Ulster Presbyterians and the Irish Language

A private letter which we have received from a man who knows Ulster from sea to sea, says that many Presbyterian clergymen of the North have forbidden Presbyterian children attending primary schools to learn the Irish language. The primary teachers who took up the teaching of Irish made no distinction between the children of the Gall and Gael. They made no attempt to deny to any section the right to learn the national language. The children of parents who had forgotten the Gaelic tongue their ancestors took with them from Scotland were delighted to find that they belonged to a nation that had a language of its own, and they became most eager students.

It has now come to light that a big number of Presbyterian clergymen have been forbidding the children to learn the language, and the Irish rolls in many schools have fallen as a direct consequence. It is very difficult to get direct proof of the interference of the clergy, but the following letter which was sent to an Ulster teacher shows how opposition to Irish is stirred up among the people.

DEAR SIR,
I am writing to say that [boy's name] is not allowed to learn Irish.
Rev. Mr. — told him to not learn it at all...
Yours sincerely,
Name of boy's mother.]

The Gaelic League undertook to make all the people of Ireland realise the importance of saving the national language, and it will not cease to remind all sections of the people that while they neglect the language they must be false to the nation. There was a time, not so long ago, when Ulster Presbyterians were the most fearless champions of Irish nationality. Many of their ancestors spoke the Gaelic language when they first came into Ulster. Will the clergymen who are forbidding Presbyterian school children to learn Irish be allowed by the patriotic members of the Presbyterian church in Ulster to uphold in Irish schools the anti-Irish ideals of West British education?

We are glad to know that the friends of Irish Ireland are rapidly increasing in numbers in the North. Their help is wanting. Let them take courage and preach boldly the principles of nationality. The declarations of Mr. Justice Ross and others in Trinity College last week should encourage them. Ours is a fight in which victory can only follow the generally slow process of conviction, but it needs vigorous fighting even to set men thinking.

Nothing could be better for Ireland just now than a decade of thought-compelling agitation for the recognition of nationality education, in the churches, in business, and in sport and amusements. The torpor of centuries still hangs like an enchantment over our minds. We see enemies, monsters like those iolphéirtí of the stories, waiting to devour us, in our brothers, and we turn against each other the weapons that should be used only on our common foe.

The powers of darkness have been invoked to raise amongst us the enchantments of racial and religious hatreds, and the play of these spells leaves us like children or people bereft of their senses in the hands of the enemy. We have often heard advocates of our cause basing the claims of the Gaelic League for support on the literary value of the Irish language.

The real value of our language is that its acceptance would give us national pride and unity, not indeed in religion or politics, but in another sense. A Gaelic nation would sink or swim together. The Presbyterian, the Protestant, the Catholic, all would forget their prejudices were the great compelling force of nationality allowed full play amongst them. The need of a national language is indeed so great that had we no distinctive tongue of our own, we should have to invent one.