on pronouncing our Irish names properly. Why will a
certain class of people insist upon getting as far away from the
pronunciation of the natives as possible? I remember a Galway gentleman
pulling me up severely for speaking of Athenree. "It's not Athenree," he
said, "it's called Athenrye." Yet in saying this he simply went out of his
way to mispronounce the historic name, which means the "King's ford," and
which all the natives call -_ree_, not -_rye_.[23] Another instance out of
many thousands is my own market town, Ballagh-a-derreen, literally,
"the way of the oak-wood." Ballach is the same word as in the phrase _Fag
a' bealach_, "clear the way," and "derreen" is the diminutive of Derry, an
oak-wood. Yet the more "civilised" of the population, perhaps one in
fifty, offend one's ears with the frightful jargon Balla-had-her-een. Thus
Lord Iveagh (Ee-vah) becomes Lord Ivy, and Seana-guala, the old sholder,
becomes Shanagolden, and leads you to expect a mine, or at least a
furze-covered hill.

I shall not give any more examples of deliberate carelessness, ineptitude,
and West-Britonising in our Irish topography, for the instances may be
numbered by thousands and thousands. I hope and trust that where it may be
done without any great inconvenience a native Irish Government will be
induced to provide for the restoration of our place-names on something
like a rational basis.

* * * * *

Our music, too, has become Anglicised to an alarming extent. Not only has
the national instrument, the harp--which efforts are now being made to
revive in the Highlands--become extinct, but even the Irish pipes are
threatened with the same fate. In place of the pipers and fiddlers who,
even twenty years ago, were comparatively common, we are now in many
places menaced by the German band and the barrel organ. Something should
be done to keep the native pipes and the native airs amongst us still. If
Ireland loses her music she loses what is, after her Gaelic language and
literature, her most valuable and most characteristic possession. And she
is rapidly losing it. A few years ago all our travelling fiddlers and
pipers could play the old airs which were then constantly called for, the
_Cuis d'a pleidh_, _Drinaun Dunn_, _Roseen Dubh_, _Gamhan Geal Ban_,
_Eileen-a-roon_, _Shawn O'Dwyer in Glanna_, and the rest, whether gay or
plaintive, which have for so many centuries entranced the Gael. But now
English music-ha