Founded in 1893, the Gaelic League gave birth to a cultural patriotism in Ireland similar to that experienced throughout contemporary Europe, citing a national language as evidence of a nation's right to independence and statehood. Under fi rst President Dr Douglas Hyde, the League sought to revive the Gaelic language and culture of Ireland. Largely confi ned to a minority of speakers to the northwest (Connaught) and the southwest (Munster) of the island, the League raised the plight of the language to national awareness, while stimulating renewed interest in the Irish nationalist cause.

Before the League's formation, Irish language and culture played little part overall in the ambitions of Irish separatists. As R. V. Comerford suggests, outside a few cultural societies and patriotic reading club members, the language mattered little to late nineteenth-century republicans. For instance:

[T]here was no Fenian policy on language, other than an implicit assumption that English was and would remain the language of power and politics in Ireland.The movement's newspaper, the Irish People (Dublin 1863–6) had displayed very little explicit interest in any aspect of cultural nationalism, although the editor, John O'Leary, was later to claim credit for service to that cause by his ruthless exclusion of reams of bad patriotic verse submitted by readers.