From An Claidheamh Soluis, March 16, 1899.
The decisive battle of the Irish language movement is now in progress. The issue and the combatants are clearly defined. The issue is not merely whether Irish is to be excluded from, or degraded in, the secondary schools; the question goes deeper, has far wider bearings, and touches the national honour. The combatants are Trinity College and the Irish people. There is no need for doubt as to the result—the friends of the language cannot, and must not, lose. To lose would mean that Irish self-respect is as extinct as the Irish elk.
The Trinity case rests on Dr. Atkinson. Two charges are made. One is that the literature is lacking in idealism and imagination and is indecent. The second is that modern Irish is in a formless, fluid, indefinite state—is, in fact, a ‘dismal swamp.’
A little reflection will show how deadly is this onslaught. It is the worst attack ever made on the whole Irish race, on all Irish thought, on the genius of the people. It stamps the race as gross, and lacking in creative and imaginative power, it deprives us of our inheritance, our past. It says, in effect, the thoughts and deeds of the Irish people for over a thousand years are not worth the reading. How they sang, or lived, or loved, or warred, or worked, has no interest. They were a coarse, material tribe or tribes, whose written records are valueless. Their writings are ‘low,’ ‘near the sod,’ and lacking in idealism and imagination. To-day they have not a language at all.
Now, a little of the debt which the Continent owes to this calumniated Ireland has been paid. The most eminent foreign scholars have rallied to the defence of our literature and language. All the Irish and foreign authorities are against Dr. Atkinson in maintaining the educational value of the language and the worth of the literature. Dr. Hyde, Dr. Hickey, Father O’Leary, Zimmer, Windisch, Stein, Pedersen, Dottin, Kuno Meyer, and Alfred Nutt, traverse the Trinity statement.
The question, however, as we have shown, has more than a scholastic interest. The Irish people have a claim to be heard. They should enforce that claim. They should not permit the evidence of one man, whose knowledge of modern Irish is questioned by competent native scholars, to prevail. Public opinion is the court of appeal in this case.
There is another reason, too, why the country should speak out. It is the intention to press on immediately the demand for bilingual education for Irish-speaking children in the National Schools. The whole question will be fully presented in this paper, and when fully ventilated, united action can be taken by the whole organisation. Trinity College must be dispatched now, to save time and trouble later on at the Board of National Education.