SCOTTISH INTELLIGENCE AND IRISH WIT
It is generally admitted that the Irish an'cl Scottish peasants are much better eonversationists-than the English peasantry. Ac-cording to one authority, "The difference is largely due to the fact that a considerable proportion of the Irish and Scottish people are descended from ancestors who spoke a Celtic tongue as well as English, and who were under the necessity of continually translating their ideas from one language to the other. This, of course, was a splendid mental -exercise, giving them an education both in thinking and in framing their ideas. In addition to this there is the fact that Gaelic and Erse —the Scottish and Irish, languages —have thousands of words known to the least educated of the speakers of those tongues, whereas the vocabulary of the English rustic rarely exceeds 300 words. It is to these facts, I think, rather than to mere racial differences that we must trace the 'intelligence of Scottish people aad the wit and fluency of the Irish.' "■
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Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 142, 13 December 1933, Page 4
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167SCOTTISH INTELLIGENCE AND IRISH WIT Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 142, 13 December 1933, Page 4
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