Pádraig Pearse’s well-known catch-phrase ‘A country without a language is a country without a soul’ still rings true and many have taken these words to heart and devoted their time and energy to making the Irish language a living language. Pearse and others in his day wanted to alert the people to the importance of recovering our own native Gaelic language for the spiritual well-being of the nation. The language was about the soul of the nation –that which makes a nation distinctive and culturally rich. Speaking your own language defined your identity more than anything else and also linked you to the rich tradition of Gaelic culture in Ireland and in the Celtic countries. Pearse wrote in the Irish language. He founded St Enda’s, an Irish language school, in Rathfarnham in south Dublin. The cultural revival that began in the 1880s and early 1900s with the Gaelic League was key to reviving the national consciousness of a people badly bruised and demoralised after the Famine of the 1840s and 1850s.
The Irish cultural revival has today become an important part of the new national consciousness after the years of struggle and suffering in the north of the country. Many of us learned Irish in school and spent time in the Donegal Gaeltacht learning to speak in the native idiom but we have not done much to promote or speak the language on a daily basis. It is used only occasionally. Great efforts have been made in some places to revive the use of Irish in everyday conversation. Great efforts have been made to promote the Irish language among the young people through the setting up of Naoinraí and Gaelscoileanna in many parishes in the north.
Since 1970 there has been an amazing revival in the Irish language in Belfast and Derry. The Gaelscoileanna have played a crucial role in this as has the dedication of some committed people. The Irish revival might be said to have begun with a group of Gaeilgeoiri in Shaw’s Road in Belfast who set up their own Gaelscoil and their own little Gaeltacht where people spoke to one another in the native tongue. The revival of the language as a spoken language since then is often attributed to the ex-prisoners who learned and spoke the language in the jails and when released began to promote the language in their own native areas. This is indisputable.
However, it would be wrong to associate the Irish language with one section of the community – those from the Catholic or nationalist tradition. The Irish language belongs to all and many from the Protestant tradition have done much to promote and revive the Irish language.
The Irish language is being actively promoted in five of the six counties – Antrim, Down, Derry and Armagh and Tyrone. Little has been happening in Fermanagh outside of Lisnaskea. There does not appear to be the same interest or enthusiasm for speaking the Irish language in Fermanagh, as is the practice elsewhere in the six counties. It is difficult to understand. Fermanagh people have been to the fore in the resistance to injustice and discrimination. Fermanagh people have not taken on the Irish language revival in the same way that many in other counties in the north have done.
Fermanagh needs to begin to take our native language seriously. The Council could do a lot more. The local media could do more. People interested in the Irish language and culture in the county need to work together on this issue even if they disagree politically. We can agree to disagree about other issues while focussing on recovering the Irish language and using it at every opportunity. The survival of the Irish language is more important than any political beliefs. We also need the help, advice and support of others who have been successful in reviving the use of the Irish language in conversation. All offers of help would be gratefully appreciated. I am hoping this blog might provoke a discussion within and outside the county.
People bemoan that unionists/protestants do not, as a whole, wish to embrace the language at best, the truth being there is a hostility to it.
There are many reasons for hat, as we know. Most of them based on falsehoods even though saying that will not help the matter at all.
I would suggest that the nationalist/Catholic people have also fell into the trap of falseness regarding the language.
This is epitomised by claiming it to be Irish. It is not. at least not exclusively so. Which is my point. IF you call the language Irish you are subliminally sending out a message, this is ours keep off. Better to use the term Gaelic. After all you do not call the language when spoken in Alba Scottish, do you? (Granted you call the language when, rarely, spoken in the Isle of Man, Manx.)
Now if we started calling the language Gaelic, and if we wish to differentiate between the dialects by having them named as East Ulster, West Ulster, North Connaught, South Connaught or whatever so be it, but at least we are being true to those in the past who spoke it.
We thus would be inclusive and also, on a wider scale, acknowledging the true status of a language that once was spoken across two countries and a lordship.
No need to be as exclusive as the Ulster Scoots movement is,, we are better than that.
Ná déan dearmad, tagann gach maith le cairde. San oideachas atá eochair na faidhbe.
Isn’t it Strange that when you visit the graves in a Gaeltacht area the headstone inscriptions are nearly all in English? I blame this entirely on the clergy who encouraged the use of English in all official documents because Gaelic nomenclature might appear backward to outsiders. They were the ones who insisted that all church documents were written in English (after Latin was dropped) and encouraged the people to drop their ‘Ó’ and ‘Mac’. Of course their role models were the landlords and the English speaking civil servants. Anybody who feels the least bit of loyalty to the Gaelic should embark on a journey. Find out the proper spelling of your name and change it back from the slave version. This is not expensive nor complicated. Find out the proper spelling of your address and use it. By such small steps will we be eventually reGaelicized. Of course some clergy are and were a magnificent exception to this practice.
In Armagh city, the cathedral city as its sometimes called, has a cathedral complete with Irish inscriptions on its walls. I bet you can’t guess which cathedral it is? Here’s a clue. It isn’t the R.C cathedral. It has a shop!
KIng James VI of Scotland and 1 of Great Britain called the Gaelic of Scotland “the Irish Language.” The language had come to “Scotland” from Ireland. In the Miiddle Ages ,in Latin,
Scotia Major meant Ireland and Scotia Minor “Scotland.” Duns Scotus was from Ireland.
I’m an Irishman and identify as “Eireannach.” I don’t think of myself as a “Gael” or a “Celt.”
The term “Celt” appears to have been coined in the 18th Century.
I don’t think Pearse invented “Tir gan teanga, tir gan anam” but adopted the slogan.
There is evidence of the use of the use of the word “keltoi” by the Greek historian and sceptic philosopher, (there are a few left) Hecataeus in 517 BC. Barry Cunliffe in The Celts – A Very Short Introduction (2003) points out that Edward Lhuyd (1660 – 1709) published the first volume of Archaeologia Britannica: an Account of the Languages, Histories and Customs of Great Britain, from Travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland and Scotland. The term “celtic” was used regularly by Lhuyd in order to reference a distinctive identity.
Fr Mc Veigh
Apart from the blog above,what steps have you taken in Fermanagh to encourage its population to learn Irish?Have you approached the local secondary schools or the South West college to run night classes?Pious aspirations on Jude’s blogspot are hardly enough if you are really serious about stimulating interest in the language.
The importance attached to ex-prisoners in promoting the revival of the language is over-egging the pudding. Many who have no truck with political revolution, have worked assiduously at promoting an teanga. Indeed, such assertions serve to deter some in the broad, Irish community from engagement. I am currently on holiday in Gaoth Dobhair and it was a joy to meet a school group from Ballygawley yesterday evening who were there to enrich their liofacht.
The notion that the Irish language movement in Belfast only began in the 1970s is seriously wrong, to put it mildly. This assertion is nonsense: ‘The revival of the language as a spoken language since then is often attributed to the ex-prisoners who learned and spoke the language in the jails and when released began to promote the language in their own native areas. This is indisputable.’
Conradh na Gaeilge witnessed major growth in the north in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1942, when Conradh na Gaeilge celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, Belfast was host to many events – in halls and clubs, but also in the streets and parks. My own father gave a series of open-air classes at the band-stand in the Falls Park.
Furthermore, not to mention the role of Cluain Ard in Belfast is a serious ommision. People like Alf Ó Murchú, Albert Fry, Joe Mitchell etc etc were the real heroes in promoting Irish in Belfast. Cluain Ard had many protestant learmers at classes before the Troubles. Not to mention a clear policy of separating love of language from political agendas. Then the Workers Educational Association had Irish classes during the 70s, taught by my father. And so on, and so on.
MATHAIR TEANGA / MOTHER TONGUE
For far too long the male has been the top banana
Where the females prop Fear Manach / Fermanagh
Geill sli , Buachaill on Eirne
Fair play to maidenhair fern
Let him make way for lakeside Alannah agus Hannah.