IRISH SPELLING 



WHEN I was asked to give a public lecture on behalf of 

 An Cuman um Letiriit Shimpli, it seemed to me at first 

 that the most appropriate way to deal with the object 

 for which the Society was founded would be to trace the 

 main lines in the history of Irish orthography, to show 

 how it has been changing slowly it is true from the start, 

 and how various attempts have been made to improve it, 

 some of them successful, others doomed to untimely failure. 

 Such a study might be made the basis of an appeal for the 

 extension of the same liberty to living writers as was con- 

 ceded to their predecessors in the past. But a brief con- 

 sideration showed that the subject was too vast and 

 complex for the occasion, that it was better suited to the 

 classroom, or to a university dissertation, than to a public 

 hall. For this reason I do not mean to inflict an academic 

 discourse on you, but to keep closely in touch with the 

 problems that confront workers in the language move- 

 ment in this year of grace 1910, and to ask your attention 

 to historical investigations only in so far as they are likely 

 to help us in solving those problems. It may be that 

 there are some present who feel tempted to ask : " What 

 have you to do with those problems or their solution ? 

 That is the business of the Gaelic League." Well, to such 

 a question I answer without the slightest apology: ' Yes ! 

 keeping the language of Ireland alive is the business of 

 the Gaelic League, but it is more than that ; it is the 

 business of every Irish man, woman, and child. It con- 

 cerns us all, inside or outside any particular league or 

 society, whether this, the chief token of our race and 

 nation, is to fade for ever within a couple of generations. 

 For my part, although various reasons have made it 

 impossible for me during recent years to take the same 



