The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 19, 1906, Page 4

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 190 DR.DOUGLAS HYDE SPEAKS TO VAST THRONG ASSEMBLED IN TIVOLI Declares Movement He Represents Is the Last Struggle for Preservation of Irish National Identity. Frank ]. Sullivan, Judge F.J. Murasky and the Rev. P. C. Yorke Make Short Addresses at Great Reception. the work lasted sing DR. HYDE BRINGS THE MESSAGE FROM IRELAND me Douglas Hyde > follow- known find myself sur- Irish blood, as great | d as-the very best h in any quarter of ve now visited some nd 1 desire on behalf of the nd which I Jeft behind to ex-| e to you all—to for his un- to the Arch-| npathy and sup- Mr. Phe whose vears ago urning of » made the and fellow one of the at ever men wk friend home could woman in -mang of | fluence whi you here in wield if you wish to wiel n s, in ¥ , of more import- for us to possess ourselves of than any other asset whatsoever. I would | sooner have the moral support of the h in America than a quartcr of a mil- of dollars poured into the Gaelic gue TOW. am here to-day to explain to you the | life are papers a; engaged death struggle upon which we | in Ireland. I see that the| say that this is the last grand ggle of the Irish race to preserve their str langusge. Oh, ladles and gentlemen, it 1s | ten times, it is a hundred times, §t is 2| thou times more far-reaching than thet! It is the last possible life and death | their | mire. struggle of the Irish race to preserve. not own language, but their nationil identity “We have no Irish race to pened the cyes *he awful yawning chasm which gaped beneath us, over wiich a zie false foots would have taken us he awful chasm of Anglicization, which, believe me, is only another name for na- w o n tional extinetion, and when you in Amer- and that—and I shall fail in if I don’t make you 2 1 know you will join u saying to the devouring demon of Anglicization, whose foul and gluttonous aws have swailowed everything that was natural, instinctive, ancient, na noble in our Irish people— r songs, our industries, ur danccs and our pastimes— I know and say that you will plant your feet firmly and will say with us: ‘Back, demon, Not one other ye back! | mouthful of the heritage of Irish nation- | hood shall you swallow again forever!’ DECLARES MOVEMENT IS NOT OF FADDISTS ‘The movement on which we are en- gaged to-day is not the movement of a few faddists. It was thought to be so That time has long gone by. So 1ar is our movement from being a movement insignificant faddists that papers in which gqre at daggers drawn s, are at one in cham- our cause. Churchmen like the Archbishop of Dublin and the Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh are at one with us: even the organ of the independent Orangemen, who seceded trom the main body, said the other day, before 1 left Ireland, that it was a movement which no Oranger or Protestant need be ashamed The Protestant Bishop of Clougher at a church conference spoke to the Northern Protestants most sym tically about us, only the other d ader of the Irish Parliamer party has himself on many occasions spoken of the importance of our work if even a shred of our fonality is to be served, and, what is better, his own ren are learning Irish, Just as a straw will show the way the wind blows, give you an idea how remarkable of the on the Irish wind wa of our c League Feislanna or festivals held in August at a place where vou know the River Bann runs ) the sea, Toome Bridge, that for gen- on generations had been the atholic and Orangeman; find? Here was a place < Catholic and Protest- their battles with re had fough and with stone: and scythes, and with they could lay their hands on, vet what do we find? Under our aegis Catholic and ngeman came into that place in a spirlt of brotherhood unexampled in | that t of the world ever before, and 1 could not tell which was the most nu- at it. They mingled from early untfl dark night, and - parted single word being spoken in anger or a single blow struck. And what we dld there we did in the glens of An- n and in a dozen other places In the ck North’ We- are like the white e of peace passing over the land and terating the old feuds and hatred and 00d of the country. ck, bad you see that we are no clique, we no faction, we are no party. We are above and beyond all politics, all parties and all factions: offending nobody—ex- e anti-Irishman, Mr. Chairman—we immovable upon the bedrock of the e of true Irish ns hood—an Ire- self-centered, self-sufficing, self- self-reliant; an Ireland ng its own language, thinking its own thoughts, writing its own books, singing its own songs, plaving its games, weaving its OWn coats, wearing its own hats, making its own hats, and going for nothing outside of the four shores of Ireland that can possibly be procured inside them. “The Gaelle League i founded not upon atred of E oh! so powerful—for tearing for destroying; but upon hatred ot build up even the size of a thraneén—a very powerful destroyer, but it 1s useless for building u e, on the is like faith; it can remove and, faith, we have mountains d we have removed them. “The philosophy of the Gaelic League is this: That Irishmen cannot compete with ngland in the things that come natur- Iy to England and that come unnatur- to us. We cannot, for instance— other han well, we cannot play cricket as well as | the Englishmen. Ah, but sure. we can | beat them blind at hurling. Upon our | clay floors we cannot dance the waltzes as gracefully; but, sure, we can smash them at a Jig or a reel. We cannot sing ‘Johnny, Get Your 'Alr Cut’ in the proper Coster pronunciation and music hall accent, but I defy an Englishman to whistle ‘Maldrin Ruadh.' In one word, we alm at the de-Anglicization of Ire- land DEFENDS HIS USE OF “DE-ANGLICIZATIO) Now it has been objected to me that that word, which I colned long ago for w it of a better—de-Anglicization—con- ned In it something harsh, something virulent, something rebellious, something anti-English, and that it was calculated to alienate the good will of many people who would otherwise be our supporters; d as that may possibly be so, and es pecially in a cosmopolitan city like San Francisco, I desire to say, to set myself right before 1 go any farther, that any ladies and gentlemen of English sympa- thies who may be here to-day—I desire to say that I honor and respect every- | thing that 8 good in the great English race. 1 yleld to no man In clation of thelr perseyerance, ness faculties, their practical qualities. They have colonized many countries; they have called into existence scores of great citles; factories, where the unceasing roar and hurh of production are neyer silent. Theirs are the harbors thronged with their forests of masts; theirs, pre- eminently ave the mart and the counting- house and the mercantile navy of the world: weaith, power fruits of industry are theirs; are thingg that mankind, In every age and every race, have, rightly or wrong- y—and, upon my word, I think very often wrongly—conspired to reverence and ad- Yes, while England can point to such advantages as these, she may laugh at those who would belittle her; for in the history of the world sbhe has made her mark deeply. Her enemles may hate her —they do hate her—but they cannot de- epise! “And yet, and yet, there exists there my appre- their busi- half-deserted streets resound ever less own | England, but upon-love of Ire- Hatred is a negative passion; it is | and the teeming | and those | and less to the roar of traffic; whose mills are silent; whose factories are fallen; : whose priceless harbors are deserted; whose very flelds are studded only with ruined gables, memories of the past, and | vet, around that nation, morality of life, | purity of sentiment, unswerving devotion | to falth, ana to fatherland, have shed a | halo in the eyes of Europe that is all its own. It is a halo, too, that is unstained | by oppression of any man, untarnished | by avarice of anything, and undimmed | by, murder. Well, the characteristics of this Irish | race of ours are rather lightness, bright- { ness, wit, fluency and an artistic temper- | ament. The characteristics of the Teu- tonic race are an Intense business faculty, | persevera and steadiness in detalls; and in America you have elicited a mag- nificent blend of both qualities in that free and noble race whose sons or whose adopted sons and daughters I see before me to-day. But mark this: neither race can, ! with any success whatsoever cut itself adrift from its own past and threw itself in imitation of the other into habits of life and thought and manners into which God never intended to be thrown. “But, alas! that Is the very thing which the Irish race at home and abroad, daz- zled by the material prosperity of the great country to which we are tied— many of them unwillingly tied—that is, I say, the very thing that the Irish race have been doing. This folly, this mad- ness, this suicidal mania (for I cannot call it anything else) of rushing to adopt pell-mell and indiscriminately everything that is English, not because It Is good, but because it is English, has been bad for all parties. It has been bad for Irish Nationalists; it has been equally bad for Irish Unioni t has been bad for our own country, and it has been equally bad for the country with which we are con- nected. The more divergence of thought and genlus, of natural aptitudes, the bet- ter; because, 1 tell you, there is an indi- viduality in nationalities exactly as there is in persons—and to attempt to mold or crush everything into one particular type has invariably been fatal to the people that attempted it. | DROPS BACK AMONG THE LEAST LEARNED “In our case, gentlemen, that attempt has been disastrous. 1f you take a birds- eye view of Ireland to-day and compare it with what it was you must be struck by the fact that the nation which was at one time the most cl ally learned and cultured nation in Europe is now one of-] the least so—Low a nation which was one of the most reading and. literary peoples in the world is now one of the least read- ing and most unliterary, and how the art products 6f onc of the quickest, niost sen- sitive, and most artistic of- all popula- tions ate Tiow “dfStinguished only by thelr- hideousness! | “One great cause of this ghastly failure may be summed up in a word; we have ccased to be Irish without becoming Eng- lish. It is to this cause that I attribute more than to anything else our awful emigration and impoverishment. Irish- men leave Ireland to-day because they have ceased to feel that théy ‘have ‘a. | country., They will not accept England as their countr and yet in the Ireland that the Gaelic League found before it there was nothing to suggest to them anything else than an imitation England, and the o mind had become hope- lessly confused and Irishmen’ had no standard to live by and they emigrated in their thousands. “I want to show you to-day hard facts; | T want to show you that in Anglicizing | ourselves wholesale we have thrown away with a t heart the best claim, the only true claim, that we can make |'upon the world's recognition of us as a | separate nationality. What did Mazzini What is Goldwin Smith, back there |in Canada, never tired of eclaring? | What does the Spectator and the Saturday | Review, the English Times harp upon in every issuc almost? Why, that we should be content in Ireland to become a big nglish county, because we have lost the | notes and marks of our nationhood, our | language and our customs. | “"What is the answer to that? Have you any answer for it? I declare to God I see no answer to it except to take to our bosoms again the things that we have discarded, our language and our customs, and to huild up out of them an Irish na- | tionhood upon Irish lines! | “I cannot understand for the life of me how it is that Irish sentiment sticks in a kind of half-way house. Why does it continue to say it hates the English and at the same time continue to imitate them? Why does it clamor for recogni- tion, nofsily clamor for recognition as a | separate nationality, when at the same time it.throws'away with both hands the | only things that would make it s0? Why, | it Irishmen only went a little further, ! they would become very good Englishmen | in sentiment also. And yet, whether we | regret it or not—some of us reeret it, ‘ others don’t—but whether we regret it or not, the fact remains’that the very peo- | ple’ that adopt English habits and copy | the English in every way—the people who | wouid biush if overheard talking a word | of Irlsh, who send their boys to English | schools and their girls to English con- | vents to learn to talk with a nice English | accent, don't you know, who call thelr | | sons Ferdinand Aloysius and thelr daugh- | ters Victorla Amelia, and who have not | an Irish book in their house—nevertheless still continue to talk of their oppressed country and to sing ‘Paddies Evermore’ and ‘The Green Above the Red,’ and if 1 were to plant a Unfon Jack over their houses they would brain me with a lump of stone. | ““And, strange as it may appear, I see no signs at all of their thinking any way | difterently, and it is perfectly certain to my mind—whether we like it or don't like ft—that so long as England refuses Irishmen the right to govern themselves. 80 long they will continue to dislike her, and movements like Young Irelandism and Fenianism and Land Leagueism and Parliamentary obstruction—all those things which crop up time and again, will gain thelr adhesion and support, at least so far as the ballot box s concerned. | And that is why T say, since they won't | become proper Englishmen, then let them become proper Irishmen; and tiat since they won’t become the one thing, Eng- lishmen in sentiment, then, in God's name, let them become the other thing—let them come in with us and bulld up an Irish Irelapd! INO PROSPERITY UNDER THE RULE OF ENGLAND “Now if you say that Ireland has not prospered under English rule, why it is only a truism. All the world admits it. i at her very doors an ancient nation whose | England itself does not deny it. But, of ! course, the English retort is ready: ‘Yow ) | | { THRILLS AUDIEN i bl W « Dr. Douglas Hyde thrilled the great audience gathered for his reception a address teeming with Irish patriotism and love for the Gaelic language. e live on with the other languages of the earth. Tremendous applause greeted him cont ciation of the good will San Franciseo has shown him. TR — 3 = EMINENT IF 3 REAT GATHERING AT THE TIVOLI IN THE INTE: £ GAELIC LEAGUE, AND TWO LOCAL MEN WHO SPOKE, GIVI 3 OF SAN FRANCISCO'S SUPPORT. — did not come in like the Scotch and form part of the empire.’ “ ‘Twenty years of good grandfatherly government, said a late well-known Prime Minister, ‘will’ solve the Irish question.’ Well, T think the gentleman made the time a little too short. But suppose now, with me to-day, suppose— a thing that is impossible—t! a series of Oliver Cromwells were to arise in Eng- land—not for a space of twenty for .a space of one:hundred years administrators . of . the empire, careful rulers of Ireland, develgping to the utmost our national resources, while they unre- mittingly stamped out every spark of the national feeling, leaving Ireland a land of wealth and factories; leaving us after a hundred years of good government, fat, wealthy, populous, prosperous, but with all our characteristics gone; Wwith every external that differentiated us from them lost or dropped: our Irish names of people and places changed Into English ones; the Irish language completely extinet: the O's and the Mac's dropped; our Irish | intonation changed by English school- | masters into something English; the names of our rebels and our martyrs blotted out; our battlefields and traditions | forgotten; the fact that we were not of Anglo-Saxon origin dropped out of mind and memory—and now let me put the question to you: How many Irishmen are there who would accept material pros- | perity at such a price as that? “It is exactly such a question and the answer that vou gave me to it that mark the difference between the two races, a difference as wide as the grave; for I believe that nine English- men out of ten would jump to accept it, ana I equally believe that nine Irish- men out of ten would indignantly re-} fuse it. “Well, that Anglicizatien that I pic- tured to you had everywhere eaten like a disease through Ireland. Nobody noticed it; nobody was told of it; but when Irishmen know, then Irish senti- ment becomes a power in the land and refuses indignantly to relinquish its birthright. Ah, but the Irish had for- gotten thesfact that they had a birth- right at all. That is the truth of the matter., They had forgotten that they were Irishmen in any sense of the word. The old race, the Mac's and the O's and those who should have Mac's and O's before their names—those are the descendants of the men who Chris- tianized and who civilized Western FBurope, the descendants of the men who for three centuries, amid the hor- ror and the darkness and confuslon of the Middle Ages held aloft the torch of Jearning and of plety unto every race of mankind. They are the men, Mr. Chairman, who now for the first time since the battle of the Boyne, have been appealed to through thelr Milesian instinets, and people marveled that it brought about this great change in Ireland; but I tell you it is because the men who were crushed at the battle of the Boyne have been appealed to through their racial Instincts by the Gaelic League, and you see the old Irish race rising on its feet to accept the new doctrines, over new and over old. “Those are the men of whom our far- mers and our artisans and our shop- keepers consist, and in whose hands is to-day the making or the marring of the Irish nation., But they are just on the point of recovering the possession | of their own land. and their sons and | daughters, please God, will have it aft-| er them. and it is now miore necessary than at any time before for these men to decide what they will be. On this side, an Irish nation built up again as it is being built up within our own recollection; on the other side, an imi- tation England. MUST MAKE BRICKSTO | BUILD A NEW NATION “When the Gaelic League started up we found that these.men were losing | everything that connected them with ! the Christianizers of Europe, that| connected them with the éra of Cuchul- lain and Olsin; “that connected them | with Brian Boroishe and the heroes of | Clontarf; that connected them with the | O'Neills and the O'Donnells: that con- | nected them with Rory O'Moore and: ‘the Wild Googe: aye, and that connected | them ever with the men of '96. - They | had lost all that those .others had, | the present of our own land, we find ourselves de- spoiled and robbed of the old bricks of our nationality, and we must set to work to make new bricks out of new clay, in a new brick kiln, to build a new nation with. “Do you believe in burning new bricks of new: clay for the old Irish house? I do not believe in it. I belleve in going here and there throughout the entire island and gathering carefully, carefully every relic and atom of the past upop which we can lay Our hands and gatheéring them to- gether into one great whole, and build- ing them course after ,course and tier after tier into the temple that shall be raised to the godhead of Irish nation- hood. “The rise of O'Connell and the estab- lishment of Maynooth—Maynooth 1s now; vou will be glad to hear, the most Irish spot in Ireland. the rise of O'Con- nell and the establishment of Maynooth §ynchronized with the decay of Irish Ireland. The Irish race, the fathers of race of Irish-Americans. really llved in the closest contact with the traditions of the past and the na- tional life of nearly 1800 years. until the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury. Not only so, but during the whole of the dark penal times they produced among themselves a most vigorous literary development. “Thomas Davis and the young [reland- ers came Just at the parting of the ways, when the natlon was, as it were, still in a state of flux and capable of being turned either to one side or the other. “Thomas Davis—that Irishman without fear and without reproach, whose name shall live forever in the grateful hearts of his countrymen—and the young Ire- landers generally, produced a new liter- ature throughout the country. It was a literature in which they strove to com- pete with England herself upon England's own lines. The effect was enormous for 3 time, but it cannot be sald to have been enduring. The fact is that the bark had been so recently stripped off the stem of the Irish tree that this attempt to replace it by a new bark, stuck on, as it were, with English gum and glue and stick-fast, failed to incorporate itself with the an- clent stem, and finally fell off from f{t, as it were, in flakes. Gentlemen, I tell you that English gum and glue and stick-fast are no substitute and never can be a sub- stitute for Irish sap. Fifty years of bitter experience have taught us that the young Ireland heroes did not arrest, and to my thinking could not arrest, the denational- ization of Ireland by a literature which, rousing and admirable &s it was, was still only a literature written in the English language and largely founded upon Eng- lish models. Remember, I am not say- ing one word in disparagement of the young Ireland movement or of the splén- did men who created it. If we had been in thelr place, God knows we might have pursued exactly the same tactlcs. But I clalm that our fifty years of experience should now be made use of and that we g0 a step farther than they went, and al- low the nautral bark, the Gaellc bark, thin though it may be at first ‘and slender though it may be, to grow with the growth of nature upon the trunk of the Irish elm. “The greatest misfortune that ever be- fell Ireland has been the loss of her lan- guage, I often heard people thank God that if England gave us nothing else, she gave us at least her language. Well, in that way people put a happy face upon it, | and have pretended that the Irish lan- gauge is worth nothing, why have I has no literature. And If the Irish lan- guage is worth nothing, . why have I met professor after professor from Den- mark, from France, from Germany, studying in the mountains of Connacht in order to learn the language that is there banned by the people themselves? And it does possess a literature, or why would a German have calculated that books pro- duced in Irish from the tenth to the sev- enteenth century and still extant, would fill a thousand octave volumes? LEAGUE SAVES TRISH RACE FROM EXTINCTION “Now do not think, please, that I am exaggerating in any way when I say that Ireland was threatened with national ex- tinction if the Gaellc League had not stepped into the breach. I will tell you some instances which first drew my at- tention to the appalling state of public opinion in the Irish-speaking country. I satin s Skie R VA together CE WITH MESSAGE t the Tivoli Theater yesterday afternoon with an | He declared that the language of his people would | inuously. He expressed high appre- — . el “THE AWTFUL SHADS ANGLICIZATIO AND For NATIONAL +* Connacht) were becoming Conyers, the McCarthys- (Kings of Munster), Carters; the O‘Donnells (Princes of Tir-Connell) called themselves Danlels, the O'Sullivans (lords of the south) called themselves Sylvanus, but not, I think, in America, for I have met more O'Sullivans since I came out here than ever I met at home. “I remember Daniel O'Connell once at a great mass meeting. He spoke against an opponent of his, Lord Chancellor Sug- den. ‘Why," said O'Conmell in his best O'Connellite manner, ‘you wouldn't call a decent pig Sugden,’ and yet he never uttered one word of remonstrance when he saw the O'Lahiffs, the O'Bréllahans and the McRorys changing their names before his very eyes into Guthriss, Brad- leys and Rogers. And the melancholy part of it all was that net one single word of warning was ever addressed to the Irish race by their public men, or by their papers, to put a stop to this colos- — STRUGGLE UPON WHICH WE ARE NOW ENGASED 1~ IRELAND o« o tle there. I am not ashamed of it; all Irishmen sell cattle when they have them to sell; and very glad to have them. I overtook a young man driving a cow be- fore him and I spoke to the young man in Irish, and as I was speaking in Irish he | was answering in English, and at last I 'said to him, ‘Don’t you speak Irish? and | what was his answer? ‘Well, I declare | to God, sir, that neither my father nor | Y mother has one word of English and Istill T can't spake and I won't spake | Irish’ And I, who had just left Pro- : fessor Georges Dottin of Brittany, France, | and Professor Holger Pedersen of Crpen- | hagen in Denmark and Kuno Meyer of | Germany, living on the mountain sides, | in the houses of the peasantry to learn to | speak the language that this reptile whose | father and mother spoke nothing else was | discarding—well 1 am sorry to say I lost ! my temper. I lost my temper and I stood out from him, and to tell the honest truth, I hit him one kick, and, mind you. it just shows you what the loss of y native language does for you. unfortunate dévil, he didn’t have courage enough to turn around and knock me down. “I remember another day, I was about six miles from my own house passing aldng~thé road; when. the ehildren came trooping out 0of what is commonly called a national school, and there was a little ‘gossoon’ that I was talking Irish to. I | had some questions to a-k about people [in the neighborhood, ana as I talked to | him in Irish he answered -me in English. At last I sald to him in Gaelic, ‘Don’t you speak Irish?” What was the answer? ‘And isn’t it Irish Iam speaking?’ ‘No,a chuisle,” said I, ‘it is not Irish you are speaking. “Then this is how I spoke it ever!’ says he. That meant that our children, in my opinfon the brightest and most intelligent in the world perhaps, were being so mis- educated and stunted as far as the Gov- ernment schools could do it that they did not know that I was speaking to thém in one language and they were answering me | in another. That is what passed for Gov- ernment education in Ireland; but it won't pass In future for Government education, or for any kind of education. We have killed it. “I remember another day, in the county of Sligo—the first of these instances hap- pened in Galway, the second in Mayo and this is in Sligo. I went into a house to wait for a train, and there was a pretty little girl at the fireside, and I sat down on a ‘creepy’ stool and began to talk to her, and after her first shyness she began talking Irish very nicely to me and we ‘were having a pleasant conversation when a dirty little unwashed, red-headed broth- er stuck in his nose out of a door and he cocked his nose at her and sald (imitat- ing): ‘Now, Mary, and Isn't that a great credit for ye to be spakin’ Irish to the gintleman? And not a word could I get out of Mary from that time on. You laugh, gentlemen, and, God forgive me, I laughed, too; but when I went home and thought over it I swear to you that I ecried, because I saw in that little Incident, which I knew so well would be repeating ftself at every fireside in the country—I saw, ‘I say, the tragedy of a nation in a nutshell. “Now, look what you gain by snuffing out the Irish language. I passed through the County Galway a few months ago and 1 came across a man who could neither read nor write nor speak English. An ordinary English tourist would put that man down as a mere brute. But what a mind that man had! What a memory! What a wealth of song! What a fund of story! What a variety of in- formation! I wrote down from him at one sitting an Ossianic poem of four hundred lines never before printed or heard of! He had a marvelous fund of folktale, re- malnders of Osslanic lays, of religious poems, of songs, aphorisms, proverbs—in 2 word, he had everything that could go to enrich the mind and the moral nature; and all that must die with him! And what were we going to replace it with in his son? We were going to replace it with the Third Reading Book of the national schools, and I would as soon have a lump of ashes choked down my throat as the Third Reading Book of the national | schoals. GAELIC LEAGUE WANTS A RECONSTRUCTION “Now the Gaelic League is engaged on a grand reconstructive policy, the policy of creating a new nation upon the old lines, and before we can build up it is necessary for us to place our finger on the blots. ‘“Well, first, there is the language ques- | tion, of which I have spoken. But a num- ! ber of other things hang upon that lan- guage question. And first, strangely enough, comes the question of our own names. It has always seemed to me that man's own name is part and parcel of himself. I am quite sure that if you | changed my name to-morrow I would feel i that I was changed myself; I would not understand it. And yet within the last | sixty or seventy yg@rs Irishmen, undergo- ing this awful process of national extine- tion, have been greedy to change their ancient, proud Milesian names norabl language, traditions, music, genius and | remember the first tiing that opened my |into some abominable monosyllable be- ideas; and now, just at the moment when we are becoming masters again from the Fair of Puan. T was selling cat- | The O'Connors (they were the Kings eyes was one day that as T was going cause it sounded like something English. The poor, | THE QREATES MISFORTUNE THAT TUER S=FeLt | IRB LAND wWhS THE LOSS O | wer \ LATGUAGS sal attempt at vulgarity and degradation until we arose to-day at the eleventh hour. Look at our Christian names. I would have thought the names that wera | | g0o0d enough for my grandfather and | great-grandfather before me should be | g00d enough for me. = Where are our | magnificent names of men and Dboys, | Cathair and Domhnal and Angus and Fergus and Cormac and Diarmuid and so forth. Where do you meet those names | now? The man that you call Diarmuid keyism, forces you to call Jer-am-i-ah. Where are our beaut female name: Vora and Una and Etbh and Moirin, Mere, Sheela, Eify and the rest? Where are they? A woman said to me not long ago, ‘Ged forbid,’ said she, poor thing ‘Gog forbid thag L should handicap my child in life by cdlling her Bridget!” She was wrong! She did han- dicap the child in life, but it was when she taught her to be ashamed.of the patron saint of her own country. There are, ten, twenty thousand honest Irish | girlS whose mothers christened them Bridget at home, who, the moment they touch American sofl, will tell you that their names are Bride and Bridle and Delia and Bedella. The Irish are to-day wealthy enough, powerful enough and respectable 2nough to restore the name Bridget and make it creditable again if they wish to. It only conveys a stigma because the wealthy Irish boycott it The spirit of Irish nationality as it speaks through the Gaelic League will never be appeased so long as our boys are called Dantel and Jeremiah instead of Domhnall and Diarmuid, and our girls Helen and Julia mstead of Eibhlin and Sidhle BAGPIPES AND VIOLIN ARE NO LONGER HEARD Take our music. After all, the bag- pipes, though you may not love {ts sound, was an artistic instrument; no man but an artist could play upon it. The violin is an artistic instrument; no man with- out a soft touch, a fine ear and artistic feeling can play upon the violin. The violin and the bagpipes were in every parish when I was young. Where are they to-day? What has taken M?T What grand artistic -instruments ve taken the place of the bagpipes and the violin? Here they are (Imitates the - ing of the accordeon and com or, if it isn't that, then this has taken its place (imitates the motion of playing the hand-organ). That is called, I suppose, an Irish nation. Ah! where is the vener- able custodian of Ireland’s song and mu- sic, the man I knew when I was young— the man who always commanded a wel- come at the peasant's fireside as he trudged through the bogs and over the mountains and through the woods of the country? Ha sleeps with his green bag beside him under the green sward. In his place have come upon the village stage that quintessence of all vulgarity and abomfnation known throughout the world as ‘the stage Irishman.’ Gentle- men, your action in dealing with that monster in San Franeisco, in Butte the other day, and in other places, Fave as a greater gratification and impressed upon me the imperishability of Irish character, and the possibility of welding our race together, more than any other thing I remember reading in the Ameri- can papers. ““Well, I sald at the outset that T would have failed in my mission to-ddy if I did not convince you that Ireluad was really threatened with national extime- tion fn the most far-reaching and vital sense of the word: and I think I have shown you that it was. I said I would put my finger on the blots, and now you will ask me what have we done to Mt them. I will tell you. A deazen years ago Irish was taught in less than a dozen schools. Six years ago it was taught in 105 schools: to-day it is taught more or less in something over 3000 of the 8000 schools of Ireland. Between publie and parochial schools, between colleges and convents, there canmot be less than a quarter of a million people now studying to read and write the language. Six years ago, in Intermediate education, only 260 budils passed in Irish; last year over 2000. “Six years ago ne stranger coming to Ireland would have seen anything to tell bim that he was not in a blg, vul- garized English county. New, in many of the larger towns, and in Dublin, the cap- ital, you see thé names of ‘the streets put un, 3nd the ‘names of the roads, and the names of the towns printed in Irish capitals at the corner of the streets, and the stranger when he looks around— why he Xnows that &ie !s not In England. Six years ago scarcely a paper printed a word of our language. Now all the national daily papers and very many of Continued on Page 5, Columa 1. 2 B