THE IRISH LANGUAGE
The Sword of Light. By Desmond Ryan. (Arthur Barker. 12s. 6d.) THE purpose of Mr. Ryan's book is to give an account of the struggles to save Irish language and culture that have been carried on from the seventeenth century up to the present time. In a way it is appropriate that this book should appear when for many the possibility of an European War brings with it the additional threat of the downfall of civilisation as we know it. We may hardly have known how dear that civilisa- tion was to us ; the uglinesses and injustices that it has developed, the moral and economic disorders associated with it are all too familiar to us. And yet, when we think of its complete overthrow, we suddenly realise that we are conserva- tives at heart ; that the order in which we have lived incor- porates within it a heritage that may be dearer to us than life itself.
But it is hardly conceivable that any disaster could bring to European civilisation such complete annihilation as came to the Irish order in the seventeenth century. And to under- stand how great was the tragedy that the Four Masters and Geoffrey Keating looked out upon, and that inspired their work, we must understand the extraordinary conservatism and passionate devotion to racial tradition that had been the mark of the Irish people from immemorial times to that fateful cen- tury. The advent of Christianity and its whole-hearted acceptance by the people had not broken that tradition. Bardic schools continued side by side with the schools of Latin learning. The old veto against committing that traditional learning to writing still continued for more than two centuries after the Latin schools and the writing of Latin were intro- duced into the country. But when at last the scribes were allowed to write Irish learning in the Irish tongue, the rigid conservatism was revealed by the archaic language in which they wrote, by the laws that had been clearly formulated in a far-off time, and by the fact that life reflected in the sagas when they were written out on parchment was the life of an age possibly as remote as the first century of our era.
The advent of the Normans must certainly have brought about certain social changes ; but these, outside the narrow limits of the " pale," were no more than modification in an existing framework, not a substitution of a new order for the old. The way of life, the law; the traditional literary culture were so deep-rooted in the people's consciousness, that wars and defeats awoke no fears of a final overthrow of the age- long order, until the crushing defeats in the early seventeenth century brought a sudden realisation that all that had been most intimate and dear was now doomed. The Four Masters and Keating realised that the work that they undertook was a work of salvage. They sought to make a record of the race memory before their generation passed away and the race was finally submerged ; they wrote the biography of a civilisation as that civilisation lay on its death-bed.
Subsequent history reveals how well those scholars judged the meaning of the age they lived in. Before their century had expired the final overthrow of the Gaelic and Gaelicised- Norman aristocracy had taken place, and the long night of penal laws and persecution had begun. It is true that the Irish language remained as the speech of the majority of the people, of the poor, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, but it had fallen from its high estate.
Reading the later chapters of Mr. Ryan's book, one is con- scious of the far-reaching change that had taken place in the passage of time from the years when the Four Masters wrote. One sees not merely the increasing dominance of the English language, but one can also observe that even while the Irish language remains on the lips of the majority, the real divorce from the old order has already taken place. Up to the seventeeth century the most that an English King could effect was some minor modification in the Irish order, but as the Irish people emerge from the oppression of the penal days we find that they belong to a new world into which they have been, as it were, precipitated. The most that could have been hoped from any of the attempted language revivals had they succeeded would have been to give to Ireland a distinc- tion of language and some distinguishing marks within the new civilisation ; the livid scar that the seventeenth century left upon her could not have been wiped out. There was to be no going back and taking up the thread of history where it had been broken off.
But in fact those attempts failed. When the Gaelic League, which aimed at, and to some extent received, popular support, was launched, Irish had ceased to be spoken in the major part of the country. Mr. Ryan asserts that but for the work of the Gaelic League, Irish would now be as dead as Cornish. This statement is hardly sustainable. The League produced a certain sympathy with the language. It gave to a certain number of English speakers a knowledge of Irish. It helped to promote Irish studies. But in the Irish-speaking districts it had practically no effect. Even since the Free State was founded the English language has in all probability continued to encroach upon those districts. The Gaelic League played its part in producing the movement which led to the estab- lishment of the Free State. It prepared a public opinion which itself brought about the language policy of the Govern- ment, which is to provide that the new generation shall have a spoken knowledge of the Irish language. It is too soon to judge whether or not that policy will achieve its aim.
Mr. Ryan's, survey of the historical background of that policy makes an interesting, and at times, a moving book. It would be ungracious to complain that frequently his sentdrices do not
Previous page
