Irish Books and Irish People

Irish Books and Irish People, by
Stephen Gwynn

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Title: Irish Books and Irish People
Author: Stephen Gwynn
Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22264]
Language: English
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IRISH BOOKS AND IRISH PEOPLE
By

STEPHEN GWYNN.
DUBLIN The Talbot Press Ltd. 89 Talbot Street
LONDON T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. 1 Adelphi Terrace

CONTENTS
Page INTRODUCTION 1
NOVELS OF IRISH LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 7
A CENTURY OF IRISH HUMOUR 23
LITERATURE AMONG THE ILLITERATES:
I.--THE SHANACHY 44
II.--THE LIFE OF A SONG 51
IRISH EDUCATION AND IRISH CHARACTER 65
THE IRISH GENTRY 83
YESTERDAY IN IRELAND 97

INTRODUCTION.
My publisher must take at least some of the responsibility for reviving
these essays. All bear the marks of the period at which they were
written; and some of them deal with the beginnings of movements
which have since grown to much greater strength, and in growing have
developed new characteristics at the expense of what was originally
more prominent. Other pages, again, take no account of facts which
to-day must be present to the mind of every Irish reader, and so are,
perhaps significantly, out of date. Nobody for instance, could now

complain that Irish humour is lacking in seriousness. Synge disposed of
that criticism--and, indeed, the Abbey Theatre in its tone as a whole
may be accused of neglecting Ireland's gift for simple fun. Yet Lady
Gregory made the most of it in her "Spreading the News," and Mr.
Yeats in his "Pot of Broth."--How beautifully W. G. Fay interpreted an
Irish laughter which had no bitterness in it.
But the strong intellectual movement which has swept over Ireland has
been both embittering and embittered. These last five and twenty years
have been the most formative in the country's history of any since
Ireland became the composite nation that she now is, or, perhaps, has
yet to become. At the back of it all lies the great social change involved
in the transfer of ownership from the landlord to the cultivators of the
soil--a change which has literally disenserfed three-fourths of Ireland's
people. Yet the relations are obscure, indefinite, and intangible, which
unite that material result to the outcome of two forces, allied but
distinct, which have operated solely on men's minds and spirits. These
are, of course, the Gaelic revival and the whole literary movement
which has had its most concrete expression in the Irish theatre, and its
most potent inspiration in the personality of Mr. Yeats.
Of these two forces, one can show by far the more tangible effects, for
the Gaelic League has issued in action. Setting out to revive and save
the Irish language as a living speech, the instrument of a nation's
intercourse, it has failed of its purpose; but it has revived and rendered
potent the principle of separation. Nationalist, it will have nothing to do
with a nationality that is not as plainly marked off from other
nationalities as a red lamp from a green lamp; and the essential symbol
of separate nationality is for orthodox Gaelic Leaguers a separate
language. America, said an able exponent of this doctrine the other day
in a public debate, will never and never can be a nation till its language
is no longer recognisable as English--till its English differs as much
from the language of England as German differs from Dutch. An
inevitable corollary to this view is the necessity for complete political
separation from Great Britain--if only to provide the machinery for this
complete differentiation by daily speech.

I cannot pretend to assess impartially the value of this movement. It
asserted itself in passionate deeds at a moment when many thousands
of us Nationalists were taking equally vigorous action in pursuit of a
less tribal ideal. Thousands of us lost our lives, all of us risked our lives,
with the hope of achieving a national unity which could never be built
on the basis of regarding no man as an Irishman who did not speak, or
at least desire to speak, Gaelic for his mother tongue. The action of
Irish soldiers was thwarted and frustrated by the action of a very few
separatists, with a very small expense to themselves in bloodshed. But
the tribute to the work of the Gaelic League is that Ireland accepted