Keeping the language alive in the Galtees
With a population of 4.75 million people, the 2016 census shows that only about 74,000 of us speak Irish daily, but in the past, many rural Irish towns and villages were home to mostly native Irish speakers. So, what has changed?
As the prevalence of the Irish language decreases, one local man, Michael Lewis takes us through his journey with Anglesborough, Kilbehenny and the Irish language.
“It’s a connection with our past, without it we’re so much poorer,” he began.
A current member of Mitchelstown and Kilbehenny Ciorcal Caintes, many may know him better as Mr Lewis, having taught at Anglesborough NS for almost 40 years, retiring as principal in 2009.
“In school, I always had an interest in the Irish language, but I found it hard to motivate the children. I only found one person who really loved Irish,” he said.
Hailing from Kilbehenny, Mr Lewis said that his interest began at a very young age, by picking up on Irish phrases and place names still used in English conversation.
“There are still a lot of them there, but an awful lot are gone. One of the main reasons they’re not gone is because they had to do with things like traditional farming, if you were tackling the horse outside you’d put the droimach across the horse's back and that comes from Irish, 'droim' which means back.
“That’s where I got my interest I suppose, from listening to these words and my parents had a lot of them,” he told The Avondhu.
While he credited the work being done currently in bigger cities to revive the language, Mr Lewis said he also believes that people living rurally have a special connection to the language, especially in times gone past.
According to Michael, one of the main reasons that the use of Irish declined so much was because it suffered from not being the language of commerce.
“If I go back in Anglesborough to the hedge school, the parents wanted the hedge school teacher to teach them English, because that was the language you needed to get on in life, so therefore Irish suffered and had to take a back seat,” he added.
In the 1850s in Anglesborough, the parish priest at the time asked the archbishop to send a curate that had the Irish language.
“At least half of the people were speaking Irish and they probably had no English,” Mr Lewis said.
In the 20th issue of the local Parish Magazine, dating March, 4, 1995, in the ‘Odds and Ends' section, it reads: “It was fitting to find Irish, glan-Gaeilge leis in the Kilbehenny-Anglesboro Parish Magazine and nearly half the fine editorial is in Irish too. Irish survived in that parish down to the 1940s.”
In the 1901 census, there is a column in which people could identify their spoken language, and for households who did choose to fill in this column, almost all households had at least one person who spoke Irish.
“You’ll find that all people in their 70s in that census had Irish. If you take my great-grandparents, there were 6 of them alive in 1902, and the six of those were Irish speakers. I’d say that applies for all the grandparents at that time in Anglesborough,” he added.
Steeped in heritage, the villages surrounding the foot of the Galtees, including Anglesborough and Kilbehenny, began attempts to revive the language around the time of the War of Independence in the 1940s.
“There were Feís as well, there was a big event held in Anglesborough behind the creamery, there’s a sloped field there and all the people were on the slope and were seen dancing and there were bits of drama and things,” Mr Lewis said.
THE CORNUÍ CHADHLA
Paddy Kiely, who was Michael Lewis’s predecessor at Anglesborough National School, was also very involved with the Irish language.
There was a Feís na nGaltee held in many different villages around the foot of the Galtees during this time and Paddy Kiely put up a cup known as the Corn Ui Chadhla, for whoever had the best spoken Irish. The cup, which is now on display in Kilbehenny Community Hall, was won twice in succession by the same man, Donal Ó Cathan.
According to Mr Lewis, Donal left for England in the late 1940s and had worked there until the late 1990s, and upon his return to Ireland, he still spoke perfect Irish.
“He sought me out through the parish magazine. I’m from the Kilbehenny side and I didn’t know who he was, but he wrote to me extolling the virtues of the parish magazine, as Gaeilge, so I wrote back to him as Gaeilge.
“He wrote in the old script, so I tried to write back and I could not. I was writing the modern way and he was writing the old way and we communicated that way until he came back to Ireland,” Mr Lewis said.
Through Irish, a keen friendship was established between the two men, who would often meet in the village of Kilbehenny and speak as Gaeilge.
In his will, Donal left the Corn Ui Chadhla, along with books and copies he had filled with the old Irish script to his friend Michael. The Corn Ui Chadhla was then donated by Mr Lewis to the Kilbehenny community and is now on display in the community hall, featuring in a case specially made by Bob Dineen.
During Mr Lewis’s teaching days, he placed a strong emphasis on not only teaching, but also making an active effort to integrate the language into everyday settings.
“We lose something huge if we lose that. People always talk about heritage, buildings and things like that, but in my view the most important thing is language,” he said.
THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE
While Mr Lewis is passionate about Irish, his view on the language takes a slightly different stance.
“It’s the way Irish is taught and forced on the schools, all governments from the beginning of the state forced it on the schools and expected the schools to revive it.
“It should have always been geared towards a spoken language in my view, rather than being geared towards the academic and it could have been more fun,” he said.
The perception that Irish is a difficult language, Mr Lewis says, is not true and he believes the language is like any other, in that if it is taught from a young age, it is easier to master.
Despite this, he agrees that it is not without its complications.
“I find Donegal Irish difficult, I still find it difficult, even though we hear it on the radio and the television quite a bit now. I remember when I went to the teacher training college in Dublin and when the Donegal fellas were talking, I hadn’t a bull's notion what they were saying,” he laughed.
With such a rich history and culture between rural Ireland and the Irish language, what could possibly be in store for the future of this county's native tongue?
“I feel now that when I’m looking at religion, it’s the older generation that is going to church and more regular attendees, whereas the younger people are not, and it’s very akin to me that the same thing happened the language. I feel that if it wasn’t compulsory in schools, I think most people wouldn’t be doing it. It’s part of our heritage and we should teach it,” Mr Lewis continued.
However, another revival of the language may well be under way in other parts of the country.
While Anglesborough and Kilbehenny may no longer have the numbers of native Irish speakers they once bore, efforts to keep the language alive have been seen in cities.
The rise of pop-up Gaelteachts and Ciorcal Caintes have allowed those with an interest to invest their time into the language and facilitated new ways to learn, relearn and participate in its growth and conservation.
“People are not confident in it, they don’t trust themselves, but if they have confidence, they could speak it. I like to try using it if I’m at a checkout in a store.
“I’m trying with my grandson now, but he doesn’t understand it because he’s so young, but that’s how you learn it, if you can immerse yourself in it when you’re young,” Mr Lewis concluded.