Cultural Revival

On 25th November 1892 Dr Douglas Hyde gave a lecture to the Irish National Literary Society, entitled The Necessity for de-anglicising the Irish People.

He concluded: 'I would earnestly appeal to everyone, whether Unionist or Nationalist…to set his face against the constant running to England for our books, literature, music, games, fashions and ideas. I appeal to everyone…to help the Irish race to develop in future upon Irish lines…because upon Irish lines alone can the Irish race once more become what it was of yore – one of the most original, artistic, literary, and charming people of Europe.'

Hyde, the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman and brought up among Irish speakers in Co Roscommon, believed passionately that the Irish people were turning their backs on a unique and glorious heritage and, as a result, losing their claim to a separate identity.

The Great Famine of the 1840s, by starvation, fever and emigration, had dealt a severe blow to the Irish language – speakers, after all, were largely drawn from the poorest and most vulnerable classes. The 1851 census showed that the proportion of Irish speakers had fallen to just over 23 per cent. That percentage had dropped to 14.5 per cent by 1891.

The decline had been hastened by the tendency for native speakers to regard the language as a badge of poverty and social inferiority. National Schools taught through English and were not allowed to have Irish on the curriculum until 1878. Catholic clergy were given little encouragement to use Irish when training at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

Disappointment at the rejection of two Home Rule Bills helped to galvanise a new generation to restore respect for the language and for a distinctive Irish culture.

Hyde provided the inspiration. In 1889 he had written: 'if we allow one of the finest and richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four millions of Irishmen, to die without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace and a blighting stigma upon our nationality.'

Eoin MacNeill, a native of the Glens of Antrim who had learned Irish in Connemara, agreed. He was largely responsible for the formation of the Gaelic League in July 1893. The organisation declared that its object was ‘to keep the Irish language spoken in Ireland’. The new movement was particularly successful in the towns and where Irish had died out.

After 15 years the League had 599 branches spread throughout the island. It failed to arrest the steady decline of the Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking areas, but the status of the language had been turned around. Dignity had been restored to the Irish language – denounced by the Morning Post as ‘kitchen kaffir’ and by the Daily Mail as a ‘barbarous tongue’

The Gaelic League declared itself to be non-political and non-denominational. There is no denying, however, that the great numbers of mainly young people who met in its branches for the most part had advanced nationalist views. It was through the Gaelic League that future revolutionaries, including Patrick Pearse, Eamon de Valera and Sean T O’Kelly acquired their separatism. O’Kelly, indeed, joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and was ordered to use his position in the League to infiltrate its central organising committee with IRB members.

The Gaelic Athletic Association also became a nursery for future republican activists. P W Nally, who co-founded the movement with Michael Cusack in 1884, was not only a renowned Co Mayo athlete but also had served a term of prison for his political activities. Indeed, at least four of the seven men who attended the inaugural meeting were Fenians.

The GAA, set up for ‘the preservation and cultivation of the national pastimes of Ireland’, was arguably the most popular and enduring product of the Irish cultural revival. Michael Cusack, an Irish-speaker from Co Clare, gave the organisation a firm foundation based on parishes, counties and provinces while, Maurice Davin, who once held the world hammer-throwing record, drafted rules which won general acceptance. Davin also persuaded Archbishop Croke of Cashel to become the GAA’s patron.

Its success can be measured by the fact that over most of the island throughout the 20th century the leading games were hurling and Gaelic football.

The drive to reinforce a separate identity was underscored by the GAA rules banning ‘foreign games’ (including cricket, rugby and tennis) and excluding members of the Crown forces, including the Constabulary. Hyde and MacNeill, however, became increasingly alarmed by a growing tendency of ‘Irish-Irelanders’ to refuse to accept Protestants as true Irishmen. D P Moran, the acerbic editor of the Leader, bluntly stated that the Irish nation was Catholic – if Protestants refused to accept the majority culture then the only solution was partition ‘leaving the Orangemen and their friends in the north-east corner’.

At the beginning of the 20th century the establishment of a Dublin Parliament seemed but a dream. By 1912 Home Rule appeared to be just round the corner.