over a hundred years ago a national movement took place that became known as the Celtic revival it turned to Ireland's past to create a future sense of Irish identity embracing many areas of Irish life literature painting sports and the Irish language at the heart of the revival were some remarkable individuals this is the story of one of who daka's Hyde was not only the first president of Ireland he was also the first president of Conor McGregor or the Gaelic League hi it may seem an unlikely figure to have played such a prominent role in the revival since he came from a Protestant and unionist background [Music] he may only lure them not fathom play giver for humming again really good about polity after eval of her bit if you in tall gal longer talk of my santosha Laura Laura in a mask Lera of the hood in Craven even the virulent Werdum kayla pressure his can't piano man [Music] there was a time when Irish was considered as the badge of ignorance and backwardness the Irish language of course had been the language of the majority of the Irish people right up until the famine and then the family this great catastrophe begins this process really whereby first of all the speakers of Irish are a lot of them have died and over decades you know millions of people are leaving and they are overwhelmingly Irish speakers so the language has been hammered and there's a widespread sense that this is a language which is going to become extinct douglas hyde was born in County Roscommon in 1860 the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman his family weren't wealthy or part of the landed gentry but they were the poor relations with the fringes of French Park this is Longford house in Kesari andthat's house he was born in 1860 and when he was seven he lived in Kill McCraney for the first seven years of his life and then when he was seven father was my director of this structure were in now in church but during those years he used to mix with the local people in the cottages and they were the ones that gave him the love of the Irish language hi it was a sickly child and was home-schooled by his father who taught him ancient Greek and Latin and he soon became fluent in both languages but it was a local gamekeeper and former Fenian Seamus Hart who sparked a love of the Irish language in the young height well be shame harsh a cobra second through gum there was c'mon and officer ericone er duelist ajita agus whether on Harlan a Fela Hoshi's rinds well-armored love Hey look I guess it's no cougar Reinhardt and a Skelton the high royal national cologne Yang's heard lad dude lost ahed Zach establish a honour hoods Oh heart busca hearts on gras via Dehesa son Sango Gaston holster Agrella I discovered hide kept detailed Diaries from an early age they recorded his first steps in learning Irish and also his adventures growing up in rural Roscommon more anagen void has studied Hinds Diaries in detail near I do Lhasa he's a Caribbean as egg - nor host Shh grieves fade Zealand ha and Chrissie Pashto more lush August or ox tree exuded socket or fear Graner or one who is shake ashram August be hostile why gaeilge Lara the winter no answer so lick share her hostel okay August knock Crowley in Vera agra agra sushi stalks its ocarina nara Shalem winter no honza do--she couplets off August a speeds inertia and valia aha unlock more lash so we shall spacial Nahas position at cloths is Elam Hyde was fascinated hearing the people in the locality speaking Irish the stories and folktales he heard fired his imagination and sparked something else in him you have this huge movement towards nationalism of Nicaea century and they don't really think about nationality just in territorial terms they think about language groups so the Germans are the people who speak German the Italians are the people who speak Italian so therefore the Irishman must be the people who speak Irish but hold on we're not speaking Irish we're speaking English therefore do we exist at all as a nation was a very strong extensional sense in the late 19th century that if your language goes you have no claim to be a separation [Music] when Hyde was 16 his mentor and friend died he was heartbroken Hyde Rosen is diary I can see no one from now on with whom I can enjoy friendship such as I enjoyed with you thrash the Heart Ball near Vasc to heat alum we turn a hacer afire Mesa mr. host Rena Kalish anger on Shailesh hey Nagas not crazy Carrie talk for a gain of laughs wing Serena do huh [Music] hide studied classics at Trinity College and went on to gain a PhD in law he maintained his interest in fluency in Irish by studying the language in his own time in 1880 he joined the Society for the preservation of the Irish language and began to publish his own poems Australian as well as translations of songs and ballets he used the pen name on creavy and even delightful little branch by which he became well known hi its arguments really is that Irishness consists primarily in the language that you can't have Irishness if you don't have the language so the revival of Irish isn't just a sort of abstract linguistic project it's actually a project about saying whether or not that this is such a thing as an Irish people in 1892 douglas hyde became the first president of the irish national misery society and delivered a speech called the necessity for d anglicize in ireland his speech was to have a far-reaching and profound effect on Irish cultural history Skeen secreta he'd Zig fraggers to worthy of you to samasta tear economics and chocolates povo on gan-chan or girl Cortina keen to make Zahra Lamia na Gaeilge hide speech is really an alarm call it's actually not about saying look we've got this lovely language why don't we revive her that's why don't we speakers it's actually saying we're right on the edge of the abyss culturally the language is going and if the language goes then since her culture goes everything that's wrapped up in the language all its memories all his meanings or the gum 1893 proved to be a critical year for Hyde he married Lucy Kurtz and they later went on to have two daughters Lula and ona he also published love signs of Qarth his most famous book it was based on balance he had heard as he traveled through Kunwar ha see do lusty he's a balloon and I are unsure nervy Shana vocal oke oke ascension severe up take notice the tree - a / Lowry it's the on chunker egg Maharaja air if we internet here economic assisted or she'd sorts well growin below kancho rave loads of Marvel econ Devore / August Tongass fresh and push grandma hi Ron Shaw denim courteous air Vulcan Akko perspective demands Quinta who her embark on suga more sessions are Coverity near New Gloucester he's a marsh grieve nor August exertion autocracy oh Yates later Gregorio kissing Royale air to heat up 1893 was also the year that the Gaelic League or Conor McGregor was founded was hide as its first president its purpose was not just to preserve but to revive the Irish language [Music] we're not Conan gaeilge a nowit's or son new changa we crave occur or footman Sierra goes where she's wrong in Agoura fall to smokin all Queenie Kamala Sheehan of course she's wrong in a dice wrong in a killer fall August's toka girl ad conan abuela the babe or hall vox on a whole tour away like this curse prog corner no gaeilge means you're in it's your show it's really target what really impresses me is that from the outset Hyde was adamant that the new organization would have no explicit political objective hide very much seize the Irish language and its revival as a way of creating a new era identity which transcends the sectarian division and the hope for Hyde is that this isn't just about reviving something in the past it's also true that revival about creating a better Ireland of the future Kurama gaily expanded forming branches nationwide including unionist parts of Ulster I was shocked to discover that the Belfast friendship community Alika the saddle and the bear spread Road here in East Belfast in 1895 so you know stone's throw away from where I live was the birth of the vales House grounds I never knew Linda Irvine comes from a staunch Lee loyalist background she's related to David Ervine former leader of the UVF despite her background she found inspiration in Hyde's life and work and like him has come to love the Irish language she now runs weekly Irish language classes he's been part of my Terrace of discovery and you know when I find out if I dug this hide and that he was a Protestant and you know one of the quotes from Doug was hide I just love where he said you know thank God the Irish language is neither Protestant or Catholic neither a unionist nor separatist you know that really resonates within me because that is what the language is it doesn't belong to one community doesn't stand for one political viewpoint it belongs dears all and for me the language has the potential to unite us not divide us the Irish Republican Brotherhood that will go on to become the Irish Republican Army held the opposite view they saw the language as a way to separate Ireland from Britain part of its strategy was to infiltrate and control a number of key nationalist cultural organizations if you were the IRB any movement which was tending towards the separation of Ireland from Britain was exactly where he wanted to be whatever that was doing whether it was land agitation whether it was the GAA or whether it was the Irish language movement salanas it had separatist implications then it was very useful to you Patrick Pearse became one of Hyde's IRB opponents in the league in 1913 Pierce wrote had I a chance of speaking after Hyde had produced his dough of peace I have always been careful to produce my sword and tantalize him by saying that the Gaelic League has brought to Ireland not peace but a sword so the IRB gradually began to infiltrate the Gaelic League and eventually there should push for the Gaelic League to adopt an explicitly separate sister gender pony to Gloucester heed Connor and Laguerre gum agree ox na ho bunts a key and the policy of Falcon sensibly needs a quick take vole Connor and aware good Zeroni politics a near idea he's a sauce solution inane her the conflict within the league reached a climax early in 1915 when IRB members drafted an amendment to rule 2 of the league's constitution inserting an unambiguous commitment to political separation from Britain Hyde was passionate in his opposition to any amendment never never for as long as the Gaelic League holds together and I find myself on a platform like this shove the pure light of the Irish language be trailed in the dust of any one faction or party or of politics at all he went on to lose the vote and at once resigned from the league Hyde's tragedy really was that he was never going to be as good a political operator on the Jace's a level of touring conspiratorial politics and getting people elected and running committees and getting control of organizations as the IRB where they were pretty experienced at this kind of stuff and in the end they saw him off most of the signatories of the Easter proclamation had been members of the Gaelic League but Hyde took no part in the rising in fact he strongly opposed us hide like a lot of cultural nationalists was pretty shocked by the Easter Rising I mean the Easter Rising was you know we have to remember how much of a minority movement it was most militant Irish nationalists did not think the Easter Rising was a good idea they thought that the principles of it were good but they they they saw it as an act of complete folly at that particular time Hyde was completely outside the loop he had no idea that this was coming and was deeply shocked completely discombobulated bias douglas hyde kept a diary during the easter rising and she describes the day when he is walking by and the tram is going from stephen's green to clonsky and the volunteers come and start shooting at the tram and all the people run off at screaming and are very nervous and agitated he also talks about the dead bodies one day he came to the 17 dead bodies and about the dead horses as well so it's fascinating to read and you can really visualize what was happening at the time through the eyes of Douglas I'd he was dismayed that some of the league's members such as Pierce had taken part even after the executions his view remained unchanged he thought their involvement had compromised Conor negate his work and wrote the league has been steered onto the rocks by fools as far as he was concerned the end result was as black as can be after the establishment of the Free State hide was appointed as a senator but he lost his seat in the next election it seems that he would end his days in academia surrounded by his books and friends as a professor of Irish at aucd however there was a different face in store for him in 1938 Ireland had just adopted a brand new constitution hide was almost 80 but he was asked to come out of retirement and serve as the country's first president [Music] it's not surprising that Hyde was chosen as the first president of Ireland's after the 1937 Constitution he had never become embroiled in sort of bitter Irish controversy he had tried to remain a very gentlemanly open kind of figure who was genuinely admired and liked that was important it was also important for the presidency that Hyde was Protestant the state was still very anxious to present herself even if the reality was somewhat different as a non-sectarian state as president he wanted to be seen as someone who represented both traditions [Music] shortly after his inauguration in 1938 he attended a soccer match between Ireland and Poland at dailymed Park despite being a patron of the GAA for 36 years hi it was expelled from the organization for contravening rule 27 of the GAA which forbade attendance at any so-called foreign game high this expulsion from the GA in many ways kind of dramatized the fact that even though he was being acknowledged as president as as a key founder of the state his vision of Ireland was still not one that Ireland officially was quite comfortable with it was still very much a Catholic sectarian state which saw Irish cultural nationalism as a part of its armoury rather than as a ground of which a much more complex open pluralistic kind of Ireland could be brought into being [Music] soon after he became president Douglas Hyde suffered a stroke this was typical of the man that he still tried to fulfill his duties the spices illness hide remained committed to carry out his role for the remainder of his term as author on the Heron there was one last controversy in heinz life his death in 1949 he was buried from san Patrick's Church of Ireland Cathedral [Music] however the Irish kabbalist did not attend the service which was forbidden by the Catholic Church at the time the sole exception was NOLA Brown the rest of the ministers waited in their state cars outside of the Protestant church the behavior of the Irish governments I mean at the funeral of the first president of the state the fact that they did not see fit to cross the threshold of a Protestant church to honor would of the key figures in the creation of modern Ireland is one of the great disgrace of the state and what they were saying essentially was that Hyde's vision of Ireland which which was a non-sectarian world was in fact not one they shared they were making a statement of both the states which was that it was essentially a Catholic state and that the demands of Catholicism and a very very narrow sectarian kind of Catholicism outweighed the demands of Irish republicanism which supposedly was a non-sectarian Creed in recent decades Ireland is beginning to catch up with some of Hyde's thinking room 27 of the GAA which forbade foreign games was abolished in the early 1970s and rule 21 which forbade anyone connected with the crown forces taking part in Gaelic games was scrapped just a few years ago Conor McGregor the Gaelic lead also abolished its explicit political agenda in 2008 the organisation embraced the non political status that Hyde had originally championed I mean high will be enormous ly disappointed with contemporary Ireland's because he saw that there would be no real distinctive Irish culture without the Irish language and he turned out to be wrong it turned out most Irish people were perfectly contented to have an Irish identity which did not include at least Irish as the vernacular language of the state but I think hides basic aspiration is still one that is really important and even more important than the Ireland awfully good Friday Agreement where are we now at least together have some sense that we need a pluralist identity well for me every word spoken in Gaelic is like a brick on the bridge that unites our the people you know hich man relation China it's mine that's my language and I didn't know that I've never been allowed to know that so I think it's important not to push about anybody's throat not to force it on anybody but sure don't and say you know it's here if you're interested and you want to come and learn but even just to know that's part of your environment your place names your own surnames the words that you use in the near everyday language you know what other country in the world the but you don't be allowed to know that Hansa he's a gomorrah l'm mark wanna go ahead august make lave nanny Ellen he said Guerrero's sores scream shimmery on Arrakis tree gran Barajas the famed winning a twin flesh off near who in a sooth no hey Elaine her vision Jessica scores you Lucas honk Oh loser Gomorrah leche agus varlam Satmar Hara egg jahida by any standards Douglas Hyde was a remarkable man a linguist a cultural activist a poet a scholar a dramatist and a teacher but perhaps his most important legacy was his basic sense of decency and tolerance and the breadth of his vision from which we can all still learn