The mother tongue

We weren’t born talking. I don’t mean as individuals, I mean as a species. We made noises alright, but it wasn’t language. We were fluent in violence and laughing, swinging from branch to branch. Godless monkeys, living our instinctual lives to the full. Then we hopped down off the trees, started wearing glasses, got manners and learnt to drive.

I often look at babies now, and giraffes and leopards. Thinking, thinking, thinking, and not a word between them. Wordless thoughts, wouldn’t you love a few of them?

They never really do it for me, you see, words. They kind of express what I’m feeling, but not really. They’re close, but not close enough. Maybe its just English. Maybe me talking English, is like a fiddle player being forced into an orchestra to play violin.

So, taim ag iarraidh Gaeilge a f hoghlaim. Aris. Trying to get out of the concert hall and back to the sibin. Maybe soul and mouth will be closer then. I have the books and the tapes. The kids go to a Gaelscoil. We live in the West and love it here. The rain, the dole, the skinny cattle and sideways trees. The mischief and the lawless fun. I was in London one time, walking a busy street, 10,000 people around the place and, clear as a bell, I hear this one voice shout out, “Tamwee... Tamwee”.

It’s Connemara for Tommy. I turn around, and up she strolls. Thin as a rasher, wild as grass, she says to me, “Teach an asal”. I say, “What?” She says, “Teach an asal.” I say, “What ?”

She says, “You wass in Ti Josies in Carraroe a few yearss ago and you wanted to know phwatt the Irish for en suite wass... teach an asal.”

She had the glint in her eye. She giggled, all the better for contact, and wandered off into her exile again.

Connemara Irish sounds like a yawning man trying to clear his throat. I’ve written poetry in it. “Ag ol i m’aonair I leathanaigh theas N h’abair go einne Ach ta se go deas”

Donegal Irish is the wildest thing you’ll ever hear. Sounds like someone with a seagull trapped in their neck. Sounds like a Chinese man falling out of a plane, screaming for help. Munster Irish sounds like the same man hitting the ground. It’s mainly grunting, with all the wind taken out of it. I love it down there, though. I was on top of Carrauntouhil recently and her sister Sandra. Sandra Twohill. Mighty women.

Refresher course

My Irish isn’t great, in fairness,

Gaeilge briste a ta se. The kids are beagnach liofa with it at this stage. I’m half thinking of doing a refresher course. I know a woman who did her Leaving Cert Irish exam again to brush up, but I’d go all the way back to junior infants. Arra, if you’re going to do something, do it right. In the door next September with a heap of four-year-olds, and start again slowly. Doras; lamha chle; fuinneog.

We might send the kids to an all-Irish secondary school in a few years. I ran the idea past an old man I’m sometimes obliged to listen to for

inheritance purposes. He said, “They’ll be retarded, Tom, and no good at science, either”.

Prejudice of The Pale. But I wouldn’t be sending them in order to fare well in a world reduced to the demands of globalisation. No. I’d be given them a chance to see more deeply into the wonder of where we are. Cois fharraige.

Ta Gaeilge le chloisteal anseo but I try not to have conversations in it; it’s hard enough for me to understand what I’m saying, never mind others.

I was reared in north Leinster and can speak that language fluently. The Breffni drawl, the Oriel way, the blood tongue of people like Pat McCabe, Tom MacIntyre and Michael Harding. I can wrestle with words like they do; like everyone up there can. Talking... the last refuge of the powerless. Lean into the words, bend them. Enjoy your vowels, take your time on them. It’s as close to mooing as humans. I’ll come. Tis violent, too, when I wanz ta bee. I met a man one time, in a red jumper, above in Cootehill, who rose out of a drunken stupor to whisper in my ear, “I’m as wild as hatchets”. Dark nation up there. Dark nation everywhere. I’ll never be fluent in Irish. I’ll never dream in it. I’ll never be too inventive with it either, although I did come up with the phrase,

“Slan go feoil” for a person about to give up meat .

So as long as I’m talking English, it’ll be with a sense of dissatisfaction and struggle — no, that’s not quite what I meant. Maybe I should just shut up. Or be grateful for what I’ve got, and moo...