ABSTRACT
Northern Protestants’ Irish Ghost Limb was originally published in The Honest Ulsterman Journal in February 2020. It is about the historical erasure and the current rediscovery of the Irish language amongst northern Protestants. The starting point is an inarticulate feeling of absence experienced by some northern Protestants. The essay goes on a journey of personal discovery, as the author try to work out why her own heart felt the absence of Irish, questioning whether the ghost limb is romanticism or a deeper loss of connection with the language. Both the Irish language and Ulster Scots were formally recognised in the 1998 Agreement, and people were officially given the right to identify as either British or Irish or both. While Protestant engagement with the Irish language has been steadily increasing in recent years, language revival has been strongest in working-class Catholic areas.
