The Irish standard., 1908-11-21

A favorite Protestant fiction is that
until the Reformation the people were
ignorant and uneducated;; thanks to the
power and influence of Rome. Mrs. j.
H. Green has just published a work
OIL ireland which gives us a view of
the social condition of that country
between the twelfth and sixteenth cen.
turies. showing that the Irish at any
rate had not to await the arrival of
gibbet and rack, and other educative
influence of the Reformers before ac-
quiring learning. AS a critic of the
book points out, the most strenuous
efforts to extinguish education and
learning in Ireland, and the vigorous
exclusion of Irishmen of learning from
all posts to which their abilities and
qualifications entitled them, did not
suffice to suppress the inexhaustible
thirst for learning possessed by men of
all ranks ana-classes. Colleges in Gal
way, Waterford and other places gave
wide and liberal education; when
these were closed early in the seven
teenth century, the universities Of Eu-
rope were so crowded with Irish stu
dents that special colleges at Louvain,
Salamanca, Rome and other places had
to be built to receive them. When it
,~l
laws. to get permit to leave Ireland,
the voluntary hedge-scllools, carried
on in some miserable hut or by road
side ditch, kept up all over Ireland
some semblance of classical educa-
ton.
1t is good to read these statements
i'll an English non-Catholic literary
journal of standing, though it is hope
less to expect the average Protestant
"nan in the street" to believe any
thing so contrary to what he has al
ways "heard tell" In the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, Latin as we'll
as Irish was commonly used as a spok-
en- and written language throughout
the country, by the chiefs families, the
merchants. and the majority of the ed
ucated classes. 1T was" writes Mrs.
Green, "the second language Of the ed
ucated Irishman. taught in every school
and used by traders, chiefs, students
and educated women. When Fitznau-
rice called on Ireland to Join his rising
(1570), his appeal was sent out in Eng
ish to the gentry of the Pale, and in
Latin to the IRISH" Mrs. Green states
that the Spanish Captain Cuellar, who
wandered for nine months in the Wild
est districts of Connacht and Ulster,
after the wreck Of the Armada, found
the "savages" speaking Latin, both in
the houses Of the mobiles and the huts
of the peasantry. Among the gentry
the study Of English was added to that
Of Latin. Neal O'Neill (144s) talked
English; the wife Of O'Reilly was very
learned in Irish, English and Latin
A1 dHy VI IAc oSACA eC4OAo VI CIllcIS were
commonly educated in the three lam
guages. "The country was not 50
barbarous," wrote one Of them in 1862,
"but that the heirs thereof were always
brought up in learning and civility
and could speak the English and Latin
tongues" Il saw" wrote an English
man. q few years later, "in grammar
school in Limerick, one hundred and
three score scholars, most of them
speaking perfect English, for they
have been used to construe the Latin
into English" "How many of our boys
at public schools today 'construe the
Latin into German. or to make more
adequate comparison Of all differences
between the native and acquired tom
gues, into Russian?" asks the Liter.
ary World" Is learning so obviously
on the side Of our Protestant critics
that they may justly reproach us for
lack of it? In Mr.. Struther's school
report for 1905 occurs this passage:
1T Was. disappointing to ind q wide-