Irish Literature - How Ireland has been Robbed of it (1853)

Tomás Ua Baíghell, composed in South Gloucester, Ontario

Part of a series of articles composed by Ua Baíghell and published in various American newspapers.

“While the Savans of Europe with an earnestness and devotion that no amount of difficulties can daunt, are travelling to the most remote and barbarous parts of the globe, in the anxious expectation of discovering some unknown monuments for the illustration of the world’s history; whilst the buried cities of the East, raised, as if to life again by the persevering energy of a Layard or of a Botta, seem to lay aside for awhile the shrouds-of ruin and desolation in which the tide of ages and barbarism has forever entombed them, and disclosing their superb palaces, exhibit their primeval and time-authenticated monuments; - whilst the mysterious symbols of the city of the Pharaohs are unlocked by the profound and penetrating genius of a Champoleon; while the language and antiquities of the New World find a zealous collector and judicious interpreter in the laborious and learned De Humboldt; and while every other known dialect and monument of the Old World have found in Europe, but more particularly on the Continent, able, true, and precise investigators and interpreters, whose names are Legion - is it not painful and unaccountable that Inis Fail alone should still remain without the master-mind of history, to tell her story in a truthful and native spirit, and present her with becoming dignity in her emerald robes and unfading beauty, seated sorrowfully in her sea-girt sanctuary, the freshly fairest, tho’ the most persecuted of the daughters of the ocean.

The recollections and traditions of the past are the foundations on which we build futurity. Having the examples of our ancestors before us, their virtues and their vices, their civilization and barbarity, we cannot fail to be instructed by them.— Our minds in youth are moulded according to paternal feelings and predilections, and in manhood determined by the history and traditions of our particular race. This principle is as inherent in man as his very soul: deprive him of it and he loses the main-spring of ambition and lofty purpose. It was the knowledge of it and of its ever renovating influence that determined the enemies of Ireland, as the principal element of their policy towards her, to pass penal enactments against our language, liberal institutions and religion, to destroy with a Vandal hand our records and monuments, wherever they could be found, and obliterate, if possible, every vestige of the past, and every trace of civilization and learning from the country. This policy has been steadily adhered to, at least in spirit, down to the present day. If they do not know Irish manuscripts now-a-days, it is because they fancy they have given the death blow to the language, literature, and history of Ireland: like the assassin, who makes a show of kindness before the world, in binding up the death-wound of the victim he smote in secret to the ground. But the true Irish patriot will watch with yearning over the history of his prostrate and bleeding country, and collect, digest, and learn her mutilated story, were it as scattered and as flitting as the written laws of a Sybyline Prophetess; for nothing is too difficult for a willing mind. And allow me, my dear sir, to observe by the way, that our noisy patriots, those men who build so many castles in the air, would do well to be more practical: if they employed the time spent in delivering windy orations to uncongenial assemblies, in collecting and arranging the disjecta membra of Irish history and literature, they would have the satisfaction of accomplishing more truly what I have no doubt is their real object; they would be clearing away the rubbish, laying the foundation, and cutting and squaring, if not building up, the stones of the future edifice of Irish nationality.

The destruction of Irish literature and institutions was only the counterpart of the political machinery, devised and put in motion for the purpose of crushing the spirit of nationality in Ireland. Now that an almost general ignorance of the past was induced, a system of national perversion and slavish servility was to be projected. Every successive reign of tyranny had its mercenary apologist: nay, the pens of the ablest and the most unscrupulous writers were employed from Cambrensis to Clarendon, in publishing in the uncouth jargon of the times, and the most brutal calumnies against the Irish, their language, institutions and habits. And even in our times these traditional sentiments towards Ireland are daily developed, and, if possible, with still more monstrous energy: recently they have been pithily and pointedly embodied by an English statesmen in that celebrated phrase, in which Irishmen have been designated as “Aliens in blood, in language, religion and feelings.” The stream of Ireland’s nationality being thus dried up, or rather diverted, her children who were suffered to live, only when they ceased to be objects of actual jealousy, or of future apprehension to their enemies, were at one time arrayed in suicidal feuds against each other by the spies and tools of Dublin Castle, and at other times taught not to know how to speak Gaeilig, and flippantly to pronounce with an Irish brogue and distorted mouth, the superiority of everything Sasanach, if they wished to obtain distinction or honor at the hands of the stranger, -

“Unprised are her Sons till they learn to betray, Undistinguished they live, if they shame not their sires.”

Thus it was persecution prepared the way for the language of the stranger: our own divisions, our weakness, our ignorance, the apathy of some and the base servility of others, who have always a stolid scoff in readiness for whatever is most dignified and respectable when it chances to be placed under the banner of tyranny, have all contributed to rob us of the most original, copious and polished of European languages.

This is but a brief and imperfect outline of the process by which Irishmen have been deprived of their language, literature, and history. They have been allowed to retain only their religion and national character, of which no human power could deprive them: the former they have preserved unsullied through the mercy and goodness of God, under the most prolonged and trying persecutions and sufferings: the latter is the essence of their nature, and hence we may conceive why they have retained them. Wherever they go, their vigorous Christianity germinates a hundred fold with a masculine and uncompromising energy that is peculiar and characteristic; while we may daily see the phenomenon of Irishmen without their language or history, and driven into exile by persecution and starvation, still preserving a love for Sean-Éire, as deep, as fresh, and as lasting as the Atlantic waters that wash their native shores.

We know our countrymen; we know their lasting love of Fatherland. Hence it is that we have the most sanguine hopes in appealing to them on behalf of the remains of the language, literature, and history of our native land. The Archaeological Society is anxiously and earnestly laboring to arrange the torn, the mutilated web of our history. Will Irishmen in America refuse them their support and sympathies? I think not: they only require to know the true object in order to give it their most cordial support; for in the words of our poet: “ It would be a lasting reproach on our nationality, if the labors of the Archaeological Society did not meet with all the encouragement they so well merit.”

I remain, Sir, yours,

Eireadh Go Brath.”

For citation, please use: Ua Baíghell, Tomás. 1853. “Irish Literature - How Ireland has been Robbed of it.” Ó Dubhghaill, Dónall. 2024. Na Gaeil san Áit Ró-Fhuar. Gaeltacht an Oileáin Úir: www.gaeilge.ca

Adapted from: Ua Baíghell, Tomás. 1853. “Irish Literature - How Ireland has been Robbed of it.” The Boston Pilot. 16(19) (7 May). Boston.