Graveyard Clay
Graveyard Clay
Cré na Cille
A Narrative in Ten Interludes
MÁIRTÍN Ó CADHAIN
TRANSLATED BY LIAM MAC CON IOMAIRE
AND TIM ROBINSON
The Margellos World Republic of Letters is dedicated to making literary works from around the globe available in English through translation. It brings to the English-speaking world the work of leading poets, novelists, essayists, philosophers, and playwrights from Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to stimulate international discourse and creative exchange.
English translation copyright © 2016 by Yale University and Cló Iar-Chonnacht.
Originally published in Irish as Cré na Cille. Copyright © 1949 by Sáirseál agus Dill.
Jacket and interior illustrations copyright © Cian Ó hÉigeartaigh, based on designs by Charles Lamb for the original edition in Irish published by Sáirséal agus Dill 1949.
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CONTENTS
An Introductory Note Liam Mac Con Iomaire
On Translating Cré na Cille Tim Robinson
List of Characters and Dialogue Conventions
Graveyard Clay
Bibliography
AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE
A Biography of Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1906–1970)
Cré na Cille (Graveyard Clay) is the most acclaimed work by
Máirtín Ó Cadhain, writer, teacher, academic, and language activist, who was born in the townland of Cnocán Glas (green hillock) near An Spidéal (Spiddal), in the coastal region known as Cois Fharraige (by the sea), in the south Conamara Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking region). In spite of its proximity to Galway city, about twelve miles away, Cnocán Glas was wholly Irish-speaking. Because the formative years of his life were spent in this community, Ó Cadhain escaped the influence of a secondary boarding school in an English-speaking area, to which most Irish speakers were of necessity subjected at an early age, if they were to get any post-primary education. That accounts, in part, for the depth of his knowledge of the spoken language, but his parents, of course, were a major influence. Both his mother, Bríd Óg Nic Conaola, and his father, Seán Ó Cadhain, were traditional storytellers, as were his grandfather and his uncle and other relations; and his brother Seosamh, who assisted in the editing of the English-Irish Dictionary (Dublin, 1959), had a remarkable knowledge of the vocabulary and idiom of Conamara Irish.
Ó Cadhain himself declared in Páipéir Bhána agus Páipéir Bhreaca (Blank Papers and Speckled Papers), a public lecture he delivered to Cumann Merriman, the Irish cultural organisation, in 1969, at which time he had come to be considered by many as the foremost modern Irish writer, in Irish or English: “The most valuable literary instrument I got from my people was the spoken language, the natural earthy pungent speech, which sometimes starts dancing and sometimes weeping, in spite of me” (translated from the Irish).1 In later life he acquired many other languages, including English, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Russian, Spanish, German, French, and Italian.
At the age of eighteen he won a scholarship to St. Patrick’s College in Dublin, the largest primary teacher training college in Ireland, where he spent the years 1924–1926, after which he returned to the Galway Gaeltacht and taught in various schools there until 1936. A copy of the magazine Honesty, which he had read while at the training college, had aroused his interest in republicanism.
His earliest contribution to scholarship was a collection of folktales he made for the Irish Folklore Commission, recorded mainly from his parents. Some of these folktales were published in Béaloideas: The Journal of the Folklore Society of Ireland in December 1933, December 1935, and June 1936. Ó Cadhain was a lifelong collector of old songs in Irish. A rich collection of traditional Conamara songs he had made while principal at Camas National School in the late 1920s, edited by Ríonach uí Ógáin, was published by Iontaobhas Uí Chadhain (the Ó Cadhain Trust) and Coiscéim in 1999, entitled Faoi Rothaí na Gréine (Under the Wheels of the Sun).
He never relaxed in his efforts in the defence of the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) communities against the ever-increasing pressures from outside. In the early 1930s he was pivotal in persuading the Irish government to acquire better holdings in County Meath for Irish-speaking families from his native Conamara, thereby forming the nucleus of what was to become, in his own lifetime, the vibrant Ráth Chairn Gaeltacht. In later life in Dublin in 1966 he led Misneach (Courage), a small group of likeminded young people, in protests against the government’s neglect of the Irish language, and shortly before he died he travelled all over the Conamara Gaeltacht, canvassing support for the newly formed Gaeltacht Civil Rights movement and its candidate for the Galway West constituency in the 1969 general election.
In 1936 his membership of the proscribed Irish Republican Army led to his dismissal from Carnmore National School in East Galway by his clerical manager, Canon Patrick J. Moran, and the then bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh, Dr. Thomas O’Doherty. Blacklisted as a national teacher, Ó Cadhain found employment in the Fáinne Office in Dublin, where a ring-shaped badge, or “fáinne,” could be purchased, to be worn on the collar of one’s coat or jacket as a sign of one’s ability and willingness to speak Irish to other Irish speakers. He also worked as a labourer on a building site in Dublin and on a government employment scheme, stacking and distributing turf (peat) in Phoenix Park during the Second World War.
In 1937 his special knowledge of the Irish language was recognised by the Department of Education when he was invited to contribute to a projected Irish dictionary. His collections of words and phrases from the living speech of Conamara were used extensively in the preparation of the department’s English-Irish Dictionary (1959) and again in its Irish-English Dictionary (1977).
In 1939 his first book, Idir Shúgradh agus Dáiríre (Between Jest and Earnest), a collection of short stories, was published by An Gúm (Government Publications). In it his own people in Conamara are portrayed with insight and sympathy, and with an honesty that makes no attempt to conceal the harsh realities of life in a depressed rural community. Although the book was favourably received, Ó Cadhain himself knew he hadn’t yet found the style or form of writing that suited him. Nevertheless, in these early stories he begins to explore narrative forms of various lengths, while experimenting with established literary conventions. Around this time, in the latter half of 1939, he had a momentous experience that steeled his resolve to be a writer:
One day I found an old copy of a French magazine, for a penny I think, in a bookshop in Aungier Street in Dublin, something that was as much of an eye-opener to me as what happened to Saint Paul on the road to Damascus! In it I came across a French translation of a story by Maxim Gorky, Harvest Day among the Cossacks of the Don. I jump
ed up off the bed where I was lying down reading it. I hadn’t read the like of it before. Why didn’t anybody tell me there were such stories? “I would be able to write that,” I said to myself. “That’s work my people do, except that they have different names.” A sort of hunger came over me, a hunger that was much more unbearable than the sort that was in my stomach at times. Cois Fharraige, with its stony ground, its bare rocks, its inlets, streams, pools, lakes, mountains, with the faces of man, woman and child, began creating itself behind my closed eyelids. That magazine was in my pocket, and very little else, the day I was arrested.2
Ó Cadhain was arrested in September 1939 under the Offences against the State Act and spent nearly five years between three or four prisons; most of that time was spent in the internment camp on the Curragh of Kildare. While in captivity he read widely in many languages and taught himself the sort of dialogue he was to use afterwards in his two novels. Influenced by Gorky and others, he set about developing his own particular kind of short story, and he wrote An Bóthar go dtí an Ghealchathair (The Road to Brightcity) and An Taoille Tuile (Floodtide) in the Curragh Camp; they would not appear in print until much later. “Those were really the days,” he said, “I started writing in earnest.”3 He edited the internees’ (news)paper Barbed Wire in the camp for a period and wrote for it in Irish and English. He translated many songs into Irish, including the “Red Flag” and the “Internationale” and other songs that were popular with the internees, such as “The Shawl of Galway Grey,” “Moonlight in Mayo,” and “The Boys of Kilmichael.”
During his internment he had been very successful in teaching spoken Irish to adults of very varied educational backgrounds. In the first of many letters Ó Cadhain wrote to his fellow Irish-language writer Tomás Bairéad in Dublin, he states (translated from the Irish): “There wasn’t a language spoken in Babel that isn’t being taught by us here: Irish, French, Spanish, German, Latin, Welsh, Breton…. There’s a fair amount of Irish speakers here, and every trade and faculty, except barbers!”4 A collection of those letters in Irish, twenty-three in all, was published by Sáirséal agus Dill, a small, bespoke publishing house in Dublin, entitled As an nGéibheann (Out of Captivity, 1973), leaving us a rich personal account of his years behind barbed wire. More personal references to his years in the Curragh Camp are available in TONE—Inné agus Inniu (TONE—Yesterday and Today), based on a lecture Ó Cadhain gave to the Wolfe Tone Association in the Mansion House, Dublin, in 1963, edited by Bernadette Ní Rodaigh and Eibhlín Ní Allúráin, published by Iontaobhas Uí Chadhain (the Ó Cadhain Trust) and Coiscéim in 1999. Both his father and his mother died during his years in captivity.
On his release in July 1944, Ó Cadhain was asked by the then Taoiseach (head of government), Éamon de Valera, to continue with his work on the English-Irish Dictionary. In 1945 he married Máirín Ní Rodaigh, a national teacher and fluent Irish speaker from Cavan, and a gifted teacher of Irish to the infant classes in Scoil Lorcáin in Monkstown in south Dublin for many years. They settled permanently in Dublin and had no children of their own.
In March 1947 Ó Cadhain was appointed to Rannóg an Aistriúcháin (the Parliamentary Translation Staff) in Dublin, which at the time had been given the task of forming a standardized spelling and morphology of Irish, based on the spoken dialects as well as on the written language. He made no small contribution to this difficult task, although, of course, his suggestions were not always adopted (as is evident in his article “Forbairt na Gaeilge” published in the monthly magazine Feasta in December 1951). His period with the Parliamentary Translation Staff provided him with valuable experience of the problems involved in the adaptation of a spoken rural language (with three major dialects) to the requirements of modern urban society.
His second collection of short stories, An Braon Broghach (The Cloudy Drop) was published in 1948, meriting the following praise from the writer and poet Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, who would later translate a selection of these stories into English: “One feels a certain exultation of spirit in his 1948 collection of stories: the born teacher discovering himself as the born writer.”5
Cré na Cille (Graveyard Clay), Ó Cadhain’s third book and first novel, was published by Sáirséal agus Dill in 1950 to critical acclaim, and was serialised over a seven-month period in the national daily broadsheet newspaper the Irish Press. In the public lecture delivered to Cumann Merriman, Ó Cadhain said (translated from the Irish): “A few years after being set free I wrote Cré na Cille and another novel Athnuachan, which won the Club Leabhar Prize (1951). When I began writing Cré na Cille I felt confident that I could write a better novel than had previously been written in Irish.”6 Cré na Cille was chosen by UNESCO as an outstanding work, with a recommendation that it be translated into other European languages, and Ó Cadhain was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy, the first Irish-language writer to receive the honour.
Athnuachan (Renewal) remained unpublished, at the author’s own behest, until after his death. The writer and critic Tomás Ó Floinn, on behalf of a panel of judges appointed by An Club Leabhar (the Book Club), noted (translated from the Irish): “Nothing has been written in Irish to date that is as powerful, as moving, as certain chapters in this book … only a real artist could handle this subject as it has been handled here.”7 And when the book was eventually published by Iontaobhas Uí Chadhain (Coiscéim, 1995), the writer and critic Breandán Ó Doibhlin wrote in the preface (translated from the Irish): “I think it is no exaggeration to say that Athnuachan is on a par with Cré na Cille as far as its energy and force of dialogue is concerned, in its comic depiction of the utter absurdity of the human race.”8
Ó Cadhain’s third volume of short stories, Cois Caoláire (By the Firth—that is, by Galway Bay), published by Sáirséal agus Dill in 1953, added further to his reputation and marked a new departure in his writing. The volume contained some earlier material that An Gúm had deemed unsuitable to include in An Braon Broghach, a decision that sufficiently rankled with Ó Cadhain for him to remark on Raidió Éireann several years later (on 11 May 1952) that his readers would be the ultimate arbiters on the isssue. The collection contained several searing studies set in Conamara, but it also marked a change in emphasis from the rural towards the urban and the suburban, which opened up a new canvas on which Ó Cadhain could examine the individual on the margins.
From 1953 to 1956, he contributed a weekly column to the Irish Times, and a collection of those articles entitled Caiscín (Brown Bread), edited by Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh, was published by Iontaobhas Uí Chadhain (Coiscéim, 1998). A collection of his writings in the monthly magazine Feasta entitled Ó Cadhain i bhFeasta, edited by Seán Ó Laighin, was published by Clódhanna Teo. in 1990, and a collection of his writings in the monthly magazine Comhar entitled Caithfear Éisteacht! (It Must Be Heard!), edited by Liam Prút, was published by Comhar in 1999.
In 1956 Ó Cadhain was appointed lecturer in Irish at Trinity College Dublin, where he inspired his students with such dedication and enthusiasm for the Irish language that they responded with an esteem and affection that was as remarkable as it was unusual at the time. His long-playing record The Consonants of Irish (Ceirníní na Gaeltacht, published by SPÓL in 1961) marked a departure from traditional teaching and was accompanied by a text for learners that bore characteristics typical of Ó Cadhain’s creative work—humour, satire, and a sense of the ridiculous. Reading the text aloud sounds not so much like an educational tool as like a hilarious surrealist fantasy rooted in the life-world of Cré na Cille.
Ó Cadhain’s wife, Máirín Ní Rodaigh, died in October 1965. In 1967, following a public competition, Ó Cadhain was appointed associate professor of Irish at Trinity College Dublin, and in 1969 he proceeded to the chair of Irish as Established Professor. The publication of An tSraith ar Lár (The Fallen Swathe) that same year won for him the valuable Butler Award of the Irish-American Cultural Institute. He was to receive the distinction Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 1970, the year
he died. The other two collections of short stories in the Sraith (Swathe) series were to follow: An tSraith dhá Tógáil (The Swathe Being Raised), published in 1970, and An tSraith Tógtha (The Raised Swathe), the very last book he wrote, published posthumously in 1977. All three are different, both in style and in content, to his first two collections, with the emphasis shifting to stories based on material from the Bible and to a more existential examination of the individual. All three Sraith collections were published by Sáirséal agus Dill.
Ó Cadhain was a formidable controversialist and satirist, and perhaps some of his best writing is to be found in articles such as “Do na Fíréin” (For the Faithful, in Comhar, March 1962) and “Béaloideas” (Folklore, in Feasta, March 1950), in which he ridicules a folklorist who feeds off the people of the Gaeltacht while hoping for their speedy extinction in order to enhance the value of his own collections. His published lectures, articles, and pamphlets on literary, language, and political problems are essential reading for anyone who would understand fully the contemporary Irish scene. A collection of satirical essays, Barbed Wire, which Ó Cadhain considered “the best bit of writing I ever did,”9 was published posthumously by Iontaobhas Uí Chadhain, edited by Cathal Ó Háinle (Coiscéim, 2002). Barbed Wire was the eventual product of Ó Cadhain’s increasingly bitter polemic in the early 1960s, and it presents an unsympathetic portrait of Ireland in the Séan Lemass era. The commentary on the contemporary Irish-language movement is scathing, and the virtuosity of the prose is exceeded only by its vitriol. An Ghaeilge Bheo, Destined to Pass is a bilingual, personal, and passionate account he wrote in 1963 of the decline of the Irish language from the Flight of the Earls in 1607 to the early 1960s. Edited by Seán Ó Laighin after Ó Cadhain’s death, it was published by Iontaobhas Uí Chadhain (Coiscéim, 2002). (Following the defeat of the Irish chieftains and their Catholic allies at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, and the ensuing planting of their lands by the victorious English, the Earls of Tyrconnell and Tyrone, O’Donnell, and O’Neill, together with their families and followers, were forced to leave Ireland in 1607 and seek refuge on the Continent.)
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