Born 100 years ago, Máirtín Ó Cadhain was the most acclaimed author of 20th Century prose in Irish. He was a giant among writers who practised the art of the short story and the novel to international standards, and in his public life was involved in most of the political campaigns and controversies which have shaped Irish life over the past few generations. His compelling personality ensured that he could not be ignored and his writing ability in every genre demanded both attention and recognition.
He was no different in his upbringing to most others in Cois Fharraige at the start of the last century. His family had a small, three-bedroomed house west of Spiddal. Máirtín’s intellectual ability was noted at an early age and he was appointed monitor in Spiddal School. He subsequently obtained a place in St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, where he trained as a primary school teacher. He spent those early years teaching throughout Conamara and East Galway, where he became familiar with the major and more local dialects of the county. He was an unusual man, however, and before long he was immersed in the politics and community movements of the times. While visiting the various districts of Conamara he collected information on unusual Gaeltacht vocabulary and expressions. He used many of these in his translation of Sally Kavanagh, and subsequently in his first original work, Idir Shúgradh is Dáiríre which was acclaimed as an extraordinary achievement as regards its mastery of Irish.
He was dismissed from his job as a schoolteacher in the thirties due to a dispute with the parish priest, and shortly afterwards was interned as a political prisoner during the Second World War. It was this period in the Curragh of Kildare that made a writer of him, according to himself, as it was here he began to read voraciously, and to write with purpose. He said that it was in the Curragh he wrote his first real story, An Bóthar go dtí an Ghealchathair. He was not the first to call his place of incarceration ‘The Curragh University’. He held various posts on his release and his most productive writing period was from then until the end of his life. He wrote three substantial novels in that period, of which Cré na Cille is the most famous, and the greatest of these. It has often been called the Ulysses of the Irish language. It is certainly most remarkable Irish language book of the 20th century.
He was appointed as Irish lecturer in Trinity College in 1956, and there followed somewhat of a lull in his writing until 1967 when An tSraith ar Lár was published. This book was a significant departure from everything which had gone before in that this writing contained elements of fantasy, legend and city life, as opposed to previous writings which were mostly based in realism. He returns to the Gaeltacht in the collection An tSraith dhá Tógáil but it is a completely different Gaeltacht, a Gaeltacht which has been changed utterly by modern life.
In Rí an Fhocail, a specially commissioned documentary for RTÉ, a selection of stories or manuscripts from the corpus will be dramatised, animated, reviewed and discussed.
Joe Steve Ó Neachtain, Andrias Ó Cathasaigh, Cathal Ó Háinle, Gearóid Denvir, Mícheál Ó Conghaile and Louis de Paor are among those interviewed.
Máirtín Ó Cadhain died in 1970 just as Irish life and literature were again on the cusp of change. He left behind many unpublished manuscripts which are gradually being made known to the public. No one has yet replaced him as the most formidable writer of prose in Irish.
‘There Goes Cré na Cille’ to be repeated
RTÉ One will also be re-showing a biographical documentary about the writer, made in 1980, 10 years after O Cadhain’s death, entitled There Goes Cré na Cille. This will be aired at 11.50pm on Thursday 28 September.
Máirtín Ó Cadhain was on his way into Croke Park one day when a man in the crowd pointed him out and announced to all who could hear: ‘There goes Cré na Cille’. Cré na Cille is probably the most renowned work in modern Irish writing, if not the most widely read, as Ó Cadhain’s command of Irish was way beyond what was taught in school.
It has been said that Ó Cadhain was a fearless briar of a man who was impelled by what made him a writer to be an agitator too. He was a remarkable teacher who commanded love and loyalty in about the same degree as he provoked fury.
He was sacked from his teaching job in Connemara because of his Republican views. He served a five year term in the ‘University of the Curragh’ during ‘The Emergency’ where he taught Irish to Brendan Behan, among others.
Released from the Curragh he entered his most productive period of writing and supported himself by taking any job he could, including writing a column for ‘The Irish Times’, before being appointed Professor of Irish at Trinity College in the mid-fifties.
He was active in the defence of the Irish language and the Gaeltacht Civil Rights movement in the Sixties. According to Ó hEithir, who got to know him well in the latter days, he ended up very pessimistic about the prospects of the language and of the Gaeltacht areas.
Had he chosen the write in English, like Liam O’Flaherty, he would have won fame in the wider world. He opted not to. But not in any self-sacrificing spirit – ‘In dealing with Irish I feel I am as old as Newgrange, the Old Hag of Beara, the great Elk. In my eyes, in my ears, in my head, in my dreams, I carry around 2,000 years of that dirty old sow which is Ireland.’
Ó Cadhain was born 100 years ago and this documentary ‘There Goes Cré na Cille’, produced by Séan Ó Mordha and scripted by Breandán Ó hEithir, was first shown on RTÉ in October 1980 to commemorate his death 10 years previously.