CELTIC CHAIR ENDOWMENT FUND.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 333, 15 December 1875, Page 2

CELTIC CHAIR ENDOWMENT FUND.

The following communication from ’ a Highlander in Auckland, with its enclosure, will be read with interest by our Celtic readers :— Auckland, December 8, 1875. Dear Sir, —I herewith take the liberty of handing you a circular addressed to Highlanders abroad and in the Colonies, knowing by report that you are an enthusiastic Highlander, and take a deep interest in all that concerns the language of the ancient Gael. I feel sure that you will do all you can to further the object in view by the address now handed you. By Gisborne newspapers kindly sent me, I see that the Poverty Bay Highlanders have already commenced a subscription towards the founding of the Celtic Chair. I must own that as a people you are much ahead of us in Auckland. But I am doing all I can to create an interest in the matter. I have already written to several friends to endeavour to raise subscriptions in their district. We will be able to raise at least £lOO in Auckland. —Yours, &c., D. H. McKenzie. Mr. Hay, Gisborne. TO HIGHLANDERS ABROAD & IN THE COLONIES. It has long been a matter of regret with the friends of the Highlanders and all lovers of native history and literature, that the language of the Gael, as now spoken in the Highlands of Scotland and in the Colonies, has been treated with such undeserved neglect, not only by the inhabitants of the low countries, but in not a few cases even by the Highlanders themselves. The consequence of this has been, not only that the excellent poems of Alastair M’Donald, Duncan Ban Maclntyre, Dugald Buchanan, and many others (not to mention the sublime strains of Ossian), are practically unknown to the great mass of the Gaelic-speaking youth of Scotland, but that even the sacred Scriptures in the Gaelic version, whose excellence is generally confessed, are left unread by hundreds of persons who can be edified only by religious addresses in the familiar mother-tongue. Into the causes of this neglect, various and sad as they have been, it is not necessary to enter here; let it be sufficient to allude to one, that, when young Highlanders of any intellectual ambition betake themselves to the Unversities of their native country, in pursuit of the highest attainable culture, they find the language and literature of the Celtic races either not naiped at all, oy named only to be ridiculed, while all their energies qre directed into the channel of Greek and Roman learning. In these circumstances it is natural for them to look upon the language of their jfreat forefathers rather as unnecessary evil than as an element of good: and, if the teaching of the parish schools has in most cases done little to make the young Gael familiar with the printed traditions of his native tongue, the Universities generally succeed in eradicating altogether from the youth any germ of enthusiasm for Celtic literature that might have been growing in the bosom of the boy. As the natural remedy to this evil, a few friends of the Gael in the Council of the University of Edinburgh, bethought themselves of the very obvious expedient of founding a Chair of Celtic Languages and Literature in one of the Scottish Universities; and as the seat of such a Chair Edinburgh at once presented itself, not only in respect of its historical traditions and metropolitan position, but as being the great centre of ecclesiastical and intellectual action in Scotland. The erection of such a Chair would at once lift up the language of the Gael from the contempt into which it has fallen, and present to aspiring young Highlanders an object of scholarly ambition in the field of their own most cherished traditions which has long been denied them. It would manifestly act also as a grand training school for those who are to be employed as preachers in the Highland pulpits, and teachers in Gaelic-spcakiing districts of Scotland, and in connection with the Greek and Latin Classes, and

the recently erected Chair of Sanscrit, tend to create a school of well-disciplined scholars, who might dispute with the Germans on Celtic ground the most interesting and difficult problems of Comparative Philology. In order to realise this idea, as various circumstances rendered it hopeless to look to Government, at least in the first place, for aid, a Committee was appointed to collect contributions, of which Principal Sir Alexander Grant, The Honorable Lord Neaves, Cluny MacPherson, Professor Masson, Sheriff Nicolson, of Kirkcudbright, Professor Blackie, and Professor MacGregor, of the Free Church College, were prominent members. Of this Committee Professor MacGregor was appointed Convener; but the Professor finding his hands sufficiently occupied otherwise, retired from the work, and the duties belonging to the Convenership devolved on Professor Blackie. At first the encouragement offered was so light that the originators of the scheme almost despaired of success; but the more the matter was looked into, and the more firmly the pulse of true Highlanders was felt in the matter, the more did the prospects brighten, and the result has been that now, after little more than four months’ activity, a sum of more than £4OOO has been raised, subscribed by the leading Highland aristocracy, the heads of the Clans, the merchant princes of London and the West of Scotland, citizens of various Highland towns, and the Gaelic Societies and Celtic Clubs in the various parts of Scotland where Highlanders congregate. Her Majesty tile Queen also, as the Convener on the best authority believes, is in favor of the scheme, and will stamp it with her approval as soon as she sees it placed on a firm foundation of popular support. The sum required as a capital to provide an income of £4OO a year for the Professor will be £10,000; but in order to secure the services of a first-rate man, and considering the increased expenses of living in the present age, it is very desirable that a sum of £12,000 or £14,000 should be subscribed, as it cannot be expected that the young men who attend a Celtic class will either be very numerous, or able to pay a very remunerative fee. The Committee, however, have not the slightest reason to doubt that there are hundreds of intelligent and patriotic Highlanders, both at home and abroad, who will not. only be ready to furnish the means for founding such a Chair, but who might also be willing to increase its efficiency, by creating along with it a few Fellowships which would act as a seminary of accomplished Celtic scholars for future generations. The intellectual misfortune of Scotland has always been that University study has been confined too much to strictly professional channels, and that all learning which does not produce a direct practical result has been allowed to starve. This, and this only, it is that in so many branches of interesting research causes our acknowledged Academical inferiority to the Germans and the English ; and from this specially arises the lamentable fact that the most learned works on Celtic Philology have been composed by Professors in German Universities —Zeuss and Ebel—not, as would naturally have been expected, in the Universities of the country where the language still flourishes in a green old age. Comparative Philology and Ethnology, with their important bearings on early history, both profane and biblical, suffer, as(h matter of course, from the neglect of the’Tnaterial which lies at our doors; The reproach thus cast on our national learning nothing will tend so effectually to remove as the scientific treatment of the Gaelic, add other Celtic languages, on the elevated platform of University teaching. For these reasons, and others which will readily occur to you, we sincerely trust that you may feel moved to give the friends of the Celt in the mothercountry that substantial aid which they require, in order to realise the proposed scheme in a manner worthy of the known patriotism of Highlanders. (Signed) Cluny Macphebson Alex. Gbant, Bart., Principal of the University Alex. Duff, D.D., L.L.D., Edinburgh John Kennedy, D.D., Dingwall Rev. Db. John Macleod, Glasgow The Rev. Archibald Clerk, D.D., L.L.D., Kilmaliie. John Stuart Blackie, Professor of Greek, Edinburgh. James Begg, D.D„ Edinburgh Thomas Maclauchlan, L.L.D., Edinburgh