middle-aged or the old. But the Gaelic League, perhaps because of the
very simplicity and directness of its objects, made an appeal to all.
It numbered its adherents in every walk of life; it drew its
membership from all political parties; it gathered the sects within
its folds, and the greatest tribute that can be paid it is that it
taught all its disciples a new way of looking at Ireland and gave them
a new pride in their country. Ireland became national and independent
in a sense it had not learnt before--it realised that "the essential
mark of nationhood is the intellectual, social and moral patrimony
which the past bequeaths to the present, which, amplified, or at least
preserved, the present must bequeath to the future, and that it is
this which makes the strength and individuality of a people."

Its branches spread rapidly throughout Ireland, and the movement was
taken up abroad with equal enthusiasm. Irish language classes were
organised, Irish history of the native--as distinct from the
British--brand was taught. Lessons in dancing and singing were given
and the old national airs were revived and became the popular music of
the day. It would take too much of my space to recount all the varied
activities of the League, all that it did to preserve ancient Irish
culture, to make the past live again in the lives of the people, to
foster national sports and recreations, to organise Gaelic festivals
of the kind that flourished in Ireland's artistic past, to create an
Irish Ireland and to arrest the decadence of manners and the
Anglicisation which had almost eaten into the souls of the people and
destroyed their true Celtic character. Mr P.H. Pearse truly said of
it: "The Gaelic League will be recognised in history as the most
revolutionary influence that ever came into Ireland." It saved the
soul of Ireland when it was in imminent danger of being lost, and its
triumph was in great measure due to the fact that it held rigidly
aloof from the professedly political parties, although it may be said
for it that it undoubtedly laid the foundations of that school of
thought which made all the later developments of nationality possible.
And the amazing thing is that the priest and the parson, the gentry
and the middle classes, equally with the peasantry, vied with each
other in extending the influence and power of the movement. One of its
strongest supporters was a leader of the Belfast Orangemen, the late
Dr Kane, who observ