Blair Collection > Deo-gréine

\N DEO-GHREINE.
speaker, and we give her remarks in full as
follows : —
A bhan-uachtaràin, agus a mhuinntir na
h-Alban mar ath;i sibh ! thangamar annst
indiu leteachtaireacht£hugaibh ò luchtChonn-
artlia na Gaedhilge i n>-Eirinn. Baineann ar
teacntaireachl seo le càirdeas agus le siotfi-
chain. Bhi muinntirna h-Eireann agusmuinn-
tir na h-Alban dluithte le chèile san aimsir
fad 6 agus ba mhaith linne an sean-chairdeas
do chur ar bun an'stidiran dànàisiun Gaedh-
ealach seo.
An obair seo na Gaedhilge ata ar siubhal
agaibh annso, t;i a mac-samhail ar siubhal
againn i n-Eirinn. Tàmuid ag troid thall ar
son na teangadh, direach mar ata sibh ag troid
annso; agus, buidheachas If Dia, tà sè ag
èirighe linn go geal. Chfmid fiinne an lae
romhainne ; ni fada go mbeidh an ghrian ag
dealradh 6s ar gcomhair.
Deirmid libh-se, a chomh-Ghaedhil na
h-Alban, gur i 6ir daoibh gan aon fhaiteas do
bheith oraibh. Glacaidh meisneach anois !
Biodh bhur ndochas agus bhur muinghin as
Dia is na flaitheasaibh, agus ni gàbhadh agus
ni baoghal oach dtiocfaidh sibh chum (inn go
tapaidh. Guidhim beannacht Dè oraibh agus
ar an obair naomhtha so ata idir lainili agaibh!
Lady Cromartie, and fellow-Gaedheals of
Albnn, we havp romp here to-day from your
kindred across the sea, with a me'ssage of
friendship and sympathy, and a message of
hope for the cause of the language, which is
the common cause of the Gaedheal, both in
Eire and in Alban. There is hope for the lan-
guage if the people of Alban are willing to
sacrifice something for the great ideal of a
united people speaking the national
language. There never was a great
movement which was not based on
self-sacrifice. You have an uphill light
before you ; but you must not be dis-
couraged. If you place your hope in
God and the greatness of the cause you
will surely succeed ; and never was
there a greater cause, a nobler ideal to
light for, than the uplifting of a people
through their language, and the tradi-
tions of the past enshrined in that
language.
Get 'hold of the schools and all the
rest will be easy. The children of to-
day are the men and women (if to-
morrow. It is to these Highland
laddies and lassies, lisping the Gaelic,
that we must look for the re-birth of
Gaelic Scotland. It is to a new gen-
eration filled with love and reverence
for the traditions and language of the
past — a generation which will love
every hill and every glen of this old
land of yours as much for the memories
they hold of ancestral valour as for the
beauty and the grandeur of their out-
ward form — it is to this up-coming
generation we look for tin- reawakening
of the soul of our kindred here in
Scotland ; to them we look for the upraising
of the old ideas of the Gaedheal. In this new-
generation, fed upon the language that was
taken by your fathers from their home across
the sea, when they settled in this land, and
spoken here amongst the heather hills for all
tlie centuries that have passed since then — in
this new generation we shall see, please God,
the old customs of the Gaedheal revive again
— the traditional songs and music that were a
common heritage of yours and ours, and the
old dances and the national games.
Many say to us — or, I should say, rather,
many used t<> say to us— in Ireland, that it
was the thought which mattered, not the lan-
guage in which the thought was uttered.
Many of you here, I am sure, have studied
mental science, and yet the most learned of
you would be slow to say which is anterior to
the other. The world which studies psychology
is agreed that there is action and interaction
between thought and language. When the
thought of a people and their peculiar outlook
on life gets impressed, as it naturally does, on
a language, that language is the most fitting