Learning Irish in Conamara

May her soul be at the right hand of God

When my friend and H.R. guru Sharon Armstrong asked me where I saw myself in five years, I said, “Studying the Irish language in the west of Ireland.” Never one to shrink from a challenge, Sharon responded, “I have just the person for you.” And that is how I met Eleanor Max.

Eleanor, a native of County Meath, taught Irish on Mondays at the Stoddert School in Glover Park. When I arrived the first evening, I found Eleanor with Pat and Jack, who had been studying with her for a year or two. I introduced myself and sat down. Eleanor showed me the book they were working through and said, “We’ll start over.” I was horrified, “Oh, no. Please continue wherever you are, and I’ll catch up.” Eleanor gave me a look that clearly did not invite a response and said, “No, you won’t.”

She was right. Irish was incredibly hard to start. And it only became slightly less difficult as time went on. But class, which soon moved to Eleanor’s dining room table two blocks away from the school, was fun. Eleanor, Jack, and Pat lived in Glover Park and soon my knowledge of the neighbors was at least as good as my Irish. There was a lot of comhrá, or conversation, mostly in English.

When Eleanor found out I had a love of literature, she invited me to a lecture on Yeats at the Smithsonian. I picked her up in my car, which was at the end of its long life. I told her I had gotten an estimate to fix the air conditioning that was more than the car was worth. “This car owes you nothing,” she declared. Again, I had to agree.

We walked into the lecture hall and found seats halfway back. When the lecturer, a Yeats scholar from an eminent university, was introduced, he proceeded to speak for more than an hour about his grandfather who had worked as a gardener at the Yeats estate in Sligo. No Lake Isle of Inisfree, no Easter 1916 — not a single work of Yeats was mentioned. When he invited us all to enjoy intermission, Eleanor stood up and announced that she had “learned quite enough about Yeats’ gardener.” I could stay, she said, but she was going home. I could not have agreed with her more.

On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, Eleanor and I had plans to see the Irish author Colm Tóibín at Georgetown University. He, too, would be speaking about Yeats. So, we decided to give Yeats another try, this time with the author of Brooklyn. But it was the day after the 2016 presidential election. When Eleanor answered the phone, I told her I would pick her up at six o’clock. “I don’t really have the heart to go out tonight,” she said. “I feel like staying in the house for the next few years.” I understood. 

When I got a scholarship to study Irish over the summer in Conamara, Eleanor told me I was her star pupil. I beamed at the compliment, not mentioning that there were only three of us. 

Eleanor taught Irish to inner city children in Dublin and at Georgetown and Catholic Universities after moving to Washington. It was clear she had a gift for teaching but, more than that, she loved the Irish language. It expressed a complexity of human experience that English could not. To understand who Eleanor was, it may be necessary to have a little Irish.

She was smart. And funny, in that quiet Irish way that you might miss if you weren’t listening carefully. She was kind and gracious to everyone, but she did not suffer fools lightly. She expected the best of us all, knowing that she would likely be disappointed. But now and again, her expectations would be met.

Sharon was right. She had just the person for me. Five years from that conversation, I was studying Irish in the West of Ireland, not far from where Eleanor had studied it. And now when I study my bit of Irish or have a conversation in Irish, I will remember my friend Eleanor who is now at the right hand of God, brooking no foolishness.

Put the trout in the net before you put it in the pot.

My roommate Lisa O’Rourke taught me how to navigate the candy aisle at the Eurospar in An Cheathrú Rua. She was also there to vouch for me when I was accused of lifting bags of candy from the other shop in the village.

The Eurospar was the larger of the two. It had everything from sticky notes in the shape of fluorescent arrows (Lisa’s favorite) to large heads of fresh cabbage. The candy aisle was also the checkout aisle, but it was far longer than in the U.S. with candy on both sides. Think TSA line, only with candy and no uniformed guards. There were chocolates and caramels and bags of Taytos in five different flavors. There were small bags and large bags and single candy bars. There were gummy worms and gummy dinosaurs. The only thing we were interested in were the chocolates, which came in various sizes and shapes with lots of different fillings.

The word “oiread” as Gaeilge is one of those words that can be used in many ways. It signifies length of time or space, as well as amount. It might be in the nominative or the genitive case, and it sometimes pretends to be an adjective just to mess with you. It’s the kind of word that doesn’t have a direct translation in English, and every time you think you’ve grabbed it between your fingers, it slips away and morphs into something else. This word was, of course, a part of our final exam—which was the source of much anxiety–anxiety that lengthened in time and space as it approached and had as its source several sections: comprehension, written, and oral.

One evening after dinner and before cracking the books, Lisa said, “Let’s go for a walk.” Which to my ears sounded exactly like, “Let’s go for a walk and stop at the Eurospar for candy.” So we walked out of the house, past the hotel under renovation, between the Acadamh and the Stáisiún Gardaí—which I never actually saw a policeman go into or out of in three weeks—and across the road to the Eurospar. Being a teacher, Lisa had an endless craving for school supplies: pencils, erasers, paper clips, post-it notes, to name a few. And she wasn’t just a collector of school supplies; she knew how to use them.

A piece of Irish grammar that strikes fear in the hearts of gaeilgeorí is the conditional mood, or An Modh Conníollach. In English the closest beast to the Modh Coinníollach is the subjunctive, which has been driven into obscurity from lack of use. But I’ve loved the subjunctive since I was young and a priest eulogized a friend of mine by saying, “His life’s work was moving from the subjunctive to the present tense, making what should be, what is.”

So I bought two bags of chocolate, and we continued our walk toward Trá an Dóilín, a coral beach that’s actually made up of small bits of coralline algae. An Cheathrú Rua is a peninsula filled with beautiful beaches. But that night we didn’t make it all the way to the beach. The books beckoned, and we turned around after about 20 minutes and headed for home.

As we got back into the village, we came to Tigh Mhicí, the other shop in the village. “I love to give these local shops a bit of business,” Lisa said. “Let’s look in and see what they’ve got.” I was carrying a bag of chocolate in each hand, so I stuffed them into my raincoat pockets, thinking I didn’t want to pay for them twice. As I came through the door, a young man stepped out of the back of the store and took his post at the cash register.

We looked around; Lisa found yet another pen she needed. We walked up to the register, she paid, and we turned to leave.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said the young man. “Would you have anything in your pockets you’d be needing to pay for?” I laughed as I turned to look at him, pulling the bags of candy out of my pockets. “I bought these across the road at the Eurospar,” I said. “You must have seen me put them in my pockets when I walked into the store.” The poor young fellow turned a hundred shades of red. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m ashamed for asking you. I just saw you put them in your pockets…”

We chatted with him for a few minutes until he could stop apologizing, talking about our Irish course and about our great host family who lived just a short walk from the school. “You know where to send the garda then,” I called back to him as we left the shop. I could see him blush through the shop window.

When we got home and told Lucy about the incident, she said, “Was he a tall boy with black hair?” “Yes, he was.” “That’s Micheál, Ciarán’s sister’s lad.” Poor kid. He didn’t have the heart to tell us we were living with his aintín and uncail. But in a place as small as An Ceathrú Rua, you can’t do much without someone’s wife’s sister’s cousin’s husband finding out about it before you can say, “An Modh Coinníollach.”

In time, a mouse may bite a cable in two.

When I was in my twenties, I traveled for several months through Europe with a backpack, hiking boots, a Let’s Go travel guide, and my dear friend Lisa. The eighth country we visited was Ireland. We were young and foolish, so we hitchhiked from Waterford to the Dingle Peninsula, which I now know as Corca Dhuibhne.

On our way out of Dingle, we hitched a ride as far as Limerick with a fellow named Leo Murphy and his friend Brian Walsh. On that two-hour trip, they taught us to sing “The Reason I Left Mullingar” and “From Clare to Here” by the Furey Brothers. We stopped at Bunratty Castle and drank Murphy’s on tap and ate pub grub. We decided against visiting the Blarney Stone–the major deterrent being that Irish boys liked to drink beer and relieve themselves on the stone late at night. By the time we finished dinner, it was too late to get on the road, so Lisa and I slept on Leo’s living room floor. In the morning, he took us to the bus station, and we left for Galway.

Leo lived in Limerick because he worked nearby at Shannon Airport as an air traffic controller, but he was born and raised in Baile na nGall, known in English as Ballydavid, on Corca Dhuibhne. His training and his apartment were subsidized by the Irish government as part of a program to support native speakers of Irish. Leo learned to speak English when he was 14 years old.

After I left Ireland, I wrote Leo to thank him for offering his home to two travelers, and I asked him if he had a suggestion for a book I might get to learn Irish. Exercising that amazing Irish hospitality, even from afar, he sent me a book and a set of tapes called “Teach Yourself Irish.” I found them quite daunting on my own. I leant them to my brother Kevin and never saw them again. That was it for my Irish studies for several decades.

I did hear from Leo once more, or at least I heard of him. My mother answered the phone one day a few years later to hear a thick Irish brogue. (By the way, bróg means shoe in Irish; I have no idea how it came to be used for “accent.”) Leo was visiting his sister in New York. He would only be there a few days, but he wanted to call while he was on this side of the Atlantic. They talked for half an hour. She found him utterly charming and was disappointed he wouldn’t be coming to Washington on that visit. Mise, freisin.

The day my studies ended in Conamara, I headed for Ballyferriter for a week-long course in the Kerry Gaeltacht. It was, I discovered, just a few kilometers from Baile na nGall. During my studies I had no car, and I hadn’t an Irish phone, so I couldn’t get to that town or try to call Leo. Besides, I was sure he would be in Limerick or somewhere else. Why, I thought, would he return to this slice of heaven having seen a city like Limerick?

After my studies were done, John came to An Bhuailtín with a rented car, and we spent a few days hiking and touring the unimaginably green beauty that is West Kerry. We drove near Baile na nGall one evening to have dinner at a restaurant called The Old Pier, which was really more like an old house with a couple of rooms filled with tables jammed with people on holiday, eating local seafood and fresh veg. We couldn’t figure out which cluster of houses was Ballydavid. We talked about how we might find Leo but weren’t quite sure how to go about it.

Alice said we should visit the Gallurus Oratory, a perfectly preserved seventh century chapel built of thick slabs of sandstone fitted together seamlessly by monks who used no mortar. Once we saw the oratory, she said, go across the street to TP’s house. He owns the pub in Baile na nGall and “he knows everyone.” He would know how to find anyone who had ever lived in that town, she said. John, being of more reserved stock than I, was hesitant to stop at a stranger’s house and ask about a person I hadn’t seen in thirty years.

It was our last full day in Corca Dhuibhne, so we drove back to the area we thought was Baile na nGall. There were a couple of streets intersecting the main road with a market and church at the center. I pulled into the church parking lot, figuring I could ask someone inside—if I could find anyone. If not, we would pray for revelation.

We walked into the church and sat in a pew at the back. I grabbed a Sunday bulletin (always!), which was in Irish, of course. John knelt to pray and, after a few moments, I watched as two men walked into the nave. One climbed up on some scaffolding. I walked quietly up the center aisle and stood at the communion rail. The men were busy talking in Irish about the painting they were about to do.

“Gabh mo leiscéal,” I said just loud enough for them to notice. We were right next to the altar, after all. “Hello,” the man on the floor replied, spotting me for a Yank. “Táim ag lorg an fear darbh ainm Leo Ó Murchú. An bhfuil aithne agat air?” I said. “Aithníonn.” He went on to explain that Leo lived in his mother’s house, just beyond what he referred to in Irish as two “chalets.” I think it must be a Kerry word for cottage. But there are a lot of Murphys in West Kerry, so I said, “Seo é Leo Ó Murchú, the air traffic controller?” “Is ea. Is ea.”

It was then I realized I was so focused on speaking and understanding Irish, that I had no idea in what direction these chalets were. So I looked at the back of the church and said, “Ar chlé?” pointing to the left. At that point, he and the fellow on the scaffolding started giving me directions at once in rapid fire Kerry Irish, and one of the phrases I caught in the jumble was “Téigh síos an bóthar.” (Go down the road.) I must have looked fairly distraught, because the fellow on the ground said quietly in English, “Yes, just down the road past the two chalets.” “Go raibh maith agat,” I said and smiled broadly, feeling pretty proud of myself for navigating what seemed to me a somewhat complex conversation with two locals, who hadn’t been hired to teach me!

We drove down the road but were a little lost since our main identifier was two chalets, and there was nothing that looked like Swiss architecture anywhere in sight. There was a woman who had stopped to get her mail out of a box at the side of this narrow two-lane road bordered by tall fuchsia hedges. John stopped the car, and I hopped out. “Cá bhfuil an teach Leo Ó Murchú?” “You just missed it. He lives in that peach-colored two-story house right there.” She pointed up the road. “But Leo’s not there. His sister should be at home.” “Thank you!” John and I turned around and pulled into the driveway of the peach-colored house.

The house was empty. We drove back to the little market and, after more Irish—páipear, peann, clúdach—I wrote a note to Leo and left it in the mail slot. Besides identifying myself, I only said that we were staying in An Spéice the night. I figured he would call there. I wish I had asked the woman at the mailbox why Leo wasn’t at home. Maybe he was on vacation. We left An Bhauiltín the next day and headed to the Burren. Maybe I’ll try writing a letter to Leo with my street and email addresses included. Maybe I’ll write to him in Irish.

May your journey, long or short, be a success.

After a lovely visit with my cousin Gary at the University of Limerick, John and I headed north through the Burren in Clare and into Galway, stopping at Moycullen to see the Reilly family home. My grandfather left that home in 1900 when he booked passage from Cóbh to New York, and on to Pittsburgh.

Although still in the family, the house hasn’t been lived in for twenty years or more. A thick stone wall still sits before it, and the iron gate is rusted shut. John gave me a leg up to climb over the wall; then he climbed over, and I jumped into his arms on the other side, landing in a bed of nettles. The house with its faded red door sits not far from the stone wall. The windows are covered in thick wooden planking. To the west of the house is a smaller structure made of stone, maybe a cool place for storing potatoes and other vegetables.

We walked between the house and the small stone structure in a deeply rutted path that ended in a large meadow overlooking the expanse of land that stretches for miles between Moycullen and the sea. The sky that afternoon was unusually blue, with bright white cumulus clouds, and across the field five horses grazed. As we walked into the field, each one in turn looked up. They walked across the field and stood in a perfect phalanx about twenty feet in front of us, waiting patiently. I would have given almost anything at that moment for a bag of apples.

After a bit the horses decided we bore no gifts, and they went back to grazing in the field. John and I walked to the edge of the field and back, climbing back up over the stone wall and into our black rental car. We headed toward the sea like my grandfather had done on foot, more than a century ago.

For weeks I’ve been studying Irish, the first language of my paternal grandparents. My studies haven’t been simply in Ireland, but in a village within walking distance—albeit a long walk—from both of their birthplaces. Every day I’ve had more questions for them and for my father. Did they speak to him in Irish when he was a boy? Did my father have any Irish? My grandparents were cradle Irish; they must have spoken it to each other at home.

Decades ago my father talked about having to be very quiet on Tuesday evenings when my grandfather entertained other “Gaelic scholars” in the parlor of their home in Pittsburgh. He remembered sitting on the stairs listening to them speak in Irish, most probably about literature and politics, which at that moment in history would have included the Gaelic Revival, the Easter Uprising, and the First World War. What I wouldn’t give, not only for a bag of apples, but to sit in that parlor listening to that conversation in Irish. I would have kept very still.

May we live this time again.

Kylemore Abbey, the Sky Road, Clifden, Roundstone. My hope is to live this time again–through memory, at least.

One story leads to another. 

Yesterday we had a great tour of Inis Oirr, the easternmost of the Aran Islands. Here are a few photos of Saint Gobnait’s 6th century church, the landscape, and an elderberry tree. The island was of strategic importance in centuries past and had its fair share of smugglers and pirates, as well. It’s part of County Galway now but has gone back and forth between Galway and Clare in years past. Irish is still the first language in the Aran Islands.