Week ending June 26th 2012
The recent appearance of the Republic of Ireland soccer team in the European championships in Poland and Ukraine sent many of us back down memory lane to those great weeks in June 1988 when the Boys In Green took part in their only other European championship. It was a glorious time in more ways than the football. The sun shone for a couple of weeks as if summer would never end. I was a curate in the Aran Island of Inis Meain at the time and the only bailout in sight was the water you would bail out of the bottom of a currach when fishing for mackeral. A West German filmcrew stayed three weeks on the island making a documentary on the European periphery. Note that I wrote ‘West’ Germany. The Iron Curtain still stood, or hung, as the case may be, and Angela Merkel was only a slip of a girl.
The relative disappointment at Ireland’s performance in a very difficult group this time masks the fact that The Republic did not get out of their group that other time either. Beating England and Ronnie Whelan’s goal against The Soviet Union (remember them) gave us our moral victories in the tournament. Life went on. The German filmcrew deliberately arrived a minute late for an appointment and laughed at the notion that they were “becoming Irish.” They arranged to have an interview with Archbishop Joseph Cassidy when he would visit the Island for confirmation. My focus switched to preparations for that ceremony as well as visiting the beach for a swim and a sunburn in the evenings.
I had written a fairly controversial novel a number of years earlier, “Súil Le Breith,” Cló Chonamara 1983 which dealt with a story not unlike that which came to light with regard to Archbishop Éamon Casey some years later. The Germans were aware of that. It seemed as if they hoped to figuratively nail the Archbishop to the door of the church in the way Martin Luther had nailed up his famous articles. They did not reckon with the sophisticated communicator who faced them. Archbishop Cassidy disarmed them with a smile and a short phrase: “I loved the book.” He continued: “A very human story…” and within a minute they were eating out of his hand. It did me no harm either to have my book endorsed by my Archbishop.
It is hard to believe now how quickly those twentyfour years have flown. Charlie Haughey and Margaret Thatcher were at the height of their powers. I remember writing a scetch a few years later when it looked as if the long promised Gaeltacht TV station would take another hundred years to deliver. Charlie and Maggie were still there, their longevity due to ‘angel dust,’ a subject prominent in the news at the time. There were only two native speakers of Irish left to welcome the new station. As it happened the TV station that became TG4 was delivered some time later and has gone from strength to strength, in the process training many who have become very successful broadcasters in other stations. The biggest change since those years, and the one which has earned eternal credit for all who helped bring it about, is the peace process. The great political problems we have now are dwarfed by those we had then. Political will and hard work can solve the financial ones too.
The relative disappointment at Ireland’s performance in a very difficult group this time masks the fact that The Republic did not get out of their group that other time either. Beating England and Ronnie Whelan’s goal against The Soviet Union (remember them) gave us our moral victories in the tournament. Life went on. The German filmcrew deliberately arrived a minute late for an appointment and laughed at the notion that they were “becoming Irish.” They arranged to have an interview with Archbishop Joseph Cassidy when he would visit the Island for confirmation. My focus switched to preparations for that ceremony as well as visiting the beach for a swim and a sunburn in the evenings.
I had written a fairly controversial novel a number of years earlier, “Súil Le Breith,” Cló Chonamara 1983 which dealt with a story not unlike that which came to light with regard to Archbishop Éamon Casey some years later. The Germans were aware of that. It seemed as if they hoped to figuratively nail the Archbishop to the door of the church in the way Martin Luther had nailed up his famous articles. They did not reckon with the sophisticated communicator who faced them. Archbishop Cassidy disarmed them with a smile and a short phrase: “I loved the book.” He continued: “A very human story…” and within a minute they were eating out of his hand. It did me no harm either to have my book endorsed by my Archbishop.
It is hard to believe now how quickly those twentyfour years have flown. Charlie Haughey and Margaret Thatcher were at the height of their powers. I remember writing a scetch a few years later when it looked as if the long promised Gaeltacht TV station would take another hundred years to deliver. Charlie and Maggie were still there, their longevity due to ‘angel dust,’ a subject prominent in the news at the time. There were only two native speakers of Irish left to welcome the new station. As it happened the TV station that became TG4 was delivered some time later and has gone from strength to strength, in the process training many who have become very successful broadcasters in other stations. The biggest change since those years, and the one which has earned eternal credit for all who helped bring it about, is the peace process. The great political problems we have now are dwarfed by those we had then. Political will and hard work can solve the financial ones too.
Week ending June 19th 2012
One of the things which really gets on my goatee is to see rich and famous Irish literary, film and artistic types claiming that all is well in the Arts/Literary world. Church State and Banks should be ashamed of themselves, they tell us, but the secular saints have gone out there and done us proud Aren’t they great? Most of them are, but they are so far out of touch with the realities of the majority of people who are involved in the arts that they seem to belong to a different world. I recently saw a young artist on TV who is living on five thousand euro a year. He didn’t mind He put up with it because he was personally fulfilled. Compare that with those who don’t miss a couple of million euro, or whose money is stashed away abroad for tax reasons.
Some of our leading artists self congratulated to an international audience in Farmleigh last year, and they appeared again on a recent TV programme which celebrated forty years of Listowel Writer’s week - RTÉ’s “Making Magic Happen”. Listowel and its people deserved all the plaudits they were given, but the show was stolen by writers from Dublin and Wexford who loudly clapped themselves on the back for their literary successes. Listowel and Kerry writers such as John B Keane, Bryan McMahon and Brendan Keneally got little more than a mention. The most famous Kerry writers of them all, the Blasket Islanders with international appeal and reputation, Tomás Ó Criomhtháin, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin and Peig Sayers were completely ignored, while little legends in their own lunchtimes proclaimed Irish literary and artistic successes.
I was so annoyed that I penned a letter to The Irish Times to point out the realities of life for those who do not belong to the priveleged coterie at the top of the literary pyramid. Needless to say my letter was not published, at least up until the time of writing this. Censorship rules OK? That miught be a little harsh but I thought one of my better lines might be worth repeating, which is why I quote it here: “Censorship is as alive and unwell as it ever was, but church and state can not be blamed this time.” There have been a number of programmes recently about censorship in the fifties and sixties which assume that censorship no longer exists. Tell that to anyone who lives in the real world but is not on the inside track, who wants to have a book published or even reviewed in any of our selfstyled quality newspapers.
I have had five books published in the past two years, two in Irish, two in Bulgarian and one in English. Publishers have sent copies to “all the usual suspects,” by which I mean national newspapers, RTÉ, TV3. They never got a look in. Granted Irish language magazines and radio stations reviewed them, but I would expect all home produced books to receive equal consideration, whatever language they are written in or whatever the occupation of the writer. I hesitate to accuse media outlets of secular sectarian bigotry, anticlericalism or anti-Catholicism, but there is much evidence to suggest it. The big buzzword that came from the inquiries into the way Father Kevin Reynolds was libelled by RTÉ was ‘groupthink’ There seems to be lots of it around still.
Some of our leading artists self congratulated to an international audience in Farmleigh last year, and they appeared again on a recent TV programme which celebrated forty years of Listowel Writer’s week - RTÉ’s “Making Magic Happen”. Listowel and its people deserved all the plaudits they were given, but the show was stolen by writers from Dublin and Wexford who loudly clapped themselves on the back for their literary successes. Listowel and Kerry writers such as John B Keane, Bryan McMahon and Brendan Keneally got little more than a mention. The most famous Kerry writers of them all, the Blasket Islanders with international appeal and reputation, Tomás Ó Criomhtháin, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin and Peig Sayers were completely ignored, while little legends in their own lunchtimes proclaimed Irish literary and artistic successes.
I was so annoyed that I penned a letter to The Irish Times to point out the realities of life for those who do not belong to the priveleged coterie at the top of the literary pyramid. Needless to say my letter was not published, at least up until the time of writing this. Censorship rules OK? That miught be a little harsh but I thought one of my better lines might be worth repeating, which is why I quote it here: “Censorship is as alive and unwell as it ever was, but church and state can not be blamed this time.” There have been a number of programmes recently about censorship in the fifties and sixties which assume that censorship no longer exists. Tell that to anyone who lives in the real world but is not on the inside track, who wants to have a book published or even reviewed in any of our selfstyled quality newspapers.
I have had five books published in the past two years, two in Irish, two in Bulgarian and one in English. Publishers have sent copies to “all the usual suspects,” by which I mean national newspapers, RTÉ, TV3. They never got a look in. Granted Irish language magazines and radio stations reviewed them, but I would expect all home produced books to receive equal consideration, whatever language they are written in or whatever the occupation of the writer. I hesitate to accuse media outlets of secular sectarian bigotry, anticlericalism or anti-Catholicism, but there is much evidence to suggest it. The big buzzword that came from the inquiries into the way Father Kevin Reynolds was libelled by RTÉ was ‘groupthink’ There seems to be lots of it around still.
Week ending June 5th 2012
I was thinking of Shakespeare’s ‘seven ages’ in recent weeks as religious ceremonies marked and celebrated various aspects of growing up, christenings, first communions, confirmation, a secondary school graduation, a wedding, a first Mass, a wedding anniversary, and unfortunately, funerals which included the young as well as the old. After all that the summer came and it was most welcome. The long spell of cold, wind and squally rain came to an end and was replaced by the glorious weather which usually indicates the exam season. Still, the exams will be over before very long, and who knows? We may still have a summer.
In South Conamara as in most Gaeltacht areas the summer means not just the arrival of the cuckoo and the swallows, but also the ‘Gaelgóirí,’ the influx of students who stay in local houses, liven up the roads and beaches and bring an buzz of life to an area. From my own point of view I have been very impressed since coming to Carna/Cill Chiaráin parish by the way the young students participate in Saturday evening Mass, take to the Irish language hymns like ducks to water and generally add to such celebrations in a far more organised and disciplined way than I remember teenage students thirty or forty years ago.
Among my memories from forty years ago was a young girl arriving at the nurses’ house on the island of Inis Oirr (Inishere) with a dart sticking out of her head. It necessitated the lifeboat being called from Inis Mór to take her to hospital in Galway, from which she was thankfully discharged safe and well the following day. Another student sneaked out to join friends who were camping on the island. They shared a bottle of vodka and when the young girl passed out her friends tried to revive her by throwing her into the tide. Thankfully she too lived to tell the tale. As she is now in her fifties I wonder does she tell her grandchildren how bold some children of the seventies really were. If such things were to happen now there would be a national outcry.
It has often been remarked of students attending Irish language colleges in the summer months that they cry when they arrive and they cry again when they are ready to go home. They cry at the start from homesickness, and for many it is their first time away from home for an extended period on their own. Three weeks sounds like a very long time, but by the time it ends the fun and camraderie, the new friends and often the falling in love with someone from the other end of the country leads to tears again when it is time to return home. The organisation and discipline, the full day and the exercise from games and ceilís helps to pass the couple of weeks very quickly.
The TG4 series of programmes:”Bean a’tí sa chistín” gives an idea of the high standard of food provided during the Irish courses. The final in particular was so competitive that it would far excel most ‘Come Dine With Me’ programmes and even challenge a couple of the gourmet chefs. So we have a few more of the ‘seven ages to enjoy before the summer is out, and then there are the local festivals in honour of Saint Mac Dara and Saint Ciarán, the currach and sailboat races, and maybe even an outing for the Green and Red against the Maroon and White.
In South Conamara as in most Gaeltacht areas the summer means not just the arrival of the cuckoo and the swallows, but also the ‘Gaelgóirí,’ the influx of students who stay in local houses, liven up the roads and beaches and bring an buzz of life to an area. From my own point of view I have been very impressed since coming to Carna/Cill Chiaráin parish by the way the young students participate in Saturday evening Mass, take to the Irish language hymns like ducks to water and generally add to such celebrations in a far more organised and disciplined way than I remember teenage students thirty or forty years ago.
Among my memories from forty years ago was a young girl arriving at the nurses’ house on the island of Inis Oirr (Inishere) with a dart sticking out of her head. It necessitated the lifeboat being called from Inis Mór to take her to hospital in Galway, from which she was thankfully discharged safe and well the following day. Another student sneaked out to join friends who were camping on the island. They shared a bottle of vodka and when the young girl passed out her friends tried to revive her by throwing her into the tide. Thankfully she too lived to tell the tale. As she is now in her fifties I wonder does she tell her grandchildren how bold some children of the seventies really were. If such things were to happen now there would be a national outcry.
It has often been remarked of students attending Irish language colleges in the summer months that they cry when they arrive and they cry again when they are ready to go home. They cry at the start from homesickness, and for many it is their first time away from home for an extended period on their own. Three weeks sounds like a very long time, but by the time it ends the fun and camraderie, the new friends and often the falling in love with someone from the other end of the country leads to tears again when it is time to return home. The organisation and discipline, the full day and the exercise from games and ceilís helps to pass the couple of weeks very quickly.
The TG4 series of programmes:”Bean a’tí sa chistín” gives an idea of the high standard of food provided during the Irish courses. The final in particular was so competitive that it would far excel most ‘Come Dine With Me’ programmes and even challenge a couple of the gourmet chefs. So we have a few more of the ‘seven ages to enjoy before the summer is out, and then there are the local festivals in honour of Saint Mac Dara and Saint Ciarán, the currach and sailboat races, and maybe even an outing for the Green and Red against the Maroon and White.