necessity of
keeping alive racial customs, language, and traditions, in which with the
one notable exception of our scholarly idealist, Smith O'Brien, he has
been followed until a year ago by almost every leader of the Irish race.

Thomas Davis and his brilliant band of Young Irelanders came just at the
dividing of the line, and tried to give to Ireland a new literature in
English to replace the literature which was just being discarded. It
succeeded and it did not succeed. It was a most brilliant effort, but the
old bark had been too recently stripped off the Irish tree, and the trunk
could not take as it might have done to a fresh one. It was a new
departure, and at first produced a violent effect. Yet in the long run it
failed to properly leaven our peasantry who might, perhaps, have been
reached upon other lines. I say they _might_ have been reached upon other
lines because it is quite certain that even well on into the beginning of
this century, Irish poor scholars and schoolmasters used to gain the
greatest favour and applause by reading out manuscripts in the people's
houses at night, some of which manuscripts had an antiquity of a couple of
hundred years or more behind them, and which, when they got illegible from
age, were always recopied. The Irish peasantry at that time were all to
some extent cultured men, and many of the better off ones were scholars
and poets. What have we now left of all that? Scarcely a trace. Many of
them read newspapers indeed, but who reads, much less recites, an epic
poem, or chants an elegiac or even a hymn?

Wherever Irish throughout Ireland continued to be spoken, there the
ancient MSS. continued to be read, there the epics of Cuchullain, Conor
MacNessa, Deirdre, Finn, Oscar, and Ossian continued to be told, and there
poetry and music held sway. Some people may think I am exaggerating in
asserting that such a state of things existed down to the present
century, but it is no exaggeration. I have myself spoken with men from
Cavan and Tyrone who spoke excellent Irish. Carleton's stories bear
witness to the prevalence of the Irish language and traditions in Ulster
when he began to write. My friend Mr. Lloyd has found numbers in Antrim
who spoke good Irish. And, as for Leinster, my friend Mr. Cleaver informed
me that when he lived in Wicklow a man came by from the County Carlow in
search of work who could not speak a word of English. Old labourers from
Connacht, who used to go to reap