DECLINE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 173, 21 July 1876, Page 8

DECLINE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE.

We recently quoted from a Dublin contemporary [the remarkable statement that while in Scotland no less than three serials devoted to the cultivation of the Gaelic language and literature were published, Ireland possessed not one. This is the more remarkable when we recollect that Scotland has a much smaller population than Ireland, and that the bulk of that population are lowland Scotch of German or Danish descent, who care nothing about Gaelic. If the Scotch had such a mine of archaeological lore in their ancient language as Ireland can boast of, it would be some apology for their Irish neighbors, who hive not, however, even that poor excuse. On this head Professor Spaldir.g, of Aberdeen University, himself a Scotchman, tells us, in his "History of English Literature :" — "It does not appear that the Scottish Celts can point to literary monuments of any kind having an antiquity at all comparable to this (ihe Irish). Indeed, their social position was in all respectß much below that of their Western kinsmen. It does not appear rash to sny, that the Irish possess contemporary histories of their country, written in the language of the people, and authentic, though meagre, from the fifth century or a little later. No other nation of modern Europe is able to make a similar boast." If this national disgrace arose from apathy on the part of Irishmen in general we should not refer to it ; but it does not. It is part and parcel of an Irishman's nature to love his land and to love his land's language. How, then, are we to account for the anomaly noticed above ? Simply by stating that it haß been and is English policy in Ireland to eradicate the ancient language of the people. And the reason is obrious.

The language and the nationality of a nation are'so closely interwoven that if either be destroyed the other will probably perish. There was a philosophy in Sir Walter Scott's observation, that when Frederick the Great affected to patronise the French language and literature, and to despise his own, he paved the way for the subsequent success of the French army and the humiliation of Prussia. We know, too, that the first German movement against French domination in the beginning of the present century originated with the poets and universities of Germany. The " Niebelungen " and many a " vaterslandlied " had their share in the great result. If the Irish national language and literature are allowed to die on the lips and in the hearts of our people, in vain Jwill Irish nationalists agitate and make speeches ; they will have lost their plea, and the name Irishman may be exchanged for West Briton. Nationality bids us cherish our native Gaelic ; but it stands on its own merits. " Its form hath not lost all its original brightness." Its Phoenician origin connects it with the language of the Pentateuch, and it takes its place with the Hebrew as one of the daughters of Aryan Sancrit. Some sentences in one of the plays of Plautus prove to a demonstration that it is almost identical with the language of Carthage, the haughty republic that long rivalled Borne in arms, and surpassed her in wealth and commerce. It is, therefore, not the rude dialect of the unlettered serf ; it is the language of the navigator who doubled the Cape of Good Hope three thousand years before Vasco de Gama was born — of the general who crossed the Alps 2000 years before Buonaparte. Some of our countrymen may be misled into the belief that its literature contains nothing to adequately reward the student for his pains ; this is a grave mistake. The array of its lost books is indeed enough to sadden the Philo-Coltic student; but besides the twenty.

seven books on various subjects which are known to be lost, enough still remains to reward the laborer one hundred-fold. Its MSS., it is true, are scattered over Europe ; but the library of Trinity College Dublin, alone contains more than one hundred and forty volumes • the collection in the Royal Irish Academy is even more extensive • • there is a large collection of Gaelic MSS. in the British Museum, and in the Bodleian Library at Oxford ; there is the Stowe collection of Tiord Ashburnham, and the collection at Louvain, Brussels, Bobbio, and Borne, The late Professor O'Curry has well observed that " any one well read in the comparatively few existing fragments of our Gaedhelic literature, and whose education had been confined solely to this| source, would find that there were but few indeed; of the great events in the history of the world with which he was not'acquainted " Enough has been said to show that the present supine indifference with regard to the cultivation of Irish national literature ought not to be allowed to continue. Isolated efforts in some of the great cities have from time to time been made ; it is to be regretted that these have not been as successful as they deserved. Yet it needs but to arouse our people to the importance of the subject and set before them some tangible mode of dealing with it, and we are sanguine it would be an accomplished fact. — ' Pilot.'