Philo-Celts.
The Philo-Celtic society meets now
at 3 o'clock on Sundays instead of 7
o'clock. The Democratic General Com¬
mittee has given the hall free, so that
the society can spare funds for its Win¬
ter entertainments. We hope all the
old members will appreciate this hopeful
state of things, and uphold the prestige
of their society by renewed exertions.
Let the lovers of the language "throw
a wet blanket" on all those cranks who
would retard its progress by their fault
finding. The child must creep before
it walks, and it is open to all to prog¬
ress, as Euclid said to Ptolemy "There
is no royal road to geometry," in other
words, there is no royal road to learning.
Some have criticised us for saying
that Tadhg Gaodhalach was literate.
Yes, we so stated on authority, but not
to detract from his poetry, because he
was a born poet, and used the language
in its purity — having no knowledge of
any other language. Our friends must
remember that the Irish is a pure orig¬
inal language, and not so subject to va¬
riation as a mongre language, such as
the English.
THE GAEL thanks the City for its
flattering notice the other day and
we wish it every possible success.
If any of our readers has a spare
copy of No. 9, Vol. 4, he would confer
a great fovor by sending it to us.
Our revered friend, THE CATHOLIC,
brings us to task for saying that "The
infallibility of the Church was founded
on the infallibility of the Bible."
W estand corrected. What we did
mean, though, was that the Bible is
the voice of the Church — Her written
Constitution, and that no individual
member, however exalted, can inter¬
pret it — that being reserved for the one
divinely oppointed authority, which can
not err — the Church in Council.
It being, as appears by this discussion, the fa¬
vorite practice of the criticisers to try to be little
those who speak the Irish language in lieu of ten¬
able arguments, the discussion closes with this
number.
All our modern grammarians admit that the
form which we advocate (and which all Irish speak¬
ers, without exception, use) for the third sing. cond.
is the proper form for the disssyllabic and poly¬
syllabic verbs, and we have shown that that class
of verbs is as 10 to 1 of the monosyllabic class, and
therefore that the form which we and the speakers
advocate, is used by common consent, in that ratio
of 10 to 1:
Now, when our grammarians exhibited such ig¬
norance of the relative strength of these two classes
of verbs as to assert that the monosyllabic verb was
the more numerous, they cease to be an authority
in this particular respect. And when the criticis¬
ers follow in the same strain they exhibit alike ig¬
norance,
In our reliance in the masses of the people, we
could not believe that they must be wrong and the
comparatively few writers right. We set to work
to see if we could solve the enigma. and in that re¬
solve we concluded to make an actual count of the
two classes of verbs, and, as shown in the last
GAEL, we were rewarded by the discovery that the
mass of the people were right (by the admission of
grammarians) in the proportion of 10 to 1.
We regret to see that Messrs. O'Donnell and
Ward have made use of expressions and innuen¬
does on the strength of other uninformed writers,
which should not escape the lips of true Irishmen.
Their references to bogs and mountains as the ab¬
odes of Iris speakers tend very little to their credit,
remembering that a McHale was nurtured in these
very mountains, and that we have shown that their
authorities were so stupidly ignorant of what
they presumptiously dictated as a rule as to ignore
the nine-tenths of the verb! The Irish people were
fooled long enough, but we hope the day of a
brighter day is breaking in the Eastern horizon.
Bourke is the only writer who ever hinted an i¬
dea of the true state of facts in regard to the verbs.
He has given their conjugation, and the only thing
necessary to make his grammar perfect is to con¬
jugate the 3rd sing. imperfect cond., of the mono¬
syllabic verb (as the speakers do) in accordance
with his second conjugation. Then you have a
perfect grammar, and never until then.
Having now dispersed the cloud which envelop¬
ed the verb, we leave the matter in the hands of the
future compilers of Irish grammar, resting assured
that no future writers will class the monosyllobic
verb as the most numerous suggesting that THE
VERB par excellence, TO BE, is pronounced as the
speakers pronounce all the verbs, a fact which leads
strongly to the presumption that it was the trans¬
cribers who sought to corrupt the sound of the sec¬
ondary verb into the un-Irish sound fa.
THE GAELIC ALPHABET.
Irish.
Roman.
Sound.
Irish.
Roman.
Sound.
a
a
aw
m
m
emm
b
b
bay
n
n
enn
c
c
kay
o
o
oh
d
d
day
p
p
pay
e
e
ay
r
r
arr
f
f
eff
s
s
ess
g
g
gay
t
t
thay
i
i
ee
u
u
oo
l
l
ell
