THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 71

THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE

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any single year, it would be as impossible to uproot from the Irish soil the language in which Oisin sang as to uproot the faith which St. Patrick planted. But what seems to me more needful than all else for the permanent revival and development of the language is some such modification of the existing Irish Academy, or creation of a new one, as might gather together the force of Celtic intellect into a body not content to sink into the indolence of a club, not so languid of spirit as to surrender to a South Kensington collection of curiosities the inestimable relics of Celtic antiquity bequeathed to them by the pious patriotism of generations of Hudsons, Hardimans, and Wildes; but a body learned enough to be law-givers of the language, fond enough to bestow upon it enthusiasm and affection, and sufficiently broad-minded to surround it with all those charms of poetic, historic, and archaeological associations which would appeal to every cultivated mind in the country. Such an Academy, combining (if one may illustrate by living types) the conscientious erudition of Mr. Gilbert, in a cognate subject, with something of Dr. Haughton's light magnetic touch, and Dr. Douglas Hyde's enthusiastic cultivation of the living Gaelic, would bring provincialisms to an authoritative standard, would prune the language of its decayed consonants, purify the style of the slovenly copyists and story-tellers according to modern canons of variety and elegance, and create a new national literature—whether in the Gaelic tongue or the English—enriched with the genius, warmth, sincerity, and quaint mountain charm of the old. Nor need its mission stop here. There would be the broken chords of the world-dispersed Irish race to be taken up and attuned; there would be all the gracious accessories of national life to blossom again in its sunshine—the re-awakening of … continue reading »

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