Galway In Days Gone By

1922

Collins killed

History plays strange tricks with its heroes of war. But few of them survive to enjoy the peace which their prowess has won. Militarism always takes its toll and refuses to fit in with any known order of events.

It is devastating, cataclysmic. Yet Collins was no militarist. His death was brought about by this fact. He had fought England with a lion-hearted valour, and the conditions in which that hideous warfare was waged put a greater strain on the Chief of the Intelligence than any mere physical bravery on the field.

Yet he bore it all with native gaiety; for he had the heart of a Celtic lad and the courage of the noblest of our race. When communications with his comrades in the country were severed, when his colleagues were in jail or across the seas, when he, with a price upon his head, was hunted night and day, he kept the spirt that achieved victory alive; and today, the English “Daily Telegraph” is constrained to describe him as “the most implacable and dangerous foe we ever had”.

Knowing full well what that the initial peace kites sent up by England signified, he raised the cry, “let us get on with the work”.

“Had he been captured,” says the Telegraph, “history would have run in a different channel”.

Studying Irish

Upwards of 160 students are applying themselves assiduously at the Spiddal Irish College this yar to the study of Irish. They are, for the most part, composed of teachers from various parts of the country and, under the tutorship of expert native Irish teachers, remarkable progress is in evidence.

An innovation which is bound to have a wholesome effect is in operation this year whereby students are prohibited from speaking English.

Last year, and at previous sessions, pupils in the beginners’ and intermediate classes were, to suit their own convenience, allowed to speak English, but at the present session it is completely dispensed with, and nothing is to be heard but the native language.

Practical application is an essential element in the acquirement of any language, and the prohibition of the Béarla at the Irish Colleges will have an advantageous reaction.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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