Page:Mion-Chaint - Ua Laoghaire (1899).djvu/6

4 I have to state as a positive fact, that, as far as learners are concerned, whether they be learners who can already speak Irish, or learners who cannot, those volumes are many degrees worse than useless. The very first page of any of these books, and I say it from positive experience, is enough to frighten even a fluent Irish sneaker from any further effort at becoming an Irish reader, unless he be a person of iron determination. Fortunately we have in considerable abundance people of that stamp. Persons whom even a sensation like intermittent lock-jaw cannot frighten from the work. But when a fluent Irish speaker, whose native Irish vocabulary is overflowing with wealth, and whose organs of speech can use that vocabulary like rolling music, when he. I say. looks at the page of an Ossianic society volume, and finds himself threatened with lock-jaw almost at every sentence, he naturally comes to the conclusion that there is something wrong. He does not know what is wrong, but he lays down the volume.

The learner who never spoke a word of Irish is in a far worse plight. He does not suspect that there is anything wrong. He straggles onward through the Easy Lessons, through the Ossianic volume, lock-jaw and all. Then he gets among the people, and lo! not a syllable of the people's language can he understand. What is it that is wrong? There are a good many tilings wrong, but the whole evil can be reduced to this one fact. For a living language, the books and the speech of the people should go hand in hand. What is printed in the books should be the exact representation of what comes out of the people's