THE CASE FOR GAELIC
By EDWARD MacCURDY Cheering also to the lover of Gaelic has been the testimony which, has already begun to come in from prisoners since An Comunn Gaidhealach conceived the idea of sending out parcels of Gaelic books to those camps in Germany where there are known to be Highlanders. Among the letters of thanks are some which show how' the opportunity is being used to begin the study of Gaelic. Grammars and dictionaries were among the books sent out, and those who know something of the language are acting as instructors. One letter told of a class formed by a Highland padre which had twenty students. Among those who have written home welcoming the opportunity thus afforded is Viscount Tarbert, part of whose letter appeared in An Gaidheal. He said that he had always wanted to learn Gaelic, but never had the opportunity before, and that he hopes to be able to speak to his Ross-shire tenants in their mother- tongue after the war. As later files of An Gaidheal and The Stornoway Gazette reveal, a note of cultural optimism prevails in The prison camps. One man writes that they had read twice over all the Gaelic books they had—three of the little books issued by the Churches for the troops—" so the kind gift has come very opportunely." Another that he has been learning Gaelic and has reached the stage when he can enjoy reading Litrichean Alasdair Mhoir. Fifty parcels containing two hundred and twenty Gaelic books had been sent out up to last July, and these are some of the acknowledgments. They make pleasant reading, but they awaken thoughts that are the reverse of pleasant. Surely there is something radically wrong with things when men have to be in a foreign prison camp In order to have the opportunity of studying the ancient language of their country. Of what country other than Scotland could the same be said?
The• veto on the language has been in part the legacy of fear. The fright that " the Rising' had given the Government may be gauged from the fact that the grant to the victor of Culloden came to more in the aggregate than the sum voted to Wellington. Dr. Johnson on visiting the Hebrides twenty-eight years later wrote: " Their language is attacked on every side. Schools are erected in which English only is taught, and there were lately some who thought it reasonable to refuse them a version of the Holy Scriptures, that they might have no monument of their mother-tongue." A century later, after the passing of the Education Act of 1872, teachers who knew no Gaelic were appointed to Gaelic-speaking districts, and the speaking of Gaelic in school became a punishable offence, although the child might know no other language. Many still living can tell of this repression. The power to speak Gaelic was not destroyed, but a generation grew up in which it was the exception to be able to read or write it. They had been made illiterate as
regards their native language by the workings of an educational system which, was inimical to Celtic culture.
Landmarks on the pathway to freedom have been the founding of the Celtic Chair at Edinburgh, which gave the language academic status, and the " Gaelic clause " in the Education Act of 1918, whereby local authorities are required to include in their educa- tional schemes adequate facilities for teaching Gaelic in Gaelic- / speaking areas. Half, or even a smaller fraction, of a loaf is better than no bread, but how can facilities for teaching Gaelic in Gaelic- speaking areas be regarded as adequate when they fail to provide for its use as a medium of instruction for children whose home language it is? This is the practice in Wales, where the national language is taught in every school. It is not to be wondered at that after twenty-five years' experience of the -working of the Act a memorandum has recently been drawn up by the Education Com- mittee of An Comunn Gaidhealach setting forth that in all schools throughout the Highlands " it is surely possible and desirable to have all the work conducted in an authentic Gaelic atmosphere," and suggesting that provision should be made for the teaching of- Gaelic in some of the secondary schools of the Lowlands, where Highlanders and their descendants are numerous.
All lovers of Gaelic will wish that the authors of the memo- randum may attain their object. It is surely indefensible that the right of the Gaelic-speaking Highlander to have his children taught his language should be affected by his change of domicile. Had those three soldiers from Ballachulish had their schooling in Glasgow they would be prisoners today, for Glasgow has classes in Gaelic for adults but the language is not taught in the schools. The war has now brought Canadian soldiers over in their thousands. I read the Gaelic words on the forage-cap of one of them recently : "Dileas gu brath "—" Faithful for ever."
The Gaelic language, far from being a disintegrating force—as was once believed by some in authority—is one of the strongest of those intangible ties of sentiment which bind our people across the seas to their mother country. " Here in Scotland," as Professor Watson has said, " it claims respect and even affection not only from Highland but also from Lowland Scots, who are, after all, in my humble opinion, still Celtic to a far greater extent than they are Saxon." Let us see to it that it has a fair deal as a living language which once ran from Tweed and Solway to the Pentland Firth, and which has written itself in the place names of the whole land. A visit to a Mod held at Salen in Mull a few months before the out- break of war would have convinced anyone that—given the oppor- tunity to acquire a knowledge of it—Gaelic will never die of inanition as long as there are Gaels. The entries, though limited to Mull, numbered over two hundred. " Every language," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, " is a temple in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined."
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