Cuimhní cinn a breacadh 1918-19 : an dara cuid

and I should imagine that with some of them the fact that a person (botún) possessed wealth and social position made him hated. The feeling that this was so grew upon one so much in the course of another year that I never turned up at the Coiste Gnótha in [good] my best clothes, but always in old ones. In the year when I came up from the country for the great language procession on St Patricks day I found to my horror that the Dublin Coiste Ceanntair, who I imagine were all Larkinites, had asked him to speak at it. If I had known in time I would not gone myself, but they kept it hidden from me till the last moment, [and] for when I asked in the morning at the League offices who the speakers were to be, they did not tell me that he was to be there. He mounted the mag-gouette[?] and spoke from beside me. A tall black haired powerfully built man, with a great resounding voice and much fluency and energy seeming to say a lot with

great emphasis but really[saying] speaking platitudes, the gist of his speech being that if Irishmen really wanted Irish taught to their children [they] there was no power on earth that could stop them! Patrick Pearse, who spoke also, pronounced a great eulogy on Larkin, he at least he said was doing some-thing, he was making history. So he was, for he had closed the port of Dublin, and the workers of Dublin have not yet got over the effects of the general strike with which he [led] plunged them – apparently without counting the cost. It was char-acteristic of Pearse that he never stopped to inquire if the something that Larkin was doing was good or bad. It was sufficient that he was doing something. One if not more of his sons was at Pearse’s school at this time. Domhnall O Murchadha who was secretary to the Dublin Coiste Ceanntair [botún] said as I read in some paper afterwards [said] that Larkin had given a better exposition of the principles

of the G League than their own president had given. This Domhnall was a curious and interesting character. He was from Kerry, a great worker and a splendid teacher of Irish, but a bitter Socialist and Larkinite, and, [he] hard worker as he was for the language, he always ran (botún) his activities for it with one eye on the Larkinite propaganda. He [always] seemed to me to be a person who could not help suspecting if not hating anyone with a good coat on his back. I was always more than civil and friendly to him but I think he was one of those farouche natures that you could not really win over. He was a fine actor and singer and at the Oireachtas he undertook and carried out so much work that it nearly killed him I think on one occasion he fainted. He was an amazingly hard worker, but he always seemed to me quite unfit to direct any policy, for I don’t think he knew much about anything except Irish. He was secretary of the Dublin Coiste Ceanntair, a body which was soon captured by the Larkinites and extremists of one sort

or another, and which gave me endless anxiety because the Coiste Gnótha had practically no power over them. The great damage they did the language movement by identifying Larkin with it – solely to give him an advertisement for he had never done anything for it – counted for nothing with them. The Archbishop, Dr Walsh, was so offended at it that he would not come to the opening of the Leinster[?] College and gave us to understand how vexed he was. Many other people refused to subscribe to the funds of the League on account of it. But [they] the Coiste Ceanntair did not mind, Larkin had got his advertisement. I think, as well as I can remember, that this was one of the first attempts to ex-ploit the power of the League in the interests of something that was not the Irish language, and from this out there was little cessation of such attempts. I always scanned the monthly agenda paper with (botún) alarm, being only too happy if some item was not on

the agenda which had been placed there with some deliberate ulterior motive. I think it is hardly too much to say that personally I had for four or five or six years much more trouble in warding off damage from items placed deliberately on the agenda paper with an arriere pensée, and not in the interests of the language at all, than in helping the League to carry out the real language reforms which were wanted. Most of these

[I said the Coiste Ceanntair was a great cause of troubles not content] items were framed or shaped either in the interests of the anti-clerical party, to which nearly all the Larkinites belonged, and of which they Foleys and Domhnall O Murchadha were the leaders, or else with the object of forcing the G League into open opposition to the Govt, thus making it at one stroke a political and also an ex-tremist movement. I remember one attempt of this kind particularly vividly, because I managed to checkmate it only by a hair's breadth.