Little girls walk through
the village ringing a shrill hand-bell, as a signal that the women's
meeting is to be held, - here it would be useless to fix an hour, as
the hours are not recognized.
Soon afterwards bands of girls - of all ages from five to
twenty-five - begin to troop down to the schoolhouse in their reddest
Sunday petticoats. It is remarkable that these young women are
willing to spend their one afternoon of freedom in laborious studies
of orthography for no reason but a vague reverence for the Gaelic.
It is true that they owe this reverence, or most of it, to the
influence of some recent visitors, yet the fact that they feel such
an influence so keenly is itself of interest.
In the older generation that did not come under the influence of the
recent language movement, I do not see any particular affection for
Gaelic. Whenever they are able, they speak English to their
children, to render them more capable of making their way in life.
Even the young men sometimes say to me -
'There's very hard English on you, and I wish to God I had the like
of it.'
The women are the great conservative force in this matter of the
language.
