474
AN GAOḊAL.
THE GAELIC LETTER.
Mr. M. J. Collins says, among other matter, —
I inclose herewith a strip of paper that I have cut
out of the Chicago itizen. It is headed "Gaelic
poetry," wherein Mr T. O'N. Russell undertakes
to give us a history of the Irish Alphabet, which,
as you may plainly perceive, is erroneous and
false. He moreover undertakes to dispraise the
Irish letters, and says, forsooth, that they are not
Irish but Roman letters which were brought over
to Ireland by the Christian missionaries etc.
Mr. Collins says a good deal more, but the fore¬
going is sufficient as an introduction to the remarks
which follow. —
We cannot conceive how any one can have the
hardihood to assert that the Irish language had no
character of its own. Bishop O'Connell, in his
Dirge of Ireland, asserts that four languages were
formulated in the University of Shenaar, name¬
ly, Greek, Hebrew, Irish and Latin. This was a¬
bout the year 2.200 B. C. Now, all admit that
the Gadelians were the most powerful and en¬
terprising tribe which came to the surface from
the confusion of Babel until the rise of Rome, and
how an inferior tribe could succeed in having a
distinct letter of their own while the superior tribe
had none, is a ridiculous assumption, for there is
no warrant for it except the subsequent elevation
of the inferior tribe to become masters of the
world. The fact that the Roman Alphabet has
eight letters more than the Irish is a strong proof
that it is of a more recent formation. The Latin
Alphabet has twenty-five letters, whereas the Irish
has only seventeen. The German Alphabet, being
of still more recent formation, has twenty-six let¬
ters; thus clearly showing that with each fancied
improvement additions have been made to the al¬
phabet. The Irish having another distinct char¬
acter, the Ogham, is no proof against the general
letter. We have in English today the Phonetic
letter, but we have the sight of our eyes for anoth¬
er, and a different, character, the Roman. In cen¬
turies hence it might be argued with greater cog¬
ency that the English used no other but the pho¬
netic as it is now that the Irish had only the ogh¬
am letter.
But, up to the foundation of Rome, let us take
a note of the insignificance of this people to whom
it is sought to accord the possession of our alpha¬
bet. What were the Latins from the foundation
of the University of Shenaar, B. C. 2.200, until
the foundation of Rome, 752 B. C., a space of 1448
years? We find that on the destruction of Troy,
1148 B. C., Æneas fled to Italy accompanied by
one hundred men, with their families we presume,
and after setting there a short time that the Ital¬
in monarch, Latinus, aided by a neighboring
prince, Rutulian, took up arms against them,
which resulted in the complete overthrow of the
allied Italians, the killing of the monarch, and the
capture of his capital, Laurentum, by the victori¬
ous Trojans. That a people so insignificant as to
be conquered by a force of one hundred men were
the formulants of our alphabet is so glaring an ab¬
surdity that we dismiss its consideration in toto:
and this over 1100 years after the formulation of
the languages by our immediate progenitor, Fen¬
ius. Gaelic being the ordinary language of Fenius
and his people, the Gadelians, it is absurd to sup¬
pose that he would leave it without a character of
its own to supply the language of the, then insig¬
nificant, Latins with one.
The most reasonable view is that when the Ro¬
man became powerful they sought to improve
the Gadelian alphabet by adding letters necessary
to fully enunciate the Latin sounds. The Gaelic
alphabet could not be the Latin one because it fell
short of representing the Latin sounds. This fact
ought to be sufficient to any one of common sense
to show that the Gaelic alphabet cannot belong to
the Latins. It may be assumed that when the
Romans became powerful they, like the English of
the present time, sought to claim for themselves
the honor of being the inventors of every thing
tending to add to their prestige. This, we maintain
is the proper and common sense view of the mat¬
ter. The Christian missionaries did not arrive in
Ireland until the middle of the Fifth Century A D,
and we are not going to suppose that the Irish
Language was without its distinct letter or charac¬
ter for the space of 2.700 years, and we will not ad¬
mit the absurdity, It is lamentable to find Irish¬
men using arguments opposed to circumstantial ev¬
idence and common sense to try to dim the bril¬
liancy of their former brightness. You meet some
Irishmen to-day who believe their forefathers had
no cultivated speech; and if England had succeed¬
ed in destroying the langunge and records, it is
reasonable to suppose that two hundred years from
now you would get Irishmen to swear that it never
existed. Now, those who assert that the Gaelic
letter is merely Roman, have no proof but their
mere assertion, and the circumstantial evidence a¬
bove adduced, along with continued possession, is
so strong that their assertions should not be enter¬
tained for a moment. Therefore, Irishmen should
"sit down" on those who try to deprive them of
their rights. Mr. T O'N. Russell is an enthusiast
in the Gaelic cause and thinks the scarcity of the
Gaelic type to be a barrier to its progress, and we
believe other patriotic Irishmen entertain similar
ideas. We maintain the genuineness of the letter
and its perfect adaptability to the wants of the
language. No combination of Roman characters
is so pleasing to the eye or so happy of enuncia¬
tion as the genuine letter. When Irishmen come
to view themselves aright — when they cease to
"play tag" with an unscrupulous, unrelenting foe,
the supplying of a sufficiency of Gaelic type will
be no barrier. In the meantime, let the movement
be pushed forward in any letter and those who
acquire a knowledge of it will insist on the genuine
letter to represent it.
