An American Irish=speaking Colony

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 45, 10 November 1904, Page 15

An American Irish-speaking Colony

Many young people of Irish ancestry, and a tew or other race-lines (says an American exchange), are learning the lush langujaga in our larger American cities as an accomplishment, much as they lcain French or German. The revival in rrelpnrl of ihe (4aehr language and literature, in which non-Catholics have led equally with Catholics, anid which was long preceded by a very practical interest in the same subjects in the German universities, has had its influence beyond the Atlantic. Few, however, know that there is at least one little town :n Ihe United States whore Irish is still a family language, although its people are of the third generation from tne original immigrants. Lan J. McG-arvey, in the l Holy Family Maga/ane,' of Philadelphia, writes of ' The Lost Creeks and their Celtic Colony.' The Lost Creeks arc in the Shcnandoah Galley, Pa., and although the precise date of the first lush settlement in the territory seems to have been lost, it is certain that the immigrants helped to open the anthracite coal bods, in the early part of the nineteenth century, as well as those at Conner's and Dean.vville, at. a later day. me population consists ol about 300 families, whose founders came from, "the West of Ireland. Mr. McGarvcy says that among -fnese people ' anardiy, legalized polygamy, known as the divo-ee cult, Mormonism, and the rapacity of modern commercialism ' have no existence ; nor is there even ciuumstantial evidence of race-suicide, for ten and twelve children to a family arc not uncommon '1 hey are not laggards in patnotism nor love of learning , tor during the Ciwl War, the Lost' Creeks settlements gave a generous proportion of soldiers to the I'nion army, and they have provided lawyers, priests, dodo s and merchants, all of whom have won honor in their respective callings m diilercnt sections of the country and in Pennsylvania ' r I lull ''hey speak the Gaelic language with all the puiity of the peasants of the Donegal highlands, or the fanners oi far-away Connemara, is due, as the write: inst quoted learned from a village patriarch, Michael Flannery, not to modem revivalists, but to the women of the settlement from its beginning. They 1 <uight the ancient tongue to their children, and fostered m them a love for the traditions and folk-lore of Ireland, whun has never since been lost. They speak English, too, of course ; but it is as much 1o their advantage to be bi-lmgual as it. is to that of (he residents of the many German settlements in the same .State, nnd the great North-west Perhaps there are. other lush-speaking colonies m the countiy. If so, some acount of them would be of great interest to Americans of Irish blood, and to those of all nationalities who are mteiested in the Gaelic Revival.