I cry. *** Do English-language poets in Ireland actually love the English language with the same fervour as the Irish-language poet loves his? Whether they do or not, it is of another intensity, another flavour, to the Gaelic poet’s love of Irish. And, whether we like it or not, English was the language of the Pale in Ireland, the language which sought to wield a political, moral and aesthetic superiority over the rest of Ireland, a propaganda war lasting over seven hundred years and one which may not yet be over. We can forgive and forget, of course, but what’s history but remembering? Our first President, Douglas Hyde, gave us this colourful anecdote: ‘At Abbey Knockmoy, County Galway, I noticed the name Rabbit, and inquired from the old caretaker if it was a common one in the locality. ‘It is, your honour,’ said he, ‘I’m a Rabbit myself.’ ‘That is not an Irish name,’ said I. ‘Thrue for ye; me rale name is Ó Coinín, which is Rabbit when Englished.’ Poet Seán Ó Ríordáin (1916 – 1977) wrote many self-accusatory poems in which he questioned his own handling of language, as though torn between allegiance to what was well expressed in the past and an urge to make things new, even if that meant risking being contaminated by an striapach allúrach, that ‘foreign whore’ he called English!
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