The writings of Thomas Osborne Davis

[Oisín]

Old Ireland
First published in The Nation 10 August, 1844

There was once civilisation in Ireland. We never were very eminent, to be sure, for manufactures in metal, our houses were simple, our very palaces rude, our furniture scanty, our saffron shirts not often changed, and our foreign trade small. Yet was Ireland civilised. Strange thing! says one whose ideas of civilisation are identical with carpets and cut glass, fine masonry, and the steam-engine; yet 'tis true. For there was a time when learning was endowed by the rich and honoured by the poor, and taught all over our country. Not only did thousands of natives frequent our schools and colleges, but men of every rank came here from the Continent to study under the professors and system of Ireland, and we need not go beyond the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth centuries than Ireland, and we find their names and achievements remembered through the Continent.

Of two names which Hallam thinks worth rescuing from the darkness of the dark ages, one is the Irish metaphysician, John Erigena. In a recent communication to the Association, we have Bavarians acknowledging the Irish St. Killian as the apostle of their country.

Yet what, beyond a catalogue of names and a few marked events, do even the educated Irish know of the heroic Pagans or the holy Christians of Old Ireland? These men have left libraries of biography, religion, philosophy, natural history, topography, history, and romance. They cannot all be worthless; yet, except the few volumes given us by the Archaeological Society, which of their works have any of us read?

It is also certain that we possessed written laws with extensive and minute comments and reported decisions. These Brehon laws have been foully misrepresented by Sir John Davies. Their tenures were the Gavelkind once prevalent over most of the world. The land belonged to the clan, and,on the death of a clansman, his share was re-apportioned according to the number and wants of his family. The system of erics or fines for offences has existed amongst every people from the Hebrews downwards, nor can anyone, knowing the multitude of crimes now punishable by fines or damages, think the people of this empire justified in calling the ancient Irish barbarous because they extended the system. There is in these laws, so far as they are known, minuteness and equity; and what is a better test of their goodness we learn from Sir John Davies himself, and from the still abler Baron Finglass, that the people reverenced, obeyed, and clung to these laws, though to decide by or obey them was a high crime in England's code. Moreover, the Norman and Saxon settlers hastened to adopt these Irish laws, and used them more resolutely, if possible, than the Irish themselves.

Orderliness and hospitality were peculiarly cultivated. Public caravansarais were built for travellers in every district, and we have what would almost be legal evidence of the grant of vast tracts of land for the supply of provisions for these houses of hospitality. The private hospitality of the chiefs was equally marked; nor was it quite rude. Ceremony was united with great freedom of intercourse; age, and learning, and rank, and virtue were respected, and these men, whose cookery was probably as coarse as that of Homer's heroes, had around their board harpers and bards who sang poetry as gallant and fiery, though not so grand, as the Homeric ballad-singers, and flung off a music which Greece never rivalled.

Shall a people, pious, hospitable, and brave, faithful observers of family ties, cultivators of learning, music, and poetry, be called less than civilised, because mechanical arts were rude, and comfort despised by them?

Scattered through the country in MS. are hundreds of books wherein the laws and achievements, the genealogies and possessions, the creeds, and manners and poetry of these our predecessors in Ireland are set down. Their music lives in the traditional airs of every valley.

Yet mechanical civilisation, more cruel than time, is trying to exterminate them, and, therefore, it becomes us all who do not wish to lose the heritage of centuries, nor to feel ourselves living among nameless ruins, when we might have an ancestral home—it becomes all who love learning, poetry, or music, or are curious of human progress, to aid in or originate a series of efforts to save all that remains of the past.

It becomes them to lose no opportunity of instilling into the minds of their neighbours, whether they be corporators or peasants, that it is a brutal, mean, and sacrilegious thing, to turn a castle, a church, a tomb, or a mound, into a quarry or a gravel pit, or to break the least morsel of sculpture, or to take any old coin or ornament they may find to a jeweller, so long as there is an Irish Academy in Dublin to pay for it or accept it.

Before the year is out we hope to see A Society for the Preservation of Irish Music established in Dublin, under the joint patronage of the leading men of all politics, with branches in the provincial towns, for the collection and diffusion of Irish airs.

An effort—a great and decided one—must be made to have the Irish Academy so endowed out of the revenues of Ireland, that it may be a National School of Irish History and Literature and a Museum of Irish Antiquities, on the largest scale. In fact, the Academy should be a secular Irish College, with professors of our old language, literature, history, antiquities, and topography; with suitable schools, lecture-rooms, and museums.

No surer way exists of bringing that to pass than sustaining those who are now collecting and spreading information on the subject. Every man able to afford it should subscribe to the Archaeological Society. It has given us many things, the Battle of Magh Rath, worth a dozen MacPhersons, the Statutes of Kilkenny, Grace's Annals and a number of smaller works. It is about to give us O'Flaherty's History of West Connaught, edited by Mr. Butler and Dr. Aquilla Smith, the Books of All Hallows and Christ Church, under the able Dr. Todd, and best of all, Hy-Fiachra and Cormac's Glossary, by John O'Donovan.

We see a just complaint in the last report of the Society, that they had asked for the use of old family papers illustrative of the manners, laws, topography, or aught of the information of past days, for their miscellany, and had asked in vain. Now, this is a disgrace to the country, and we hope each of our readers will exert him or herself to remove it ....

[Oisín]

Orange and Green

Here it is at last—the dawning. Here, in the very sanctuary of the Orange heart, is a visible angel of Nationality:—

‘If a British Union cannot be formed, perhaps an Irish one might. What could Repeal take from Irish Protestants that they are not gradually losing in due course?’

‘However improbable, it is not impossible, that better terms might be made with the Repealers than the Government seem disposed to give. A hundred thousand Orangemen, with their colours flying might yet meet a hundred thousand Repealers on the banks of the Boyne; and, on a field presenting so many solemn reminiscences to all, sign the Magna Charta of Ireland's independence. The Repeal banner might then be Orange and Green, flying from the Giant's Causeway to the Cove of Cork, and proudly look down from the walls of Derry upon a new-born nation.’

‘Such a union, not to be accomplished without concession on all sides, would remove the great offence of Irish Protestants—their Saxon attachment to their British fatherland. Cast off, as they would feel themselves by Great Britain, and baptised on the banks of the Boyne into the great Irish family, they would be received into a brotherhood which, going forward towards the attainment of a national object, would extinguish the spirit of Ribbonism, and establish in its place a covenant of peace.’

So speaks the Evening Mail, the trumpet of the northern confederates, and we cry amen! amen!

We exult, till the beat of our heart stays our breathing, at the vision of such a concourse. Never—never, when the plains of Attica saw the rivals of Greece marching to expel the Persian, who had tried to intrigue with each for the ruin of both—never, when, from the uplands of Helvetia, rolled together the victors of Sempach—never, when, at the cry of Fatherland, the hundred nations of Germany rose up, and swept on emancipating to the Rhine—never was there under the sky a godlier or more glorious sight than that would be—to all slaves, balsam; to all freemen, strength; to all time, a miracle!

If Ireland's wrongs were borne for this—if our feuds and our weary sapping woes were destined to this ending, then blessed be the griefs of the past! His sickness to the healed—his pining to the happy lover—his danger to the rescued, are faint images of such a birth from such a chaos.

It is something—the cheer of an invisible friend—to have, even for a moment, heard the hope. It must abide in the souls of the Irish, guaranteeing the moderation of the Catholic—wakening the aspirations of the Orangemen. There it is—a cross on the sky.

It may not now lead to anything real. Long-suffering, oft-baffled Ireland will not abandon for an inch or hour its selected path by reason of this message.

We hope from it, because it has been prompted by causes which will daily increase. Incessantly will the British Minister labour to gain the support of seven millions of freed men, by cutting away every privilege and strength from one million of discarded allies.

We hope from it, because, as the Orangemen become more enlightened, they will more and more value the love of their countrymen, be prouder of their country, and more conscious that their ambition, interest, and even security are identical with nationality.

We hope from it, because, as the education of People and the elevation of the rich progress, they will better understand the apprehensions of the Orangemen, allow for them in a more liberal spirit, and be able to give more genuine security to even the nervousness of their new friends.

We hope most from it, because of its intrinsic greatness. It is the best promise yet seen to have the Orangemen proposing, even as a chance, the conference of 100,000 armed and ordered yeomen from the North, with 100,000 picked (ay, by our faith! and martial) Southerns on the banks of the Boyne, to witness a treaty of mutual concession, oblivion, and eternal amity; and then to lift an Orange-Green Flag of Nationhood, and defy the world to pull it down.

Yet 'tis a distant hope, and Ireland, we repeat, must not swerve for its flashing. When the Orangemen treat the shamrock with as ready a welcome as Wexford gave the Lily—when the Green is set as consort of the Orange in the lodges of the North—when the Fermanagh meeting declares that the Orangemen are Irishmen pledged to Ireland, and summons another Dungannon Convention to prepare the terms of our treaty; then, and not till then, shall we treat this gorgeous hope as a reality, and then, and not till then, shall we summon the Repealers to quit their present sure course, and trust their fortunes to the League of the Boyne.

Meantime, we commend to the hearts and pride of 'the Enniskilleners' this, their fathers', declaration in 1782:—

We, the Grand Jury of the county of Fermanagh, being constitutionally assembled at the present assizes, held for the county of Fermanagh, at Enniskillen, this 18th day of March, 1782, think ourselves called upon at this interesting moment to make our solemn declarations relative to the rights and liberties of Ireland.

We pledge ourselves to this our country, that we will never pay obedience to any law made, or to be made, to bind Ireland, except those laws which are and shall be made by the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland.

Signed by order, Arthur Cole Hamilton, Foreman.

[Oisín]

Ireland's People
First published in The Nation 26 November, 1842.

When we are considering a country's resources and its fitness for a peculiar destiny, its people are not to be overlooked. How much they think, how much they work, what are their passions, as well as their habits, what are their hopes and what their history, suggest inquiries as well worth envious investigation as even the inside of a refugee's letter.

And there is much in Ireland of that character—much that makes her superior to slavery, and much that renders her inferior to freedom.

Her inhabitants are composed of Irish nobles, Irish gentry, and the Irish people. Each has an interest in the independence of their country, each a share in her disgrace. Upon each, too, there devolves a separate duty in this crisis of her fate. They all have responsibilities; but the infamy of failing in them is not alike in all.

The nobles are the highest class. They have most to guard. In every other country they are the champions of patriotism. They feel there is no honour for them separate from their fatherland. Its freedom, its dignity, its integrity, are as their own. They strive for it, legislate for it, guard it, fight for it. Their names, their titles, their very pride are of it.

In Ireland they are its disgrace. They were first to sell and would be last to redeem it. Treachery to it is daubed on many an escutcheon in its heraldry. It is the only nation where slaves have been ennobled for contributing to its degradation.

It is a foul thing this—dignity emanating from the throne to gild the filthy mass of national treason that forms the man's part of many an Irish lord.

We do not include in this the whole Irish peerage. God forbid. There are several of them not thus ignoble. Many of them worked, struggled, sacrificed for Ireland. Many of them were true to her in the darkest times.

They were her chiefs, her ornaments, her sentinels, her safeguards. Alas! that they, too, should have shrunk from their position, and left their duties to humbler, but bolder and better men.

Look at their station in the State. Is it not one of unequivocal shame? They enjoy the half-mendicant privilege of voting for a representative of their order, in the House of Lords, some twice or thrice in their lives. One Irish peer represents about a dozen others of his class, and thus, in his multiplex capacity, he is admitted into fellowship with the English nobility. The borrowed plumes, the delegated authority of so many of his equals, raise him to a half-admitted equality with an English nobleman. And, although thus deprived of their inheritance of dignity, they are not allowed even the privilege of a commoner. An Irish lord cannot sit in the House of Commons for an Irish county or city, nor can he vote for an Irish member.

But an Irish lord can represent an English constituency. The distinction is a strange one—unintelligible to us in any sense but one of national humiliation. We understand it thus:— An Irish lord is too mean in his own person, and by virtue of his Irish title, to rank with the British peerage. He can only qualify for that honour by uniting in his the suffrages and titles of ten or twelve others. But—flattering distinction!—he is above the rank of an Irish commoner, nor is he permitted to sully his name with the privileges of that order. And—unspeakable dignity—he may take his stand with a British mob.

There is no position to match this in shame. There is no guilt so despicable as dozing in it without a blush or an effort, or even a dream for independence. When all else are alive to indignity, and working in the way of honour and liberty, they alone, whom it would best become to be earliest and most earnest in the strife, sink back replete with dishonour.

Of those, or their descendants, who, at the time of the Union, sold their country and the high places they filled in her councils and in her glory, for the promise of a foreign title, which has not been redeemed, the shame and the mortification have been perhaps too great to admit of any hope in regard to them. Their trust was sacred—their honour unsuspected. The stake they guarded above life they betrayed then for a false bauble; and it is no wonder if they think their infamy irredeemable and eternal.

We know not but it is. There are many, however, not in that category. They struggled at fearful odds, and every risk, against the fate of their country. They strove when hope had left them. Wherefore do they stand apart now, when she is again erect, and righteous, and daring? Have they despaired for her greatness, because of the infidelity of those to whom she had too blindly trusted?

The time is gone when she could be betrayed.

This one result is already guaranteed by recent teaching. We may not be yet thoroughly instructed in the wisdom and the virtue necessary for the independent maintenance of self-government; but we have mastered thus much of national knowledge that we cannot be betrayed. There is no assurance ever nation gave which we have not given, or may not give, that our present struggle shall end in triumph or in national death.

The writers of The Nation have never concealed the defects or flattered the good qualities of their countrymen. They have told them in good faith that they wanted many an attribute of a free people, and that the true way to command happiness and liberty was by learning the arts and practising the culture that fitted men for their enjoyment. Nor was it until we saw them thus learning and thus practising that our faith became perfect, and that we felt entitled to say to all men, here is a strife in which it will be stainless glory to be even defeated. It is one in which the Irish nobility have the first interest and the first stake in their individual capacities.

As they would be the most honoured and benefited by national success, they are the guiltiest in opposing or being indifferent to national patriotism.

Of the Irish gentry there is not much to be said. They are divisible into two classes—the one consists of the old Norman race commingled with the Catholic gentlemen who either have been able to maintain their patrimonies, or who have risen into affluence by their own industry; the other, the descendants of Cromwell's or William's successful soldiery.

This last is the most anti-Irish of all. They feel no personal debasement in the dishonour of the country. Old prejudices, a barbarous law, a sense of insecurity in the possessions they know were obtained by plunder, combine to sink them into the mischievous and unholy belief that it is their interest as well as their duty to degrade, and wrong, and beggar the Irish people.

There are among them men fired by enthusiasm, men fed by fanaticism, men influenced by sordidness; but, as a whole, they are earnest thinkers and stern actors. There is a virtue in their unscrupulousness. They speak, and act, and dare as men. There is a principle in their unprincipledness. Their belief is a harsh and turbulent one, but they profess it in a manly fashion.

We like them better than the other section of the same class. These last are but sneaking echoes of the other's views. They are coward patriots and criminal dandies. But they ought to be different from what they are. We wish them so. We want their aid now—for the country, for themselves, for all. Would that they understood the truth, that they thought justly, and acted uprightly. They are wanted, one and all. Why conceal it—they are obstacles in our way, shadows on our path.

These are called the representatives of the property of the country. They are against the national cause, and therefore it is said that all the wealth of Ireland is opposed to the Repeal of the Union.

It is an ignorant and a false boast.

The people of the country are its wealth. They till its soil, raise its produce, ply its trade. They serve, sustain, support, save it. They supply its armies—they are its farmers, its merchants, its tradesmen, its artists' all that enrich and adorn it.

And, after all, each of them has a patrimony to spend, the honourable earning of his sweat, or his intellect, or his industry, or his genius. Taking them on an average, they must, to live, spend at least £5 each by the year. Multiply it by seven millions, and see what it comes to.

Thirty-five millions annually—compare with that the rental of Ireland; compare with it the wealth of the aristocracy spent in Ireland, and are they not as nothing?

But a more important comparison may be made of the strength, the fortitude, the patience, the bravery of those, the enrichers of the country, with the meanness in mind and courage of those who are opposed to them.

It is the last we shall suggest. It is sufficient for our purpose. To those who do not think it of the highest value we have nothing to say.

[Oisín]

Our National Language
Part I was first published in The Nation 1 April, 1843. Part II was first published in in The Nation 30 December, 1843.

Part I

Men are ever valued most for peculiar and original qualities. A man who can only talk common-place, and act according to routine, has little weight. To speak, look, and do what your own soul from its depths orders you, are credentials of greatness which all men understand and acknowledge. Such a man's dictum has more influence than the reasoning of an imitative or common-place man. He fills his circle with confidence. He is self-possessed, firm, accurate, and daring. Such men are the pioneers of civilization, and the rulers of the human heart.

Why should not nations be judged thus? Is not a full indulgence of its natural tendencies essential to a people's greatness? Force the manners, dress, language, and constitution of Russia, or Italy, or Norway, or America, and you instantly stunt and distort the whole mind of either people.

The language, which grows up with a people, is conformed to their organs, descriptive of their climate, constitution, and manners, mingled inseparably with their history and their soil, fitted beyond any other language to express their prevalent thoughts in the most natural and efficient way.

To impose another language on such a people is to send their history adrift among the accidents of translation—'tis to tear their identity from all places—'tis to substitute arbitrary signs for picturesque and suggestive names—'tis to cut off the entail of feeling, and separate the people from their forefathers by a deep gulf—'tis to corrupt their very organs, and abridge their power of expression.

The language of a nation's youth is the only easy and full speech for its manhood and for its age. And when the language of its cradle goes, itself craves a tomb.

What business has a Russian for the rippling language of Italy or India? How could a Greek distort his organs and his soul to speak Dutch upon the sides of the Hymettus, or the beach of Salamis, or on the waste where once was Sparta? And is it befitting the fiery, delicate-organed Celt to abandon his beautiful tongue, docile and spirited as an Arab, "sweet as music, strong as the wave"—is it befitting in him to abandon this wild liquid speech for the mongrel of a hundred breeds called English, which, powerful though it be, creaks and bangs about the Celt who tries to use it?

We lately met a glorious thought in the Triads of Mochmed, printed in one of the Welsh codes by the Record Commission. There are three things without which there is no country—common language, common judicature, and co-tillage land—for without these a country cannot support itself in peace and social union.’’

A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories—'tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river.

And in good times it has ever been thought so.

Who had dared to propose the adoption of Persian or Egyptian in Greece—how had Pericles thundered at the barbarian? How had Cato scourged from the forum him who would have given the Attic or Gallic speech to men of Rome? How proudly and how nobly Germany stopped ‘the incipient creeping’ progress of French! And no sooner had she succeeded than her genius, which had tossed in a hot trance, sprung up fresh and triumphant.

Had Pyrrhus quelled Italy, or Xerxes subdued Greece for a time long enough to impose new languages, where had been the literature which gives a pedigree to human genius? Even liberty recovered had been sickly and insecure without the language with which it had hunted in the woods, worshipped at the fruit-strewn altar, debated on the council-hill, and shouted in the battle-charge.

There is a fine song of the Fusians, which describes— ‘Language linked to liberty.’

To lose your native tongue, and learn that of an alien, is the worst badge of conquest—it is the chain on the soul. To have lost entirely the national language is death; the fetter has worn through. So long as the Saxon held to his German speech, he could hope to resume his land from the Norman; now, if he is to be free and locally governed, he must build himself a new home. There is hope for Scotland—strong hope for Wales—sure hope for Hungary. The speech of the alien is not universal in the one; is gallantly held at bay in the other; is nearly expelled from the third.

How unnatural—how corrupting—'tis for us, three-fourths of whom are of Celtic blood, to speak a medley of Teutonic dialects. If we add the Celtic Scots, who came back here from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and the Celtic Welsh, who colonised many parts of the Wexford and other Leinster counties, to the Celts who never left Ireland, probably five-sixths, or more, of us are Celts. What business have we with the Norman-Sassenagh?

Nor let any doubt these proportions because of the number of English names in Ireland. With a politic cruelty, the English of the Pale passed an Act (3 Edw. IV, chap. 3), compelling every Irishman within English jurisdiction, to go like to one Englishman in apparel, and shaving off his beard above the mouth,
[...]
and shall take to him an English sirname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale; or colour, White, Blacke, Browne, or art or science, as Smith, or Carpenter; or office, as Cook, Butler; and that he and his issue shall use this name, under pain of forfeiting his goods yearly.’’

And just as this parliament before the Reformation, so did another after the Reformation. By the 28th Henry VIII, c. 15, the dress and language of the Irish were insolently described as barbarous by the minions of that ruffian king, and were utterly forbidden and abolished under many penalties and incapacities. These laws are still in force; but whether the Archaeological Society, including Peel and O'Connell, will be prosecuted, seems doubtful.

There was also, 'tis to be feared, an adoption of English names, during some periods, from fashion, fear, or meanness. Some of our best Irish names, too, have been so mangled as to require some scholarship to identify them. For these and many more reasons, the members of the Celtic race here are immensely greater than at first appears.

But this is not all; for even the Saxon and Norman colonists, notwithstanding these laws, melted down into the Irish, and adopted all their ways and language. For centuries upon centuries Irish was spoken by men of all bloods in Ireland, and English was unknown, save to a few citizens and nobles of the Pale. 'Tis only within a very late period that the majority of the people learned English.

But, it will be asked, how can the language be restored now?

We shall answer this partly by saying that, through the labours of the Archaeological and many lesser societies, it is being revived rapidly.

We shall consider this question of the possibility of reviving it more at length some other day.

Nothing can make us believe that it is natural or honourable for the Irish to speak the speech of the alien, the invader, the Sassenagh tyrant, and to abandon the language of our kings and heroes. What! give up the tongue of Ollamh Fodhla and Brian Boru, the tongue of M'Carthy, and the O'Nials, the tongue of Sarsfield's, Curran's, Mathew's, and O'Connell's boyhood, for that of Strafford and Poynings, Sussex, Kirk, and Cromwell!

No! oh, no! the ‘brighter days shall surely come’, and the green flag shall wave on our towers, and the sweet old language be heard once more in college, mart, and senate.

But, even should the effort to save it as the national language fail, by the attempt we will rescue its old literature, and hand down to our descendants proofs that we had a language as fit for love, and war, and business, and pleasure, as the world ever knew, and that we had not the spirit and nationality to preserve it!

Had Swift known Irish he would have sowed its seed by the side of that nationality which he planted, and the close of the last century would have seen the one as flourishing as the other. Had Ireland used Irish in 1782, would it not have impeded England's re-conquest of us? But 'tis not yet too late.

Part II

Now, reader, don't be alarmed, we are not going to ask you to call your wife machree, or your child mavourneen instead of ‘my heart’ and ‘my dear’, as you do or ought to do now. We do not want you to learn names for those implements of agriculture and trade, those articles of furniture and dress, those relations of love, and life, and religion, other than you in infancy lisped.

For you, if the mixed speech called English was laid with sweetmeats on your child's tongue, English is the best speech of manhood. And yet, rather, in that case you are unfortunate. The hills, and lakes, and rivers, and forts and castles, the churches and parishes, the baronies and counties around you, have all Irish names—names which describe the nature of the scenery or ground, the name of founder, or chief, or priest, or the leading fact in the history of the place. To you these are names hard to pronounce, and without meaning.

And yet it were well for you to know them. That knowledge would be a topography, and a history, and romance, walking by your side, and helping your discourse. Meath tells its flatness, Clonmel the abundant riches of its valleys, Fermanagh is the land of the Lakes, Tyrone the country of Owen, Kilkenny the Church of St. Canice, Dunmore the great fort, Athenry the Ford of the Kings, Dunleary the Fort of O'Leary; and the Phoenix Park, instead of taking its name from a fable, recognises as christener the "sweet water" which yet springs near the east gate.

All the names of our airs and songs are Irish, and we every day are as puzzled and ingeniously wrong about them as the man who, when asked for the air, I am asleep, and don't waken me, called it "Tommy M'Cullagh made boots for me."

The bulk of our history and poetry are written in Irish, and shall we, who learn Italian, and Latin, and Greek, to read Dante, Livy, and Homer in the original—shall we be content with ignorance or a translation of Irish?

As we urged before, with a detail which we cannot now repeat, three-fourths of the people are of Celtic descent, notwithstanding the English names imposed on so many of them by Act of Parliament, policy, fashion and meanness, and the Irish, the most pure of the Celtic dialects, must be fitted for their voice and ear, best to speak, most sweet to sing, most strong to rouse, most suited to the genius of the people, even as Greek best suits the men descended from the conquerors of Marathon—the men who inherit Athenian mouths, ears, and musical faculties, who breathe the air, and dwell on the slopes of the Hymettus. It were as absurd to expect the Irishman to be in full native health in India as to look for a full development of all his powers in oratory, music, and history, when using a tongue which leaves his fathers nameless, gives his fathers' deeds in translated fragments, strains his organs, and cramps his musical powers.

But it will be said, 'tis too late to revive Irish, it has no modern literature, modern science is as nameless in Irish as Irish localities, airs, &c., are in English, and after all 'tis impossible to succeed.

This sounds plausible, but 'tis very shallow. As to Irish not having a modern literature, we say, so much the better, if the present or coming generation have the energy to set about creating one. If they go to the work with strong passions, they will build a literature fast and firm enough; they will be greater, and the parents of higher excellence, than if they studied and repeated instead of originating songs, histories and essays. The old Irish literature is ample to give impulse, and character, and costume to a new literature.

The want of modern scientific words in Irish is undeniable, and doubtless we should adopt the existing names into our language. The Germans have done the same thing, and no one calls German mongrel on that account. Most of these names are clumsy and extravagant; and are almost all derived from Greek or Latin and cut as foreign a figure in French and English as they would in Irish. Once Irish was recognised as a language to be learned as much as French or Italian, our dictionaries would fill up, and our vocabularies ramify, to suit all the wants of life and conversation.

These objections are ingenious refinements, however, rarely thought of till after the other and great objection has been answered.

The usual objection to attempting the revival of Irish is, that it could not succeed.

If an attempt were made to introduce Irish, either through the national schools or the courts of law, into the eastern side of the island, it would certainly fail, and the reaction might extinguish it altogether. But no one contemplates this save as a dream of what may happen a hundred years hence. It is quite another thing to say, as we do, that the Irish language should be cherished, taught, and esteemed, and that it can be preserved and gradually extended.

What we seek is, that the people of the upper classes should have their children taught the language which explains our names of persons or places, our older history, and our music, and which is spoken in the majority of our counties, rather than Italian, German, or French. It would be more useful in life, more serviceable to the taste and genius of young people, and a more flexible accomplishment for an Irish man or woman to speak, sing, and write Irish than French.

At present the middle classes think it a sign of vulgarity to speak Irish—the children are everywhere taught English and English alone in schools—and, what is worse, they are urged by rewards and punishments to speak it at home, for English is the language of their masters. Now, we think the example and the exertions of the upper classes would be sufficient to set the opposite and better fashion of preferring Irish; and, even as a matter of taste, we think them bound to do so. And we ask it of the pride, the patriotism, and the hearts of our farmers and shopkeepers, will they try to drive out of their children's minds the native language of almost every great man we had, from Brian Boru to O'Connell—will they meanly sacrifice the language which names their hills, and towns, and music, to the tongue of the stranger?

About half the people west of a line drawn from Derry to Waterford speak Irish habitually, and in some of the mountain tracts east of that line it is still common. Simply requiring the teachers of the National Schools in these Irish-speaking districts to know Irish, and supplying them with Irish translations of the school books, would guard the language where it now exists, and prevent it from being swept away by the English tongue, as the red Americans have been by the English race from New York to New Orleans.

The example of the upper classes would extend and develop a modern Irish literature, and the hearty support they have given to the Archaeological Society makes us hope that they will have sense and spirit to do so.

But the establishment of a newspaper partly or wholly Irish would be the most rapid and sure way of serving the language. The Irish-speaking man would find, in his native tongue, the political news and general information he has now to seek in English; and the English-speaking man, having Irish frequently before him in so attractive a form, would be tempted to learn its characters, and by-and-by its meaning.

These newspapers in many languages are now to be found everywhere but here. In South America many of these papers are Spanish and English, or French; in North America, French and English; in Northern Italy, German and Italian; in Denmark and Holland, German is used in addition to the native tongue; in Alsace and Switzerland, French and German; in Poland, German, French, and Sclavonic; in Turkey, French and Turkish; in Hungary, Magyar, Sclavonic, and German; and the little Canton of Grison uses three languages in its press. With the exception of Hungary, the secondary language is in all cases, spoken by fewer persons than the Irish-speaking people of Ireland, and while they everywhere tolerate and use one language as a medium of commerce, they cherish the other as the vehicle of history, the wings of song, the soil of their genius, and a mark and guard of nationality.