collars and ugly neckties
hanging awry and far better not there at all, and dirty shirts of bad
linen were banished, and our young hurlers were clad like men and
Irishmen, and not in the shoddy second-hand suits of Manchester and London
shop-boys. Could not this alteration be carried still further? Could we
not make that jersey still more popular, and could we not, in places
where both garbs are worn, use our influence against English second-hand
trousers, generally dirty in front, and hanging in muddy tatters at the
heels, and in favour of the cleaner worsted stockings and neat breeches
which many of the older generation still wear? Why have we discarded our
own comfortable frieze? Why does every man in Connemara wear home-made and
home-spun tweed, while in the midland counties we have become too proud
for it, though we are not too proud to buy at every fair and market the
most incongruous cast-off clothes imported from English cities, and to
wear them? Let us, as far as we have any influence, set our faces against
this aping of English dress, and encourage our women to spin and our men
to wear comfortable frieze suits of their own wool, free from shoddy and
humbug. So shall we de-Anglicise Ireland to some purpose, foster a native
spirit and a growth of native custom which will form the strongest barrier
against English influence and be in the end the surest guarantee of Irish
autonomy.

I have now mentioned a few of the principal points on which it would be
desirable for us to move, with a view to de-Anglicising ourselves; but
perhaps the principal point of all I have taken for granted. That is the
necessity for encouraging the use of Anglo-Irish literature instead of
English books, especially instead of English periodicals. We must set our
face sternly against penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers, and still more,
the garbage of vulgar English weeklies like _Bow Bells_ and the _Police
Intelligence_. Every house should have a copy of Moore and Davis. In a
word, we must strive to cultivate everything that is most racial, most
smacking of the soil, most Gaelic, most Irish, because in spite of the
little admixture of Saxon blood in the north-east corner, this island _is_
and will _ever_ remain Celtic at the core, far more Celtic than most
people imagine, because, as I have shown you, the names of our people are
no criterion of their race. On racial lines, then, we shall best develop,
following the bent of our own natures; an