Douglas Hyde: Quotations

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“Ringleted Youth of My Love [A Oganaich an Chuil Cheanghaillte]”: ‘Ringleted youth of my love, / With thy locks bound loosely behind thee, / You passed by the road above, / But you never came in to find me; / Where were the harm for you, / If you came for a little to see me, / Your kiss is a wakening dew / Were I ever so ill or so dreamy. // If I had a golden store, / I would make a nice little boreen / To lead straight up to his door / The door of the house of my storeen; / Hoping to God not to miss / The sound of his footfells in it, / I have waited so long for his kiss / That for days I have not slept a minute. // I thought, O my love! You were so / As the moon is, or sun on a fountain / And I thought after that you were snow, / The cold snow on top of the mountains; / And I thought after that, you were more / Like God’s lamp shining to find me; / Or the bright star of knowledge before / And the star of knowledge behind me. // You promised me high heeled shoes, / And satin and silk my storeen, / And to follow me never to lose, / Though the ocean were round us roaring; / Like a bush in a gap in a wall, I am now left lonely without thee, / And this house I grow dead of, is all / That I have around or about me.’ (Love Songs of Connacht, IUP rep. edn. [I985], p.41; quoted in Joseph Lynch, MA Dip, UU 2003.)

Note also prose translation: ‘And I thought my storeen that you were the sun and the moon, and I thought after that, that you were snow on the mountain,, and I thought after that that you were a lamp from God, or that you were the star of knowledge going before me and after me.’ (Love Songs of Connacht, 1893, IUP facs. rep. edn. 1968, p.43; quoted in Robert Welch, ed., W. B. Yeats: Irish Folklore, Legends and Myth, Penguin 1993, [Afterword], p.128.)

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“My Grief on the Sea [Mó Bhrón ar an bhfarraige]”: ‘My grief on the sea / How the waves of it roll / For they heave between me / And the love of my soul. // Abandoned, Forsaken, / To grief and to care / Will the sea ever waken / Relief from Despair. // My grief and my trouble, / Would he and I were / In the province of Leinster / Or the county of Clare. // Were I and my darling / Oh, heart bitter wound / On board of the ship / For America bound / On a green bed of rushes / All last night I lay, / And I flung it abroad, / With the heat of the day. / And my love came behind me / He came from the South; / His breast to my bosom, / His mouth to my mouth.’ See also the literal translation [as footnote]: ‘My grief on the sea. It is it that is big. It is it that is going between me And my thousand treasures. I was left at home making grief, Without any hope of (going) over sea with me, For ever or aye. My grief that I am not, And my white mourneen, In the province of Leinster or the county of Clare. My sorrow I am not, and my thousand loves On board of a ship voyaging to America: A bed of rushes was under me last night And I threw it out with the heat of the day. My love came to my side, Shoulder to shoulder And mouth on mouth.’ (Love Songs of Connacht, IAP rep. edn. [1985], p.10; quoted in Joseph Lynch, MA Dip, UU 2003.)

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“Lament of a young woman”: ‘My heart is as black as a sloe, or as a black coal that would be burnt in a forge, as the sole of a shoe [92] upon white halls, and there is great melancholy over my laugh. My heart is bruised, broken, like ice upon the top of water, as it were a cluster of nuts after their breaking, or a young maiden after her marrying. My love is of the colour of the raspberry on a fine sunny day, of the colour of the darkest heath berries of the mountain; and often has there been a black head upon a bright body. Time it is for me to leave this town. The stone is sharp in it, and the mould is cold; it is in it I got a voice [blame] without riches ad heavy word from the band who backbite. I denounce love; woe is she who gave it to the son of yon woman, who never understood it. My heart in the middle, sure he has left it black, and I do not see him on the street or in any place.’ (Quoted in W. B. Yeats, ‘Old Gaelic Love Songs’, in Bookman, 1893 [review of Douglas Hyde, Love Songs of Connacht], rep. in Robert Welch, ed., W. B. Yeats: Irish Folklore, Legends and Myth, Penguin 1993, pp.92-93.)

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‘The Necessity for the de-Anglicisation of Ireland’, address delivered before the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, 25 November 1892 (1892) - Selection from various sources: ‘If we take a bird’s eye view of our island today, and compare it with what it used to be, we must be struck by the extraordinary fact that the nation which once was, as every one admits, one of the most classically learned and cultured nations in Europe, is now one of the least so; … the least studious and most un-literary, and how the present art products of one of the quickest, most sensitive, and most artistic races on earth are now only distinguished for their hideousness’; ‘… failure … brought about by the race diverging during this century from the right path. / … in Anglicising ourselves wholesale … continues to hate the English, and at the same time continues to imitate them; continues to clamour for recognition as a distinct nationality, and at the same time throws away with both hands what would make it so…. / … It is the curious certainty that come what may Ireland will continue to resist English rule, even though it should be for their good, which prevents many of our nation from becoming unionists on the spot … It is just because there appears no earthly chance of their becoming good members of Empire that I argue that they should not remain in the anomalous position they are in, but since they absolutely refuse to become the one thing, that they become the other; cultivate what they have rejected, and build up an Irish nation on Irish lines / … the Irish race at present in an anomalous position, imitating England and yet apparently hating it.’; ‘… In two points only was the continuity of the Irishism of Ireland damaged. First, in the north-east of Ulster, where the Gaelic race was expelled and the land planted with aliens, whom our dear mother Erin, assimiliative as she is, has hitherto found it difficult to absorb, and in the ownership of the land, eight-ninths of which belongs to people many of whom always lived, or live, abroad, and not half of whom Ireland can be said to have assimilated.’ [Cont.]

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‘The Necessity for the de-Anglicisation of Ireland’ (1892) - cont.: ‘We can, however, insist, and we shall insist if Home Rule be carried, that the Irish language, which so many foreign scholars of the first calibre find so worthy of study, shall be placed on a par with - or even above - Greek, Latin and modern languages, in all examinations held under the Irish Government. We can also insist, and we shall insist, that in those baronies where the children speak Irish, Irish shall be taught, and that Irish-speaking schoolmasters, petty sessions clerks, and even magistrates be appointed in Irish-speaking districts. If all this were done, it should not be very difficult with the aid of the foremost foreign scholars, to bring about a tone of thought which would make it disgraceful for an educated Irishman - especially the old Celtic race, MacDermotts, O’Conors, O’Sullivans, MacCarthy’s, O’Neills - to be ignorant of their own language - would make it at least as disgraceful as for an educated Jew to be quite ignorant of Hebrew.’ … / ‘I have now mentioned a few of the principal points on which it would be desirable for us to move, with a view to de-Anglicising ourselves; but perhaps the principle point of all I have taken for granted. That is the necessity for encouraging the use of Anglo-Irish literature instead of English books, especially instead of English periodicals. We must set our face sternly against penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers, and still more the garbage of vulgar English weeklies like Bow Bells and the Police Intelligence.’ (p.159). ‘Every house should have a copy of Moore and Davis.’ Also, ‘We ought to be content as an integral part of the United Kingdom because we have lost the notes of nationality, our language and customs. It has always been very curious to me how Irish sentiment sticks in this halfway house - how it continues apparently to hate English, and at the same time continues to imitate them; how it continues to clamour for recognition as a distinct nationality and at the same time throws away with both hands what would make it so … We find ourselves despoiled of the bricks of nationality. The old bricks that lasted eight hundred years are destroyed.’ (Quoted in Joseph Lee, The Modernisation of Ireland, 1973; see also in A. C. Partridge, Land & Society in Anglo-Irish Literature, 1984, p.131; Chris Corr, ‘English Literary Culture and Irish Literary Revival’, PhD Thesis, UUC 1995; and Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 1995, pp.140-41.) [Cont.]

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‘The Necessity for the de-Anglicisation of Ireland’ (1892) - cont.: ‘[T]he half unconscious feeling that the race which a one time held possession of more than half Europe, which established itself in Greece, and burned infant Rome, is now - almost extirpated and absorbed elsewhere - making its last stand for independence in this island of Ireland; and do what they may the race of today cannot wholly divest itself [cf. supra] from the mantle of its own past. Through early Irish literature, for instance, can we best form some conception of what that race really was, which, after overthrowing and trampling on the primitive peoples of half Europe, was itself forced in turn to yield its speeches, manners, and independence to the victorious eagles of Rome. We alone of the nations of Western Europe escaped the claws of those birds of prey; we alone developed ourselvs naturally upon our own lines outside of the free from all Roman influence; we alone were thus able to produce an early art and literature, our antiquities can best throw light upon the pre-Romanised inhabitants of half Europe … The dim consciousness of this is one of those things which are at the back of Irish national sentiment, and our buisiness whether we be Unionists or nationliasts, should be to make this dim consciousness an acitve and potent feeling.’ (‘Necessity … [&c.]’, printed in C. G. Duffy, Revival of Irish Literature, p.124-26; cited by Norman Vance, ‘Irish Literary Traditions and the Act of Union’, in Cyril J. Byrne and Margaret Harry, eds., Talamh an Eisc: Canadian and Irish Essays [Irish Studies, St. Mary’s College] Halifax Canada: Nimbus Publ. Co. 1986), pp.29-47; p.51.) [Cont.]

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‘The Necessity for the de-Anglicisation of Ireland’ (1892) - cont.: ‘In conclusion … … I appeal to every one whatever his politics - for this is no political matter - to do his best to help the Irish race to develop in future upon Irish lines, even at the risk of encouraging national aspirations, because upon Irishlines alone can the Irish race once more become what it was of yore - one of the most original, artistic, literary, and charming peoples of Europe.’ (Quoted in Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, IUP 1974, p.158.) [See full text in Library, “Irish Classics”, via index, or direct.]

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Literary History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1899), “Introduction”: ‘The present volume has been styled - in order to make it a companion book to other of Mr Unwin’s publications - a Literary History of Ireland, but a Literary History of Irish Ireland would be a more correct title for I have abstained altogether from any analysis or even mention of the works of anglicised Irishmen of the last two centuries. Their books, as those of Farquhar, of Swift, of Goldsmith, of Burke, find, and have always found, their true and natural place in every history of English literature that has been written, whether by Englishmen themselves or by foreigners. [ix; 1967 edn.; but cf. do., cited as p.xxxiii in Gerry Smyth, Decolonialism and Criticism, 1997.] In studying the literature itself, both that of the past and that of the present, one of the things which has most forcibly struck me is the marked absence of the purely personal note, the absence of great predominating names, or of great predominating works; while just as striking is the almost universal diffusion of a traditional literary taste and a love of literature in the abstract among all classes of the native Irish. [ix.] O’CURRY, O’Longan, and O’Beirne Crowe catalogued something more than half the manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, and the catalogue of contents filled thirteen volumes containing 3,448 pages. [xi.] Hyde quotes PETRIE’s memories of being asked by one Dr Brinkley, TCD and President of the Academy, on addressing the RIA, if he meant to say that there was the slightest evidence of acquaintance with the arts of civilised life before the arrival of the English. [xii.] Hyde goes on: ‘As to the civilisation of the early Irish upon which Petrie insisted, there is no longer room for the very shadow of a doubt.’ [xiii.] Expresses thanks in particular to Fr. Edmund Hogan, SJ for numerous memoranda towards the last chapter [xvi.] (For extracts on Anglo-Irish writers, see infra.)

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Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta (1889): ‘I do not think there is much to add to what I have said here, except to observe that it is a national duty - I had almost said a moral one - for all those who speak Irish to speak it to their children also, and to take care that the growing generation shall know it as well as themselves: and in general, that it is the duty of all Irish-speakers to use their own language amongst themselves, and on all possible occasions, except where it will not run. For, if we allow one of the finest and richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four million Irishmen, to die out without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace and a blighting stigma upon our nationality.’ ([pp.215-18]; quoted in Brian Ó Cuív, ‘Irish Literature and Language, 1845-1921’, in William Vaughan, ed., A New History of Ireland, Vol. VI: 1870-1921, OUP 1996, p.401.)

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Beside the Fire (1890): ‘The inaction of the parliamentarians, though perhaps dimly intelligible, appears, to me at least, both short-sighted and contradictory, for they are attempting to create a nationality with one hand and with the other destroying, or allowing to be destroyed, the very that that would best differentiate and define their nationality. It is a making of bricks without straw. But the non-parliamentarian nationalists, in Ireland at least, appear to be thoroughly in harmony with them on this point.’ (Beside the fire, London 1890, p.xlv, n.; quoted in Brian Ó Cuív, ‘Irish Literature and Language, 1845-1921’, in William Vaughan, ed., A New History of Ireland, Vol. VI: 1870-1921, OUP 1996, p.401.)

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Love Songs of Connacht (1893): ‘The life of the Gael is so pitiable, so dark and sad and sorrowful, and they are so broken, bruised, and beaten down in their own land and country that their talents ad ingenuity find no place for themselves, and no way to let themselves out but in excessive, foolish mirth or in keening and lamentation. We shall see in these poems that follow, more grief and trouble, more melanchology and contrition of heart, than of gaiety and hope. But despite that, it is probably the same men, or the same class of men, who composed the poem which follow and the songs which we have read. We shall not pRove that, and we shall not try to prove it, but where is the person who knows the Gaeldom of Erin and will say against (or contradict) us in this? they were men who composed many of the songs in the last chapter, but it is women who made many of the love-songs, and melodious and sorrowful they made them’ (Quoted in W. B. Yeats in ‘Old Gaelic Songs’ [review of Love Songs of Connacht], Bookman, October 1893; rep. in Robert Welch, ed., W. B. Yeats: Irish Folklore, Legends and Myth, Penguin 1993, pp.91-94; p.91-92.)

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“Early Irish Literature”, [ed. essay], in Irish Literature, gen. ed. Justin McCarthy, Vol. II (Philadelphia: John Morris & Company 1904): ‘The editors of Irish Literature [i.e., this anthology] have very wisely decided to represent in their volumes, so far as literal translations will allow them, the real autochthonous literature of Ireland as it existed both before any of the modern languages of Europe had made their appearance as literary vehicles, and since that time. The great and revivifying movement which is at present pulsing through Ireland, and creating, wherever it is felt, new hopes and a new spirit, has indeed rendered it impossible to produce a work upon Irish literature in which, as has happened too often before, the real Irish element was calmly ignored, and the scope of Irish literature narrowed to the productions of English-Irish writers, who after all were, for the most part, too often only imitations of Englishmen. / For the literature of Ireland does not begin with Ware or with Swift, with Molyneux or with Sheridan. Hundreds of years before the English language had risen out of a conglomeration of Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French, hundreds of years before the langue d’oïl and the langue d’oc struggled for mastery upon the plains of France, hundreds of years before the language of the Nibelungen Lied had risen upon the ruins of Gothic, Ireland swarmed with bards, scholars, poets, saga-tellers, and saga-writers; while “the countless hosts of the illuminated books of the men of Erin” (as Angus the Culdee had called them more than two centuries before the birth of William the Conqueror) filled the island from shore to shore; and Erin, at that time civilizer and Christianizer of the western world, was universally known as the “Island of Saints and Scholars.” (p.7.) [Cont.]

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“Early Irish Literature” (in Irish Literature, 1904) - cont.: ‘There are two points about the native literature of Ireland which entirely differentiate it from the rest of the vernacular literatures of Europe, Greek excepted. The first of these is the extraordinarily early period at which it took its rise, and the enormous length of time during which it flourished. The other is the absolute originality of this literature, which was self-evolved, which was utterly unaffected by classic models, and in the syntax of which [vii] scarcely a trace is to be found of those Latinisms upon which are really founded and built up so many other modern languages. It is only right, accordingly, that a word of warning should at the outset be addressed to the reader of these volumes, and that he be reminded, when reading, of how necessary it is to place the occasional pieces culled from this antique literature in their proper perspective. In other words, he should be invited to approach them with a certain historic sense of the early date at which they were written, and of the strange and self-developed people that produced them, so different from the rest of Europe in their manners, thoughts, feelings, civilization, and, beyond all, in their mode of expression. Ireland's wonderfully copious and extraordinarily early literature is, without doubt, her greatest glory; but its very wildness of flavor and strange extravagance of manners are likely sometimes to render it of only moderate interest to the ordinary reader of English more to him I imagine than to readers of other languages although it can never fail to be piquant and delightful to the literacy connoisseur, who is sure to be captivated by its unique originality. There are a sufficient number of pieces included in these volumes for the reader to sample their flavor for himself, but to do so to the full he must, as I have said, remember that many of them were composed and written before the English language, through the medium of which he now reads them, had been heard of. He must also remember that it is universally acknowledged that the extracts from Ireland's heroic past portray pictures of a far older and more primitive civilization than any that either the Slavs, the Teutons, or the Latin-speaking races have preserved, pictures of an age more primitive in point of social development though it is later in point of time than even those depicted in the lays of Homer.’ (pp.7-8.) [Cont.]

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“Early Irish Literature” (in Irish Literature, 1904) - cont.: ‘There has seldom been a literature pursued with greater malignity and a prey to greater misfortune than that of Ireland. The Norsemen, who first made their appearance toward the close of the eighth century, made it a point to “drown” the Irish books, since fire was a less certain agent than water in the destruction of the parchment volumes. When the worst storms of the Norse invasions, which had lasted for over two hundred years, had come to an end, on [viii] the 23d of April, 1014, by the crushing defeat of Clontarf, “the countless hosts of the illuminated books of the men of Erin” had almost disappeared, and the literati of Ireland, under the great Brian, began laboriously to gather together their fragments and to rewrite them. It is from this period that the most important still existing Irish MSS. date, and these contain largely a re-editing in the language of the twelfth century of things originally composed in old Irish, many of which were first written centuries and centuries before. [...]’ (Cont.)

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“Early Irish Literature” (in Irish Literature, 1904) - cont.: ‘[...] The romantic, as opposed to the realistic, dominates Irish utterance from first to last. Allied to this we find an ex uberance of minute description and a love of adjectival thunder, which last, by the way, is a trait that has not wholly departed even to this day from among Irishmen even those who have lost their language. Its love of rhetoric, its peculiar mode of hyperbole, and its copiousness of synonyms lend to early Irish literature a charm and a flavor that are wanting to early German, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman-French. On the other hand, Irish writers, despite their weakness for a multitude of alliterative adjectives, go fairly straight to the point. Their sentences are not obscure or involved, and there is very little of mysticism or cloudiness about them. “Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français,” say the French, and the same with much truth may be said about the Irish. They begin their sentences with the verb instead of ending with it, as do the Germans. Some witty linguist once remarked that had the Irish through some philological catastrophe been forced to speak in German half the race would have died through heart disease within a couple of generations. This is perhaps poking an undue fun at the rapidity and vigor of the out-pourings of an Irishman's mouth, but it is not without an element of truth in it, all the same. The ancient Gael did not avoid similes, but he did not make an excessive use of them. In this respect the Welsh books are more demonstrative and less chastened than the Irish.’

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“Early Irish Literature” (in Irish Literature, 1904) - cont.: ‘Both offer [xiii] a curious contrast to the Anglo-Saxon.In the whole seven thousand lines of Beowulf we meet with scarcely one simile. Yet in spite of their exuberant number of expletives and other peculiarities, the early Irish were masters of story-telling, and pursue their sagas to the end, without over-redundancy or chasing of side issues, so that each presents a fairly perfect unity of its own. In this way their best poetry often reminds us of the marvelous drawings in their illuminated manuscripts, which, despite the thousand-fold involutions and twistings of their lines and knots and other ornaments, never fail, when looked at from a distance, to present a perfect unity of figure. The naiveté of Irish similes is also striking, and they are usually introduced in a natural manner of their own, completely different from the severe and self-possessed similes of the Latin and Greek epics. There is more of quaintness, more of originality, and, if I may say so, more of humanity about them. Thus in describing the appearance of Cuchulain, the romancist exclaims in admiration of his white teeth, “it seemed as though it were a shower of pearls that were flung into his head.” When his steeds have the reins flung loose upon their necks their career is “like a hawk's swooping from a cliff on a day of hard wind.” The watchman who beholds Froech and his suite flashing past him in crimson and gold relates it to the listeners, and adds, “from the perfumed breeze that floated over them it is the same with me as if my head were over a vat of wine.” When Lughaidh (Lewy) is pursued by Conall Cearnach, his servant looking behind him sees the pursuing chariot and tells his master that a warrior is on his track : “you would believe,” said the servant, “that all the crows of Ireland were flying above him, and flakes of snow are whitening the plain before him.” “Those birds you see,” said Lewy, “are the earthclods thrown up by the hooves of the Dewy-Red, Conall's steed, and those flakes of snow are the foam from his nostrils.”’ [‘The Death of Cuchulain’, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, by Lady Gregory, Volume IV]. / We also find in early Irish literature a disinclination to indulge in anything like generalization or metaphysical abstractions [...]’ (pp.xiii-xiv.) [For full text of Hyde’s article, see under RICORSO Library, “Classics of Irish Criticism”, via index or direct.]

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Saving the language: ‘My aim was to save the Irish language from death - it was dying then as fast as ever it could died - and that ambition did not lend itself to English writing except for propaganda purposes …’ (The Dublin Magazine, vol. 13, 1938, p.29.) [Cited in Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 1974, p.xvii].

A Way of His Own: ‘Bíonn a shlighe féin ag gach file / Agus a chaint féin ag gach bard / Ní lia tír ná gnás / A’s ní ceann ná céard [A way of his own has every poet / And every bard his own way finds; / So many lands, so many habits / so many heads, so many minds.’] (Hyde, quoted as epigraph to Brian Coffey’s edition of The Poems of Denis Devlin, 1964.)

Anglo-Irish literature: ‘Nothing less than a miracle could give us at once Gaelic writers and Gaelic readers; and we must read something if we are to remain reasonable beings. This Anglo-Irish literature, which certainly mirrors the life of Ireland that is presently ours provides us with the necessary material. It is not perfection of Irish thought … but it is a saving salt that will secure the heart of the country from complete decay. (Cited in F. S. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine, 1971, p.225).

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On folklore: ‘Folklore can only find a fitting garment in the language that comes from the mouths of those whose minds are so primitive that they retain with pleasure those tales which the more sophisticated invariably forget. For this reason folklore is presented in an uncertain and unsuitable medium, whenever the contents of the stories are divorced from their original expressing in language.’ (Quoted in Dominic Daly, Douglas Hyde, 1974, p.106-07; quoted in Aine Mellon, “The Modernisation of the Folktale” , UG Diss, UUC, 2000.)

On Irish place-names: ‘On the whole, our place names have been treated with about the same respect as if they were the names of a savage tribe which had never before been reduced to writing, and with about the same intelligence and contempt as vulgar English squatters treat the topographical nomenclature of the Red Indians.’ (“Necessity, &c.”; quoted in Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, Shannon: IUP 1974, 220, n.)

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The making of the Nation: ‘A nation cannot be made by Act of Parliament; no, not even by a Treaty. A nation is made from inside itself; it is made first of all by its language, if it has one; by its music, songs, games, and customs…. So, while not forgetting what is best in what other countries have to offer us, we desire to especially emphasise what we have derived from our Gaelic ancestors - from one of the oldest civilisations in Europe, the heritage of the Os and the Macs who still make up the bulk of the country.’ (Douglas Hyde, at opening to RN2, 1926; quoted in Maurice Gorham, Forty Years of Irish Broadcasting, Talbot, 1967, p.24; cited in Luke Gibbons, in Transformations in Irish Culture, Field Day / Cork UP 1996, ‘From Megalith to Megastore; Broadcasting and Irish Culture’ pp.70ff.; pp.71.)

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The Gaelic past: ‘The moment Ireland broke with her Gaelic past, she fell away hoplessly from all intellectual and artistic effort. She lost her musical instruments, she lost her music, she lost her games, she lost her language and popular literature and with her language she lost her intellectuality.’ (Cited in Nuala C. Johnson, ‘Making Space: Gaeltacht Policy and the Politics of Identity’, in Brian Graham, ed., Geography Bibliography, In Search of Ireland: A Cultural Geography of Ireland, Routledge 1997, 174-91, p.179; quoting from T. Ó hAilín, Irish Revival Movements’, in S. Ó Tuama, ed., The Gaelic League Idea, Mercier 1972, p.96.)

The Irish heart: ‘I believe it is our Gaelic past which is really at the bottom of the Irish heart. Do what the Irish race may do, it cannot wholly divest itself from the mantle of its past.’ ALSO, ‘I have no hesitation at all in saying that every Irish-feeling Irishman who hates the reproach of West-Britonism, should set himself to encourage the efforts, which are being made to keep alive our once great national tongue…. we must strive to cultivate everything that is most racial, most smacking of the soil, most Gaelic, most Irish, because … this island is and will ever remain Gaelic to the core …’ (Necessity, &c., 1892, para. 14; as supra.)

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