Have you ever seen Peig on a souvenir tea towel?

Sunday Tribune, April 18

"On will too tine?"
"What?"
"On. Will. Too. Tine?"
Gaeltacht headmaster, Mr P 'Fart' Faherty's face hovered over mine. His moustache smelled of mince and onions.
"Knee higgim," I replied.
"What?"
"What?
"An bhfuil tu tinn: Are you bloody well sick?" I had a hangover to rival anthrax-poisoning and we both knew it.
"I've a pian in my bolg," I said. Mr Fart stamped around the bedroom looking for evidence of contraband drink. He even looked in the bin, where all he found was an empty Yellow Pack shampoo container and a Dettol bottle. The vein in his forehead squirmed. If anger could have 'fadas' and 'shayvoos' all over it, then his did.
"The shmell of alco-hawl is dishgushting, so it is," he shpluttered in his thick Connacht accent. I could see the hairs in his nose shrivelling in the fumes of my hangover.
"I think I'm going to be sick," I said.
"As gaeilge!" he shrilled.
"I'm going to be sick… with a fada over the 'I'?"
I retched theatrically and he backed off. "I'd shend the lot of you shcoundrel hoors home exshept there'sh no boat off the island till Winsday next."
He slammed the door, shpluttering and farting in annoyance.
I was 16. I have always thought of this as the real dry run for my Leaving Cert oral Irish exam. Unlike the orals that are taking place this week, my interview with Mr Fart could have had tangible consequences: ie, a boot up the backside.
I hadn't shone in that test, but I had 'passed'. I had gotten away with it.
I've always associated Irish with 'getting away with it'. I also associate it with excruciating boredom. The kind that lasts three weeks and drives you to drink smuggled vodka out of shampoo bottles. Mr Fart should have checked that bin more thoroughly. I got away with that too.
School was all about 'getting away with it'. In Irish class we'd risk handing over history essays instead of gaeilge ones to our half-blind teacher, 'Harry Weed'. I used to spend the class seeing how many Blu-Tac balls I could get to stick to his tweed jacket. Poor Harry. I think we broke his brain.
The chief problem with Irish was the humourless, dry way it was taught. Pádraic Ó Conaire's 'M'asal Beag Dubh' ('My Little Black Ass') may have sounded like a Harlem porno mag, but was as interesting as watching donkey poo drying.
Who can forget Peig Sayers? "I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge." Now there's an image: Peig doing the splits over a hole in the ground.
She's off the syllabus now, but little has changed. Schoolkids still don't love Irish. RTé reported last week that more students are seeking exemption from doing it on learning-disability grounds. However, half of this year's exempted Leaving students are sitting other language exams.
Some parents are using the exemption to get their children out of studying what they see as a difficult subject. It's entirely understandable. Dropping Irish means a better chance of more points, which means a better chance of a job. Irish should not be compulsory for the Leaving Cert – its outcome is far too important.
Still, it's perplexing to think that parents will brand their kids 'special needs' to get them out of doing something difficult. To teach them it's okay to break the rules if you can get away with it. Maybe I'd do the same if I had kids. Maybe abusing the exemption is our generation's revenge on Peig.
We had no need for Irish and were never given any reason to love it. Gaeilgeoir fundamentalism was a major turn-off. This fundamentalism was in evidence again in Clare last February. County councillors complained that they had spent €30,250 translating three development plans into Irish, but nobody wanted to buy them. Then-Gaeltacht minister Eamon Ó Cuív insisted the practice should continue nonetheless. Idiotic wastefulness like that turns people against Irish.
What gaeilgeoir fundamentalism also ignores is that Ireland loves English. Whenever we market ourselves abroad, we point to our great writers: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce. They all wrote in English, not Irish. Have you ever seen a souvenir tea towel with Peig Sayers' face on it?
Gaeilge can't compete with that kind of marketing. For it to appeal to a wider audience it has to dumb down. It has to be conversational, not literary. It needs to be promoted as Ireland's secret language. The one you can insult foreigners in, when they're eavesdropping, for example.
Perhaps Mary Coughlan should commission an Irish slang dictionary (with curse words). Or employ Richie Kavanagh as a special adviser. He topped the charts for six months with his 'Aon Focal Eile'. It was awful, but at least he got people spouting a few words of Irish. That's more than Peig ever did.
If we stripped the earnestness out of Irish, people might start using a phrase or two. That's the best that can be expected. A cúpla focail is better than foc-all, as Richie and Mary might say.
I need to wash my mouth out after saying that. Now where did I leave that
Yellow Pack shampoo bottle?

dkenny@tribune.ie

April 18, 2010