Speaking Together

Cathal G O hAinle, School of Irish, Trinity College Dublin

The bond of a common linguistic heritage and culture that united Ireland and Scotland in the past, raises in the mind, which is informed by a sense of history, the hope that in the future our two countries may be capable of concerted action for their own good and for the good of Europe and indeed of the world. For our common heritage was on the one hand particular to ourselves and on the other was also profoundly European.

Independent Ireland has for a number of generations been engaged, at government level and through non-government organisations, in action in support of human rights on the world stage. I would dearly wish to see Scotland, which has a glorious record of intellectual achievement, empowering itself through its newly-established Parliament to join with Ireland in such action in the future.

Gaelic Ireland and Scotland have for more than a generation been working more closely together for the mutual benefit of our languages, literature and cultures. The long-standing exchange visits by poets and musicians; bilingual radio programmes such as Raidio na Gaeltachta's Sruth na Maoile; television programmes portraying aspects of one another's heritage; interaction between our university departments at conferences; in ventures such as the Irish Scottish Academic Initiative and the Higher Education Authority-funded Irish Scottish Research Project at Trinity College Dublin and in Aberdeen University's Research Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies - all of these give me grounds for hoping that the support of our two parliaments for Gaeilge and Gadhlig, together with EU support for them as "lesser-used" languages, will ensure that the gloomy predictions about the future of our two languages will be proved wrong, and that instead they will grow together and survive to add their own special colour to the tapestry of European and world languages, literatures and cultures.

Edwin Morgan, Poet

The artificiality of millenniums does not preclude Scottish and Irish writers from feeling themselves, with the usual mixture of joy, apprehension and responsibility, caught in a vortex of change which is both cultural and political. Scotland's imperfect political existence is a spur to something more complete, and indeed many on the world's stage wonder why we have not taken that further step already. No doubt writing is writing and politics is politics, but there is, among Scottish writers at least, an absence of faintheartedness which encourages these islands to keep evolving and to be unafraid to forge new links within the parameters of the strong individuality of the parts.

Seamus Heaney, Irish Poet and Nobel laureate

When the Irish first crossed the Sea of Moyle, they were known as the "Scoti", and it's hard not to see this as prophetic of the new Irish/Scottish convergence. Nowadays, in the literary and cultural spheres, there is an increasing awareness of common endeavours, parallel aims and mutually fortifying achievements. Writers once thought of as local - Robert Burns, Brian Merriman - have been recognised as part of world literature; the names of Hugh MacDiarmid and James Joyce, W B Yeats and Sorley Mac Lean, signify epoch-making artistic achievement. Ceol mor and seannos are echoing off the satellites. Much that was battened down is regenerating itself. Indomitably, wi' the haill voice.