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.”
Learning Irish in Conamara 