Gaelic League

Irish organization founded in 1893 to promote the use of the Irish language. Established by a Protestant academic, Douglas Hyde, a Catholic intellectual, Eoin MacNeill, and a Catholic priest, Fr Eugene O'Growney of Maynooth, the Gaelic League successfully halted the decline in the use of Irish by organizing language classes and social events, and establishing the language as a subject taught widely in national schools.

The movement was initially confined to an urban-based bourgeois intellectual elite but grew in popularity in the early 20th century to form part of what became known as the cultural nationalist movement. Although ostensibly non-political, the Gaelic League sought to promote a distinctive Irish national identity based on the revival of Gaelic culture. In both practical and ideological respects, it provided important support to the militant nationalists who would later organize the Easter Rising in 1916 and the Irish Civil War (1922–23).