There were throughout the nineteenth century various short and ineffective attempts at a revival of Irish industries, but the first evidence of a sense of spiritual loss was the successful attempt in the eighties at a revival and strengthening of Irish games and athletics, which resulted in the removal of English games and athletics from the dominant position and their gradual decline to their proper position as the games of a Garrison. But the turning point of all modern Irish development was the foundation of the Gaelic League in 1893. That definitely and irrevocably, insignificant though it seemed at the time and for a long time, arrested the assimilating process, provided a last fortification, as it were, behind which the still unassimilated forces of the Nation gathered strength, and unity, and courage, and turned the mind of Ireland away from everything foreign and inward towards herself and her own concerns. There had always been in Ireland Archæological Associations and learned persons who studied Irish as a dead language, and there actually was in existence at the time the present "Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language": but the Gaelic League was a League of common men and women who took up Irish not for antiquarian or academical reasons, but because it was the national language of Ireland, and because they were convinced that Ireland would be irrevocably lost if she lost it. They were seers and enthusiasts, not archæologists, and in twenty years they had all Ireland, all Nationalist Ireland at any rate, behind their banner.
It would be difficult to over-emphasise the influence which the Gaelic League has had upon Ireland. It may be said with absolute truth that it stemmed the onflowing tide of assimilation to English civilisation, and not alone stemmed it but turned it back. Its fight for the Irish language reacted upon everything else in Ireland, set up influences, currents, out of nowhere, which fought firmly for this or that Irish characteristic, dinned into the ears of the people everywhere an insistence upon things Irish as apart from things foreign. And it gave the first great example of the support of a thing because it is Irish. The Gaelic Leaguer had, and has, many weapons in his armoury, and the reasons for the revival of Irish are many. But although in case of necessity he is prepared to justify the revival upon utilitarian grounds, upon philological grounds, and upon historical grounds, the chief weapon in his armoury is a sentimental one, being "[Gaelic: Ár dteanga féin]"--Our own language. That is the battle-cry which has appealed irresistibly to the man in the street, and the principle behind it, first enunciated as a fighting principle by the Gaelic League, has come to be applied to all Irish questions and practically to mould the thoughts of the present generation.