3711
THE MODERN LITERATURE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE.
We shall see in. this last volume specimens of the ordinary Irish language of the people, as they have had it for the last couple of hundred years, and as they have it now. There is nothing but modern Irish to be found in this volume, and hence the reader must form his own opinion of the old Irish literature by the help of the English translations that have been given in the other volumes. We give here no old Irish, because it is too difficult to understand for any person who has not made a special study of it.
There are stories, songs and sayings of the people themselves to be found in this book, and a great many of these have been written down by scholars from the mouths of old people in Ireland who did not know how to read and write their own language. But there is another portion of the book which is the work of the cleverest writers, the work of writers who are making a modern literature for the people of Ireland to-day, such as Father Peter O'Leary, James Doyle, Conan Maol (O'Shea), Patrick O'Leary, Thomas Hayes, Father Dinneen, Miss O'Farrelly, Tadhg O'Donoghue, and others.
It is a very difficult thing to put correct tasteful English upon Irish, for it is my opinion that there are no two languages in the lands of Christendom which differ more between themselves than they do. And although they have been so long standing side by side upon one island, very little is the trace that either of them has left upon the other, and it is very little that the people who speak them have learned from one another either.
The schools of Ireland also, are, alas, under the dominance of people to whom the English Government has given the control over them, and these people have always been against the Irish, and against the language of the country. Not one
