38 IRISH SPELLING 



by one man. That one man is Canon O'Leary, whom I 

 make no apology for calling the greatest living writer of 

 Irish. Canon O'Leary has all along refused to be bound 

 by the decrees of the " scholars," whose methods have 

 often been anything but scholarly. Of course it was natural 

 that one whose chief interest was not " scholarship " but 

 the rights of the spoken language, should often be incon- 

 sistent in his way of spelling, but on the whole Canon 

 O'Leary's influence and example have been in favour of 

 making the orthography the servant of the language. Here 

 are some examples of his method, which I have taken 

 from the first hundred pages of his Niamh : 



.Arnu' for 



xMlfO 



btmuf 



-Cip 



conuf- ,, cionrmf 



oioLc-Af 



"OOt-Al 



