Brian O'Nolan, aka Myles na gCopaleen, had little time for Irish language revivalists, although expert in the language himself. In this non-satirical Cruiskeen Lawn column in 1958, he commented on an article by Prof Michael Tierney of UCD on the Irish revival which had appeared in the Jesuit quarterly Studiesin the 1920s.
PROFESSOR TIERNEY starts with the bold statement that future historians will judge whether the struggle to get a Free State was worth while by the success or failure of the job of reviving Irish, saying that Shannon Schemes or sugar factories will count for little with them: “If we fail, it is not at all improbable that the discerning historian will write opposite the year 1940 or thereabouts ‘Finis Hiberniae’.”
Now that would be quite a mouthful at any time. He discourses most inflatedly on the great deposit of culture enshrined in the language, and has the view that without Irish Ireland will disappear as a nation. It is a sad look-out for us all, for now we know in 1958 that an Irish- speaking Ireland is impossible.
The best of the commentators was the late Prof Bergin , a craggy but good-humoured scholar. Of the “hundreds of expert writers in Irish” whom Prof Tierney claims we had in 1927, Bergin says he has not even heard of 20. In any case, hardly anybody opens a book nowadays. The newspaper is what matters (to say nothing of the 1958 boons of radio, movies and TV). Bergin once tried to influence a young Gaeltacht man to learn to read Irish – even write it. He replied: “I’d learn to read Irish if there was anything to read in it except the Divil in a bag.” This young fellow afterwards cleared off to Ameriky.
It is clear that Bergin thought Irish could not be revived though his own interest and work was on the archaic and philological side of the subject. He also thought many of the revivalists were lunatics, particularly the early Gaelic Leaguers whom with everything against them, expected to see a Gaelic-speaking Ireland in 10 years. Prof Tierney, with a broader mind, was willing to wait 13.
These gentlemen disagree as to whether English might be retained for the study of “high subjects” such as mathematics, the physical sciences. Tierney was much against this; Mulcahy was for it. Did not the Greeks, he asks, muttering folk jargon at the time of Herodotus, shape it into a perfect instrument for the highest human thought.
It is of interest to note that Mulcahy was chairman of the first Gaeltacht Commission and Tierney a member. I have a copy of its report – a unique thesaurus of humbug, prefaced by a map which gave an untrue and misleading distribution of the Gaeltacht and Breac-Ghaeltacht areas.
I know, from sound psycho-anthropological reasons, Irish as a spoken, current tongue cannot be brought back to us, though the language and its antiquities are rewarding and enjoyable for leisure study, like Greek or Latin. Causa finita est.
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