THE NATIONAL POET OF IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, 20 November 1913, Page 43

THE NATIONAL POET OF IRELAND.

To the Editor.

Sir, —The correspondence on this subject, which appeared in your columns, was very interesting. As the descendant of an old bardic family, which "for centuries sent out from its schools bard after bard, I naturally felt drawn towards Mr. Nolan's paper. It seemed in every sentence to breathe of Irish national life as expressed by her minstrels. In the writer we perceive a type of Irish gentleman very rare in these latitudes: one who knows thoroughly the history of his country, feels almost its every throb of human passion in joy and sorrow, and one who has moreover the sympathetic faculty of communicating to others his feelings. Mr. Sullivan, if I might presume to say, is an Irishman of more modern date, the product of a civilisation which sought to crush every noble sentiment in the Gael. True, Mr. Sullivan has come out unspotted in the process. I know him to be a genuine Irishman, but he must surely be mistaken in thinking Moore is our National poet. The Anglicised form in which Irish literature and minstrelsy is presented to us can bear no comparison to the dignity, beauty, and style of the original. Even our religious hymns are cold, insipid imitations compared with- the devotional fervor of Irish. The national poet of Ireland must be born in the womb of Irish literature and tradition.—l am, etc. 3 s Shane O'Dala. Auckland.