The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-08-19
DR.. DOUGLAS HYDE AND v. B. YEATS
Grand Music of the Country Has
Become Anglicized.
CHANGING The OLD MlLESIAN NAMES
Work Being Accomplished By
The Gaelic League.

A lecture was given on the 27th ult.
at the Courthouse, Gort, County Gal
way, by DR.. Douglas Hyde, LID, on
the language movement in Ireland
The Very Rev. DR.. Fahey presided, and
introduced the lecturer in an eloquent
speech.
DR.. Douglas Hyde, having first made
speech in Irish, which was received
with great enthusiasm, proceeded to
lecture in English. He made an earn
est and eloquent protest against the
Anglicisation of the Irish race. He
drew attention to the fact that the ma
ton which was once one of the most
reading and literary nations in Europe,
had become one of the least studious
and the least cultivated, and declared
that this decline had been brought
about by the Irish having in this CEN
tury diverged from the right path, and
Having ceased to be Irish without be-
coming English. "In anglicisng our
selves Wholesale he said, eve have
thrown away with light heart the best
claim which we have upon the worlds
recognition of lis as a separate nation
allty. What Our enemies were unable
to do, we have done ourselves, we have
broken the continuity OF Irish lie and
cut ourselves off from the past and
while claiming the right to build I'D
the nation, we have thrown away the
bricks with which to build it, the music,
the songs, the very name OF our coun-
try. Our music,' he continued, "has
become Angicised to an alarming OK
tent. Not only has the national instru-
lncnt, the harp-whicll efforts are now
being made to revive in the highlands
become extinct, but even the Irish pipes
are threatened with the same fate. In
place OF the pipers and fiddlers, who,
even twenty years ago, were going
about the country, we now meet even
on country roads, the German band and
the barrel organ. If Ireland loses her
music, she loses what is, after her lam
guage and literature, her most precious
possession. A few years ago all our
travelling fddlers and pipers would play
the old airs, and they were the airs that
were called for. But now, instead of
the beautiful 'Shule Aroon' or the fun of
the 'ModSereen Rua, we hear Where
did you get that hat?' or Over the gar
den wall Vulgar songs had been
written also by Anglicised Iristmen in
which the 1rishman was represented, ac-
cording to the model given on the En-
glish stage and in the English comic
papers. There is town in the north,
| which l will call Knocklir, and man
who has realised the shame of such
representations as these being encour-
aged in Ireland, told me lately that at
concert to be given in this town, two
of the singers got themselves up in the
costume Of the stage Irishman, with
swallow-tailed coats and crooked cau-
beens, with pipe stuck in the brim,
and when he saw these preparations
they angered him so much that he told
the people OF the town about it, and out
of several hundred people that were ex-
pected at the concert, only thirty turned
up, and even these thirty protested by
making some kind of row, in which
the stage Irishmen had been glad to es-
cape with whole skin. MY brother
and myself the man said, 'risked our
lives in an English town against two
thousand people, making a protest
against the same kind of thing, and, by
God, l was not going to stand it in
Knocklir! That was nearer to the
proper national spirit than the spirit that
had been among us of late. 1t was OF
late, also, the lecturer said, that we had
been giving up our Milesian names,
both in England and Ireland. He had
been told in America that the first
Chauncey who had come there was an
O'Shaughnesee had been, but this man
knew how great family that OF the
O'Shaughnsee had been, but this man
had taken the name of Chauncey and
from him all the Chaunceys of America
we're descended We had lost also our
Irish Christian names, and worse than
that, we had spoiled them by translation,
turning Diarmuid into Jeremiah, Conor
into Corney, and the like. 1t was time
that all this should be changed, AMI no
time should be lost in making a change