THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE
From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893
Page 62
THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE
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as single stars, but in constellations; that the order of poets was for generations as powerful as the order of kings, and sometimes more powerful; and that, as the intellectual legacy of that order, we inherit two bodies of epic poetry, permeated by a worship of beauty, a pity for the weak, a contempt for cowardice and cunning, a joyous strength and valour, as ennobling as inspired the songs of Troy, and, at the same time, a native tenderness, heartiness, and simplicity as distinctively homelike as the note of a blackbird in an Irish glen—all this a race of laborious and unrequited Irish scholars have now placed it beyond the power of flippancy or malice to contest. 'The Pursuit of Diarmid and Grainne,' even in its present version, dates from the eleventh century—that is to say from a time when there was not yet a single written document in the Italian language, and a century before the tales of Spanish chivalry were yet invented. It is certain that the earliest of our existing manuscripts were only transcripts of tales told, and probably written down, many centuries before. To look for a troubadour's word-carving, or for Grecian graces of style in narrative thus jotted down by unknown scribes from unknown storytellers' lips, would be like expecting Tennyson's mellow metres from an Anglo-Saxon rhymer.
The value of the Gaelic literature lies in its spirit, not in its letter. Its value in the loveless old age of the nineteenth century is greater than, perhaps, even the most ardent protesters against the extinction of the Gaelic language suspect. The world is a-weary with pessimism. It has lost its innocence. It is losing its faith in most things here or hereafter. Whatever portion of its energies is not given to the pitiless rush for wealth, or self-advertisement, or material luxury, is spent in morbidly analysing its own … continue reading »
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