Authors: Declan Kiberd
In calling for a return to national traditions, Hyde had made a telling point: that far from being fixated
on the past, the Irish were in danger of making an irreparable break with their inheritance. This blockage had its roots in the enforced migrations and interrupted family histories of the nineteenth century, which had disrupted the national archive. Hyde, by his promotion of Celtic scholarship and of Irish, was seeking to repair and restore it. He was dismayed by that weird blend of external deference and private rebellion which characterized the Irish relation to England. What remained of the Irish identity had been preserved through the spiritual leadership given to many people by the Catholic church, but that same church had also blocked the expression of that identity by the more militant nationalists and republicans.
Hyde, in unstopping the sentiment, was also careful to recognize the spiritual dimension in a collection like
Abhráin Diaga Chúige Chonnacht
(The Religious Songs of Connacht). He did indeed woo the Catholic clergy, though for subtler reasons than Joyce might have suspected: he needed their endorsement as an answer to those pious Catholics who condemned the mingling of sexes at League functions as "occasions of sin". Moreover, he was well aware that the careers of many Irish-language enthusiasts among the Catholic clergy had been stymied, in Maynooth and elsewhere, as a result of their high-profile activities. Men like Lorcán Ó Muireadhaigh, Dr.
O'Hickey and
Walter McDonald got into trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities for promoting Irish, for insisting on its central importance in the syllabus for matriculation, and so on. Far from abjectly toadying to such figures, Hyde may have been attempting to accord them a degree of respectability, by featuring them on platforms at successful mass-meetings. Those priests would undoubtedly have contained within their ranks a predictable proportion of conservative, anti-modern theologians, as Joyce alleged – but there were others, such as Walter McDonald, who were at the forefront of progressive movement, as well as being completely ecumenical.
Apart from being a great ecumenist and reconciler himself, Hyde was ever the cunning tactician – properly grateful to have the support of prestigious Catholic priests, whose presence could serve to glamorize the Irish language in the eyes of a peasantry for whom it had long been
a token of shame. As the priests had once done, so now he – a Protestant gentleman-scholar – assumed leadership of a people whose traditions had been so disrupted that they were estranged from their very environment.
A major agent of that estrangement had been the Board of
Education, which throughout the previous century, in Ireland as in India, had encouraged the materially ambitious natives to abandon their culture. These people had been encouraged to view their own great narratives as mere myths to be discarded (much as the Elizabethan historians like Stanyhurst had mocked the "unscientific" memorialists of Gaelic Ireland). If anything, the situation in Ireland was more extreme than that in India, for the Irish school texts were given to every child and brooked no nationalism, whereas the Indian books were intended only for the élites and
did
allow a modicum of national sentiment. The value of the new education, the British claimed, was that it would help the people to dismantle the myths which still bound them to their own culture, and instead, in the words of Lord
Macaulay's minute on India, "make them look to this country with that veneration which the youthful student feels for the classical soul of
Greece".
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However, the pitched battle put up by
Trinity College against the Gaelic League had precisely the reverse effect to that intended and had thrown this entire process into jeopardy. By 1903, the constitutional nationalist
Stephen Gwynn, a member of parliament, could write that "I have heard the existence of an Irish literature denied by a roomful of professors, educated gentlemen, and, within a week, I have heard, in the same country, the classics of that literature recited by an Irish peasant who could neither write nor read. On which party should the stigma of illiteracy set the uglier brand?"
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The disarray of political nationalism in the 1890s had allowed some unionists to adopt a more relaxed attitude to the Gaelic tradition, and the League made an appeal to a much wider version of nationality. The movement was so powerful in Belfast by 1899 that it could cram a meeting-hall which called for the teaching of Irish in schools:
All classes and creeds were represented at the gathering. The first resolution was proposed by an MA of Trinity College. Nationalists and Unionists, Protestants and Catholics, were equally earnest in their advocacy of the language – the Protestant Bishop of Ossory wrote in open approval of "a platform on which all lovers of our dear native land could meet as nationalists in the truest sense of the word".
36
By 1904, it was the strongest democratic organization in the country, wooed by the directors of the Abbey Theatre and by John Redmond's Parliamentary Party which offered Hyde a seat in Westminster. He refused, but only on being cautioned that such a gesture would reduce the inflow of funds from nationalist sympathizers in the United States. The long-term implications of Hyde's position were by men becoming clear, and they were spelt out vividly by the Protestant
canon James Hannay
(alias
George Birmingham, novelist) in 1907:
I take the Sinn Féin position to be the natural and inevitable development of the League principles. They couldn't lead to anything else ... I do not myself believe that you will be able to straddle the fence for very much longer. You have, in my humble opinion, the chance of becoming a great Irish leader, with the alternative of relapsing into the position of a
John Dillon. It will be intensely interesting to see which you choose. Either way, I think the movement you started will go on, whether you lead it or take the part of a poor Frankenstein who created a monster he could not control.
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Hyde did lose control. The Fenian sub-text of his own language impelled his more ardent supporters towards a brazenly political commitment: and Hyde, whose uninterest in politics helped to widen his initial support, now found that his political
naïveté
could lead to the League's decline or, at any rate, its co-option by other forces. Though thousands of students had enrolled in the League's classes, few ever got beyond the learning of a few token phrases. Without state support, there was a clear limit to what could be achieved. Equally, the
Gael-tacht,
the repository of unbroken traditions, could hardly be saved by a non-political organization which, by its own self-denying ordinance, could never expect to bring about industrial reform. The Gaelic League saw very clearly that if the
Gaeltacht
were left to survive on
tourism, it would soon become a mere reservation, a museum: "the language, the industries, and the very existence of a people are all interdependent, and whoever has a living care for the one cannot be unmindful of the other".
38
So Patrick Pearse urged a programme of industrial development and called upon Leaguers to settle in the west, thereby making a real commitment over and above the use of ritual phrases. They did not go, preferring, as Sean O'Casey sarcastically noted, to stay in the more respectable Dublin suburbs of Donnybrook and Whitehall, "lisping Irish wrongly" and wincing at workmen like himself who frequented their meetings.
39
O'Casey's portrait of Hyde in his autobiography is a vicious travesty of a kindly visionary, but there is truth in its retrospective suggestion that the League seemed at times to have confused "the fight for Irish" with "the fight for collars and ties". The lyrics studied in League classes often seemed to favour mental over physical labour
Aoibhinn beatha an scoláire
bhíos ag deanamh léinn;
is follas daoibh, a dhaoine,
gur dó is aoibhne in Éirinn.
Gan smacht rí air ná ruire
ná tiarna dá theise,
gan chuid cíosa ag caibidil,
gan mochéirí, gan meirse.
Mochéirí ná aoireacht
ní thabhair uaidh choíche;
is ní mó do-bheir dá aire
fear na faire san oíche.
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The life of a scholar is pleasant
as he pursues his learning;
it must be clear to you, O people,
that his is the pleasantest life in Ireland.
Neither king nor prince controls him,
nor does any leader however strong,
he does not have to pay dues to clergy,
nor does he wake early or have to do hard labour.
Early rising and animal-minding
are things he never needs to do;
and he never pays any heed
to the watchman in the nights.
Many Gaelic texts revived in the period were out-and-out attacks in the name of the Gaelic bards on the brutish parliamentarians of an earlier century.
Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis
(The Parliament of Clan Thomas), republished in 1912, probably helped to feed the forces of extra-parliamentary nationalism which gathered momentum in that year.
Some Leaguers projected an ideal self-image of the Gael as a descendant
of ancient chieftains and kings. Irish Ireland countered the petty
"seoinín'
or West Briton, who asserted his superiority by imitating English manners, with its own form of invented Gaelic snobbery. Ireland became not-England, an apophatic construct which was as teasing to the mind as the notion of a horse as a wheelless car. Anything English was
ipso facto
not for the Irish, as it might appear to weaken the claim to separate nationhood, but any valued cultural possessions of the English were shown to have their Gaelic equivalents. Thus was born what
Seán de Fréine has acutely called an ingenious device of national parallelism:
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| English language | – | Irish language |
| English law | – | Brehon law |
| Parliament | – | Dáil |
| Prime Minister | – | Taoiseach |
| Soccer | – | Gaelic football |
| Hockey | – | Hurling |
| Trousers | – | Kilt |
It mattered little whether those devices had a secure basis in Irish history, for if they had not previously existed they could be invented, Gaelic football being a classic case of instant archaeology but definitely not a game known to Cuchulain.
Equally, because Englishmen were sensible enough to wear trousers in their inclement climate, it followed that the romantic, impractical Irishman must have worn a kilt. This garment pleased the revivalists with its connotations of aristocracy, of Scottish chieftains and pipers marching into battle; but the garment never was Irish; and subsequent historians have shown that the Irish wore hip-hugging trousers long before the English (and were reviled for the barbarous fashion by the new invaders). The kilt wasn't properly Scottish either, having been devised by an English Quaker industrialist, seeking an outlet for unused tartan
after
the highland clearances: it was worn by Scottish workers in the new factories because it was cheaper than trousers.
42
None of these considerations, however, prevented a generation of enthusiasts from raising the cry "Down with trousers!" Some devious souls tried to have it both ways, as in George Moore's recommendation that tartan trousers be worn to his Gaelic lawn-party at Ely Place.
An Claidheamh Soluis
contributed to this pan-Celtic lunacy when it announced its own inspired compromise: "We condemn English-made evening dress, but evening dress of Irish manufacture is just as Irish as a
Donegal cycling suit. Some people think we cannot be Irish unless we always wear tweeds and only occasionally wear collars".
43
One historian has marvelled at how heated these debates could become and has suggested that the success of the League can be explained by "the opportunity it extended to a snobbishly-afflicted middle and lower-middle class to assert a new social self-respect".
44
Sean O'Casey spoke corrosively of these pretensions to respectability, but it was left to James Joyce to write the most lethal account of the careerism of some Leaguers in his short story tided "A Mother". A respectable woman named Mrs. Kearney sees in the League a chance to promote not the cause of Irish but the musical prospects of her daughter:
When the Irish Revival began to be appreciable, Mrs. Kearney determined to take advantage of her daughter's name and brought an Irish teacher to the house. Kathleen and her sister sent Irish picture postcards to their friends and those friends sent back other Irish picture postcards .. . People said that she was very clever at music and a very nice girl, and, moreover, that she was a believer in the language movement. Mrs. Kearney was well content with this.
45
The daughter secures a position as accompanist at a series of concerts in aid of the Éire Abú Society, but when the functions are poorly attended and the society cannot afford to pay the fee, the mother creates a nasty scene and insists on every last penny. Joyce could see how, for some, the new social self-respect could verge on hard-nosed bourgeois materialism.
It was, however, the
unworldliness
of Hyde's analysis which led to the confrontation with radical Leaguers led by Pearse, who insisted that Ireland should not merely be free but Gaelic, not merely Gaelic but free, and that the two aspirations were inter-dependent. By its refusal to follow this logic, the League got left behind in the years leading up to the 1916 Rising. By 1913, Pearse was announcing that "the Gaelic League, as the Gaelic League, is a spent force", though he was careful to add in another speech of the following year that "what will be accomplished by the men of this generation, will be accomplished because the Gaelic League made it possible".
46
Hyde was disgusted by Pearse's support for
James Larkin during the
Lock-Out of 1913, though, in fairness, it should be said that he may have been motivated by concern for the hungry families of workers rather than the welfare of the bosses: but his break from the League came only in 1915, at a Dundalk
conference which adopted a clear nationalist stance. He resigned the presidency amid tears and regret. "My own ideas had been quite different", he explained: "My own ambition had always been the language as a neutral ground upon which all Irishmen might meet. . . We were doing the only business that really counted, we were keeping Ireland Irish, and that in a way that the Government and Unionists, though they hated it, were powerless to oppose. So long as we remained non-political, there was no end to what we could do".
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