There’s been a series of letters in the London TIMES recently for and against the teaching of Welsh in Wales. One letter from Dublin asserted that the Irish State had spent countless millions on the promotion of the Irish Language. Anyone conversant with the Irish State should know that its Department of Finance, inherited from the British, was for decades a penny-pinching obstacle to development and every farthing it spent accounted for. The most parsimonious of its Finance Ministers (from 1923 to 1932) was Earnan de Blaghd, infamous for taking a shilling off the Old Age Pension. De Blaghd was, arguably, the cabinet minister most devoted to promoting the Irish Language in the history of the State. He should also be remembered as the Finance Minister responsible for funding the Shannon Hydroelectric scheme (1923-1927) the world’s largest for its time, and ensuring that the Contractors, Siemens, completed it within the their quotation. It should also be recorded in de Blaghd’s favour, that when the scheme was completed he was offered a bung by Siemens , which he rejected with scorn. Blaghd will also be remembered for his harshness during the Civil War and his involvement with Blueshirt Fascism, but it is only fair that the good he did is counted in any assessment of his life. It is sad that ignorant Irishmen, ignorant of Irish history and Irish language should feel it necessary to augment the Philistine forces of cultural genocide in Wales.
If the state revenue derived from Irish Whiskey was devoted to the language, the tongue might have been better served.
De Blaghd was an intriguing character: an Ulsterman who favoured Munster Irish. A cultured man whose artless reign at the Abbey Theatre is still referenced with horror by authors and actors alike. Still, his biographies ‘Trasna na Bóinne’ and ‘Gaeil Á Múscailt’ are interesting works with a real insight into how the Protestants of East Ulster came to endorse Unionism so overwhelmingly. Translations are overdue.
The enigmatic importance of a big-hitter like Earnán de Blaghd reminds one what a sitter was missed by the current Blue-shirted, Red Sox Prime Minister of the Free Southern Stateen.
An open goal beckoned and what does Leo Vee go and do? Hoof the rounded opportunity a mile wide and high, clean out of the ball park.
In short, there was another Blythe Spirit from the Wee North just waiting for the nod and the title of: Aire na Gaeilge / Minister for Irish.
It would have been a doddle to speed the appointment of Linda Ervine (for it is she !) through the Doll’s House that is Dáil Éireann. As doddly even as speeding the cast-ironic guarantee of a couple of squillion squids to underwrite the 8-country World Cup of Rugga, 2023 through the same august assembly in early July, 2017.
There is a precedent, in the shape of the Maria Cahill girl.
First Seanadóir Linda, and then – bilingo ! – Aire Linda.
What a fluttering among the blind-sided, pigeon-toed politicians there would have been ! Such larks!
In a stroke the Pink Room of Amharclann Náisiúnta / Abbey Theare could have been restored to its natural hue, and renamed the Green Room. And that’s just for starters.
But of course Leo Vee is mistakenly taken by the monominded media as a man of wit rather than, what he actually is, a man of width. The Leo, the neo-Notice Box Number One has more profoundly important matters of polity on his wide-boy mind. Like, f’rinstance, choosing the colour of his socks of a morning.
Besides, the moribund monominded media (the sad news broke yesterday that the circulation figures of the Sindo – see the Maria Cahill girl above- are plummetting at the same precipitous rate as those of The Unionist Times) would be gobsmacked into hack silence. Their daily banner headline –
-DUB says YES ! to DUP.
-would be well and truly nutmegged by the bootleg appointement of the Blythe Spirit that is Linda Ervine.
Instead of a Skylark over the Liffey the monoglot media give us – a Newt.
In 1812, Percy B. Shelley spent some time in Ireland to make, amongst other things, a pilgrmage to the Church of St. Michan’s where a hero of his was believed to be buried, Robert Emmet. Percy B. could well be seen as the Jeremy C. of his time, one who gave it welly to the Establishment.. And every bit as reviled by the oxymorons of the orthodox media.
Alas, Leo Vee has seen to it that the Only English-only National Theatre still in the EU , amongst every other isntitution of state in the Free Southern Stateen aka John Bull’s Udder Island, will never get to pose the following rhetorical question, re Linda Eee of Bóthar Bhaile Nua na hArda:
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
There would be whingers in the southern demi state who would object that ‘s Ervine doesn’t pay tax in same state.
And when we finally get to vote on elections in the 26, she would be returned with a massive majority!.
Small but important point. Linda, though a unionist, is not a DUP. supporter. A rare thing in unionism, a gracious tolerant and broadminded lady. Go néirigh leí.