Sally
Bavage writes:
Our
partnership event with the Irish Arts Foundation on Friday 2 March was a double
bill which promised to be entertaining and thought-provoking – what the LitFest
always aims for - and we were not disappointed.
Father
O’Malley, I imagined, would be a
frailish man in his eightieth year.
Not a bit of it! He gave us a feisty view of the history of the movement
to preserve the Irish language since the end of the Middle Ages, spiced up with
recollections and anecdotes of his own part in its preservation. He had subtitled his account of the
rise and fall of the speaking of Gaelic as “the dream of the Gaelic League”,
founded at the end of the nineteenth century after three centuries of decline,
and “the reality of failed twentieth century government initiatives and
minuscule funding” leading to Gaelic having an uncertain future in contemporary
Ireland.
As early as the sixteenth century, the poet Brian Ó
Gnimh was speaking about being adrift on a rising tide of English which reduced
his words to the lonely call of seabirds:
I am the guillemot, the English the sea.
Reasons
for the decline were many: Cromwell, colonisation by the English, some of whom
insisted their labourers and their families spoke English, the Great Potato
Famine, lack of employment opportunities ... all conspired to confine Gaelic speaking to outlying areas,
in some cases within a generation. Although the Gaelic League made good
progress up to 1916, speaking the native language also fed the aspirations of
the republican freedom movement, which led to government support being
mealy-mouthed and inconsistent.
Father
O’Malley gave us an entertaining account of his part in the setting up of a
pirate radio station that confronted those who said it was technically
impossible. Quite a turbulent
priest indeed. Now there are
thriving TV and radio stations which broadcast in Gaelic. Forty years ago,
those who refused to pay a licence for English-only broadcasts only in English
were jailed. However, in uncertain
economic times, the progressive strategy to support the acquisition and the use
of the native language is in doubt.
Irish
literature is published by two key publishing houses, who provide volumes of
stories, short stories and poetry, and who support modern young poets as well
as more traditional forms. The
Queen spoke in Gaelic in 2011 on her visit to the country, which has given a
fillip to the movement determined to hold back the tide of cultural
globalisation through TV, radio and news media that threatens to swamp the
resurgence of Ireland’s native language. Food for thought indeed.
For the
second half of the evening we were delightfully entertained by Dylan Bible on
guitar and Amanda Fardy’s vocals as they explored traditional themes of life,
love and loss using some modern interpretations of old Irish airs. It was Trad meets Blues meets Burt
Bacharach through haunting melodies and piercing words.
A truly
enjoyable evening exploring the voices of Ireland! If the definition of an elegy is ‘mourning
or expressing sorrow for that which is irrecoverably past (and you like to play
upon words) then our evening was Gaelic to elegiac – almost.
Below,
Father O’Malley
