"THE TEDIUM OF IRISH"
By L. T. FLEMING
" OHNNY'S getting on fine with his lessons," remarks el a cartoon character in a recent issue of Dublin Opinion: "He's learning everything through the tedium of Irish." The joke sums up the new attitude towards the Free State's Gaelic policy—the attitude of the man in the street who for fifteen years past has supported the Irish language crusade with his votes and his money, and who never, until the last few months, has cared to confess that he finds the whole campaign rather a bore.
For the campaign to make Ireland Irish-speaking, backed by successive Free State Governments to the limit of their power, is still so much of a crusade that criticism is not popular. To support the crusade is to be a good Irishman, to oppose it is to label oneself a "West Britisher," someone who does not wish the cause of Irish nationalism to triumph. The outstanding feature of the Irish language question is that it has been recognised in the Free State as a question of patriotism, and thus has been almost impossible to examine on its own merits.
The extent of the Irish language campaign will be apparent to any English visitor to Dublin, and he will find many apparent signs that the country really is on the way towards bi-lingualism. Daily life is full of such signs. Gaelic mono- polises the coins and the postage stamps ; it shares an equal place with English on signposts, telegraph forms, railway tickets, and countless other things. Treasna Annsd (with a very small "cross here" underneath) stands at the street corner, the mail-vans bear the inscription, An Post, the telephone booth is labelled Telefon, and even the public convenience has become leitreas. Nor are indi- cations wanting that the Government seems, if anything, to lag behind public opinion in its language policy. Almost every day the newspapers will reveal that some public body has passed a resolution demanding the complete Gaelicisation of the Universities, deploring the extent to which English is used in Parliamentary affairs, or suggesting that the new - Constitution should recognise Irish as the only official language of the State.
What is the reason, then, for the extraordinary paradox that will become apparent even to a stranger ? Mr. Patrick Murphy may have changed his name to Padraig 0 Murchida, but he still obstinately refuses to converse in anything but , English ; his children may be learning all their lessons through Irish, but they leave the language behind in the classroom. Why are there all the earmarks of a successful Irish revival except the only one that matters—the will to adopt the language as a vernacular ?
Wherever the fault lies, it certainly does not lie in any slackness of the Free State Government, which has spared no pains to make a knowledge of Irish a vital necessity. In • the schools it is a compulsory subject to a greater or less - degree, and its use is further encouraged by the granting of such generous bonus marks in the public examinations that a student who has answered all his questions in Irish frequently scores more marks than the nominal "maximum." In later life, Irish will earn the student a more substalidal reward, for it unlocks the door to every good job under Government control. To be a Civil Servant of any kind— a clerk in Government Buildings, a policenian, a Postman, or anything else—one must know Irish.
In every walk of life that the Government can influence, Irish has become not only one of the requirements, but the primary requirement, and only in rare cases is efficiency allowed to outweigh lack of knowledge. "The Minister for Local Government," states a recent news item, "has granted Nurse — and Nurse — a further period of one year to attain a competent knowledge of Irish. The Minister had previously asked the Clare Board of Health to dispense with these nurses' services, as they had not acquired the necessary knowledge of the language within the prescribed period." Such announcements cause no comment nowadays in the Free State ; it strikes nobody as odd that a knowledge., of Irish should be so vital an asset in a county hospital, any more than that the Income Tax official who begins his demand : A Chara should continue it in English. - At least, the oddness does not seem to have struck anybody until last autumn, when some of the teachers made an unex- pected stand against the Government's policy in education.
The intensive teaching of Irish in the schools has been open, for years past, to the obvious criticism that it is likely' to inflict serious damage on educational standards and to place an intolerable strain on children and teachers alike: This was true especially of the latest development in the scheme, which provides that the smaller children shall be taught every subject through Irish. As virtually none of these children has any knowledge of the language to begin with, the effect is very much the same as if English council schools decided to teach all their subjects through the medium of - Hindustani, and at last the teachers summoned up enough courage to protest openly against the absurdity of the situation..
They gained nothing by their stand—they were denounced heartily, in fact, as opponents of Irish culture, and the Govern- ment took the opportunity to state that there would be no slackening in the official pace—but they certainly succeeded in clearing the air a little. It is beginning to be realised more generally that the Irish language revival, whatever its merits, is being forced down the throats of the Irish public so thor- oughly that they are given no time to digest it. What is mere, the opinion is beginning to be stated.
It is a question whether the Irish language, so nearly dead, can be, or should be, revived at all. Assuming that it can be revived, it still is probable that the Free State Government has gone about the task in exactly the wrong way. , When the Treaty was signed, the Irish language still had a flicker of life in the western Gaeltacht, where, if not written, it was at least spoken. To foster the little flame so that ,it burned steadily and spread further, would have been a long and un- spectacular task ; to encourage the few language enthusiasts in other parts of the country . did not. seem enough _either. Yet the policy which was fellowed—which imposed the Irish language willy-nilly on the whole of the country—has had no more than the appearance of Success. It has given the Free State. a façadeof Irish, but the language is little more aliie than it was in 1922. Many Irish observers bold that the Free Suit Government still his the chance to bring about a genuine revival of Irish if it concentrates on building up the language from within, rather than on imposing it. from without. The Cnaeltacht still remains as a nucleus, while in the cities the staging of Irish-speaking plays and the wearing of the Fciinne (the badge of the Irish speaker) show that there are genuine enthusiasts whose numbers could be encouraged to spread. Compulsory Irish for all has brought a Gaelic State no nearer ; in fact, it has diminished whatever prospect there is of a Gaelic State, because it has bred the distaste which every schoolboy feels towards his grammar-book,
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