Incomplete modernisation, under-industrialisation and a deference to history and tradition among its people reinforced the popular perception of Ireland as a place disconnected from time, a ‘lost world’ of sorts, where things persisted that had been pushed out of Britain and other modernised countries, and where science and magic seemed to have equivalent value in the eyes of the local population (Fennell, Irish Science Fiction 38–41). This made it a repository of cultural material for Romanticists and Gothicists, such as the writers who secretly contributed original work to British and American compendiums of Irish folklore (Markey 95–8), and the Irish language was a useful signifier of this inspiring anachronism – not least because, out of reverence for ‘the authority of tradition’, many mediaeval written sources for Gaeilge were composed in an ‘archaising’ style to make them seem older than they were, resulting in texts that combined Early Modern Irish with older grammar and vocabulary that had fallen out of popular use (Doyle 30–31).

Throughout the nineteenth century, English-language writers tackling Irish topics would often make use of phonetically-rendered Irish words, mostly characters’ names and folkloric figures; in many of these works, the language is assumed to be a mark of difference between the characters and the reader, as the texts often include footnotes or glossaries, and their inclusion serves the authenticity of the setting rather than characterisation. The paradox, of course, is that if the intended reader truly has no familiarity with the language or culture, then they have no way of judging the text's authenticity to begin with (Fennell, Rough Beasts 35); the precise purpose of its inclusion, therefore, was to meet the reader's expectations of the characters using it – usually a closeness or sensitivity to nature, a superstitious personality, or a lack of intelligence.