Blair Collection > Beside the fire

PREFACE. xlv
from the various races of men who inhabit it, by helping
them to develop themselves on national and racial
lines. The people are not the better for it either, for one
would fancy it required little culture to see that the man
who reads Irish MSS., and repeats Ossianic poetry, is a
higher and more interesting type than the man whose
mental training is confined to spelling through an
article in Uiiited Ireland*
I may mention here that it is not as easy a thing as
might be imagined to collect Irish stories. One hears
that tales are to be had from such and such a man,
generally, alas ! a very old one. With difficulty one
manages to find him out, only to discover, probably, that
he has some work on hand. If it happens to be harvest
time it is nearly useless going to him at all, unless one
* It appears, unfortunately, that all classes of our Irish politicians alike
agree in their treatment of the language in which all the past of their race—
until a hundred years ago — is enshrined. The inaction of the Parliamentarians,
though perhaps dimly intelligible, appears, to me at least, both short-sighted
and contradictory, for they are attempting to create a nationality with one hand
and with the other destroying, or allowing to be destroyed, the very thing
that would best differentiate and define that nationality. It is a making of
bricks without straw. But the non-Parliamentarian Nationalists, in Ireland at
least, appear to be thoroughly in harmony with them on this point. It is
strange to find the man who most commands the respect and admiration of that
party advising the young men of Gaelic Cork, in a printed and widely-circu-
lated lecture entitled : " What Irishmen should know," to this effect : — " I
begin by a sort of negative advice. You all know that much has been written
in the Irish language. This is of great importance, especially in connection
with our early history, hence must ever form an important study for scholars
But you are, most of you, not destined to be scholars,and so I should simply