CHAPTER IX

THE FRONTIER

I

Our frontier is twofold, the language and the sea.  For the majesty of our encircling waters we have no need to raise a plea, but to give God thanks for setting so certain a seal on our individual existence and giving us in the spreading horizon of the ocean some symbol of our illimitable destiny.  For the language there is something still to be said; there are some ideas gaining currency that should be challenged—­the cold denial of some that the unqualified name Irish be given to the literature of Irishman that is passionate with Irish enthusiasm and loyalty to Ireland, yet from the exigencies of the time had to be written in English; the view not only assumed but asserted by some of the Gael that the Gall may be recognised only if he take second place; the aloofness of many of the Gall, not troubling to understand their rights and duties; the ignoring on both sides of the fine significance of the name Irishman, of a spirit of patriotism and a deep-lying basis of authority and justice that will give stability to the state and secure its future against any upheaval that from the unrest of the time would seem to threaten the world.

II

Consider first the literature of Irishmen in English.  From the attitude commonly taken on the question of literary values, it is clear that the primary significance of expression in writing is often lost.  What is said, and the purpose for which it is said, take precedence of the medium through which it is said.  But from our national awakening to the significance of the medium so long ignored we have grown so excited that we frequently forget the greater significance of the thing.  The utterance of the man is of first importance, and, where his utterance has weight, the vital need is to secure it through some medium, the medium becoming important when one more than another is found to have a wider and more intimate appeal; and then we do well to become insistent for a particular medium when it is in anxiety for full delivery of the writer’s thought and a wide knowledge of its truth.  But we are losing sight of this natural order of things.  It is well, then, the unconvinced Gall should hear why he should accept the Irish language; not simply to defer to the Gael, but to quicken the mind and defend the territory of what is now the common country of the Gael and Gall.  Davis caught up the great significance of the language when he said:  “Tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river.”  The language is at once our frontier and our first fortress, and behind it all Irishmen should stand, not because a particular branch of our people evolved it, but because it is the common heritage of all.  One who has a knowledge of Irish can easily get evidence of its quickening