18 IRISH SPELLING 



they can spell out the rival names in the rival alphabets. 

 The second experiment is better made indoors. Take a 

 book with Irish in medieval lettering on one page and 

 English in modern type on the opposite, such as one of 

 the volumes of the Annals of Ulster , and try to pick out 

 the proper names. Readers who have much indexing of 

 this kind to do turn instinctively to the English side, where 

 the names stand out more clearly. It is inevitable that 

 this should be so. It has nothing to do with language, 

 as you will see if you have to work at those parts of the 

 Annals which are written in Latin. The Latin is printed 

 in the so-called Irish letters that is, in an imitation of 

 the medieval Latin script but it is just as troublesome 

 to find the place in such a text, or to pick out the Irish 

 names, as in the Irish text itself. It is a question of type. 

 On the one hand, the capitals and lower-case letters are 

 too much alike, and too much space is wasted in order 

 to leave room for aspiration marks in case they should 

 be wanted. On the other, you have, as I have said, the 

 fruit of centuries of experiment in many lands in the 

 direction of clearness and convenience, with all manner 

 of special types italic, clarendon, egyptian, and so on- 

 to draw on when necessary. All these are to be branded 

 as English. The language of Ireland is too good for them 

 or is it not good enough ? 



" Oh, but the old letters have an aesthetic value. If 

 you abandon them you destroy the beautiful appearance 

 of the page." 



When a grown man talks like that and I have actually 

 heard the like from time to time I try to bear up under 

 the weighty objection with becoming fortitude. But it 

 is hard to keep patient. This is no question of schools 

 of art or museum cases. Crumbling ivy-clad ruins are 

 also beautiful and picturesque to look upon. But you 

 can't live in them. I don't ask you to blow them up with 

 dynamite. That would be a desecration. But only a 

 homicidal lunatic would force a weak or dying friend to 

 pass a cold night in one of them. You cannot live in 

 ruins. They suggest not life, but death. They are bound 



