To The General Reader The Celtic Renaissance Was A Surprise, And Even To
Irish Writers Deeply Interested In Their Country The Phenomenon Or
Movement, Call It Which You Will, Was Not Appreciated As Of Much
Significance At Its Beginning. Writing In 1892, Miss Jane Barlow Was Not
Hopeful For The Immediate Future Of English Literature In Ireland;--It
Seemed To Her "Difficult To Point Out Any Quarter Of The Horizon As A
Probable Source Of Rising Light." Yet Mr. Yeats Had Published His
"Wanderings Of Oisin" Three Years Before; Mr. Russell Had Already
Gathered About Him A Group Of Eager Young Writers; And Dr. Hyde Was
Organizing The Gaelic League, To Give Back To Ireland Her Language And
Civilization, And Translating From The Gaelic "The Love Songs Of
Connacht" (1894) Into An English Of So New And Masterful A Rhythm, That
It Was To Dominate The Style Of Many Of The Writers Of The Movement, As
The Burden Of The Verse Was To Confirm Them In The Feelings And
Attitudes Of Mind, Centuries Old And Of To-Day, That Are Basic To The
Irish Gael. Even In 1894, When Mrs. Katherine Tynan Hinkson Wrote The
Article That For The First Time Brought Before America So Many Of The
Younger English Poets, All That She Said Of The Renaissance Was, "A Very
Large Proportion Of The Bodley Head Poets Are Celts,--Irish, Welsh,
Cornish." She Had Scarcely So Spoken When There Appeared The Little
Volume, "The Revival Of Irish Literature," Whose Chapters, Reprinted
