"...the Irish language is not worth knowing..." the real and present danger!

Several things stirred me during the Christmas period. Two interviews with poets, an article in the Irish Times and a blog article from the prolific keyboard of journalist Concubhar Ó Liatháin.

Irish fiction?

The first was a television interview conducted by Morning Ireland's Cathal Mac Coille with the vetern poet and writer, still happily with us, Máire Mhac an tSaoi. This was a delightful hour or so where both writer and interviewer truly understood each other and where, as far as one could see there a genuine but not restrictive respect, affection and understanding between the interviewer and interviewee. Difficult questions were asked and answered and there were some beautiful moments where this over eighty year old poet recited some of her poems as part of the programme.

The second interview was one of the late Nobel Lauriate, Séamus Heaney by Olivia O'Leary. Again this was a wonderful piece of radio this time in front of an audience and again the interviewer showed her knowledge and respect for the poet. One of her questions however pulled me up short. She was asking if he ever felt drawn into the English "niceness" (I think was the word she used!). This is the way in which she felt that the English tried to "own one." She then said that when she was a broadcaster with the BBC long ago, she was very conscious of the possiblity of loosing her "Irishness" which she identified as her accent. That she always insisted in pronouncing the "R" in "Arthur Scargill" the Irish way.

It struck me as sad that this intelligent woman would not have had this problem in asserting her Irishness had she been in full possession of that most identifiable and unique attribute of Irishness, the language. She would perhaps never have feared this sublimation into Englishness and been like, say the brodcaster from Llanelli's Hew Edwards, a stalwart of BBC News. I cannot imagine this would have occured to Máire Mhac an tSaoi in all her international appointments or to her interviewer.

Irish fiction?

An article in this weekend's Irish Times was on a visit to the Dublin Writers' Museum by Rosita Boland. She mentons that it is twenty years since she last visited the museum. She was puzzeled by one of the display cases. "There is the same seemingly random pairing of featured writers in certain display cases. Samuel Beckett and Máirtín Ó Cadhain share one such space. At first, I think it’s because they were both born in 1906, as the text panels note, but the audio guide informs me it’s because they both “chose not to write in English”.

That immediately struck a chord as Concuubhar Ó Liatháin in his iGaeilge blog, recently commented on a new laureate (Irish), which includes a payment of €150,000, to be be awarded to "what the Arts Council describes as “an outstanding fiction writer”, writing in the English language." I must say his somwhat acerbic comment expresses a view with which I wholeheartedly agree! Should the Irish taxpayers' money be spent in promoting English language fiction or is it possible that Irish fiction and fiction in Irish are not the same?

In a recent (and unique) hour-long interview on Raidío na Life (Irish) our Taoiseach stated that he asked the English Queen Elizabeth II, during her historic visit to Ireland, what she thought the greatest gift England had given Ireland. She replied, "The English language." The Taoiseach agreed with her and indeed, incredulously, admitted this in the broadcast. One wonders if he ever read the address delivered by Douglas Hyde, later first President of Ireland, in 1893. (Arguably without this address he would not be Taoiseach at all!) "I have often heard people thank God that if the English gave us nothing else they gave us at least their language. In this way they put a bold face upon the matter, and pretend that the Irish language is not worth knowing, and has no literature. But the Irish language is worth knowing, or why would the greatest philologists of Germany, France, and Italy be emulously studying it, and it does possess a literature, or why would a German savant have made the calculation that the books written in Irish between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries, and still extant, would fill a thousand octavo volumes."

Maybe we could all do with reading his short address to realise that "in Anglicising ourselves wholesale we have thrown away with a light heart the best claim which we have upon the world's recognition of us as a separate nationality."

Indeed the words of the Coimisinéir Teanga to the Oireachtas Committee last December (2013) could well be regarded as an echo: "As we begin to regain our economic sovereignty, it would be a travesty if we were to lose our linguistic sovereignty – a cornerstone of our cultural identity, heritage and soul as a nation. I believe this to be a clear and present danger." (Translation)

The fado & Protestant culture

There's an interesting article in today's (17 Aug 2010) Irish Times by Torlach Mac Con Midhe, Idir an Fado agus an cultúr Protastúnach (Irish) {Trans: Between the Fado and the Protestant culture}

An article by Alan Titley in the same paper started him thinking back to his youth when he travelled to Canada to study. Strangly enough his memory is not so much meeting and interacting with North Americans but with meeting those from South America, refugees from the fall of Allende in Chile, or from the "dirty war" in Argentina as well as Mexican, Venuzuelans, Columbians and Peruvians.

He found that these people enriched his experience far more than the dour North Americans. They were full of fun and energy. They were singing, dancing, eating, drinking, laughing (though the story at home was often tragic) and they played football. He found he could mix with them and that they respected him. He was able to sing "Ar an loing seo Phaidí Loingsigh" and recite "Tháinig long ó Valparaiso!" with out self consciousness. He could participate. He was welcomed.

One of the Argentinian girls, Rita, said to him, "You know, we have no friends among the Canadians! The only English-speaking friends we have are the Irish!" He notes that he had the same problem himself. There was no life or vigour to be found except in these exuberent Latins.

He reflects that in the recent past Irish emigrants have departed for the most part to the English speaking dominions and former colonies. However prior to that they went to the countries of Southern Europe. Though we are an Atlantic people rather than a Mediterranean, although we share that with the Portuguese, we have a "Catholic" tradition in common.

He muses that the empires sent colonists to their territories, and they either decimated the original populace leaving the descendants of the colonists in power. However in Ireland something else happened. The empire made colonists of the native people. They were gifted with the language and culture of the British. They were colonists in their own land. But at the same time it is impossible to deny that there are still "native traits" to be found in these colonists. For this reason they are a split, divided people in themselves.

He quotes Faust “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust,” (Alas, Two souls reside in my breast!). We have the soul of the colonist and that of the Gael in our breast and they do not sit well with each other.

He concludes with a stark question. "I believe that this is sometimes realised by the Irish language community (lucht na Gaeilge) but I wonder is it appreciated by the English speakers!"
By the way the Fado, in the article title, is a type of music from Portugal, learned, understood and appreciated by the author, not a million miles away from our own Sean-Nós styles. (see pic)