Instituciones, organismos y agencias con funciones de traducción

One subject that has attracted much attention in the history of the Irish language is the founding of the Gaelic League in. However, before this event took place, a lot of work had been done by another organization to promote an awareness of Irish among the public. Much of the activity of the Gaelic League was a continuation of projects which had been initiated by this earlier organization, and hence it is necessary to take a closer look at its achievements.

As we saw in the previous chapter, Irish was in serious decline by, and this process continued in the following twenty years. By, the areas where Irish was spoken had shrunk even further (Figure.). It seemed that it was doomed to extinction in a few decades.

This was the general linguistic background to a new initiative aimed at protecting Irish. In a group of people came together in Dublin to form the Society for the Preservation of the Irish language (SPIL). This was not the first society founded in the nineteenth century with the purpose of cultivating Irish. However, in a number of respects it differed from previous initiatives of this sort. First, it had the support of people representing a broad spectrum of society, rather than just academics and antiquarians. Some idea of the com-position of its membership can be gleaned from the minutes of the first meeting:

A meeting was convened at No. Bacheler’s [sic] Walk, December th , ‘To take the necessary steps for the formation of a Society for the Preservation and Cultivation of the Irish Language and Literature’. There were present: Charles Dawson Esq., High Sheriff of Limerick; William Dillon Esq., Barr.; T. D. Sullivan Esq., Editor of ‘The Nation’; Bryan O’Looney M.R.I.A., Professor of Irish Language, Literature and Archaeology C.U.; Rev. H. P. Kelly O.D.C.; H. J. Gill Esq. M.A. T.C.D; P. W. Joyce LL.D. T.C.D.; Rev. J. E. Nolan O.D.C.; D. Comyn.

(Ó Murchú: ) Second, it had the express purpose of preserving the living language, whereas previous societies of this sort had tended to be more antiquarian in spirit. This aim was clearly present in the mission statement of the SPIL:

After some discussion the meeting became unanimously of opinion that it is possible and desirable to preserve the Irish Language in those parts of the Country where it is still spoken, with a view to its further extension and cultivation.

(Ó Murchú: ) Finally, the public response to the founding of the Society was far more enthusiastic than the response to previous organizations of this sort. Those

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FIGURE. Language communities in Ireland 

Sources: based on Brian Ó Cuív (). Irish dialects and Irish-speaking districts. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Map; Brian Ó Cuív (ed.) (). A view of the Irish language. Dublin:

The Stationery Office. Map 

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who joined included members of the clergy, both Catholic and from the Church of Ireland, teachers and academics, parliamentary deputies, and representatives of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy.

One of the main aims of the Society was to introduce Irish into the educational system. To this end, it sent a petition to the Commissioners for National Education in  requesting that Irish be recognized as an optional subject in primary schools. The permission was granted without any fuss, but only for schools located in districts where Irish was still spoken by the local community. Getting permission was one thing, but implement-ing the teachimplement-ing of Irish was quite another. Many National School Teachers did not speak Irish, and even if they did, they were often unable to read or write it, and had no training in how to teach it. There were virtually no teaching aids available to them. Furthermore, because Irish was an optional subject, parents had to pay a fee of two shillings a year if they wished their children to attend the classes. Most parents in Irish-speaking districts were very poor, and saw no advantage in learning how to read and write Irish, for the reasons we explored in Chapters–. In one school in County Clare, for example, the response to the idea of including Irish in the curriculum was somewhat less than enthusiastic: ‘All can speak Irish; [the teacher] has no class, as the parents of the children would not like them to speak Irish’

(Ó Murchú: ).

The SPIL tried to overcome these difficulties by publishing text-books and by providing training for teachers. A primer entitled An chead leabhar Gaed-hilge. First Irish Book, appeared in. The problem with this text-book was that it was geared towards second-language learners, while the children using it were not learners, butfirst-language/bilingual speakers. Like other books for teaching foreign languages at the time, the model adopted was very much based on the teaching of Latin, with little emphasis on contemporary everyday usage. Despite these shortcomings, the publication of this teaching aid marked a new beginning in the teaching of Irish.

After a few years, a certificate of proficiency in Irish was given recognition by the Commissioners of National Education. Existing teachers were required to pass an exam in order to be granted this certificate. Nearly all the teachers who took the exam in thes were native speakers of Irish. However, there were complaints that the exam was too difficult, and not many teachers applied for the certificate. Right through the s and s the Society pressed for the appointment of professors of Irish in the various teacher-training colleges. In a motion was passed at the annual conference of the National teachers, which made Irish a part of the curriculum of the teacher-training colleges, and in the first professor of Irish was appointed in the main training centre, St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra in Dublin.

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The SPIL also wanted to have Irish included in the secondary school curriculum. Here, the situation was somewhat different, in that there was nothing preventing secondary schools from teaching Irish if they so wished. It was not until that legislation was passed providing for secondary educa-tion, the Intermediate Education (Ireland) Act. Due to the efforts of the SPIL, Irish was included in the list of subjects drawn up in  for the official secondary school exam, the Intermediate Certificate. The same problems faced the teaching of the language at secondary level as at primary level. They were compounded by totally unrealistic expectations on the part of the Commis-sioners of Education as regards the abilities of pupils. More than in the case of the national schools, the teaching of Irish at secondary level was modelled directly on the teaching of Greek and Latin. The exam in Irish for the Intermediate Certificate tested pupils’ knowledge of Early Modern Irish, a version of the language which had not been spoken for nearly years. One of the pieces to be translated was written in  in an archaic style by the historian and annalist Micheál Ó Cléirigh, one of the Four Masters mentioned in section... In terms of difficulty, this would be like requiring a present-day pupil of English to be able to read and translate a passage from Chaucer. It was not until thes that a more realistic approach was taken, which was helped by the publication of a school’s grammar and book of reading passages by the Christian Brothers. This last-named teaching order was responsible for the running of the majority of secondary schools for boys at this time, and from the start supported the teaching of Irish. By Irish had been accepted as part of the secondary school syllabus, even if many parents and teachers were still reluctant to have it taught.

At tertiary level, there had been sporadic attempts to include Irish in the list of subjects taught before, and professors of Irish had been appointed in various institutions from time to time. The introduction of Irish into the secondary syllabus created a new situation, since it was possible for subjects taught at secondary school to be taken in the entrance exams of the Royal University of Ireland which was set up in. As a result of pressure from the SPIL, Irish, along with French and German, was recognized as a subject in which students could matriculate. Some appointments were made to facilitate the study of Irish at third level. In, Eugene O’Growney was appointed professor in Maynooth. Unlike previous holders of chairs in the subject, he was interested in the modern, spoken language rather than in the contents of ancient manuscripts. However, we must bear in mind that this was the only appointment of its sort at the time, and that it was made at an institution that did not have full university status. Elsewhere Irish, or Celtic as it was com-monly called, continued to have a strong focus on the older language and its

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links with Indo-European. Nevertheless, O’Growney’s appointment is some indication of the growing awareness of Irish as a living language.

The other main area where the SPIL wished to make its mark was the publishing of new and old literature. In  a breakaway faction of the Society, the Gaelic Union, published thefirst edition of Irisleabhar na Gaed-hilge/The Gaelic Journal (GJ), a bilingual periodical. In terms of its contents, it steered a midway course between esoteric antiquarianism and more popular subjects. Its aim, in the words of itsfirst editor, David Comyn, was ‘to teach the Irish-speaking population to read their own language, which so few of them can do’ (Nic Pháidín : ). At the same time, its subscribers tended to come from the English-speaking middle classes, so it had to provide material for them in English which they could identify with. Its main achievement was that it was thefirst periodical which published writing in Irish which had some relation to current affairs. It was by no means a newspaper as we would understand that term, but it did rescue the language from the druidic mists in which it had been shrouded before this. Much of the space of its columns was taken up with persuading its English-language readers that the preserva-tion of Irish was a worthy and viable cause. It published Eugene O’Growney’s series Simple Lessons in Irish which proved to be a great success; these later appeared as a single volume (O’Growney ). Readers of the GJ encoun-tered in serial form the tale Séadna (Ó Laoghaire), especially written for adult learners. More than anything, according to Nic Pháidín (), it prepared the ground for later Irish-language newspapers which had a more modern approach.

One other kind of publication which proved popular with the public were collections of tunes and songs, such as Ancient Irish Music (Joyce ).

Collectors like P. W. Joyce understood that one way of coaxing people into learning Irish was through the medium of music. Later, this tactic was taken up by the Gaelic League, and to this day folk-music and dancing are seen as an indispensable part of the Irish-language movement.

In his book about the history of the Society, Máirtín Ó Murchú observes that the SPIL tended to get a bad press after the more radical Gaelic League came on the scene in thes. He cites the following passage, written in , as an example of the low opinion of the Society in later years:

Burdened, however, by dilettante membership the Society grew more academic than practical in outlook . . . The more practical-minded grew dissatisfied with the lack of real progress, the perfunctory methods and the loss of time.

(Ó Murchú: , n. ) The account given earlier of the various efforts of the Society to induce the Commissioner of Education to admit Irish to the school curriculum gives the

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lie to the above evaluation. Such efforts are not the kind of stuff that makes the headlines, but the aims of the SPIL, and the methods it employed to achieve them were anything but impractical.

Another myth that grew up about the Society, according to Ó Murchú, was that hardly any of the members could speak Irish:‘In  a priest from Cork, later to become famous as one of the best stylists of Modern Irish prose, wrote to the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language for some Irish books—but the letter could not be understood, because it was written in Irish!’ (Mooney : ; quoted in Ó Murchú : , n. ). In fact, as Ó Murchú (: –) shows, not only was the letter from the ‘priest in Cork’ answered, but a translation of it was published in the journal The Irishman soon afterwards.

One reason that the Society fell from favour in the twentieth century was that it was not anti-British in its attitude. Indeed, there were many represen-tatives of the Dublin establishment among its members, people like Lord de Vesci and Colonel W. E. A. MacDonnell. While it pressurized the Commis-sioners of Education and the Westminster Parliament in order to win support for Irish, its general approach was conciliatory rather than confrontational, and it worked closely with the Irish parliamentary party to achieve its aims.

After, this kind of mild agitation was no longer acceptable to many Irish-language activists. That it was not is in large measure due to the activities of the Gaelic League, and to the main personality behind it, Douglas Hyde.