THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 73

THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE

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into life, the popularisation of the old musical speech of the Gaels will be one of the easiest of accomplishment as well as one of the pleasantest duties of national piety. The story of the belief in, and the clinging to, the Gaelic language is in itself a romance pathetic enough for tears. Age after age, while the native tongue was a badge of contempt, a passport to persecution, even a death warrant—the schools suppressed, the printing press unknown, the relics of the national literature scattered in mouldering manuscripts, secreted as the damning evidences of superstition or treason—there were always to be found the poet, the scholar, the ecclesiastic, to foster the sacred fire, the outlawed treasure of the, Gael, in his bosom—to suffer, and hunger, and die for its sake. In the days of Elizabeth it was Duald MacFirbis, dedicating his great Genealogy to his ruined Celtic Prince with the pathetic lament that no Irish prince any longer owned enough of territory to afford himself a grave. Or it was Michael O'Clery, one of the Four Masters, in his poor Franciscan cell, 'transcribing every old material that his eager hand could reach,' for it seemed to him, in his own quaint words, 'a cause of pity and grief, for the glory of God and the honour of Erin, how much the race of Gael, the son of Niall, had gone under a cloud of darkness.'

The centuries pass. The soil of Ireland is confiscated anew after the Cromwellian wars, and confiscated all over again after the Williamite wars. The last relics of the old Celtic civilisation seem to shrink into the very earth before the laws and dripping sword of England. And still in Keating's cave in Aherlow Glen, and O'Flaherty's cabin in Connemara, and Lynch's cell in Louvain, the undying spark is kept alive, and the treasonous manuscripts of the Gael are cherished for happier days. Not … continue reading »

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