male Irish Writers: John McGahern’s publisher Florence
Rees, Paul Murray, Roddy Doyle, Keith Ridgway, and Dermot Bolger. I
will forever be an admirer of your work.
Heartfelt thanks to Professor Carolina Amador-Moreno, who super-
vised an early version of this project during my PhD years. You will always
be a source of motivation, support, and wonder, and I am very lucky to be
able to call you my friend and colleague. I also wish to extend my thanks to
other members of the Department of English Philology from the University
of Extremadura for always providing a helping hand and helping me grow
academically and personally.
I would also like to thank my parents Olimpia and Terence, my sisters
Olimpia Siobhan and María del Mar, and my grandparents Pedro and
Mercedes for their support and encouragement. Gracias de todo corazón.
Lastly, there are not enough words of appreciation for my husband, David:
Thank you for your unconditional support, help, and love. You are my
inspiration and a chuisle mo chroí.


1 Introduction

1.1 Preliminary considerations
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed in Ireland a
revival of Irish tradition and culture that enhanced an Irish identity that
actively resisted that of the English political, cultural, and social establish-
ment: The Celt warrior and hero. However, in Paul Murray’s 2003 novel
An Evening of Long Goodbyes, the hero is no longer a man but a dog:

“They must have dumped it,” Frank said, coming over.

“Dumped it? Don’t be absurd. How could they have dumped it?
Why, that dog’s a hero – a hero!”

“Don’t think it’s goin [sic] to win many more races, though, Charlie.”
He was right. The dog’s flanks were streaked with blood. One of his
legs was badly chewed, and his eyes and snout bore the gouge-marks
of Celtic Tiger’s teeth.
(Murray, 2011/2003, pp. 407–408)

The greyhound seems to have been both literally and symbolically bitten
by the Celtic Tiger, a moment of economic boom in Ireland from the mid-
1990s that resulted in recession in the 2000s. That is, a dog considered
to be a hero, signifies the last remnants of an Irish effort during the twen-
tieth century to maintain an ideal of masculinity based on a crafted, and
therefore, artificial, traditional Irish image of men as heroes and warriors,
which, in turn, reflects upon the depiction and staging of other masculine
ideals such as the father or the son. Irish masculinity seems to be described
in terms of the traditional values surrounding the father figure of a conven-
tional household: Breadwinner, land worker, husband; and the image of
the son has been represented as a rebellion against older generations, only
to become a traditional father once they enter parenthood.
Studies on Irish masculinity seem to have overlooked the cultural and
traditional burden that is Irish mythology in contemporary masculinities.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003349181-1
2 Introduction

Heroes like Cúchulainn, Ossian, or Brian Boru are learned and ingrained
in everyday life: From the idolisation of young Irish men’s sacrifice during
the independence years to the explicit iconicity in the myth of Cúchulainn
and all its representations – like the statue in the General Post Office
(Valente, 2011, p. 142), plays, films, and even a rollercoaster in Emerald
Park (Co. Meath) which is advertised as the largest wooden rollercoaster
of Europe and asks its visitors: “Are you brave enough to join Cú Chulainn
on his warrior’s quest?” (“The Cú Chulainn Coaster”) – could indicate a
growing emotional complexity and a representation of heroism and mas-
culine ideals that have evolved to accommodate the changing roles of
these past decades (Mahony, 1998, p. 18). Irish masculinity, perhaps as
a way of contesting English rule and as a way of creating a new identity,
was defined during the early twentieth century with a strong and manly
persona that is obsessed with heroes. Twentieth-century literature por-
trayed Irish masculinity in constant struggle to fulfil the role of the father,
the hero, and the perfect son through the representation of an idealised
rural Ireland and a faithful soldier who is willing to die for one’s coun-
try. Nevertheless, it is very early on when the ideals that are being mar-
keted seem to fail the recipients of this heroic masculinity. Authors like J.
M. Synge in his demythologisation of the countryside or Seán O’Casey in
his portrayal of urban discontentment show the opposite of a heroic and
mythical Ireland. The honour, strength, and charisma proper of mytho-
logical heroes that early-twentieth-century writers wanted to depict and
convince the Irish population with are debunked in the representation of
Irish masculinities throughout the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.
Irish identity in fiction struggles with the achievement of a certain type of
masculinity that does not seem to come naturally to any of them. Faraway
now is the heroic image of Irish warriors to present male characters who,
instead, might seem to go in the opposite direction by rejecting any hero-
ism. W. B. Yeats, in his nationalistic efforts during the Literary Revival of
the early twentieth century, presented a Cúchulainn who was a warrior
and a hero, although not in any magical terms. Yeats provided the com-
mon Irish man with a more human image of a mythological hero who,
instead of becoming more approachable and achievable by ordinary men,
set the bar in a middle realm between fantasy and reality. What could have
been a reconciliation of Irish masculinity with the ideals that this literary
and social movement paraded became, in turn, a yoke of expectations that
could not be fulfilled.
This book, thus, focuses on that unfulfilment that twentieth- and
twenty-first-century male characters in novels written by Irish authors
may feel. During these centuries there has been a surge of both female
and male Irish writers who have depicted the social struggle of finding
one’s identity in and outside of Ireland: For instance the construction of
Irishness through the characters’ response to the colonial experience in
 Introduction 3

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s novels (Nash, 1993; Lojo Rodríguez, 2018), the demy-
thologisation of returning home in migrant narratives in Dermot Bolger’s
fiction (Pine, 2011), or the questioning of political identities in the repre-
sentation of Irish Catholic Unionism in Sebastian Barry’s novels (ibid.);
however, masculinity in fiction, as seen by male writers, has certainly been
neglected. This book lies within the remit of the influence Irish mythol-
ogy and the creation of a Celtic identity has on both the male writer and
the male character. What is more, the focal point with which to study the
performance of masculinity carried out by male characters in a selection
of novels is that of language. At the same time, the male characters’ iden-
tities and their performance of language is studied and analysed through
the blending of different methodologies in order to widen the scope of the
research. Hence, through the analysis of literature by using a more quanti-
tative methodology as is corpus stylistics, language and behaviour patterns
of contemporary Irish masculinity could be found. The interdisciplinary
standpoint that this book provides will allow the study to present results
that would have been limited had this research only been carried out with
one or the other methodology. Furthermore, by selecting novels written by
Irish men, the portrayal of male characters can be purer in the sense that
they might reflect in the novels personal feelings known to them as men
under the construction of a hegemonic masculinity passed down on from
generation to generation. More on this will be dealt with in the following
section on corpus studies and the analysis of literary texts.

1.2 Using corpus studies in the analysis of literary texts

A “corpus” can be defined as a collection of texts with the purpose of ana-
lysing them. At first instance, corpus studies try to find patterns in language,
a method that has been used, according to McCarthy and O’Keeffe (2010,
p. 3), since biblical scholars manually indexed words from the Bible. With
the technological improvement of the twentieth century, this painstaking
and manual work helped the development of software that would com-
pile data for its study. Since the 1970s, computers and digital tools have
improved by giving detail to the analysis of language, and thus, corpus
linguistics was born in the field of digital humanities. Before the coinage of
“corpus stylistics” as another way with which to study literature through
corpus analysis, McIntyre and Walker (2019, p. 1) describe the use of cor-
pus linguistics in literature as a combination of techniques from stylistics
and corpus studies that “was a fringe activity at best.” There seemed to
be a controversial aspect in the abridging of methodologies so much so
that O’Halloran (2007) termed the use of corpus to analyse texts “corpus-
assisted,” and Mahlberg (2007) established that, on occasion, literary sty-
listics is already a controversial and limited tool as it may not allow room
for much interpretation of a text. Nevertheless, with a growing number
4 Introduction

of analysts interested in the study of literature through corpus analysis,

there came a number of articles and monographs that detailed corpus sty-
listics as a fruitful approach and application from Mahlberg’s 2013 anal-
ysis of Charles Dickens’ narrative to Fischer-Starcke’s 2010 analysis of
Jane Austen’s work, or Nieto Caballero and Ruano San Segundo’s 2020
analysis of Galdós’ prose in Spanish. What the merging of methodologies
proposed was to unite quantitative analysis with qualitative one without
meaning better due to “qualitative” approaches, but as an interdiscipli-
nary approach that allows literary studies to see patterns that would have
been otherwise lost in the reading or analysis of one single text.
However, corpus studies and the analysis of literary texts are not limited
to the quantitative analysis of canonical literature, but it allows researchers
to expand their definition of what texts to include in their analysis, from
newspapers, tweets, radio programmes, TV series, to translations. Hence,
where corpus studies offer repeated, typical patterns across a number of
texts, literary stylistics offer to study the distinctiveness of texts that devi-
ate from “linguistic norms that trigger artistic effects and reflect creative
ways of using language” (Malhberg, 2007, p. 221). Hence, the merging
of methodologies can present a link between corpus studies and stylistics
“in that ‘creativity’ can only be recognized as such when there is a lan-
guage norm against which the ‘creative’ language comes to stand out”
(ibid.). Still, the merging methodologies are not limited by one or the other
approach. Nieto Caballero and Ruano San Segundo (2020, p. 36) argue
that corpus stylistics has a concrete methodological procedure alongside a
theoretical motivation for study. In this manner, the systematic methodol-
ogy that corpus studies offer can unfold hypotheses that traditional stylis-
tics or literary studies could not have detected (ibid.), or even approached
from a systematic point of view.

1.3 “Identity” as a multifaceted concept

“Identity” is a very complex term to describe by using only one defini-
tion or one field of knowledge. Hence, for social psychologists, identity
“is a particular form of social representation that mediates the relation-
ship between the individual and the social world” (Chryssochoou, 2003);
whereas from an “identity politics” standpoint, there seems to be a subjec-
tive and an objective aspect that encompasses one’s identity. According to
Bilgrami (2006, p. 5), one’s subjective identity includes “what you conceive
yourself to be, whereas your objective identity is how you might be viewed
independently of how you see yourself.” That is, one’s objective identity
includes biological, social, or linguistic facts about oneself, for instance,
one’s gender and the performance of it. As gender is constructed, so is iden-
tity. The concept of identity is complex and multiple, and gender cannot be
 Introduction 5

abstracted out of it because its meaning lies within the realm of identities of
sexuality, class, race, age, and religion (Tosh, 2011). Just as identity is mul-
tiple and complex, so is masculinity. Despite Men’s Studies having existed
since the 1970s, it is not until 2002 when Connell defines masculinity as
having multiple models and the field now insists on the plural concept
of masculinities (Floyd & Horlacher, 2017, p. 1). Apart from the differ-
ent masculinities, it is also worth mentioning the ongoing crisis regarding
masculinity persistently understood to operate at a very broad social or
structural level. For instance, the inclusion of women to the labour market
and the widespread economic changes have made it increasingly difficult
for men to be the “breadwinners” of the house (Floyd & Horlacher, 2017,
p. 4), or in terms of political realignments perhaps through the different
waves of feminism, which dispose large numbers of men to be a politically
surrounded group. For a man to feel free it seems that he needs to be with-
out the restraints of women’s domesticity or civilisation (Connell, 2005).
The concept of masculinity in crisis is not one new to Ireland, as well
as the struggle to maintain power. Studies carried out in Europe in which
perspectives on masculinities are described (Madden, 2010, p. 70), include
Ireland, like any other country in Europe, which still sees masculinity within
the traditional views in which manliness is based on employment and domi-
nance. First, at the beginning of the twentieth century and through the coun-
try’s liberation movement and, then, with the rise of the Celtic Tiger, social
and economic change in Ireland has constituted a central context for men to
perform their masculinity in a very narrow scene. Hence, this book and its
study of male characters in literature aims not to explain why men behave in
a certain way, but how this cultural male identity is ingrained in its literary
characters. Irish culture is undeniably obsessed with the past (Pine, 2011,
p. 3): Its heroes, its battles, its rebellions, and this remembrance is a factor
in the creation of both a national and an individual identity, especially for
men, who seem to be surrounded by a certain number of heroic standards,
and still, as Pine (2011, p. 7) suggests, the most recent 30-year phase of Irish
remembrance culture does not only look back to the past early-twentieth-
century heroics but to a degraded past. In the literature and films of the
period, especially at the end of the twentieth century and the Celtic Tiger,
Madden (2010, p. 70) describes how there are marginalised masculinities
which are being destabilised in the broader social and economic context
of men’s traditional social and sexual roles, not only with the growing vis-
ibility of homosexuality, and the influence of feminism, but also because of
the secularisation of Ireland and the economic changes brought about by
the Celtic Tiger. Hence, drawing from the motivation that Irish masculin-
ity and its representation in literature has been under researched, this book
hypothesises that contemporary Irish literature still carries a mythological,
traditional, and heroic component in the description of male characters.
6 Introduction

That is, despite the new models of masculinity appearing in the twenty-first
century, there is still a traceable male character that is an archetype of the
traditional role of the hero, ingrained in Irish culture, literature, and society.
While the societal roles keep changing and new masculinities arise, there
is also the appearance of what Kiberd (2018, p. 265) calls a “Cuchulain
complex,” that is, an opposition to the domesticity and the traditionally
feminine values rooted in anxious masculinity and which could be found
in a world of empire and war. The changing sexual roles in society are not
only one factor to describe masculinity in crisis, as is mentioned before, but
also the social role men perform in society. Traditional forms of masculin-
ity in which men work the land, take care of their families, and provide for
them (Ní Laoire, 2002, 2005) were a growing struggle during the declining
years of the Celtic Tiger. What was an economic source of power for mas-
culinity, even the name itself, echoing a second coming of Irish nationalism
and revival, turned out to crush men’s morale, their view on their identity,
how they performed intimacy with others, and how they behaved in a
deconstructed society. Madden (2010, p. 71) expresses how there is a limit
even in male emotional expression so that tenderness is distinguished from
homosexuality. In this way then, gender norms are strongly conceived to
prove how affection is “unmanly” under these societal standards and at
the same time, calls out for the need of new forms of masculinity that, as
Madden (ibid.) mentions, “allow for a broader range of male emotional
and affectional expressions,” without questioning their identity. This
evolved into the assertion of a reactive and masculinist identity (Kiberd,
2018, p. 320) that was opposite to weakness. Hence, the hypermasculine
identity during the late twentieth century centres on men being the bread-
winners of the household and belonging to a peer system as that of “the
lads,” a concept that will be explored in the following sections, especially
in that of the model of masculinity embodied by “the son” in Chapter 2.
The conflicting ambivalent change of societal roles, the search for a new
masculine identity, and the remains of a hypermasculine identity ruling over
the traditional views on masculinity, also make other identities marginal-
ised, creating thus the need to create narratives which allow for new forms
of expression, emotion, and physicality banned by traditional masculinity.
Hence, there exists a niche in which to pay attention to old societal stand-
ards and the creation of new emergent male identities in Irish literature.

1.4 Terminology
This section lists a number of terms that are relevant for the different
areas of knowledge that are used as methodologies in this book. Although
these will be explained in more detail throughout the following chapters,
for beginners of corpus or gender studies some of these concepts might
be useful as a starting point. These concepts have been taken from a
 Introduction 7

number of sources such as McEnery and Hardie (2012), Tognini-Bonelli

(2001), Culpeper (2001), Connell (2005), Semino and Short (2004), and
Schriebman et al. (2008, amongst others.
Authenticity: Term used in corpus studies that refers to how real and in use
is the language studied in corpus analysis. The material that is included
in a corpus is supposed to be genuine when it is compiled from spoken
or written sources; however, this comes into question when the data
compiled is the fictional representation of language in prose, poetry, or
drama. In this manner, the analyst needs to decide whether the corpus
faithfully represents language in use or not. This is further discussed in
Chapter 4 (cf. Tognini-Bonelli, 2001, pp. 55–57).
Characterisation: According to Culpeper (2001), this is the process
through which we create images of a character’s personality, image,
voice, speech, etc., in our minds.
Clusters: Recurring sequences of words that can appear in a corpus and
can help create hypotheses from the patterns created: E.g., “he put
his hands in his pockets” as shown in Mahlberg (2013) and Nieto
Caballero and Ruano San Segundo (2020) could help the process of
characterisation of male characters. This is further explored in Chapter
8. Clusters are also known as N-Grams, Multi-Word Units, or lexical
bundles in computational linguistics.
Concordance: Collection of occurrences in corpus studies usually pre-
sented in lines with the searched word highlighted in the centre, also
known as Key Word in Context (KWIC) concordance. This will be
explained in detail in Chapter 5.
Corpus linguistics: Study of language through a collection of texts (cor-
pora) that can be applied to other fields of study such as lexicography,
language teaching, translation, stylistics, grammar, gender studies,
forensic linguistics, computational linguistics, and others (cf. Tognini-
Bonelli, 2001, pp. 1–2).
Corpus stylistics: Study of patterns in language use in a large collection
of texts using techniques from both stylistics and corpus linguistics.
It is still a difficult term to define (McIntyre & Walker, 2019; Nieto
Caballero & Ruano San Segundo, 2020) as corpus stylistics uses cor-
pus linguistics tools and software but aims at analysing a given corpus
through a theoretical lens as well, paying attention to both quantita-
tive and qualitative aspects of the study.
Corpus-based: Analysis of corpora where the analyst has already a hypoth-
esis about what they might find in their studies.
Corpus-driven: According to Vo and Carter (2010, p. 310): “[C]orpora them-
selves are the data from which creative language uses are uncovered.”
That is, the researcher does not create a hypothesis before the results are
presented and reaches any conclusion by means of language analysis.
8 Introduction

Digital humanities: Academic field of study concerned with preserving,

studying, and promoting accessibility of traditional texts or files, from
physical to digital ones (Nieto Caballero & Ruano San Segundo, 2020,
p. 37; Mahlberg, 2014). This field covers aspects from digitalisation of
texts to critical analysis of those same texts using computing software
and techniques.
Fictionalisation: Process through which a real language is adapted in nar-
ration and might maintain spelling, dialectal, grammatical, or lexical
features that make it recognisable in the eyes of the reader. E.g., Roddy
Doyle’s fictionalisation of Irish English in his Barrytown Trilogy with
“yis” instead of “you.”
Frequency list: Tool used in corpus linguistics that generates a complete list
of all the items in a corpus and establishes “how many tokens are in
total – at the simplest level a token and a word can be considered to be
the same thing – and how many different types constitute this total”
(Evison, 2010, p. 124). They might be ranked in alphabetical order or
in frequency order (from highest to lowest).
Hegemonic masculinity: Coined by Connell (2005), this concept was
understood as the highest performance and achievement a man could
have. It’s a specific form of masculinity that has been historically con-
sidered the most prestigious one due to its dominating, prowess, and
well-standing qualities in society. Other forms of masculinity that do
not conform to this ideal standard are marginalised, subordinated, or
repressed.
Hypermasculinity: Exaggerated performance of one’s masculinity in order
to appear more manly in any given context. Not only can this appear
in everyday life, but also in the media and in fiction. It emphasises very
manly ideals such as physical strength, some forms of aggression and
violence, possessiveness, or sexual prowess.
Irishness: Qualities that encompass everything that means being Irish or
typical of the Irish people. This includes culture, art, societal aspects,
literature, sports, language, etc.
Key word: These are not necessarily the most frequent words in a corpus,
but words that are identified statistically as being relevant in a given
corpus (Evison, 2010, p. 127). This can be automatically generated
by the software tool being used or established by the analyst in the
creation of a specific-purpose corpus. Key words are displayed in lines
with the frequency listed next to them.
Models of masculinity/new masculinities: Different performances of one’s
masculinity that do not include the hegemonic one. These, according to
Connell (2005), can be marginalised, subordinated, and complacent.
However, more and more, new studies show that the performance
of masculinity is wider and aims at depicting new and contemporary
identities such as LGBT+ ones, amongst others.
 Introduction 9

N-Grams: Cf. Clusters.

Normalisation: This consists of extrapolating raw frequencies from dif-
ferent-sized corpora so that they can be shown by a common factor
(Evison, 2010, p. 126). The results can be expressed by occurrences
per thousand or million words. In order to do this, the raw frequency
of the token that is shown is divided by the total amount of words of
the corpus and then multiplied by 1,000 or 1,000,000 respectively,
thus showing how frequent a particular word is in the corpus.
Proppian model: Also known as morphology or typology, coined by
Vladimir Propp (1968/1928) and in which he studies fairy tales
and highlights the common structure, characters, and items that are
repeated throughout. Propp defined the spheres of action for a hero/
heroine to carry out their adventure, as well as the magical tools they
might encounter, and the different characters in their path, such as the
villain, the wizard, the donor, and the helper.
Representativeness: When collecting and compiling a corpus, one of the main
factors that contribute to the balanced creation of the same is whether
the texts compiled are an accurate representation of the type of language
that is under investigation. More on this will be said in Chapter 4.

1.5 Organisation of this book

This book comprises nine chapters. In them, I present the different theo-
ries, methodologies, and results. Chapter 1 presents the introduction of
this book by presenting some preliminary considerations, why the use of
interdisciplinary methodologies can benefit one’s research and the defini-
tion of some terminology that has been deemed important throughout the
book. In Chapter 2, this book presents the context for the study of Irish
identity through the performance of language and gender, especially mas-
culinity. This chapter goes from general-to-specific ideas starting off with
a brief overview of gender studies and identity followed by how mascu-
linity is performed through language. Then, the chapter delves into Irish
masculinity and the different models of masculinity that will be described
in this book: Heroes, lads, fathers, and other models. Chapter 3 dives into
the theoretical framework for this book: The merging of different areas
of knowledge such as Corpus Stylistics, Discourse Analysis, and char-
acterisation. By using both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis, the
hypotheses presented in this book will be supported or refuted not only
by numbers, but also by literary criticism. Chapter 4 presents the data col-
lected for this book and the creation of a corpus of 18 novels written by
male Irish authors from the Republic of Ireland between 1965 and 2018.
In this chapter, I will also offer the rationale for the selection of the novels
analysed in this book, an insight of the novels, and the male characters
analysed.
10 Introduction

Chapter 5 presents the methodology that will be used in the analysis

that forms the basis of this book through the software tool with which to
analyse texts: Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2004), as well as the differ-
ent linguistic aspects that can be used to analyse a corpus (frequency lists,
concordance lines, collocations, clusters, etc.). The use of Corpus Query
Language (CQL) will be also explained, and the different formulae to
search the corpus will be presented. Chapters 6–8 present the results of the
analysis of the corpus and a discussion of the same. Chapter 6 focuses on
male vocatives and how these are used to dominate or subordinate other
in conversation; Chapter 7 focuses on verbs of speech and the adverbs that
accompany these verbs in order to see whether there is verbal domination
amongst male characters; and finally, Chapter 8 focuses on body language
and how it is used amongst male characters to present themselves to oth-
ers. Finally, this book draws to a close in Chapter 9 with the contributions,
the limitations of the present study, and future research as well as some
final concluding remarks regarding Irish masculinities.

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2 Irish identity, language, and
masculinity

2.1 Introduction
Gender, as a social construct, has changed throughout the years: A century
ago, to be a man involved being “a leader in public life, a patriarch at
home” (Clare, 2001, p. 69), that is, several virile attributes like power and
authority that were opposed to vulnerability or weakness, representing
the stereotypical qualities of women. Nowadays, gender is still being per-
formed as an essential part in the construction of identity regarding status,
age, profession, religion, ethnicity, or national identity. Studies of gender
in relation with all these elements have come to the realisation that gen-
der rarely stands alone but that it is a set of cultural codes which usually
include important factors such as certain notions of race or hierarchy of
class, and which is acquired by a constant reaffirmation and public display.
As masculinity studies became more and more popular amongst schol-
ars, a question of whether masculinity and its study were comparable
to that of feminism and women’s liberation was raised (Spender, 1981).
Men did not seem to aspire to liberation, unless they were part of the
gay liberation movement. The notion of a collective men’s conscious-
ness (Tosh, 2011, p. 21) was not completely valid unless it belonged to
a silent majority who benefitted from patriarchy and its penalties. Thus,
the study of masculinity took a cultural turn in which stereotypes and
idealistic notions of masculinity were central to the definitions of the term.
Domination and subordination do not exist only between two genders
(Connell, 2005, p. 158) but also in relation between members of the same
gender as well. Connell (ibid.) delimited the concept of hegemonic mas-
culinity as that of the norm and one which men should aspire to imitate.
The social construct that is identity makes something physiological (voice,
tone, pitch, strength, build, etc.) become a salient key in the performance
of hegemonic masculinity, whilst at the same time, those masculinities
that do not take place in the hegemonic spectrum have a disconnection
in men’s power that dismiss the experiences of individuals and pay more
attention to the socially accepted group norm (Kiesling, 2007, p. 660). In

DOI: 10.4324/9781003349181-2
 Irish identity, language, and masculinity 13

the following sections of this chapter, there will be a general-to-specific

approach in order to unravel some of the main theories and hypotheses
regarding the construction of Irish masculinity and its performance in
literature.

2.2 Language as a gendered performance

Research on language and gender since the early 1970s has opened new
possibilities in the spectrum of gender with new definitions of femininity,
masculinity, and queer identities depicted by means of language use. In
1975, Lakoff’s Language and the Woman’s Place identified the “women’s
register” in which women used language, sometimes unconsciously, to per-
form an inferior role in society. That is, by using tag questions, hedges,
question intonations, and the avoidance of curse language or expletives
(Kendall & Tannen, 2015, p. 640), a woman’s place was defined as being
weaker than that of a man. Thus, if language is looked at from a gender
binary classification, there exists the division of a “women’s language”
versus a “men’s language.” However, what is commonly accepted as a
“neutral language” is effectively identical to this “men’s language” because
men are taken as the universal norm (Cameron, 2006, pp. 106–107).
Lakoff’s publication had a major impact on language studies as it estab-
lished three main ideas: Firstly, how most children first learn “women’s
language” as their first language as they may be closer to the female fig-
ure of the house (Lakoff, 2004, p. 41); secondly, how one style of speak-
ing predominates in men’s speech and other in women’s speech (Lakoff,
2004, p. 95); and thirdly, how there is a dominant group in society that
establishes stereotypes of the other groups (ibid.). Through the perfor-
mance of a particular speech act, whilst located in a specific cultural and
societal time and place, it is possible to understand a great deal about
who we are, what we want, and the guidelines and expectations that bind
us together in society, because speaking is not a matter of individuals
encoding and decoding messages, but an ongoing process of negotiation
(Gumperz, 2015, p. 312). Language, thus, equals a performance in gen-
der, or, as West and Zimmerman (1987) described it, “doing gender.”
Lakoff’s views on language and gender were nevertheless criticised, and
several authors took into their hands to both prove and discredit Lakoff’s
theory (Fishman, 1978; Cameron, McAlinden & O’Leary, 1988). Some
opposed Lakoff’s stance because of her lack of empirical analysis; how-
ever, others expanded on the field of language and gender and the so-
called “dominance approach” which establishes that, in fact, men reflect
in language the power dynamics of society, and as a result, this domi-
nance model set out to undo the linguistic consequence of male dominance
(Cameron, 2006). Just like the hegemonic identity is the one men should
strive for when performing gender, performing language in a certain way
14 Irish identity, language, and masculinity

to achieve that status is also looked for. Authority and forcefulness seem
to belong to the sphere of masculine qualities in a male-dominated society
in which women use non-forceful styles like unassertiveness. This, there-
fore, links language to the social norms of womanhood and, by exten-
sion, manhood. Male peer groups organise themselves hierarchically and
become active producers rather than passive ones of gendered behaviour;
that is, men and women may use their ways of speaking in a particular way
to produce a variety of effects (Cameron, 2006, p. 64). This is also how
Tannen (2002) explains the negotiating of status in boys and men when
they engage in direct confrontations or use opposition. There seems to be a
ritualistic aspect, which Tannen (2002, p. 1652) calls “agonism,” in which
boys’ roughhousing and men’s use of verbal challenges are ways both of
situating yourself in your peer group and of exploring ideas, without the
feminine quality of talking things through as it is considered what women
would do. Thus, boys and men may maintain a status and their masculin-
ity is safe.
Initial studies on the different performances in conversation amongst
men and women showed how talks amongst women portray some ritual
and common aspects that do not happen amongst men (Coates, 1996).
There is a mirroring strategy which women do as a form of repetition of
syntactic patterns and key words and phrases (Kendall & Tannen, 2015, p.
643), which turns out in women bonding over conversation, whereas men
do not seek bonding through speech, as they may be able to accomplish it
in a different way, that is, through the aforementioned term from Tannen:
“Agonism” (Kendall & Tannen, 2015, p. 644). For instance, fraternity
members of Kiesling’s 2004 studies use different ways of addressing each
other, especially “dude,” to create the sense of “cool solidarity” which
conforms to a discourse of masculine solidarity both combining intimacy
and distance and indexing what Kiesling (2004, p. 286) names “young
Anglo masculinity.”
Nowadays, most of the research on language and how it affects gen-
der has been shuffled from an essentialist position (Montoro, 2014, p.
349) to a more fluid definition of the notion of maleness, femaleness,
and gender; that is, any linguistic variable would not be only identified
as that of a man or a woman. Still, it is possible to find that male speak-
ers may use the presence of women as an excuse to boast a full-on per-
formance of exaggerated masculinity with epic achievements in different
fields, Coates (2011, p. 272) says, as disparate as sport and wine buying.
Hypermasculinity is also achieved through toughness, violence, callous-
ness, and attraction to danger (Vokey et al., 2013). Everyday life experi-
ences become more meaningful through the formulations of inequality,
for example unwanted touch or having someone’s talk or space repeatedly
interrupted. Abundant evidence suggests that those with greater power
and authority, that is, who conform to the established rules of hegemonic
 Irish identity, language, and masculinity 15

masculinity, are more likely to interrupt, initiate touch, stare at, and vio-
late the space of those with lesser power (Thorne, 2002, p. 11), regardless
of gender.
Power conforms to a category in relation to gender, language, and
how people perceive those using that influence. Social structure needs to
be demonstrated in interaction to create social and linguistic identities.
Kiesling (2006, p. 263) describes some mechanisms of linguistic domina-
tion in which people with hegemonic identity may discuss how to hold onto
power or explicitly belittle the subordinate class. One example of this, as
pointed out by Van Dijk (2015, p. 475), is how men may use diminutives
when addressing women to belittle them. Makri-Tsilipakou (2015), for
instance, focuses on the use of different forms of address towards women
(girl, lass, woman, lady) and how it indexes a character and identity upon
the person addressed thus in conversation. Another of the many ways that
power is performed is through group membership. This has been stud-
ied from a sociolinguistic point of view regarding teen talk and teenagers’
slang in their social environment such as social media, groups, and gangs
(Tagliamonte, 2016, p. 3). In studies on adults (Coupland & Ylänne-
McEwen, 2006) the paralinguistic code existent in a community allows its
members to belong to that same community or, on the contrary, to be seen
as alien with the consequence of being excluded and marginalised. Slang,
terms of address, or any other paralinguistic code in this sense is associ-
ated with “social groups outside the mainstream or with local peer group
identity” (Tagliamonte, 2016, p. 2). For instance, there is a difference
between addressing someone as buddy, mate, dude, or man, which shows
a degree of familiarity and equal terms; and between captain, sir, or ser-
geant, which shows how the addresser is in a subservient social position.
Finally, regarding conversations, it is agreed how differences of power or
status are shown in talks and conversations such as interruptions, topic
changing, and initiation (Lakoff, 2004; Montoro, 2014; Cameron, 2006);
hence, nowadays, it is not so much about the gender but about the power
that is managed in social interactions, aspects that will be studied in the
following chapters of this book.

2.3 Language in fiction
Fictional language, especially in the novel genre, has tried to develop and
reinforce all the possibilities of discourse about identity representation;
that is, fictional language could also be studied in the way in which it prac-
tises identities (De Fina, 2006, p. 351). Research on narrative and cultural
identities has shown that what defines people in narrative is not only the
content of their stories but also the social norms they use to belong to a
certain group. These social norms the characters comply with to present
16 Irish identity, language, and masculinity

a realistic image to the reader are variable and changeable like register,
accent, and lexis. Some of the first studies carried out by Ochs and Taylor
(1995) or Bucholtz (1999) widely support, on the one hand, the social
constructionist conception of identity as something that needs to be per-
formed constantly, and, on the other hand, there is also the notion that
within one person there might be not just one presentation of the self but
different representations as if a character could choose from an inventory
within (De Fina, 2006, p. 353), and was able to change in different social
circumstances and with other interlocutors.
Considering that fiction usually bases its plot development on conflict-
ing actions that unravel throughout the course of the novel, short story,
or play, the conflict regarding the search of identity of oneself is one more
tool for the writer to develop and disentangle the plot. Creating an iden-
tity that bonds linguistic form and ideologies of gender, class, and ethnic-
ity is especially complex; thus, speakers (whether fictional or not) may
heighten or diminish their linguistic display depending on the goals they
try to achieve in an interaction. Despite the ability of one character to
mutate into another social group through register, manners, or appear-
ance, the norm of that group will still be honoured. Multilayered identities
can be associated with more than one social category; that is, a man is a
father when speaking with his children, a husband when speaking with his
partner, a lad when speaking with other lads, equal in social category to
him, and so on. The problem arises when the character realises their own
many faces and the conflict begins.
Despite fictional speech being based on real speech, the reconstruction
of spoken language and its fictionalisations may lose aspects such as dialect
and a faithful record of slang and accent along the way (Toolan, 1992, p.
31). However, fictional dialogue still displays orality (Amador-Moreno,
2010, p. 531) to a certain extent since fictional interaction is understood
by the reader if it follows the same rules that exist in everyday interaction.
The writer may adapt and codify conversation to convey further meaning
through “hesitations, false starts, interruptions and overlaps” (Hughes,
1996, p. 36). Still, the relationship between oral and fictional discourse in
literature is described as a paradox (Searle, 1975, p. 319). The author need
not commit to reality when narrating a story but to the reader’s ability
to recognise the authenticity in the author’s writing, so that the narrative
seems plausible (Amador-Moreno, 2010).
When trying to convey realism through speech, it is noticed how the fic-
tionalised conversations are not going to be measured against real speech.
For Leech and Short (1981), the representation of a realist piece of conver-
sation in fiction needs certain characteristics that involve dialectal features,
informal linguistic features, or even specific idiolects for specific charac-
ters. Hughes (1996, pp. 78–86) also points out two more stylistic aspects
that help a writer provide that sense of real speech in fiction: One that
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Contributed by Edwin P. Stott, Chicago, Ill.
 Needle Threader for a Sewing Machine

The threader consists of two brass pieces riveted together so that

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When a helical spring is needed badly, one can be made up

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An accurate spring can be formed, and the pitch between each coil
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 Revolving-Wheel Ruling Pen

A ruling pen that will do neat work and not leave any ink on the
ruler, and which with its small ink fount draws many lines at one
filling, can be made from an old discarded revolving-wheel glass
cutter. A ¹⁄₈-in. hole is drilled in the body, or handle part, just above
the wheel. The hole is filled with a piece of felt—a piece cut from an
old felt hat will do—rolled to fit snugly, so that it will bear lightly
against the wheel. The felt is soaked with the ink to be used, and the
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¶An excellent method of closing a crack in a wall before papering is

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widen.
 A Portable Folding Boat
By STANLEY L. SWIFT

Aboat that is inexpensive, easily made, and readily transported is

shown in the illustration. Since the bow section folds inside of the
stern portion, it is important that the dimensions be followed closely.
The material used is ⁷⁄₈-in. throughout.
 The Construction of the Portable
Boat Is Simple. When Folded It
may be Transported Readily and
may Even be Carried in Three
Parts. It Is Inexpensive, and
should Prove a Valuable Addition
to the Camping Outfit

Make a full-size diagram of the plan to determine the exact sizes

of the pieces. Brass screws are best for fastening this type of work,
but copperplated nails may be used. Tongued-and-grooved stock is
best for the bottom. The joints should not be driven together too
firmly, to allow for expansion, and all joints in the boat should be
packed with red lead or pitch.
The adjoining ends of the sections should be made at the same
time, to insure a satisfactory fit when joined. Braces are fixed into the
corners.
Metal straps hold the sections together at the bottom of the hinged
joints. These should be fitted so that there is little possibility of their
becoming loosened accidentally. The front end of each strip is
pivoted in a hole, and the other end is slotted vertically on the lower
edge. Their bolts are set firmly into the side of the boat, being held
with nuts on both sides of the wood. A wing nut, prevented from
coming off by riveting the end of the bolt, holds the slotted end.
Sockets for the oars may be cut into hardwood pieces fastened to
the gunwales. The construction of the seats is shown in the small
sketch at the left.
 Nontangling Pasture Stake

The Wheel Revolves on the Stake, Preventing the Rope from Tangling

An old carriage wheel and axle were used to good advantage in

the making of the pasture stake shown in the sketch. When the
animal tethered to the wheel walks around the stake, it is practically
impossible for the rope to become tangled, as the wheel revolves on
the axle.—Contributed by W. F. Quackenbush, New York, N. Y.
 Inkstand Made of a Sheet of Paper

A Sheet of Heavy Paper Quickly Transformed into a Holder for Ink Bottle
and Pen

Drawings are not infrequently ruined by the spilling of ink, which

might have been averted by the use of the simple inkstand cut from
a sheet of heavy paper, as shown in the sketch. The upper
illustration shows the method of cutting the paper to fit the ink bottle
and stopper, and to produce a pen rack. The device will be found
especially useful when materials for drawing are used away from a
place especially fitted for the purpose, since the inkstand can be
made in a few minutes from material readily available.—Contributed
by Henry C. Franke, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa.
 How to Wind Wire on Electrical Apparatus
When a beginner, it was the despair of the writer to try to produce
in his homemade apparatus the mathematical regularity and
perfection of the winding on the coils of electrical instruments in the
supply stores, but when he found that this professional and
workmanlike finish could be obtained by means of a simple
contrivance, and a little care and attention to details before
beginning, experimental work took on a new interest.
At the outset let it be stated that wire should never be wound
directly on the iron core, not only because it cannot be done
satisfactorily in that manner, but for the reason that it is often desired
to remove a coil from a piece of apparatus after it has served its
purpose. It is therefore advisable to make a bobbin, which consists
of a thin, hard tube with two ends. The tube may be easily formed by
wrapping a suitable length of medium-weight paper on the core,
having first coated it with ordinary fish glue, excepting, of course, the
first 2 or 3 in. in direct contact with the core. Wind tightly until the
thickness is from ¹⁄₃₂ in. to ¹⁄₁₆ in., depending upon the diameter of
the core, and then wrap with string until the glue hardens, after which
the tube may be sandpapered and trimmed up as desired.
Where the wire is not of too small a gauge and is not to be wound
to too great a depth, no ends will be necessary if each layer of wire
is stopped one-half turn before the preceding one, as indicated in the
accompanying sketch, and is also thoroughly shellacked. With
ordinary care magnet wire may be wound in this manner to a depth
of over one-half inch.
 Winding a Coil of Wire so That the Layers will be Even and Smooth

The tube having been made ready, with or without ends as may be
necessary, the small winding jig illustrated is to be made. All that is
essential is to provide a suitable means for rotating by hand a slightly
tapering wood spindle, upon which the tube is to be pushed. The
bearings can be just notches made in the upper ends of two
standards, through each of which a hole is drilled at right angles to
the length of the spindle, so that some string or wire may be laced
through in order to hold the spindle down. A crank may be formed by
winding a piece of heavy wire around the larger end of the spindle. A
loop of wire, or string, is to be attached at some convenient point, so
that the crank may be held from unwinding while adjusting matters at
the end of each layer, or while making a connection. There should
also be provided a suitable support for the spool of wire, which is
generally placed below the table to good advantage. Much depends,
in this sort of work, upon attention to these small details, after which
it will be found that the actual winding will require very little time.—
Contributed by John D. Adams, Phoenix, Ariz.
¶A No. 10 gauge shotgun cartridge shell telescoped with a No. 12
gauge shell forms a convenient match safe for campers, or other
persons out of doors, and is moisture-proof.
 Hourglass Sewing Basket
Two oblong peach baskets, their bottoms fastened together and
the whole covered with silk, formed the hourglass sewing or darning
basket shown in the sketch. Square plum baskets and other forms
trimmed in cretonne, linen, or inexpensive goods, depending on the
intended use, may also be utilized. Ornamental details may be
added to suit the individual taste.
 Artistic Effects may be Produced by the Inventive Woman

The basket was made as follows: The peach baskets were wired
together at their bottoms. A piece of silk was cut, wide enough to
reach from the top to the bottom of the joined baskets and to permit
the folding over of a portion at the top and bottom. One long edge of
the piece was glued to the inner edge of the bottom and drawn in
around the sides to form neat folds. The upper edge of the silk was
then glued in the top, being folded over the edge.
A cord was fixed around the middle of the basket, as shown in the
sketch. A lining was glued into the top and bottom. It was folded and
stitched along its edges to prevent raveling and to give a smooth
finish. The bottom need not be lined, but it is desirable to have it so.
The pincushion was made by padding a block with cotton and then
covering it with silk. A cardboard box may be used instead. The
cushion was nailed into place from the bottom. Ribbon may be used
to draw the silk to the sides of the basket at the middle, and a
cushion may be made entirely of cotton or cloth and attached with
ribbons.—Contributed by Thomas J. Macgowan, Mount Vernon, N.
Y.
 A Perpetual-Motion Puzzle
The fallacy of perpetual motion is now so generally understood
that the description of a new scheme for attaining it is only justified in
so far as it may be instructive. The sketch illustrates such a device,
apparently successful, and the discovery of the error in it is both
instructive and interesting.

The Interaction between Poles of the Magnets Causes the Traveler to Move
around the Triangle

Mount a horseshoe magnet on a wooden base, and into the latter

cut a continuous groove along the three sides of a triangle opposite
the poles of the magnet, N and S. Suspend a long, narrow bar
magnet on a universal joint from a standard. A pin projects into the
groove from the lower end, which is its north pole, and can move
only along the triangular course.
Start the device with the suspended magnet in the position shown.
The lower end will tend to move in the direction of the arrows,
because in so doing it is getting farther away from the repelling north
pole of the horseshoe magnet and nearer the attracting south pole,
which action will bring it to the corner of the triangle in the
foreground. It will next move down the side as indicated by the
arrow, because along that line it is nearer the attracting south than
the repelling north pole. When it reaches the end of its trip, at the
angle between the poles of the magnet, the attraction and repulsion
will be balanced, but a slight jar will carry the traveler beyond the
angle.
The third leg of the triangle will be covered similarly, the north pole
repelling the traveler. On this basis the motion should continue
indefinitely, but a test will show that it will not do so.
The corners of the triangle should be rounded slightly and it would
be better to use several hanging magnets, flexibly connected, so that
when one is at the dead center the others will carry the traveler on.
 How to Transfer Drawings
Soiling of drawings transferred with carbon paper may be avoided
by substituting a piece of unfinished paper, the surface of which has
been covered with a thin coating of lead rubbed from the pencil. If
any errors are made in the tracing, or undue pressure is applied with
the hand, the resulting impressions may be removed readily with an
eraser.
If a copy of a drawing is desired, and it is not necessary that the
same relative left and right position be maintained, the original pencil
drawing may be placed face downward on a sheet of paper and the
back of it rubbed with a bone paper knife, or other smooth, rounded
object. By going over the impression and making a reverse of it in
the same way a copy of the original in the same relations may be
obtained.—Contributed by J. E. Pouliot, Ottawa, Canada.