The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland

by Douglas Hyde

Delivered before the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, 25 November 1892.

When we speak of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as a protest
against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the
folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything
that is English, simply because it is English.

This is a question which most Irishmen will naturally look at from a National point of view, but it is
one which ought also to claim the sympathies of every intelligent Unionist, and which, as I know,
does claim the sympathy of many.

If we take a bird's eye view of our island today, and compare it with what it used to be, we must be
struck by the extraordinary fact that the nation which was once, as everyone admits, one of the
most classically learned and cultured nations in Europe, is now one of the least so; how one of the
most reading and literary peoples has become one of the least studious and most un-literary, and
how the present art products of one of the quickest, most sensitive, and most artistic races on earth
are now only distinguished for their hideousness.

I shall endeavour to show that this failure of the Irish people in recent times has been largely
brought about by the race diverging during this century from the right path, and ceasing to be Irish
without becoming English. I shall attempt to show that with the bulk of the people this change took
place quite recently, much more recently than most people imagine, and is, in fact, still going on. I
should also like to call attention to the illogical position of men who drop their own language to
speak English, of men who translate their euphonious Irish names into English monosyllables, of men
who read English books, and know nothing about Gaelic literature, nevertheless protesting as a
matter of sentiment that they hate the country which at every hand's turn they rush to imitate.

I wish to show you that in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown away with a light heart
the best claim which we have upon the world's recognition of us as a separate nationality. What did
Mazzini say? What is Goldwin Smith never tired of declaiming? What do the Spectator and Saturday
Review harp on? That we ought to be content as an integral part of the United Kingdom because we
have lost the notes of nationality, our language and customs.

It has always been very curious to me how Irish sentiment sticks in this half-way house -- how it
continues to apparently hate the English, and at the same time continues to imitate them; how it
continues to clamour for recognition as a distinct nationality, and at the same time throws away
with both hands what would make it so. If Irishmen only went a little farther they would become
good Englishmen in sentiment also. But -- illogical as it appears -- there seems not the slightest sign
or probability of their taking that step. It is the curious certainty that come what may Irishmen will
continue to resist English rule, even though it should be for their good, which prevents many of our
nation from becoming Unionists upon the spot. It is a fact, and we must face it as a fact, that
although they adopt English habits and copy England in every way, the great bulk of Irishmen and
Irishwomen over the whole world are known to be filled with a dull, ever-abiding animosity against
her, and right or wrong -- to grieve when she prospers, and joy when she is hurt. Such movements as
Young Irelandism, Fenianism, Land Leagueism, and Parliamentary obstruction seem always to gain

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their sympathy and support. It is just because there appears no earthly chance of their becoming
good members of the Empire that I urge that they should not remain in the anomalous position they
are in, but since they absolutely refuse to become the one thing, that they become the other;
cultivate what they have rejected, and build up an Irish nation on Irish lines.

But you ask, why should we wish to make Ireland more Celtic than it is -- why should we de-Anglicise
it at all?

I answer because the Irish race is at present in a most anomalous position, imitating England and yet
apparently hating it. How can it produce anything good in literature, art, or institutions as long as it
is actuated by motives so contradictory? Besides, I believe it is our Gaelic past which, though the
Irish race does not recognise it just at present, is really at the bottom of the Irish heart, and prevents
us becoming citizens of the Empire, as, I think, can be easily proved.

To say that Ireland has not prospered under English rule is simply a truism; all the world admits it,
England does not deny it. But the English retort is ready. You have not prospered, they say, because
you would not settle down contentedly, like the Scotch, and form part of the Empire. 'Twenty years
of good, resolute, grandfatherly government', said a well-known Englishman, will solve the Irish
question. He possibly made the period too short, but let us suppose this. Let us suppose for a
moment -- which is impossible -- that there were to arise a series of Cromwells in England for the
space of one hundred years, able administrators of the Empire, careful rulers of Ireland, developing
to the utmost our national resources, whilst they unremittingly stamped out every spark of national
feeling, making Ireland a land of wealth and factories, whilst they extinguished every thought and
every idea that was Irish, and left us, at last, after a hundred years of good government, fat, wealthy,
and populous, but with all our characteristics gone, with every external that at present differentiates
us from the English lost or dropped; all our Irish names of places and people turned into English
names; the Irish language completely extinct; the O's and the Macs dropped; our Irish intonation
changed, as far as possible by English schoolmasters into something English; our history no longer
remembered or taught; the names of our rebels and martyrs blotted out; our battlefields and
traditions forgotten; the fact that we were not of Saxon origin dropped out of sight and memory,
and let me now put the question -- How many Irishmen are there who would purchase material
prosperity at such a price? It is exactly such a question as this and the answer to it that shows the
difference between the English and Irish race. Nine Englishmen out of ten would jump to make the
exchange, and I as firmly believe that nine Irishmen out of ten would indignantly refuse it.

And yet this awful idea of complete Anglicisation, which I have here put before you in all its crudity
is, and has been, making silent inroads upon us for nearly a century.

Its inroads have been silent, because, had the Gaelic race perceived what was being done, or had
they been once warned of what was taking place in their own midst, they would, I think, never have
allowed it. When the picture of complete Anglicisation is drawn for them in all its nakedness Irish
sentimentality becomes suddenly a power and refuses to surrender its birthright...

So much for the greatest stroke of all in our Anglicisation, the loss of our language. I have often
heard people thank God that if the English gave us nothing else they gave us at least their language.
In this way they put a bold face upon the matter, and pretend that the Irish language is not worth
knowing, and has no literature. But the Irish language is worth knowing, or why would the greatest
philologists of Germany, France, and Italy be emulously studying it, and it does possess a literature,
or why would a German savant have made the calculation that the books written in Irish between
the eleventh and seventeenth centuries, and still extant, would fill a thousand octavo volumes.

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I have no hesitation at all in saying that every Irish-feeling Irishman, who hates the reproach of
West-Britonism, should set himself to encourage the efforts, which are being made to keep alive our
once great national tongue. The losing of it is our greatest blow, and the sorest stroke that the rapid
Anglicisation of Ireland has inflicted upon us. In order to de-Anglicise ourselves we must at once
arrest the decay of the language. We must bring pressure upon our politicians not to snuff it out by
their tacit discouragement merely because they do not happen themselves to understand it. We
must arouse some spark of patriotic inspiration among the peasantry who still use the language, and
put an end to the shameful state of feeling -- a thousand-tongued reproach to our leaders and
statesmen -- which makes young men and women blush and hang their heads when overheard
speaking their own language. Maynooth has at last come splendidly to the front, and it is now
incumbent upon every clerical student to attend lectures in the Irish language and history during the
first three years of his course. But in order to keep the Irish language alive where it is still spoken --
which is the utmost we can at present aspire to -- nothing less than a house-to-house visitation and
exhortation of the people themselves will do, something -- though with a very different purpose --
analogous to the procedure that James Stephens adopted throughout Ireland when he found her
like a corpse on the dissecting table. This and some system of giving medals or badges of honour to
every family who will guarantee that they have always spoken Irish amongst themselves during the
year. But unfortunately, distracted as we are and torn by contending factions, it is impossible to find
either men or money to carry out this simple remedy, although to a dispassionate foreigner -- to a
Zeuss, Jubainville, Zimmer, Kuno Meyer, Windisch, or Ascoli, and the rest -- this is of greater
importance than whether Mr. Redmond or Mr. MacCarthy lead the largest wing of the Irish party for
the moment, or Mr. So-and-So succeed with his election petition. To a person taking a bird's eye
view of the situation a hundred or five hundred years hence, believe me, it will also appear of
greater importance than any mere temporary wrangle, but, unhappily, our countrymen cannot be
brought to see this.

We can, however, insist, and we shall insist if Home Rule be carried, that the Irish language, which so
many foreign scholars of the first calibre find so worthy of study, shall be placed on a par with -- or
even above -- Greek, Latin, and modern languages, in all examinations held under the Irish
Government. We can also insist, and we shall insist, that in those baronies where the children speak
Irish, Irish shall be taught, and that Irish-speaking schoolmasters, petty sessions clerks, and even
magistrates be appointed in Irish-speaking districts. If all this were done, it should not be very
difficult, with the aid of the foremost foreign scholars, to bring about a tone of thought which would
make it disgraceful for an educated Irishman especially of the old Celtic race, MacDermotts,
O'Conors, O'Sullivans, MacCarthys, O'Neills -- to be ignorant of his own language -- would make it at
least as disgraceful as for an educated Jew to be quite ignorant of Hebrew...

I have now mentioned a few of the principal points on which it would be desirable for us to move,
with a view to de-Anglicising ourselves; but perhaps the principal point of all I have taken for
granted. That is the necessity for encouraging the use of Anglo-Irish literature instead of English
books, especially instead of English periodicals. We must set our face sternly against penny
dreadfuls, shilling shockers, and still more, the garbage of vulgar English weeklies like Bow Bells and
the Police Intelligence. Every house should have a copy of Moore and Davis. In a word, we must
strive to cultivate everything that is most racial, most smacking of the soil, most Gaelic, most Irish,
because in spite of the little admixture of Saxon blood in the north-east corner, this island is and will
ever remain Celtic at the core, far more Celtic than most people imagine, because, as I have shown
you, the names of our people are no criterion of their race. On racial lines, then, we shall best
develop, following the bent of our own natures; and, in order to do this, we must create a strong
feeling against West-Britonism, for it -- if we give it the least chance, or show it the smallest quarter -
- will overwhelm us like a flood, and we shall find ourselves toiling painfully behind the English at
each step following the same fashions, only six months behind the English ones; reading the same

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books, only months behind them; taking up the same fads, after they have become stale there,
following them in our dress, literature, music, games, and ideas, only a long time after them and a
vast way behind. We will become, what, I fear, we are largely at present, a nation of imitators, the
Japanese of Western Europe, lost to the power of native initiative and alive only to second-hand
assimilation. I do not think I am overrating this danger. We are probably at once the most
assimilative and the most sensitive nation in Europe. A lady in Boston said to me that the Irish
immigrants had become Americanised on the journey out before ever they landed at Castle
Gardens. And when I ventured to regret it, she said, shrewdly, 'If they did not at once become
Americanised they would not be Irish.' I knew fifteen Irish workmen who were working in a haggard
in England give up talking Irish amongst themselves because the English farmer laughed at them.
And yet O'Connell used to call us the 'finest peasantry in Europe'. Unfortunately, he took little care
that we should remain so. We must teach ourselves to be less sensitive, we must teach ourselves not
to be ashamed of ourselves, because the Gaelic people can never produce its best before the world
as long as it remains tied to the apron-strings of another race and another island, waiting for it to
move before it will venture to take any step itself.

In conclusion, I would earnestly appeal to everyone, whether Unionist or Nationalist, who wishes to
see the Irish nation produce its best -- surely whatever our politics are we all wish that -- to set his
face against this constant running to England for our books, literature, music, games, fashions, and
ideas. I appeal to everyone whatever his politics -- for this is no political matter -- to do his best to
help the Irish race to develop in future upon Irish lines, even at the risk of encouraging national
aspirations, because upon Irish lines alone can the Irish race once more become what it was of yore -
- one of the most original, artistic, literary, and charming peoples of Europe.

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