Page:The Celtic Review volume 4.djvu/17

4 impressionable days of youth, the wise teacher finds the surest way to the minds and hearts of his pupils. He opens up to them kingdoms of delight, for which they will be grateful in after days. It may be that some croaldng critic will say—‘Of what practical use is all this?’ Is there no practical use in literary culture? The Gaels have always been fond of literature, from St. Columba downwards. The Gaelic-speaking missionaries of Iona had two enthusiasms, a love of literature and an intense religious zeal, and the one enthusiasm did not injure the other. Was it not St. Columba’s love of books, in the famous case of the ‘Cathrach’ Psalter, that was partly the cause of his giving to Scotland the benefit of his devoted missionary labours. In the early Celtic Church, literary culture and practical religious earnestness were mutually helpful, and not antagonistic. But there are some Gaels to-day who have no literary culture themselves, and see no value in it for others. They would say, if they dared, that the study of Shakespeare was a waste of time! With such it is useless to argue. Let us cherish our native literature as an instrument of culture of no mean value. To deprive a Highland lad of the privilege of acquaintance at first hand with the traditions, tales, and religious and secular poetry of his fathers is to do him a serious injury. It is nothing less than a mutilation of his mental life.

To know the native literature will help rather than hinder the study of the literature and history of other races. George Buchanan was the greatest scholar that Scotland ever produced, and no one has ever said that his knowledge of Gaelic, his mother tongue, hampered his scholarship, or hindered his advancement as a man of affairs. The study of Gaelic constantly enlarges the mind and opens up new vistas of thought and research. It supplies subjects of conversation better than the threadbare topics of ordinary life in town and country. The nature poetry of Gaelic, a poetry that existed centuries before Wordsworth both in Wales and in Scotland, helps us to cherish the love of the beautiful, and Victor Hugo has said that ‘the Beautiful is as useful as the Useful.’

The fascinating folklore and tales of the Highlands, if