Still it is constantly asserted that whether or not the Gaelic language is dead and ready for burial it has no literature; and the assertion has been repeated for several generations with emphatic persistence. The following chapters are intended to show that there is a literature; and that it does not altogether deserve the contempt with which it has been hitherto regarded. And the English-reading public have a right to know from the pens of Gaelic scholars what is the value of the literature still extant in the ancient language of a people with whom they are so closely united, and who form an important integral portion of their common empire. All have an interest in bringing the reign of ignorance, apathy, and prejudice to an end.
At last in the midst of neglect and apathy, of petty rivalries and discords which so readily breed within circumscribed spheres, when our Gaelic scholars, MacLauchlan and Clerk, Skene and J. F. Campbell, and others, were giving to the world the results of their laborious efforts to uphold the character and literary prestige of their countrymen, and were thus paving the way, one voice began to be heard on behalf of a despised language and literature. That voice crying in the Highland wilderness was that of Professor Blackie! By inimitable eloquence and unwearied energies he interested high and low at once and for years in the establishment of a Celtic Chair in the University of Edinburgh. From the Queen, from lord and laird, and from peasant, he charmed, by his sweet and natural manner, the gold on which that Chair is now so successfully founded. Not only that, but he has also given us the fullest account hitherto published of the language and literature of the Scottish Highlands. It is needless to speak of the affection and gratitude which Highlanders cherish towards the learned and venerable Professor, who has been a most potent Celtic force in this generation. “Saoghal fada ’n deagh bheatha dhuit!”
Irish scholars have recently laboured hard and successfully in furthering the interests of their native literature. It is enough here to mention the names of O’Donovan, O’Currie, Whitley Stokes, Joyce, Standish O’Grady, and Bourke—men whose learning and talents would adorn the literary annals of any nation. While the Irish have accomplished more than the Scottish Gael, the Welsh have done more than either to preserve their language and cultivate their literature. Under systematic efforts to suppress it entirely the Kymry have adhered to their ancient tongue with unwearying pertinacity. While the Gael of Ireland and Scotland have not yet been successful in supporting one purely Gaelic newspaper, the Celt of Wales has his Welsh newspaper in every town of importance in the Principality. It is to the Kymry that we owe the best work yet published on Celtic philology—the “Welsh Philology” of Professor Rhys of the Celtic Chair at Oxford. So now it may fairly be said that we are in the midst of a Celtic Renaissance. Books of a certain useful character do sell, notwithstanding the well founded complaint referred to above. The first edition of Canon Bourke’s “Aryan Origin of the Gaelic Race” was exhausted in a very short time. Campbell’s “Tales” are out of print. These are signs of the times which, along with the establishment of Celtic Chairs at the central seats of learning, decisively indicate a reviving interest in Celtic studies. In talking once of the emotional element of the Celtic nature, an enthusiastic Irish scholar jocularly remarked to the writer that the Gael was dying away in song. If this turns out to be true, it is evident that his remains will be examined with pious and scientific care.
It is interesting to find that, meagre as Gaelic literature is—and the great wonder is that what we have should have been produced in so unpromising a field—it extends over sixteen centuries. Its stream issued from that fount of Gaelic heroism which began to burst forth in the first centuries of our era, when the ground of the old European world was on every side shaken by the heavy tramp of the Roman legions and by the consequent disturbance of equilibrium among the clans and races everywhere. Epic products of genius, of course, there are not in Gaelic literature. Perhaps the pure Celtic genius, as Mathew Arnold held, is incapable of producing epic works—is too emotional, and is only rich in lyrical and ballad power. Great works requiring leisure, quietness, and perseverance there are not; the life of our ancestors, active, earnest, and practical—its energies ceaselessly being called forth to combat the ruthless forces of nature—did not admit of the necessary cultivation and ease for such productions. Extensive fruits of Gaelic thought and letters we do still possess, however, although much has been lost, especially of what was produced in earlier days. But these should not for a moment be spoken of in comparison with the magnificent monuments of intellectual endeavour which Greece and Rome and Anglo-Celtic Britain have reared. But Gaelic literature will compare favourably with that of many other countries, especially when united with its sister product, Irish literature. And Welsh literature, no doubt, should also be added. English literature, because of the basis it has in the soil of Christianity, is the grandest product of the human intellect, the master works of Greece and Rome not excepted. It is great; it is partly Celtic; and we, as Anglo-Celts, admire it. But we may with advantage look beyond the bounds of our English studies, and then see more clearly the foundation of our Anglo-Celtic empire when we have examined with tender and sympathetic care the interesting relics of Celtic thought enshrined in the ancient language of the British Islands.
It ought perhaps to be acknowledged that the English-speaking peoples of these islands are, at present peculiarly ready to accept any authentic information respecting Celtic history and literature. The same remark replies to Continental scholars. In our own islands the stirring of nationalities in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that simultaneously with the movements of the practical politics of the parties of the day and the advocacy of the reform of our land laws, has deepened the interest in all questions relating to Celtic life and thought.
It is a mere truism to remark that the language and literature of the Gael have been much neglected. All attempts to bring their claims before the English-speaking world were, till recently, treated with systematic indifference if not with contempt. The national, historical, and scientific value of the study of both does not appear to have occurred even to many who ought to know better. Interesting and inviting as the field was, it lay long unoccupied. Highlanders conscious of some talent were attracted by the rich prizes and honour obtainable within the sphere of English letters. A few who dipped into Celtic studies found them either unprofitable or turned away with disgust from a path in which they were met on all sides with petty jealousies and ignorant pretence. The Rev. Dr John Smith, of Campbeltown, distinguished alike for his learning and general culture, sacrificed much of his time and means to Gaelic studies; and, finding them unprofitable, turned in his leisure hours to farming on his glebe. He was also annoyed by a truthless, pedant schoolmaster, Duncan Kennedy, of Lochgilphead, who laid claim to the authorship of some ballads which Dr Smith had published. The English Republic of letters could not be blamed for disregarding the intellectual history of a people who ignored their own productions and all that they inherited from their ancestors. Yet is it a reproach to Irish and British scholars that Continental students should be the first to create interest in Celtic studies and place them on a scientific basis. The real parties, however, who ought to bear the blame are the Celts themselves—the Kymry of Wales, and the Gael of Ireland and Scotland. It is with much propriety that Professor Geddes of Aberdeen, thus addresses British Celts with regard to their languages:—“Your advantages are great. To you it is a mother-speech, whereas to others like myself it has to be laboriously learned, and after all imperfectly, so that it can hardly be said to be a speech at all in such mouths as mine. It is otherwise with you; you are within the shrine, such as I are without, and just as the radiance of a cathedral window, rich with the spoils of time, looks blurred and poor to the eye that seeks to comprehend it from without, but streams in full glory on the eye that gazes from within, so your native speech rightly studied ought to be to you resplendent with linguistic treasures, such as no stranger can be expected to unveil.” The Highlander alone can fully know and appreciate the language and literature of his race. But if he takes up the obsolete harp of his fathers, and rehearses in melancholy strains that his people are perishing and that his language is dying, it is quite natural, that his Teutonic neighbour should chime in with an emphatic and not always a sympathetic amen.
This sort of harping is the species of music with which many Highlanders, and Irish Gaels also, have been pleased to humour and feed their patriotic feelings over the general neglect of Celtic interests. Well may the disinterested spectator declare that they are not much in earnest—that the wail is partly hypocritical; for they have done so little to preserve their language and nationality. And no doubt the cry is to a certain extent hypocritical with not a few self-constituted patriots, and the bulk of the people disregard it. The latter do not take up the wail, and they are mainly in the right. The enthusiast and the sentimentalist, who indulge in the dirge, run away with one small truth, or the phase of a truth—with a pathetic misconception of the true state of things. Sometimes they hire themselves to do the coronach, like the Irish professional mourners who do the wailing over the departed. But the people in general are not drawn by the charming of the sentimentalist; they are more practical. They know and feel the power of circumstances and destiny which they have to overcome and bear, and act accordingly. While they find their native hills barren, and their native glens inhospitable, they betake themselves to the rich woods of Canada and the prairies of the United States. Witness what a large body of the Glengarry Highlanders once did. Again, when they find the want of the English language a bar to their secular success in life, they protest, while cherishing dearly their native tongue, against pure Gaelic schools being thrust upon them, and demand English teaching first. This has been the case not so long ago in the Long Island. And the reason is quite patent. Before arriving at school age the children are in possession of their mother-tongue; and the parents consider, and very rightly, that the sooner their sons and daughters acquire good English the better for their own comfort, interest, and success in the great English-speaking world in which they have necessarily to perform a part. English ought to be taught from the first through, and simultaneously with, the Gaelic. In all this the people show that their utilitarianism is sensible, intelligent. They recognise the facts of their surroundings. They listen to the charming of the sentimentalist, but they go on their own practical way rejoicing. Hundreds of Highlanders in our large towns never enter a Gaelic church. English-speaking mothers and children do not find the arrangement of services convenient and, consulting the general good of all the members of the family, they take their seats elsewhere. In this they cannot be deeply blamed. In Scotland we are quite familiar with the stereotyped arguments and phraseology which are applied to depopulation and other matters. But many of those who rehearse the one on public platforms and weave the other into elegiac verse do not always give us a practical illustration of their theories and teaching by living in the Highlands and by having Gaelic taught in their own families.
This conviction and cry of the imaginative Celt that the world is slipping from his grasp—that his affairs are in a hopeless condition—has done much injury to his own interests. And it is not at all surprising although his neighbours and the rising generation of his own people have regarded his language and literature with persistent indifference. Ossian himself is proverbially known to us—“Oisein an déigh na Féinne”—as the “last of the race.” It would almost seem that every generation of Gaels during the last millennium regarded itself as the last of the “race.” Yet, strange to say, the Gaelic language is spoken to-day within pretty nearly the same limits as it was a thousand years ago, a fact encouraging to the sanguine and poetic natures of men like William Livingston, that very original Islay bard, who once sang as follows:—
“Cànain àigh nam buadhan òirdhearc,