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The
Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland
by Douglas Hyde
Delivered
before the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, 25 November 1892.
When we speak
of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as
a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would
be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening
to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply
because it is English.
This is a question which most Irishmen will naturally look at from a National
point of view, but it is one which ought also to claim the sympathies of every
intelligent Unionist, and which, as I know, does claim the sympathy of many.
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 was once, as every one admits, one of the most classically learned and
cultured nations in Europe, is now one of the least so; how one of the most
reading and literary peoples has become one of 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.
I shall endeavour to show that this failure of the Irish people in recent
times has been largely brought about by the race diverging during this century
from the right path, and ceasing to be Irish without becoming English. I shall
attempt to show that with the bulk of the people this change took place quite
recently, much more recently than most people imagine, and is, in fact, still
going on. I should also like to call attention to the illogical position of
men who drop their own language to speak English, of men who translate their
euphonious Irish names into English monosyllables, of men who read English
books, and know nothing about Gaelic literature, nevertheless protesting as
a matter of sentiment that they hate the country which at every hand's turn
they rush to imitate.
I wish to show you that in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown
away with a light heart the best claim which we have upon the world's recognition
of us as a separate nationality. What did Mazzini say? What is Goldwin Smith
never tired of declaiming? What do the Spectator and Saturday Review harp
on? That 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 half-way
house -- how it continues to apparently hate the 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. If Irishmen only went a little farther they would become
good Englishmen in sentiment also. But -- illogical as it appears -- there
seems not the slightest sign or probability of their taking that step. It
is the curious certainty that come what may Irishmen will continue to resist
English rule, even though it should be for their good, which prevents many
of our nation from becoming Unionists upon the spot. It is a fact, and we
must face it as a fact, that although they adopt English habits and copy England
in every way, the great bulk of Irishmen and Irishwomen over the whole world
are known to be filled with a dull, ever-abiding animosity against her, and
right or wrong -- to grieve when she prospers, and joy when she is hurt. Such
movements as Young Irelandism, Fenianism, Land Leagueism, and Parliamentary
obstruction seem always to gain their sympathy and support. It is just because
there appears no earthly chance of their becoming good members of the Empire
that I urge 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.
But you ask, why should we wish to make Ireland more Celtic than it is --
why should we de-Anglicise it at all?
I answer because the Irish race is at present in a most anomalous position,
imitating England and yet apparently hating it. How can it produce anything
good in literature, art, or institutions as long as it is actuated by motives
so contradictory? Besides, I believe it is our Gaelic past which, though the
Irish race does not recognise it just at present, is really at the bottom
of the Irish heart, and prevents us becoming citizens of the Empire, as, I
think, can be easily proved.
To say that Ireland has not prospered under English rule is simply a truism;
all the world admits it, England does not deny it. But the English retort
is ready. You have not prospered, they say, because you would not settle down
contentedly, like the Scotch, and form part of the Empire. 'Twenty years of
good, resolute, grandfatherly government', said a well-known Englishman, will
solve the Irish question. He possibly made the period too short, but let us
suppose this. Let us suppose for a moment -- which is impossible -- that there
were to arise a series of Cromwells in England for the space of one hundred
years, able administrators of the Empire, careful rulers of Ireland, developing
to the utmost our national resources, whilst they unremittingly stamped out
every spark of national feeling, making Ireland a land of wealth and factories,
whilst they extinguished every thought and every idea that was Irish, and
left us, at last, after a hundred years of good government, fat, wealthy,
and populous, but with all our characteristics gone, with every external that
at present differentiates us from the English lost or dropped; all our Irish
names of places and people turned into English names; the Irish language completely
extinct; the O's and the Macs dropped; our Irish intonation changed, as far
as possible by English schoolmasters into something English; our history no
longer remembered or taught; the names of our rebels and martyrs blotted out;
our battlefields and traditions forgotten; the fact that we were not of Saxon
origin dropped out of sight and memory, and let me now put the question --
How many Irishmen are there who would purchase material prosperity at such
a price? It is exactly such a question as this and the answer to it that shows
the difference between the English and Irish race. Nine Englishmen out of
ten would jump to make the exchange, and I as firmly believe that nine Irishmen
out of ten would indignantly refuse it.
And yet this awful idea of complete Anglicisation, which I have here put before
you in all its crudity is, and has been, making silent inroads upon us for
nearly a century.
Its inroads have been silent, because, had the Gaelic race perceived what
was being done, or had they been once warned of what was taking place in their
own midst, they would, I think, never have allowed it. When the picture of
complete Anglicisation is drawn for them in all its nakedness Irish sentimentality
becomes suddenly a power and refuses to surrender its birthright...
So much for the greatest stroke of all in our Anglicisation, the loss of our
language. I have often heard people thank God that if the English gave us
nothing else they gave us at least their language. In this way they put a
bold face upon the matter, and pretend that the Irish language is not worth
knowing, and has no literature. But the Irish language is worth knowing, or
why would the greatest philologists of Germany, France, and Italy be emulously
studying it, and it does possess a literature, or why would a German savant
have made the calculation that the books written in Irish between the eleventh
and seventeenth centuries, and still extant, would fill a thousand octavo
volumes.
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.
The losing of it is our greatest blow, and the sorest stroke that the rapid
Anglicisation of Ireland has inflicted upon us. In order to de-Anglicise ourselves
we must at once arrest the decay of the language. We must bring pressure upon
our politicians not to snuff it out by their tacit discouragement merely because
they do not happen themselves to understand it. We must arouse some spark
of patriotic inspiration among the peasantry who still use the language, and
put an end to the shameful state of feeling -- a thousand-tongued reproach
to our leaders and statesmen -- which makes young men and women blush and
hang their heads when overheard speaking their own language. Maynooth has
at last come splendidly to the front, and it is now incumbent upon every clerical
student to attend lectures in the Irish language and history during the first
three years of his course. But in order to keep the Irish language alive where
it is still spoken -- which is the utmost we can at present aspire to -- nothing
less than a house-to-house visitation and exhortation of the people themselves
will do, something -- though with a very different purpose -- analogous to
the procedure that James Stephens adopted throughout Ireland when he found
her like a corpse on the dissecting table. This and some system of giving
medals or badges of honour to every family who will guarantee that they have
always spoken Irish amongst themselves during the year. But unfortunately,
distracted as we are and torn by contending factions, it is impossible to
find either men or money to carry out this simple remedy, although to a dispassionate
foreigner -- to a Zeuss, Jubainville, Zimmer, Kuno Meyer, Windisch, or Ascoli,
and the rest -- this is of greater importance than whether Mr. Redmond or
Mr. MacCarthy lead the largest wing of the Irish party for the moment, or
Mr. So-and-So succeed with his election petition. To a person taking a bird's
eye view of the situation a hundred or five hundred years hence, believe me,
it will also appear of greater importance than any mere temporary wrangle,
but, unhappily, our countrymen cannot be brought to see this.
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 of the old Celtic
race, MacDermotts, O'Conors, O'Sullivans, MacCarthys, O'Neills -- to be ignorant
of his 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 principal
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. Every house should have a copy
of Moore and Davis. In a word, we must strive to cultivate everything that
is most racial, most smacking of the soil, most Gaelic, most Irish, because
in spite of the little admixture of Saxon blood in the north-east corner,
this island is and will ever remain Celtic at the core, far more Celtic than
most people imagine, because, as I have shown you, the names of our people
are no criterion of their race. On racial lines, then, we shall best develop,
following the bent of our own natures; and, in order to do this, we must create
a strong feeling against West-Britonism, for it -- if we give it the least
chance, or show it the smallest quarter -- will overwhelm us like a flood,
and we shall find ourselves toiling painfully behind the English at each step
following the same fashions, only six months behind the English ones; reading
the same books, only months behind them; taking up the same fads, after they
have become stale there, following them in our dress, literature, music, games,
and ideas, only a long time after them and a vast way behind. We will become,
what, I fear, we are largely at present, a nation of imitators, the Japanese
of Western Europe, lost to the power of native initiative and alive only to
second-hand assimilation. I do not think I am overrating this danger. We are
probably at once the most assimilative and the most sensitive nation in Europe.
A lady in Boston said to me that the Irish immigrants had become Americanised
on the journey out before ever they landed at Castle Gardens. And when I ventured
to regret it, she said, shrewdly, 'If they did not at once become Americanised
they would not be Irish.' I knew fifteen Irish workmen who were working in
a haggard in England give up talking Irish amongst themselves because the
English farmer laughed at them. And yet O'Connell used to call us the 'finest
peasantry in Europe'. Unfortunately, he took little care that we should remain
so. We must teach ourselves to be less sensitive, we must teach ourselves
not to be ashamed of ourselves, because the Gaelic people can never produce
its best before the world as long as it remains tied to the apron-strings
of another race and another island, waiting for it to move before it will
venture to take any step itself.
In conclusion, I would earnestly appeal to every one, whether Unionist or
Nationalist, who wishes to see the Irish nation produce its best -- surely
whatever our politics are we all wish that -- to set his face against this
constant running to England for our books, literature, music, games, fashions,
and ideas. 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 Irish lines 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.
