THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 53

THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE

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viduality which we derive from laws and institutions, and modes of thought all but as ancient and unalterable as the ocean cliffs that secure our Island's throne of nationhood amidst the seas. Our stock of political ideas dates from Lucas or Wolfe Tone in the latter end of the last century. Our literature is composed in the main of the songs and essays of Young Ireland. Far be it from me to suggest that the young Irish mind could be drilled in a better school of manly persistency than in Wolfe Tone's, or moulded to nobler purposes than under the glowing influence of Thomas Davis. It is outside my present aim to discuss how much more than slavish imitation or barren criticism of the Young Ireland writers is needed if ever the rich Indies of national literature, which Davis rather coasted than had time to explore, are to yield up their treasures. All I desire to be marked for the moment is that the peculiar glow and charm which have enabled Thomas Davis to acquire an empire over the Irish youth of the present generation even more powerful than over his own—the temperament swept by ever-shifting mystic lights and shadows, now bathed in a lover's tenderness, now flashing with the delight of battle, or joyous as a wine-cup at a feast of old—were derived from a passionate attachment to the old Gaelic tongue, and a sympathetic nature saturated with the wild sensitive spiritual traditions which the old Gaelic literature exhales as naturally as an Irish meadow exhales perfumes on a May morning. No man who understood only the English language could ever have written the 'Lament for Owen Roe O'Neill,' or (to cite another master of the Celtic lyre) 'The Wail for the Earls.' Nor can it be other than a confounding reflection that in the mysterious intellectual commerce of the living and the dead, the Irish Nationalist of our day … continue reading »

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