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Conradh na Gaeilge
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Conradh na Gaeilge
Conradh na Gaeilge (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkɔn̪ˠɾˠə n̪ˠə ˈɡeːlʲɟə]; historically known in English as the Gaelic League) is a social and cultural organisation which promotes the Irish language in Ireland and worldwide. The organisation was founded in 1893 with Douglas Hyde as its first president, when it emerged as the successor of several 19th century groups such as the Gaelic Union. The organisation was a spearhead of the Gaelic revival and of Gaeilgeoir activism.
While Hyde succeeded in drawing unionists to the League, the organisation increasingly gave expression to the nationalist impulse behind the language revival. From 1915, members of its executive acknowledged the leadership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the struggle for Irish statehood. After the creation of the Irish Free State, and limited advances with respect to the teaching and official use of the language, many members transferred their commitment to the new institutions, political parties and education system.
In 2008, Conradh na Gaeilge adopted a new constitution, dropping the post-1915 references to "Irish freedom", while reaffirming the ambition to restore Irish as the language of everyday life throughout Ireland. In Northern Ireland, it campaigned for an Irish Language Act. In the absence of an agreed Stormont executive, in 2022 the Westminster Parliament incorporated many of its proposed provisions in the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act.
Conradh na Gaeilge, the Gaelic League, a successor to Ulick Bourke's earlier Gaelic Union, was formed in 1893, at a time when Irish as a spoken language appeared to be on the verge of extinction. Analysis of the 1881 Census showed that at least 45% of those born in Ireland in the first decade of the 19th century had been brought up as Irish speakers. Figures from the 1891 census suggested that just 3.5% were being raised speaking the language. Ireland had become an overwhelmingly English-speaking country. Spoken mainly by peasants and farm labourers in the poorer districts of the west of Ireland, Irish was widely seen, in the words of Matthew Arnold, as "the badge of a beaten race."
The first aim of the League was to maintain the language in the Gaeltacht, the largely western districts in which spoken Irish survived. The late 20th-century Gaeilgeoir activist Aodán Mac Póilin notes, however, that "the main ideological impact of the language movement was not in the Gaeltacht, but among English-speaking nationalists". The League developed "both a conservationist and a revivalist role".
The League's first president, Douglas Hyde (Dúbhghlás de hÍde), the son of a Church of Ireland rector from County Roscommon, helped create an ethos in the early days that attracted a number of unionists into its ranks. Remarkably, these included the Rev. Richard Kane, Grand Master of the Belfast Orange Lodge and organiser of the Anti-Home Rule Convention of 1892. But from the beginning there was an unresolved conflict between non-political rhetoric and the nationalism implicit in the League's revivalist project.
With the aid of Eugene O'Growney (author of Simple Lessons in Irish) Eoin MacNeill, Thomas O'Neill Russell and others, the League was launched in the wake of an address Hyde delivered to the Irish National Literary Society, on 25 November 1892: ‘"The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland’". Citing Giuseppe Mazzini (the Italian nationalist who had been the inspiration for the rare language enthusiast among the Young Irelanders, Thomas Davis), Hyde argued that "in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown away with a light heart the best claim we have to nationality".
Implicitly, this was a criticism of the national movement as it had developed since Catholic emancipation. Although a gaeilgeoir, Daniel O'Connell had declared himself "sufficiently utilitarian not to regret [the] gradual abandonment" of the language. For Emancipator's keenest supporters, the "positive and unmistakable" mark of distinction between Irish and English was "the distinction created by religion". Hyde's project spoke to a new exclusionary sense of what it is to be Irish. The simple practice of referring to Gaelic as "the Irish language", consciously or not, rendered "those who did not speak it as less Irish, and those who did not even acknowledge its status as non-Irish".
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Conradh na Gaeilge
Conradh na Gaeilge (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkɔn̪ˠɾˠə n̪ˠə ˈɡeːlʲɟə]; historically known in English as the Gaelic League) is a social and cultural organisation which promotes the Irish language in Ireland and worldwide. The organisation was founded in 1893 with Douglas Hyde as its first president, when it emerged as the successor of several 19th century groups such as the Gaelic Union. The organisation was a spearhead of the Gaelic revival and of Gaeilgeoir activism.
While Hyde succeeded in drawing unionists to the League, the organisation increasingly gave expression to the nationalist impulse behind the language revival. From 1915, members of its executive acknowledged the leadership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the struggle for Irish statehood. After the creation of the Irish Free State, and limited advances with respect to the teaching and official use of the language, many members transferred their commitment to the new institutions, political parties and education system.
In 2008, Conradh na Gaeilge adopted a new constitution, dropping the post-1915 references to "Irish freedom", while reaffirming the ambition to restore Irish as the language of everyday life throughout Ireland. In Northern Ireland, it campaigned for an Irish Language Act. In the absence of an agreed Stormont executive, in 2022 the Westminster Parliament incorporated many of its proposed provisions in the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act.
Conradh na Gaeilge, the Gaelic League, a successor to Ulick Bourke's earlier Gaelic Union, was formed in 1893, at a time when Irish as a spoken language appeared to be on the verge of extinction. Analysis of the 1881 Census showed that at least 45% of those born in Ireland in the first decade of the 19th century had been brought up as Irish speakers. Figures from the 1891 census suggested that just 3.5% were being raised speaking the language. Ireland had become an overwhelmingly English-speaking country. Spoken mainly by peasants and farm labourers in the poorer districts of the west of Ireland, Irish was widely seen, in the words of Matthew Arnold, as "the badge of a beaten race."
The first aim of the League was to maintain the language in the Gaeltacht, the largely western districts in which spoken Irish survived. The late 20th-century Gaeilgeoir activist Aodán Mac Póilin notes, however, that "the main ideological impact of the language movement was not in the Gaeltacht, but among English-speaking nationalists". The League developed "both a conservationist and a revivalist role".
The League's first president, Douglas Hyde (Dúbhghlás de hÍde), the son of a Church of Ireland rector from County Roscommon, helped create an ethos in the early days that attracted a number of unionists into its ranks. Remarkably, these included the Rev. Richard Kane, Grand Master of the Belfast Orange Lodge and organiser of the Anti-Home Rule Convention of 1892. But from the beginning there was an unresolved conflict between non-political rhetoric and the nationalism implicit in the League's revivalist project.
With the aid of Eugene O'Growney (author of Simple Lessons in Irish) Eoin MacNeill, Thomas O'Neill Russell and others, the League was launched in the wake of an address Hyde delivered to the Irish National Literary Society, on 25 November 1892: ‘"The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland’". Citing Giuseppe Mazzini (the Italian nationalist who had been the inspiration for the rare language enthusiast among the Young Irelanders, Thomas Davis), Hyde argued that "in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown away with a light heart the best claim we have to nationality".
Implicitly, this was a criticism of the national movement as it had developed since Catholic emancipation. Although a gaeilgeoir, Daniel O'Connell had declared himself "sufficiently utilitarian not to regret [the] gradual abandonment" of the language. For Emancipator's keenest supporters, the "positive and unmistakable" mark of distinction between Irish and English was "the distinction created by religion". Hyde's project spoke to a new exclusionary sense of what it is to be Irish. The simple practice of referring to Gaelic as "the Irish language", consciously or not, rendered "those who did not speak it as less Irish, and those who did not even acknowledge its status as non-Irish".