Note 15 — PREFACE.

It appears, unfortunately, that all classes of our Irish politicians alike agree in their treatment of the language in which all the past of their race—until a hundred years ago—is enshrined. The inaction of the Parliamentarians, though perhaps dimly intelligible, appears, to me at least, both short-sighted and contradictory, for they are attempting to create a nationality with one hand and with the other destroying, or allowing to be destroyed, the very thing that would best differentiate and define that nationality. It is a making of bricks without straw. But the non-Parliamentarian Nationalists, in Ireland at least, appear to be thoroughly in harmony with them on this point. It is strange to find the man who most commands the respect and admiration of that party advising the young men of Gaelic Cork, in a printed and widely-circulated lecture entitled: “What Irishmen should know,” to this effect:—“I begin by a sort of negative advice. You all know that much has been written in the Irish language. This is of great importance, especially in connection with our early history, hence must ever form an important study for scholars. But you are, most of you, not destined to be scholars, and so I should simply advise you—especially such of you as do not already know Irish—to leave all this alone, or rather to be content with what you can easily find in a translated shape in the columns of Hardiman, Miss Brooke, Mangan, and Sigerson.” So that the man whose most earnest aspiration in life is Ireland a nation, begins by advising the youth of Ireland not to study the language of their fathers, and to read the gorgeous Gaelic poetry in such pitiful translations as Hardiman and Miss Brooke have given of a few pieces. The result of this teaching is as might be expected. A well-known second-hand book-seller in Dublin assured me recently that as many as 200 Irish MSS. had passed through his hand within the last few years. Dealers had purchased them throughout the country in Cavan, Monaghan, and many other counties for a few pence, and sold them to him, and he had dispersed them again to the four winds of heaven, especially to America, Australia, and New Zealand. Many of these must have contained matter not to be found elsewhere. All are now practically lost, and nobody in Ireland either knows or cares. In America, however, of all countries in the world, they appreciate the situation better, and the fifth resolution passed at the last great Chicago Congress was one about the Irish language.