Public intellectuals, language revival and cultural nationalism in Ireland and Wales: a comparison of Douglas Hyde and Saunders Lewis

Abstract

This article compares the content and impact of two iconic lectures concerned with language revival in Ireland and Wales. The lectures are Douglas Hyde's ‘The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland’ of 1892 and Saunders Lewis's Tynged yr Iaith (Fate of the Language) of 1962. It explores the different types of ‘public’ addressed by these lecturers and contrasts the languages used to address those publics, as well as assessing the significance of the media of communication for how the two lectures were received. This diachronic comparison raises questions about how public intellectuals have, at different times, sought to defend and enhance the position of non-state languages in the United Kingdom and illuminates the role of cultural nationalism in different parts of that state. In addition, it argues that a diachronic comparison enjoins a clearer evaluation of historical context, a feature of the analysis that can be both problematic and illuminating.

Keywords:

• Public intellectuals
• language revival
• cultural nationalism

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Patrick Maume and Gerald Morgan for discussing specific points with me.

Notes

 1. Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985, xiii. Tom Garvin points out that historical uniqueness ‘does not prohibit the drawing of analogies’: Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries, 169.

 2. Ó Gráda, Black '47; Gray, ‘Famine Relief Policy in Comparative Perspective’, 86–108.

 3. Bloch, ‘A Contribution towards a Comparative History of European Societies’, 45.

 4. Bloch wrote: ‘the comparative method, rightly conceived, should involve specially lively interest in the perception of differences …’ (Land and Work in Medieval Europe, 58).

 5. Comerford, ‘The British State and the Education of Irish Catholics’, 13–33; Evans, ‘The British State and Welsh-language Education’, 343–69.

 6. Hindley, Death of the Irish Language, chaps. 1, 2.

 7. Aitchison and Carter, ‘The Welsh Language, 1921–1991’; Davies, The Welsh Language, 67–9.

 8. Maume, D.P. Moran, 54.

 9. The text is re-published in Hyde, Language, Lore and Lyrics, 153–70.

10. Dunleavey and Dunleavey, Douglas Hyde, 182–6.

11. Hyde, Language, Lore and Lyrics, 153.

12. Hyde, Language, Lore and Lyrics, 154.

13. Hyde, Language, Lore and Lyrics, 160.

14. Hyde, Language, Lore and Lyrics, 161–7.

15. Hyde, Language, Lore and Lyrics, 169.

16. See Hyde, Language, Lore and Lyrics., 171–92.

17. Lewis, Tynged yr Iaith. In this article I have used the translation by Gruffydd Aled Williams: ‘The Fate of the Language’ (1962), in Presenting Saunders Lewis (1973), ed. Jones and Thomas, 127–41.

18. Jones, ‘“I Failed Utterly”’, 22–43.

19. Lewis, ‘Fate of the Language’, 137.

20. Lewis, ‘Fate of the Language’, 138.

21. Lewis, ‘Fate of the Language’, 141.

22. Boyce, ‘“One Last Burial”’, 126–7.

23. Löffler, ‘The Welsh Language Movement in the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, 181–215.

24. Sherrington, ‘Welsh Nationalism, the French Revolution and the Influence of the French Right’, 127–47.

25. Davies, ‘Wales in the Nineteenth Sixties’, 78.

26. A shortened version of the lecture appeared in United Ireland, 10 December 1892, and there was a positive editorial in the same organ on 3 December and a letter expressing qualified support for it by Yeats on 17 December 1892. The full text was published in Duffy, Sigerson, and Hyde, The Revival of Irish Literature, 115–61.

27. Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 157.

28. A summary and partial translation into English of Tynged yr Iaith appeared four years later: Morgan, The Dragon's Tongue. A full translation into English was not available until 1971: Lewis, ‘The Fate of the Language’, Planet (1971), 13–27. For the Irish translation, see Lewis, Bás nó Beatha?.

29. ‘Foreword’ to Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, vii.

30. Murray, ‘Irish Cultural Nationalism’. Roy Foster has argued that in 1900 the League did not look much like a revolutionary movement: Foster, Paddy and Mr Punch, 273.

31. Dunleavy and Dunleavy, Douglas Hyde, 228–43.

32. Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 179, 184 (Emphasis in the original). For a nuanced analysis of the League's membership, see MacMahon, ‘“All Creeds and All Classes”’, 118–68.

33. Collins, Catholic Churchmen, passim.

34. Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 159.

35. Quoted in Davies, Sefyll yn y Bwlch, 73.

36. Jones and Fowler, Placing the Nation.

37. Phillips, ‘The History of the Welsh Language Society’, 468.

38. Williams, ‘Non-violence and the Development of the Welsh Language Society’, 426–55.

39. Phillips, Trwy Ddulliau Chwyldro …?, 47.

40. Morgan, Re-birth of a Nation, 383.

41. Dafis, Maniffesto Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg. Aberystwyth, 1972.

42. Phillips, Trwy Ddulliau Chwyldro …?, 278.

43. Cf. the comments on Hyde's lecture by D.G. Boyce: ‘its omissions are as important as its assertions’ (‘“One Last Burial”’, 126).

44. See ‘The Irish Language’, Freeman's Journal, 27 December 1892; ‘Dr Douglas Hyde on the Irish Language’, Freeman's Journal, 25 April 1900; ‘Liverpool Irish Literary Society’, Freeman's Journal, 6 September 1895.

45. Jones, ‘Beyond Identity?’, 330–57; Johnes, ‘A Prince, a King, and a Referendum’, 129–48.

46. Leerssen, Remembrance and Imagination, 159.

47. Thomas, ‘Language, Policy and Nationalism in Wales’, 323–44.

48. This point can be overdone; as the Society embraced a more thoroughgoing social critique on issues such as housing and planning, its policies became closer to those of a political party than of a pressure group, and thus were more difficult to get implemented.

49. Leerssen, The Cultivation of Culture, 14.