The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1923. THE IRISH LANGUAGE MOVEMENT

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 36, 13 September 1923, Page 29

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1923. THE IRISH LANGUAGE MOVEMENT

HERE have been few things in history so *\ff 'I icf remarkable as the almost total disappear!j o £ ance of the Irish language about the middle LuSP of the nineteenth century. Before “Black Forty-Seven’ Irish was the spoken tongue of the majority of the people. When the Vw' ravages of the famine were ended, with IT* the old people who had died in thousands by the wayside, and with the young who had gone in their hundreds of thousands into exile, the language seemed to have gone too. Four millions at least spoke it before the middle of . the ’forties, by the end of the ’fifties no more than three-quarters of a million spoke it. The famine, as Douglas Hyde observes, seemed to knock the heart clean out of the people'. The grass was growing over the graves; the winds and rains made free with the deserted homes; old men and women had little to live for beyond an occasional letter from America or Australia. For the language no man cared— or rather but one man cared, for Archbishop Mcllale stood alone for the cause of the Gaelic language, and he alone tried to keep the people from forgetting what was perhaps the most intimate link with the spirit of their race. Thus did the silvery speech of the bards and saints dwindle away and all but disappear. If it was rare in 1860, it was rarer still in 1880 and 1890, when, in most counties, only our grandparents ever whispered a prayer in the grand old tongue. * About the year 1890 was founded the Irish Language Society, which afterwards became the Archaeological and Celtic Society. The leaders of this movement displayed great zeal and energy for the preservation of the old tongue. Foremost, among them were O’Donovan, Eugene O’Curry, and Dr. Todd, of Trinity College., Only in- limited circles was the movement supported. And, strange to say, it was also only in aristocratic circles that it had any results. It was rather too much in the nature of an intellectual and. archaeological movement to be taken ,up by the common workaday people. Hence, in the records of the Society we find that among the enthusiasts there were a Duke, an Earl, a Viscount, Marquises, Primates, Archbishops’ Baronets, and even M.P.’s ! The records are interesting

in that they stand for a chapter in the history of the Anglo-Irish gentry not generally known, and they did no small service by ; keeping alive even in limited circles the energy which ‘was’ later to broaden among the people until it moved young and old, and ; gentle and simple to recognise that to learn Irish was at any rate the right thing to do. At the close of the ’seventies was founded ; the , Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, which by publishing cheap booklets did a great deal to help the movement. These little books, which one still comes upon from time to time, were the forerunners of the famous little primers which were the first really ■ vital influence on the revival Father Eugene O’Growney’s Primers of the Gaelic Language. In 1880 was formed the Gaelic Union, of which an early member was a youth named Douglas Hyde, destined in the forty years that have since elapsed to be a tower of strength in the cause. The Union published a paper in, Irish, and with it there began the real earnest cultivation of the modern Irish language. The London Times which had recently predicted that Irishmen would soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as British civilisation had made the Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan, began to sniff suspiciously at this sign of life. In fact it was so alarmed that it devoted a leading article to the purpose of pointing out what a mistake for the Irish people (whom it loved so dearly!) it was to try to revive their ancient tongue. “To lavish ardor,” it said, “on bribing teachers and school-children to learn a language which can teach them nothing is like endowing a day laborer with a machine to test gold. . . The predetermined futility of the enterprise will not the less induce a sense of disappointment and vexation.” In its blind, stupid way, it was conscious that the language movement meant the beginning of freedom for the race it hated. And it was right. O ■ * * - W f 6 o? Grown and Douglas Hyde in the field The nineties brought the Gaelic League, and its bold ami was to make the old tongue, not the literary language but the spoken language -of the people of Ireland. That this was no dream is proved by the fact that already in 1895 Irish had found its way mto the programmes of 63 National Schools and 737 pupils passed examinations in it. In time it took its place m secondary and even in university education; but not without some Homeric struggles. * Towards the close, of the last decade of the nineteenth century the National Oireachtas was held annually, and at the opening of the twentieth many counties had their annual Feis to which, in hundreds, children speaking Irish, men and women dancing Irish dances, and even old people singing folk-lore songs flocked enthusiastically. Ihe Uaulheamh Solids , or Sword of Light , destmed to be forever bound up with the sacred memory 0t -u u IC l earSe > made-fits appearance and was read avidly by young and old. Faimie an Lae was another journal that did its part nobly. And we must' not forget the Dublin Leader in which, week after week Mr. Moran scarified the West Britons, ridiculed the sour faces, lashed the apathetic, encouraged the earnest and in ways suggested by the inspiration of genius brought it home to his readers that it was a shameful thing for an Irish man or woman not to be up and doing not only for the sake of the language, but for the sake of the history and the songs and the industries and the literature which, must be the royal road to the regeneration of Ireland. Thus the movement grew and became a force in the country. How powerful a force it was is best seen from looking at the position of Ireland to-day; for all that has been won was under God, due to the movement for the revival of the old tongue.

There is besides moving the lips and bending the knee another interior prayer without intermission, and that is the longing of Thy heart. Whatever else thou mayest be doing, if thou longest after that Sabbath of God Thou dost not intermit to pray—Thy continual desire is Thv continual voice.—St. Augustine. ; \ ‘ f J