AN GAOḊAL
699
The
Gael.
A monthly Journal devoted to the Cultivation and
Preservation of the Irish Language and the au¬
tonomy of the Irish Nation.
Entered at the Brooklyn P. O. as second-class mail
matter.
Sixth Year of Publication.
Published at 814 Pacific st., Brooklyn, N. Y.,
M. J. LOGAN, Editor and Proprietor.
Terms of Subscription — Sixty Cents a year, in
advance ; Five Cents a single copy.
Terms of Advertising — 10 cents a line, Agate.
VOL 6, No. 1. MAY, 1887.
THE IRISH RACE IN AMERICA.
BY CAPT. ED. O'MEAGHER CONDON.
The above is the title of the 7th number of Ford's
National Library, and is a volume which should be
read by every Irishman.
It is the laudable ambition of the average parent
to educate his children and to provide the means
of placing them in honorable positions in society,
and the parent who does not endeavor to do so is
hardly deserving of the title.
Families who attain to wealth and public prom¬
inence have been known to expend large sums of
money hunting up their old family records — and
even some whose family records were lost or mel¬
ted away in the maze of time have been known to
claim relationship to some distinguished family
bearing their name, without a scintilla of evidence
to support such claims, and though our republican
institutions absolutely acknowledges no personal or
family pre-eminence, yet it would be the height of
folly to assume that the idea does not obtain to a
very large extent in this republic. "The Puritan
Fathers," "The Great Anglo-Saxon Race," &c., are
daily dinged into our ears, as the founders and pre¬
servators of all that is great and grand in our
institutions, and not only that, but the claim is put
forward that this "Great Anglo-Saxon Race" is the
moral instructor of the whole civilized world. This
idea, then, gaining a footing in the minds of the
general public, carries with it a sense of superiority
in that race and a corresponding sense of inferiority
in the other races which compose this great cos¬
mopolitan republic.
It is then the bounden duty of the parent who is
not so fortunate as to belong to this "Great Anglo-
Saxon Race" to tell his children what they are,
from whom desended, and what authority exists
or assuming social superiority for their fellow cit¬
izens of the "Great Anglo-Saxon Race." This mor¬
al duty of the parent is, perhaps, of greater impor¬
tance to his offspring than the providing of wordly
means, because a sense of social inferiority begets
in man envy, hatred and revenge and their concom¬
itant evils, whereas a sense of social equality gen¬
erates affability of manner, friendship, openhearted¬
ness and the true enjoyment of friendly inter¬
course.
Hence the duty of a parent to his offspring is as
important in a social as it is in a material point of
view.
Of what elements, then, is this "Great Anglo-
Saxon Race” composed? Let the reader get the
above volume, and it will tell him
In a description of Britain, written by Ptolemy,
in the second century, he states that, before the Ro¬
man invasion, it was divided among seventeen tribes
who were in the rudest and most primitive state,
as regards the arts of life.
From the invasion of the Romans, until the lat¬
ter part of the fifth century, when Vortigern pur¬
chased the aid of the piratical brothers Hengist and
Horsa, nothing particular occurred in the position
of the tribes found in the island by them. But in
a few years after the advent of Hengist and Horsa
to the island a considerable change took place.
By a union of the followers of these Saxon pirates.
and of another people who occupied the borders of
Scotland (North Britain) the other tribes were
brought under subjection. This other people are
called Anglos, and it is this union of the two peo¬
ple which has given birth to the name, Anglo-Sax¬
on. The fact that the Angles got precedence con¬
clusively shows that they were the more powerful
tribe, and the leading feature of the coalition, as
we would say, the Russo-German alliance, the
Franco-Russian, &c.
Who were the Agnles? Dr, Mackay (an Eng¬
lishman) quoted in the above volume, the subject
of this article, proves to our satisfaction, and to the
satisfaction of every unbiased mind, that they were
the An Gaels, a portion of the original Celts or
Gaels who were driven to the Northern part of
Britain by successive invaders, as their brethren in
Ireland were driven to Connaught by Cromwell,
that they invited the followers of Hengist to join
them in subduing the common enemy, as the Gaels
of Ireland would to-day coalesce with any power
who would assist them to overthrow the Anglo-Sax¬
on regime in their country.
Angael-Saxon, then, is contracted into Anglo-
Saxon, is this "Great Anglo-Saxon Race," and the
name, England, the Angaelland is derived from the
An Gael, a contracted form of the heading of this
journal.
We do not claim this relationship for the pur¬
pose of adding to the prestige of the Gaels of Ire¬
land, for that is a foregone conclusion with us, but
we mention it to show and prove to our posterity
that this "Great Anglo-Saxon Race" is merely an
inferior offshoot of their parent trunk, and also
that their brethren, the Angaels of England, have
no more right to dictate to them, politically, than
John Smith, in the County Armagh, has to dictate
to his brother Tom, in the State of Ohio, the man¬
ner of cultivating his farm.
As Britain, as well as Wales, Ireland and Scot¬
land was first inhabited by the Celts or Gaels,
and as the term Angles is not known any where
outside of England, or there until the fifth cen¬
tury, and as the union of the article An, (the), and
the noun Gael, make up the term Angel (Angle)
there is no room for doubt in relation to the source
of the word Angle. And it being conceded by all
writers that Britain was inhabited wholly by Celts
or Gaels on the arrival of the Romans, and that the
country was known to them as Anglia as well as
