TROUBLED IRELAND

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 119, 22 May 1930, Page 18

TROUBLED IRELAND

ACQUIRING A TONGUE

THORNY PATH OF GAELIC*

NOT FOE MODEEN NEEDS

"When it came to the actual problem of providing a substitute for English it was found that the language which sufficed for the simple needs of a primitive race would not serve a modern community/ says M. G. Palmer in a recent article.

Galway is known as the "Cities of the Tribes," but even in Ireland it is sometimes forgotten that the tribes from'whom it derived the title were not Gaelic clansmen and gallowghisses with their • spears and battle axes, but sober English merchants, who, following in the wake of Strongbow's mailed invaders, found it more profitable to exchange ' their swords for yardsticks, and by shipping wool and.; fish in return for the wines of Portugal and Spain, built up a trade that made the saying "as proud as a Gahvay merchant" a national proverb. It was this "ancient colouie of the English," as: it described 'itself, that decreed in 1518 "neather, O nor -Mac shall strutte n'e swagger through the streets ot Gal way," and inscribed upon the western gate that guarded the passage, to the mountainous region where the O's and Macs roamed the heather: "O God deliver us from the ferocious O'Flaherties."

The wheel has long ■ since 'come full circle;""and,that chieftain.-of the O'JTliihei Ities whose'liabit it was to climb a hill above . his castle and declare war against •'all the potentates of "the world, but especially agiiiiiht' that pitiful, pettifogging town of Gahvay/1 merely anticipated events : Not by war but by peaceful peue•taxtion the OlTlalievties;. have triumphed, and Galyray, which for: centuries barred them 'from its gates, is not only an Irish town, but under, the Free State has become the capital of the ,- Irish-speakint; areas, and if the champions of the. new order have their way, what the .Gaeltacht .thinks to-day 'Ireland must think to-mor-row. In the. last session of the Dail all parties united in voting additional funds to Gahvay College with the object of transforming it into a Gaelic university, where professors and students alike ,-wiU do all their- academic work through, the medium of the Irish language. ■. "FREE AND GAELIC." This is merely the- latest development in the campaign to make Ireland,-in the favourite slogan, of the language enthusiasts, "not .only free but Gaelic"—an enterprise perhaps more formidable than any State has attempted in modern times. To some it is proof of the racial weakness described by Sir Horace Plunkett as a bias for "building an impossible future upon an imaginary past": to others, who decline to be impressed by the argument that .the Celt is always in reaction against the despotism of .-fact,: it is a crusade which must be fought and won if the nation is to find its soul. Whatever conclusion may be reached, ho one .can deny the magnitude of the undertaking or the extraordinary exertions which the rulers of the Free State are making to grapple with it. To effect the revival of Irish not merely-as a scholarly accomplishment for a few, but as a workaday language for 3,000,000 of people, is a feat compared with' which the harnessing of the Shannon to supply light and power is little more than the effort of a boy^ to blow. B.oap bubbles. ■'"'.:■. . -■.' ; Even a-generation ago it seemed as likely that the people of the United States would revive Choctaw as that Ireland should revert to the tongue of the Gael. ■It was not until 1892 that the Gaelic Lea-. gue, which was to be the driving force of the new movement, came into existence, j and at that.time it is doubtful if the peo-. pie who spoke only Irish numbered 20,000. Along the western seaboard there were, perhaps 500,000 persons who could- converse in both languages, but the odds were heavily in favour of English, and in the 1926 censuß speakers of Irish in the Gaeltacht had fallen 300,000. , Thirty years back pioneers like Dr. Douglas Hyde and Dr. Eoin MacNeill found it 'hard to. convince public opinion that national salvation was. to be found-in a general revival of, the tongue that was still to be heard upon the stony hills and bleak sea beaches of the west. To the eye of faith these places might be shrines of native culture; the practical man persisted in seeing them as hopeless agricultural slums peopled by a broken remnant whose dearest ambition was to raise enough money to enable their sons and daughters to escape to the United States. And the curious; and ironical thing is that, while its admirers "claim the Gaelic ideal has revivified.lreland as a whole, it has left the Irish speaking districts almost exactly where they' were. 'The area of the G_aeltacht," Mr. de Valera said recently, "is rapidly contracting through the pressure of: the English language at its boundaries where the languages meet. ..•Emigration is taking more than the average toll from the Gaeltacht, which lost approximately 23 per cent, of its population between 1911 and 1926." •It would be'in. keeping with the lamentable history of the Irishspeaking districts if their final epitaph should be, "They saved others; themselves they could not save." WOULD NOT SERVE. Even under the new dispensation, where it is the fashion to invoke the name of the Gaeltacht as reverently as a Moslem invokes Mecca, the flattery of its adorers stops well short-of imitation. When it came to the actual problem of providing a substitute for English, it was found that the language which' sufficed for the simple needs of a primitive race would not serve for a modern community. Tudor and Stuart confiscations- and^ the devastating penal laws, by i-educing to penury, the mass of propertied Catholics who,were not driven; in to exile, ended for all practical purposes the use of Irish by an educated class. In the treaty debates eight years ago it was admitted, that even if members of the Dail knew Irish—as yet not one in ten Deputies can speak it—the language had not been developed to a point _ that would make it. possible to discuss iutricate constitutional points. One oj: the strongest arguments against the transformation of Gahvay , College into a Gaelic university is, as Professor Tiurney, himself a sound Gaelic scholar, pointed out, that a terminology has not been evolved that would permit the teaching of subjects up to a university standard through the medium of Irish. The bardic tales which.are the glory of Irish literature are written iv a language as different from the modern •' tongue as Latin, is from Italian, and the new popular Irish which began with Geoffrey Keating in the' seventeenth', century is, in the main, pure folkstuff, beautiful ip its way, but restricted inside a very narrow range. To make matters worse, the: lack- of printed literature caused provincial dialects to diverge, and though in theory every one agrees that standardisation ia essential, in practice champions of the rival dialects fight bitterly against any concession, and the controversial battles of adherents of upholders of Minister, Connauglit, and Ulster Irish provide a literary analogue to the political conflicts of Orange and Green. The problem of wresting the language from the dialect cranks and the phonetic enthusiasts, and l'eshaping it to modern needs was almost as difficult as that of imposing it on _a population which not only thinks in English, but derives all its intellectual sustenance from English papers and books, and is exposed in addition to an incessant English barrage from the wireless and the talkies. The Free State Government decided that the only solution was to be found in what Mr." Blythc, frankly if incautiously, described as "the use of the jackboot." :■; USING ENGLISH. W ■ •■ Despite the horrified shrieks of purists and pedants, gaps in the vocabulary were made good by the simple process of Gaelicising English words. ..The method was barbarous, but -it worked and the official translators have now little difficulty iv producing: Gaelic versions of Government proclamations and Parliamentary Bills. Apart from school text books, the great bulk of printed matter in Irish is issued by the Government, so that they have an. entirely free hand, and in the true Napoleonic spirit' they have no scruples about breaking eggs to make the particular kind of omelette they desire. , Irish, new style, has been described as "a language•■intclligiblc only to those who know English," and certainly any speaker of only Gaelic would

be hopelessly"fit sea if he tried to'construe a clause of a Dail Bill.

In education the "jackboot" was even more mercilessly used. One of the earliest acts of the Free State authorities was to close the primary schools for a long holi,Uay so that nil teachers might be rounded up for nu intensive course of training in Irish. On their release from these "concentration camps," as they were profanely known, they were compelled to instruct their classes in the language, and since the majority of the teachers were aB reluctant to learn:as their pupils were to be taught, the- result' for. a time was .educational chaos... By.'now things, have been straightened out somewhat and the problem of enforcing tlie; teaching of Irish in secondary schools' has been carried out with little confusion. The extension, it is^true, ha.s raet will) strong antagonism from the Pro-; tmstaut minority, and while educated Catholics have offered no opposition, it is an open secret that many of these lind scant consolation ia the view of extremists that "bad Gaelic is : better than good English." NO HEADWAY IN HOMES. While Gaelic has conquered in the schools' it has as yet made little headway in the homes, and until it does, u-ot only is it vuin to dream of u,n Irish-speaking people, bot pupils, who acquire' knowledge through the medium of a language which they fail to tise for the ordinary purposes of life arc ouiy too likely to sink into illiteracy. Irish history explains the' desire to be different from England at all costs, which isi ane of the strongest impulses behind the demand for a Gaeiic-speaking people. But it certainly, does -not justify the belief that Irishmen who speak English aTe in danger of losing their nationality. The real problem ,is not to be different from England but •to (Combine all Irish elements into a coherent Irish nation. Gaelic may be essen.tial to the salvation of Irish Ireland, but its most devoted apostles, if.they have the courage to face facts, must admit that the language crusade is not the least formidable of the barriers that block, the hope of a Teuaiioni of north and south.