Dangerous ignorance
Sir: The Irish language is not 'a patois' (Leader, 9 November) because a patois is defined as 'having no literary status'. The earliest manuscripts in Irish go back at least to the 12th century and contain matter much older than that: a corpus of poetry of nature, love, narrative, satire, epic acknowledged as one of the oldest and rich- est in Europe. In the 17th and 18th cen- turies Irish was the language in which Irish poets thundered their contempt for their new masters (who could not understand what they were saying):
That the kings of the land have neither land nor crown Has made me a beggar before you, Valentine Brown. . .
Egan O'Rahilly could not even abide the English names of the new Lord Kenmare: `would as soon have addressed a "Jones" or a "Robinson" ,' said Frank O'Connor, who translated him. 'O'Rahilly was a snob, but one of the great snobs of literature.'
However, snobbish contempt breeds anger, conflict and murder, which is why your disdainful, ignorant dismissal of the Irish language, long outdated and expressed at a time when understanding between the countries is being nurtured, scratches at the scab of an old wound and is not only historically illiterate but seriously stupid.
P.J. Kavanagh
Sparrowthom, Elkstone, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
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