OUR NEED
FOR RELIGIOUS
SINCERITY[1]
By W. B. YEATS
I
Some weeks ago, a Dublin friend of mine got through the post a circular from the Christian Brothers, headed 'A Blasphemous Publication', and describing how they found 'the Christian number of a London publication in the hands of a boy'—in the hands of innocence. It contained 'a horrible insult to God . . . a Christian Carol set to music and ridiculing in blasphemous language the Holy Family'. But the Editor of a Catholic boys' paper rose to the situation; he collected petrol, roused the neighbourhood, called the schoolboys about him, probably their parents, wired for a film photographer that all might be displayed in Dublin, and having 'bought up all unsold copies . . . burned them in the public thoroughfare'. However, he first extracted the insult—the burning was to be as it were in effigy—that he might send it here and there with the appeal: 'How long are the parents of Irish children to tolerate such devilish literature coming into the country?'
II
'The devilish literature' is an old Carol of which Dr. Hyde has given us an Irish version in his Religious
- ↑ The Irish periodical, which has hitherto published my occasional comments on Irish events, explained that this essay would endanger its existence. I have therefore sought publication elsewhere.—W.B.Y.
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