THE IRISH AGE OF GOLD

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 142

THE IRISH AGE OF GOLD

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children, too, came to be flogged every time they were caught repeating the accents of Esheen, and educated Irishmen were taught to turn from the history of their motherland with averted gaze. A great romance might be written of how the old Gaelic literature was saved from the persecutions of ages. Bonnie Prince Charlie's adventures amongst the Scottish crags were not a whit more exciting or more touching in their appeal to gentle hearts. What a story that of the consecrated Silver Shrine called the Dhownach Arrigid, from the days when it was borne in battle before the O'Donels until the day it reached the Gold Room of the Royal Irish Academy! What more moving tale of outlaw life was ever told than the story of many a Gaelic manuscript which is now among the most precious muniments of European philology—handed down by some outlawed bishop who fled to France, to some obscure friar who was hanged in Dublin, and so down through the Penal Days from one smoky mountain shieling to another, through the hands of unknown rustic poets, schoolmasters, and priests, until the day broke, and the rotting vellum scrolls were found to be as precious human documents as if they were chapters of Gibbon? There descended a yellow manuscript volume from unknown times through generations of a Tipperary peasant family, half-farmers, half-poets. Its existence came to the knowledge of Edmund Burke. The great Irishman was not a Gaelic scholar himself, but his Celtic genius enabled him to divine a Celtic national treasure in its ragged pages. By his means the manuscript was purchased for a few pounds. Then came a pathetic discovery. It was written in a lost tongue. Its ancient law-dialect had been obsolete for ages. The learned puzzled over its crumbling pages in vain. The task was given over until there arose four … continue reading »

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