The green gem of Ireland set in the silver sea

 

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U 7.236: ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA

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Don Gifford correctly establishes that Joyce’s headline in Aeolus owes its present form to several sources. He cites two possible influences. The first is Thomas Moore’s song “Let Erin Remember the Days of Yore” (“Ere her faithless sons betrayed her”), which includes the lines:

and also:

    He also appropriately draws attention to “John of Gaunt’s praise of England in Shakespeare’s Richard II” (act 2, scene 1):

 

Joyce’s adaptation of a quotation

For Joyce, this was not a direct quotation, but an expression which held an accumulation of resonances built up over Ireland’s recent history. It is dangerous to attempt to “explain” “ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA” (not yet found earlier as an independent quotation), since Joyce’s first “placard” version of this was much shorter: “Erin, the Gem of the Sea”.¹

    The metaphor of Ireland as a “gem” was a favourite one of Thomas Moore. An early and influential instance occurs in the second stanza of “Remember Thee”, cited here from the 1821 edition of his Irish Melodies:

    This text is more relevant, it would seem, than those proposed above. Moore’s line was rapidly taken up and re-quoted, especially by Daniel O’Connell and his supporters:

    Quotations do not have to be exact, and in fact they gain their force by adapting to new contexts and new generations. The association of Ireland, the gem, and the sea was a powerful one for nationalists and others, and variations soon appeared. The London Morning Chronicle notices the allusion in 1828:

    The same theme is picked up by “Henricus” in The Casket of 1828:³

    Another valedictory of 1855 chooses similar wording:

 

The Gem of the Ocean

Adrian Room picks out “Gem of the Sea” as a romantic name for Ireland, parallel to the “Gem of the Ocean”, mainland Britain.⁵ Not surprisingly, there is some crossover between the two expressions. “Gem of the Ocean” and variants seems to have been associated with St Patrick’s Day toasts to Ireland from America. J. D. Crimmins cites the Columbian of 20 March 1811 in this context, and introduces “green gem”, as in Joyce:

    Caesar Otway appropriates this metaphor to Ireland, not England, in his Sketches in Ireland:

    This expression is turn is attributed back to Moore:

 

Mixed metaphors throughout the nineteenth century and beyond

This loose variation continued throughout the nineteenth century, with references to emerald, green gem, the sea, and the ocean frequently combined in free permutation. Joseph Carpenter’s Highland Songster compares Scotland with England and Ireland:

    The popular magazine Judy encourages optimism:

    In 1911 the same metaphor is rehearsed in Ina Coolbrith’s poem “Tom Moore”, recalling the supposed originator of the nationalistic association. References of this type abound at the time, and so Joyce would have had a pick of sources to choose from:

 

Joyce’s second version

Joyce’s placard contained a simple version of the expression: “Erin, the Gem of the Sea”. When he made the final revisions to the Aeolus episode he elaborated this to “ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA”. We have seen the second version take shape in the flights of fancy of writers, toast-givers, and poets through the nineteenth century, as the components “Erin” and “green gem” drift in and out of use, and the Irish/English connotations of “sea” and “ocean” play out against each other.

    The final element, “the silver sea”, derives – as Don Gifford states – from Shakespeare’s Richard II:

    In context, this refers to England, but later writers commandeered it when needed to Ireland. Pemberton Rudd was a barrister at law who published An Answer to the Pamphlet entitled Arguments for and against an Union in Dublin in 1799. He adapts the Shakespearean phrase to his own requirements, switching “stone” to the nationalistic “gem”:

    Later examples prefer “emerald gem” to “precious stone”, contrasting “emerald” with “silver”:

    But we shouldn’t look to a specific source for Joyce’s expression, as sometimes happens:¹²

    Rather, Joyce takes a commonplace notion and draws together the commonplace components he requires for his commonplace, all-purpose newspaper headline.

John Simpson