Gaelic League :: Essays Papers

Gaelic League What are the Irish known for? Most people would automatically think of some trivial fact about something like the potato famine, others the stereotypical views of the Irish drinking habits, and undoubtedly good old Irish American pubs would definitely come to mind. Although these are definitely interesting parts of the Irish history there are many other aspects to this unique heritage that truly capture the spirit of the Irish tradition. The Gaelic League was started with the founding of the Gaelic Athletic Association. This group founded in 1884 in attempts to promote and maintain Irish sports, helped to spawn the idea of Irish nationalism which eventually personified itself into organizations such as the Gaelic League. The Gaelic League was founded in 1893 by Douglas Hyde and Ed MacNeil to spread the Irish language (Hachey and McCaffery 14). Formed in Barnesmore where language classes were held in the national school; the support of both Catholics and Protestants made it poss ible to branch off to other areas (O’Connor 37). After the devastation of the potato famine and the implications of the home rule; both the Gaelic League and its predecessor the Gaelic Athletic Association had the common goal of bringing forth Irish nationalism in a country that desperately needed national pride. This movement for national pride had some success, but not before the failure that preceded it. There are a few reasons that this move, for national pride, produced failure one was the reputation of the Irish and another was the pressure of politics put on the different associations. The Irish language was considered to be a peasant’s language (O’Connor 87). Because of this the people of country that were poor and not educated in the language did not think it was worth spending money to learn. Tthe people in the country that had the money to learn the language normally did not want to learn the language for the mere fact it was considered to be a peasants language. Another reason for some of the failure that this movement attained is due to the political pressure created because of the nature of the movement itself. The two founders of the Gaelic League Hyde and McNeil never wanted the movement to become political (Gavin 56). However, this was inevitable. The mo vement caused a split in the people, those who were educated in the language and those who were not educated in the language (Hopkins 129).