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From: "Rosemary" <>
Subject: [IRL-ARAN-ISLANDS] Irish Language Movement 1902
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 19:08:33 -0500

Fort Worth Morning Register Fort Worth, Texas
23 March 1902

Irish Language Movement

Effort to Revive Interest In A Dead Tongue

The Irish language movement of to-day was started in
1893 by the formation in Dublin of the "Gaelic League"
having for its objects:

First - The preservation of Irish as the national language
of Ireland and its extension as a spoken tongue.

Second - The publication of existing Gaelic literature in
Irish.

Its main field of action is therefore the "Irish-speaking
districts". These roughly, lie round the coasts, north,
west, and south from Donegal to Waterford. They
contain the finest scenery in Ireland. Their inhabitants
are as pure Gaels as can anywhere be found - being,
in some places like the Arran Islands, wholly unmixed.
They are the core of Gaeldom - mental heirs of the past.
"I never," says Mr. Alfred Nutt, "take up a new translation
from the older Irish literature, but I am at once delighted
and amazed to note the traits of resemblance between
the Gaels of 1600 years ago and the Gaelic speaking
peasant of to-day." Physically, despite severe privations,
they are among the finest specimens of their race; mentally,
they are equals or betters of their English-speaking neighbors,
equipped, as they are, with a store of proverbs, folklore, and
legend, and endowed with an acuteness those neighbors
entirely lack. Masters of a vocabulary ten times greater than
that of the average English peasant, they speak their own
language with fluency and accuracy. In respect of courtesy,
reverence, or morality, there is no comparison between them.

According to the census of 1891 the number of persons
returned as speaking "Irish only" was 38,121, "Irish and
English", 642, 053. Total who could speak Irish, 680,174....

The Irish language movement has not been ten years in
existence, and yet its success is undoubted. It has amended
the whole popular conception of nationality. It has restored a
great national and intellectual element to the lives of the people.
It has given to the local life of country districts a color and a
reality, the absence of which was not a remote cause of
intemperance and emigration; and it is building up an Irish
Ireland, looking within itself for its inspiration and its reward.
Francis A. Fahy

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