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Irish Books and Irish People By: Stephen Lucius Gwynn (1864-1950) |
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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significantly, out of date.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... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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History |
Humor |
Languages |
Literature |
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