Last Saturday – Lá Dearg

I was on the Lá Dearg demonstration last Saturday, and felt a bit of a fraud. As some of you know and are maybe sick hearing, I spent the greater part of my life fearing and detesting the Irish language. That’s because my teachers during my teen years tended to have big fists and I had a low boredom threshold – a combination which spelt  disaster. For five years I failed every Irish exam that was put in front of me (with one exception), and spent the next forty-five years feeling hostile to those intent on promoting the language. The very sight of those old barbed-wire letters was enough to depress me. Then due to a number of factors I saw how self-defeating this grudge-bearing was, and I’ve been trying to catch up ever since.

But while my stumbling cupla focal made me feel inadequate on Saturday, I could do nothing but admire the energy and positivity of the (largely young) people who had organized it. Not that they were all young – there were oldies like myself, middle-aged people, people in their twenties, teenagers and infants. There was even a dog wearing an Acht na Gaeilge t-shirt.

I’m hopeless at estimating numbers,  but I’d be very surprised if Saturday’s Lá Dearg wasn’t counted in the thousands. In front of Belfast City Hall, under the stoney gaze of Queen Victoria, we were reminded that the Irish language had been politicized a couple of centuries ago when, as colonist rulers do, Irish people were penalized for using their own language. The speaker on Saturday didn’t say it but I will: they did such a good job there are many Irish people who still see the Irish language as pointless. What they mean is it isn’t a utilitarian tool. But then neither is poetry or art or music or…let’s face it, most of the things that make life worth living.

We are enormously fortunate to have a native language that is subtle, melodious and carries a whole way of thinking about the world. We are equally fortunate to have so many young people who are enthusiastic about speaking the language, keen to offer its delights to those who are doubtful. Note I said “offer”. That’s where the generation who taught me went wrong – they cared so desperately about the language, they thought they’d better beat it into us. For many that worked, for me it had the opposite effect.

I came home from Saturday’s march  foot-sore. (Do you realize HOW FAR it is from the Culturlann on the Falls Road to City Hall?). I also came home feeling optimistic about the Irish language’s future prospects. It is time those who signed up to the St Andrew’s Agreement delivered on their promise of an Irish language Act. And it’s time those who are hostile to the revival of the language stopped seeing it as anything other than a magical gift  passed down the centuries to us. Besides, joining a Bun Rang – Beginners’ class – is huge fun, especially at Belfast’s Cluain Árd. And fun drives out fear every time.