IRISH LAND LAWS. 768 IRISH LITERATUBJE. ment between landlord and tenant, the Govern- ment advancing the entire purcluiscnioney, such sum to be repaid liy the tenants in fi)rt_v-one annual 4 per eent. payments. The fund created fur this purpose was £30,000,000, a sum deemed sullieient to establish peasant proprietorship in Ireland. .lohn Morley's Land Law of 1890 im- proved the a])plieation of the law. Nevertheless, agitation did not end, and in January, 1898, the l'nite<l Irish League was founded, which aims, among other things, to agitate for the abolition of the dual ownership of land, and the redistribu- tion of the grazingranches of Ccmnaught among the small iioldcrs. In I'.tOi a conference between representatives of the landlords and tenants to settle the land question was urged, and a pre- liminary meeting was held at Dublin, on Decem- ber 20, 1902. As a result of the agreements reached at that meeting, the Balfour (Joveniment introduced, on ^lareh 25, 190.'J. a comprehensive measure for the final settlement of the Irish land question. The bill provided for a free grant of £12,000.000 with which to luirchase the in- terests of landlords upon the basis of voluntary agreement. It furthermore authorized Govern- ment loans to be made to tenants at the rate of 314 per cent, per annum, in order to enable them to acquire title to the lands which they were occupying, the amount which each tenant might borrow being limited to £500 in the congested districts and £1000 elsewhere. The bill also pro- vided that untenanted farms and grazing lands should be sold to neighboring tenants, and that three commissioners, known as Estates Commis- sioners, should supervise the sales. See Land League. The Report of the Devon Comtnissioii was published at Dublin in 1887. For early Irish land laws, see Maine, Lectures on the Karhj History of Institutions (London. 1875). lect. ii.; Guinell, The lirchon Laus (I/ondon. 1894). Of the many modern works on the subject, the following are among the best : Richey, The Irish Land Laic (London, 1881) ; Dun, Landlords and Tenants in Ireland (London, 1881) ; Fisher. Ilis- iory of Landholding in Ireland (London, 1877) : Sigcrson, History of Land Tenure in Ireland (London. 1871): Montgomery, same title (Cam- bridge, 1889) : Godkin, The Land War in Ireland (London, 1870). IRISH LANGUAGE, See Celtic Lan- guages. IRISH LANGUAGE, Societv for the Pre.s- ERVATioN OF TiiK. A society with headquarters in Dublin founded in 1877 for the restoration of the ancient Gaelic tongue as a spoken language. The movement of which this organization is the result had its origin in Boston. Mass., in the Philo-Celtic Society, which was organized in 1873. From there it spread to other parts of the United States and finally attracted the at- tention of scholars in Ireland, where eventually the society became firmly established. Sec Ire- land. IRISH LITERARY SOCIETY. A society for the study of the Irish language, literature, history, music, and art, founded in London in 1892 by a small coterie of young Irish men and women, with the coiiperation of leading Irish lit- erary men in England and Ireland. The society has a large library of Irish books, and during each season provides lectures on Irish subjects. and social entertainments for its members and their friends. The membership is about six liundred, and includes the names of many promi- nent litterateurs, among whom may be men- tioned Rev, Stopford Brooke, W. B. Veats, Justin McCarthy, and Barry O'Brien. The society, though located in London, is well represented in Ireland. IRISH (Gaelic) LITERATURE. Irish lit- erature shows an unbrnUcn. if varying, con- tinuity from the .seventh or eighth century until the nineteenth. In its earlier periods it is of es])ecial interest, and in some kinds of production ranks with the richest literatures of media;val Europe. Three periods are regularly recognized by scholars in the history of the Irish language: Old Irish, from the time of the earliest monu- ments tlirough the tenth century; Middle Irish, from the eleventh century to the seventeenth ; and Modern Irish, from the seventeenth century to the present time. It is convenient to follow the same divisions in treating the history of Irish literature, though there is no such well- defined distinction between the literary produc- tions of successive periods as between the cor- responding stages of the language. Old Iri.sii. There is an abundance of material for the study of the Old Irish language. The most archaic stage is represented by the Ogam inscriptions, some of which date from the liflh and sixth centuries. They contain little besides proper names, but these are of great interest for the light they throw upon the lx?ginnings of Celtic phonology and intlection. (See Ogam.) From the period between the seventh and the tenth century a score or more of manuscripts have been preserved containing thousands of Irish glosses, and on the basis of these a very complete grammar of the Old Irish language has been constructed. Unfortunately, only a few continuous Irish texts exist in any of these early manuscripts. An ancient Latin-Irish sermon. :i short .sketch of Saint Patrick's life, a few poem.'} and incantations — this is about all that is pre- served of the oldest Irish literature in contempo- rary copies. V'e have to wait for the Middle Irish manuscripts before we find much direct evidence of its character. However, many of the texts in these later manuscripts are com- posed in a language only half contemporary with the writers: they abound in archaic forms, which make it safe to set them down as being .substantially Old Iri.sh, in spite of the circum- stances of their preservation. The reason for the scarcity of early literary monuments is to be found in the political conditions of Ireland from the eighth to the tenth century. This was the Viking age, and Ireland with the rest of Western Europe suffered from the ravages of the Norse- men. Mona.steries were repeatedly sacked and burned by the I^eandinavian invaders, and few libraries .survived the struggle. Nearly all the manuscripts of the Old Irish period have been preserved on the Continent. AIinni.E Irish. In 1014 the Scandinavians were defeated in the battle of Clontarf. and from that time forth their power in Ireland declined. From the period between about 1100 and about 1500 there has come down to us a great body of manuscripts containing a vast variety of writings, in both prose and verse. Among the most important of these Middle Irish
