GAELIC NOTES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 46, 15 March 1895, Page 25

GAELIC NOTES.

j .». We can hardly choose a better day on which to make a good beginning than that which comes neareet, in the publication of our paper, to the Feast of St Patrick— " Lasair greine dine : apstal ha h-Eireann 6ige : P&draic coimeud mile ; go mbad didean ar dtruaighe."— The month, we may add, was first named by the Irish people from this feast, mi Foils PhadrcAo, a name that seems preferable to the heathen title of Marta afterwards given to it. Under the invocation of St Patrick, therefore, we open our Gaelic column. The Gaelic journal for January devotes a couple of pages to a well-deserved panegyric en the late Bey Buseby D. Cleaver, who

had recently died at Dolgelly in Wale 9, at the age of sixty-eight. Mr Cleaver, win was an Anglican clergymm, and the grandson of an Anglican archbishop, had devoted his life in great part to the preservation and revival of the Irish Gaelic. He had been born at Delgany in the county Wicklow, where he bad lived until he was twenty-one, going then to live in Eoscommon. But he had learned to Bay his prayers in Irish when he was a child, and a love of the old tongue clave to him until the end.—" agus ni raib Ec aon uair nios curamaighe i c-a tinachioll nn& ar leabaidh a bbais." He spent large sums of money in printing and distributing books written in the Irish language, and one of his last directions, given on his deathbed, was that a new edition of a Catholic prayer book should be so printed and distributed. He w_s in every way unsparing of himself in his efforts to promote his great object. The notice in the Gaelic Journal terminates with the prayer : "Go dtugaidb Dia gl6r na bbflaitheas da auam I " To Boecommon also, by the way, belongs the honour of having conferred his Gaelic tongue on Dr Douglas Hyde— who, as we saw, was lately placed, in an address, by th« Cork Gaelic League side by side, as an Irish scholar, with O'Donovan and O'Ourry. In the report of the monthly meeting in Danedin last week of the Gaelic Society, we fiad the following passage. " The Secretary (Mr M'Leod) described his visit to one or two of the meetings of the kindred society which had recently been inaugurated in the city— the Irish Gaelic Society. His visits had been of the most pleasant character. It had beeu the long-cherisbed wish of his life to meet with educated Irish Celts, from whom he could learn the living characteristics of the Irish dialect of Gaelic. One touch of Gaelic made the whole Celtic world kin, and he was instantly at home with his Irish brethren, who received him (as a representative of this society) in a most friendly manner. What he had seen was most gratifying — old and young assembled together — the younger portion with their exercise books in hand — to receive a systematic course of lessons in the primitive language of the British Isles. The Scotch had never given the Irish their due meed of credit for the beautiful and scientific orthography of the Gaelic language, which the Irish

alone of all the Celtic races bad either iD vented or acqairei and gifted to Scotland. All the other branches of the Celtic tongue — Welsh, Cornieb, Armorican and Manx — as well as the Scotch Gaelic of 300 years, as evidenced by the poems preserved by the Djan of Liamore, were all more or lea* phonetically spelt ; and the speaker showed by examples the philological advantages possessed by the preßent-day method of Irish and Scotch Gaelic spelling as compared with the phonetic method. Tha speaker concluded by hoping that the warmest fraternal feelings would ever exist between the two societies so closely knit together by the ties of a com mo 1 mother tongue. The gold medal offered by the Very Bey Father Lynch for the best essay on the Irish Gaelic language and literature has been won by Mr Patrick Sally, who wrote under the nomde plume, borrowed for the occasion from Dr Douglas Hyde, of " An Chraobhin Aoibbinn." W§ publish the essay in another place. We may add that all the essays sent in were, withmt exception, very creditable— n itai'y ihoaj eigned respectively "Sanae " and " Jfiamonn an Chnoiu." In the Pilot of January 26 a correspondent gives some p rticulars of tbe work as it goes on in Boston " The Irish school of the PhiloCeltic Society," he writes, (l re-formed its classes last Sunday for the spring session. The junior class, which is composed of twenty-five members, received its first les3on from Superintendent Joha O'Daly. who gave a systematic exposition of Iriah orthography, showiog that Irish is superior to any other language in its system of writing words> and explaining at length the celebrated canon of Celtic orthography, known as " Caol le caol agus leathern, le leathan" (Slender to slender and broad to broid.) At 5.30 o'c ock the pupils gave their usual weakly exhibition, which is frea to the public, and consists for the most part of songs, readings and recitations in the Irish tongue President John P. Lane presided." There is, it s&ms, a Scottish delicacy not, like some otbeis, famous throughout the world at large. It is known to tbe initiated as a " ceapaire," and is described as a Sandwich made of oatcake butter and cheese. A certain Highland matron is thus celebrated in Gaelic verse for her generosity with regard to it : — A the bbain taign na srulatgh, 'd c do dhutcbas bhi fial ; '8 mmadh ceapaire math garbb Rtnn tbu dhomb-aa gun diol. It will not, perhaps, be out <>f place lo contrast with the generosity of the Highland matron the charity ascribed by an Irish beggar to a certain house. He thus described tbe alms bestowed on him : — 'Bai m6c leaihan ar bbeagin taois. Mug rc6r fada aguß bainne fada sbi is. A big broad cake of little dough, A big long mug and milk long down. The Gaelic Journal for January, besides the pages devoted to the memory of tbe late Mr Cleaver, in ths panegyric of which we have spoken and a fine poem on the same theme, contains afquantity of matter also of great interest. There is a continuation m that folk lore of Ireland, which in its particular way, bas hardly any equal and cannot be scrpassed, combining, as it does, tbe visione of a quaint and weird imagination with an insight into a simple and guileless peasant life. There is a S'>ng of Donegal in which the fate of a stray sheep is described with a very pretty pathos. Riddles from MS in the British Museum ; proverbs ; notes in wbicb curious points are explained or examined ; and some otber contribution?, complete an excellent number. The publication merits all tbe

support that cm be given to it and deserves tbe widest possible cuculation.