[27] Specimens of their poetry may be found in O'Daly's two excellent volumes, "The Poetry of Munster," and in his "Jacobite Relics" and in Walsh's "Popular Songs," but most of them are still in manuscript.
[28] These are my "Religious Songs of Connacht," quoted more than once in this book as though published. They were meant to have been published simultaneously with it, but unfortunately the plates of both volumes were melted down, while I was revising these proofs, in the great fire at Sealy, Bryers and Walker's, Dublin.
[29] Conducted by the Gaelic League.
[CHAPTER XLIV]
THE HISTORY OF IRISH AS A SPOKEN LANGUAGE
We must now follow the fortunes of the Irish language as a spoken tongue, "questo linguaggio difficile e davvero stupendo," as Ascoli calls it,[1] which after imposing itself upon both Dane and Norman, was brought face to face as early as the fourteenth century with its great competitor English, before which, despite its early victory in the contest, it has at last nearly but not quite gone down, after an unremitting struggle of nearly five centuries.
As early as the year 1360, the English appear to have taken the alarm at the inroads which the Irish language—at that time a much more highly-cultured form of speech than their own—had made upon the colonists, and we find King Edward issuing orders to the Sheriff of the Cross and Seneschal of the Liberty of Kilkenny in these terms[2]—
"As many of the English nation in the Marches and elsewhere have again become like Irishmen, and refuse to obey our laws and customs, and hold parliaments after the Irish fashion, and learn to speak the Irish tongue, and send their children among the Irish to be nursed and taught the Irish tongue, so that the people of English race have for the greater part become Irish; now we order (1) that no Englishman of any state or condition shall ... [under forfeiture of life, limbs, and everything else] follow these Irish customs, laws, and parliaments; (2) that any one of English race shall forfeit English liberty, if after the next feast of St. John the Baptist he shall speak Irish with other Englishmen and meantime every Englishman must learn English and must not have his children at nurse amongst the Irish."