"Graduates in Irish to whom I have spoken claim not to have been pressured ever to read a single line written by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, arguably the finest Irish-language fiction writer ever. Imagine an English-language graduate never having read a line of Shakespeare, a Spanish graduate who had not read Cervantes!"

- Mac Síomóin, Broken Harp

Would add also Diarmaid Ó Súilleabháin (2nd pic) and Mícheàl Ó hAirtnéide. When someone thinks of Irish writers, they think of Yeats and Cosmopolitan James Joyce Both wrote in English. Both Half Anglo. Why do people ignore Irish writers? Why doesn't the education system give them any appreciation?

Like how Seathrún Céitinn in his Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (Foundation of knowledge on Ireland) describes Ireland as "domhan beag innti féin”- a small world in itself.

Fits well with historic Gaelic mentality of understanding Ireland as a whole civilisation with a vast past.

"Easter Week brought the stirring memories to a sharp point. A sudden rush of self-realisation brought the nation back to the attitude of 220 years ago, the normal attitude of race-consciousness. Now, as then, the nation knows itself to be the true owner of this island."

Aodh De Blácam, 𝗧𝗼𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 : 𝗔 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗜𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱'𝘀 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗶𝗺𝘀 (1918)

"The postman brought us the story...He said that Dublin City was one huge fire and the big guns of the Foreigner battering it and the fragrant blood of the Irish being spilled.

'The Irish are awake again,' said he, 'and the people are stirred as I never saw them'."

Peig Sayers, Machnamh Seanmhná, 1939.

[Ní raibh mé in ann an leagan Gaeilge a aimsiú.]

"After the Rising there was in Ireland, as everyone knows, a sense of spiritual exaltation....Through them the past had become alive, visible to us all. The warriors of old - the O’Neills, the O’Donnells, the O’Sullivans - they rode the land again, and Tone and Emmet were speaking in every ear, and with them, the nameless dead that had fought and died in the same fight...Vision! - the land was swept with it - our lives were dazzled: we lived nobler."

From Daniel Corkery's "Seamus", one of the short stories in his 1920 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗯𝗮 collection.

"Let us not be ashamed that gunshots are heard in our streets. Let us rather be glad. For force is, after all, the opposite of sluggishness. It is an intensity of movement, of motion. And motion is the opposite of death...ours is the wild tumult of the unchained storm."

Liam O'Flaherty, Letter to the Irish Statesman, 18th Oct. 1924