There was once a prominent Scottish-American minister, who was famed for the quality of his preaching. When other clergymen asked him how they might acquire his felicity with the spoken word, he would assume a mock-serious expression, raise an admonitory finger and reply with his musical Scottish burr, “You must be born again -– with an Irish grandfather.”

Oscar Wilde did not exaggerate when he said that the Irish are the greatest talkers since the Greeks. For proof, one need look no further than Great Irish Speeches, a new anthology of Irish eloquence, assembled by Richard Aldous, head of the history department of University College Dublin. It’s available from Amazon for $12.99.

Professor Aldous has selected 50 exceptional speeches by Irish political leaders, dating from the late 18th Century to the present. About a third of these speeches deal with Ireland’s struggle to become an independent nation; the rest deal with the struggle to determine what kind of an independent nation Ireland ought to be. That is a question that preoccupies the Irish people to this day.

Political questions are never simple in Ireland. Initially, there was the question of whether Irish patriots should pursue self-determination by constitutional means or by violence. So the speeches of statesmen –- Grattan, O’Connell and Parnell –- are counterpointed by the speeches of revolutionaries –- Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet and Patrick Pearse.

Pearse, who died before a British firing squad for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916, is represented by a fiery funeral oration that he gave the year before. “Life springs from death;” he exhorted his audience, “and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations … while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

Prophetic words. The quest for Irish freedom was further complicated by the fact that six counties in Northern Ireland, known as Ulster, had Protestant majorities. Protestant Irishmen asserted their own right to self-determination by demanding to remain part of Great Britain. “Ulster is not asking for concessions,” fulminated Sir Edward Carson in a 1914 speech against home rule for Ireland. "Ulster is asking to be let alone.”

Ulster remained part of Britain when the Irish Free State was established in 1921. But she was not let alone. She was plagued by bitter sectarian violence between the ruling Protestants and the insurgent Catholic minority for decades afterwards. Between 1966 to 2007, the period known as “the troubles,” over 3700 inhabitants of Northern Ireland lost their lives before peace was finally established. Professor Aldous’ anthology includes speeches by Bernadette Devlin, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley, leading figures of that era.

Meanwhile, the Republic of Ireland, despite having been born of revolution, settled down to being a notably conservative country over which the Catholic Church exercised vast sway. In 1925, the church demanded a total ban on divorce, which was technically available through the Irish senate. The poet William Butler Yeats, then a member of that body, replied with a furious speech warning of dire consequences if the church got its way. “If you show that this country, Southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Catholic ideas and Catholic ideas alone,” argued Yeats, “you will never get the North. You will create an impassable barrier between South and North, and you will pass more and more Catholic laws, while the North will, gradually, assimilate its divorce and other laws to those of England. You will put a wedge into the midst of this nation.”

Sixty years later, Irish deputy Des O’Malley was to make the case –- in almost identical terms and with equal lack of success -- for legislation to permit the sale of condoms without a prescription. His speech is included in the anthology, as is the 1986 speech on reform of the divorce laws by prime minister Garret FitzGerald –- a reform measure that also failed. It was not until 1990s that Ireland caught up with the sexual revolution. The sale of condoms was permitted, divorce became available and homosexual activity between consenting adults was decriminalized.

Intriguingly, Irish-American President John F. Kennedy played a subtle role in the gradual liberalization of Irish attitudes. When Kennedy visited in Ireland in June of 1963, the government still censored books found objectionable by the Catholic Church. Kennedy took advantage of the rapturous reception he received from the Irish people to send a message to the politicians. In his address to the Dail, the Irish parliament, he made a pointed reference to James Joyce, who was still considered a “dirty” writer by those in power.

The reference, moreover, came during one of the most heart-melting passages of a rhetorical masterpiece. On this occasion, Kennedy surpassed even himself:

Our two nations, divided by distance, have been united by history. No people ever believed more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the people of the United States. And no country contributed more to building my own than your sons and daughters. They came to our shores in a mixture of hope and agony, and I would not underrate the difficulties of their course once they arrived in the United States. They left behind hearts, fields and a nation yearning to be free. It is no wonder that James Joyce described the Atlantic as a bowl of bitter tears, and an earlier poet wrote, “They are going, going, going and we cannot bid them stay."

Kennedy concluded his speech with the line, “Ireland’s hour has come” –- a line that resonated so deeply with the Irish people that nearly a quarter-century later, prime minister Bertie Ahern would quote it when he was accorded the rare honor of addressing a joint session of the British Parliament.

Mr. Ahern’s speech ends this splendid anthology, and the concluding paragraph of his speech will end today’s post to this blog. Mr. Ahern said this:

Today I can say to this Parliament at Westminster, as John Kennedy said in Dublin, “Ireland’s hour has come.” It came, not as victory or defeat, but as a shared future for all. Solidarity has made us stronger. Reconciliation has brought us closer. Ireland’s hour has come: a time of peace, of prosperity, of old values and new beginnings. This is the great lesson and the great gift of Irish history. This is what Ireland can give to the world.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.