Deaglán de Bréadún: the news in Irish

Among my favourite sayings is one attributed to baseball legend Yogi Berra. Noted for his colourful mode of expression, he famously pronounced: “When you come to a fork in the road – take it!”

Apart from its surrealist humour, the statement encapsulates in its own peculiar way the difficulty we have when faced with crucial choices in our lives and careers.

One of those occasions came about in my early days as a reporter at The Irish Times. A well-respected senior colleague, Eileen O’Brien, who edited the weekly Irish-language column “Tuarascáil” (“Report”), died on New Year’s Eve, 1985, and in due course it was necessary to appoint a successor.

The legendary James Downey, who sadly passed away himself last April, was a deputy editor at the paper and, some time after Eileen’s passing, he called me aside in the newsroom to pose the question: “How good is your Irish?”

This was another way of saying: “Are you capable and willing to take over the Irish-language column?” It was a Yogi Berra moment and I indicated to him that I was reasonably confident of my capacity to produce “Tuarascáil” and, if that was the role being offered, I would take it.

My first column appeared on March 12th, 1986. “Tuarascáil” was published every Wednesday, taking up the bottom quarter of the quaintly-titled but highly-readable Arts and Studies page. In time, I succeeded in doubling the space for the column and it was transferred to the features page where it might have a higher profile. In August 1987, I was given the title Eagarthóir Gaeilge/Irish Language Editor: the work took up two days a week and the rest of the time I covered news stories in English.

I also had to oversee two other Irish-language pieces that appeared on a weekly basis: a column by the highly-regarded Breandán Ó hEithir entitled “Ag Cuimilt Meala” (“Rubbing Honey” or buttering-up – an ironic title, because that wasn’t Breandán’s style) and another column, from different contributors, called “Beocheist” (“Live Issue”). Both of these had already been running for some time and when “Beocheist” first started, Bruce Williamson, another deputy editor at the paper but whose knowledge of Irish was rather modest, humorously pronounced it as “Bayo-Chised”. He was a great wit and, when a piece appeared in the name of Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams – an even more controversial figure at that time than he is now – Bruce announced that henceforth the column’s title should be pronounced “By Christ!”

Although I have referred to “Tuarascáil” as a column, it was essentially a mini-newspaper in Irish and the various items were quite short. With “Beocheist”, on the other hand, the writer had space to explore a particular topic in greater depth and, as well as commissioning and editing contributions from others, I took the opportunity to write occasional pieces myself.

Some of these are included in a collection of my articles entitled Scéalta Nuachta (“News Stories”) published lately by a subsidiary of the magazine Comhar, called LeabhairCOMHAR. There are also several pieces that originally appeared in Comhar itself and together they cover a 25-year period, from 1988 to 2013. The book was launched at the Royal Irish Academy by former tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, who speaks excellent Connemara Irish.

Irish-speakers are sometimes caricatured as leading narrow, provincial lives with an unremitting focus on the local scene. I am happy to do my bit to undermine that portrayal, as this book includes reports on stories I covered in Iran, Egypt, Russia and the territory known as Kurdistan.

There’s a description of an interview I got in Cairo with the Egyptian president at the time, Hosni Mubarak. Although currently detained in a military hospital, having been convicted of corruption in May 2015, when I met the autocratic ruler in late 2006 he was at the height of his powers and about to embark on a series of visits to Dublin, Paris and Berlin. Surprisingly, there was no staffer sitting-in for the interview: Mubarak spoke good English and his response to most questions began with the phrase, “It’s complicated”, which rather amusingly happens also to be the title of a love-triangle movie starring Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep.

There’s also an account in the book of a terrifying visit to a nickel-producing factory in north-western Russia where the air was so full of what we were told was sulphur dioxide that I felt lucky to get out alive. Another piece describes a much-happier Russian experience when visiting Yasnaya Polyana, home of the great Leo Tolstoy, 200km south of Moscow.

Since Irish political developments can be notoriously hard to predict, it is a pleasant surprise to read again how I correctly anticipated in 1995 that Mary Robinson would not serve a second term in Áras an Uachtaráin. It took rather less foresight to predict in the same year that Bertie Ahern could well make his way from Leader of the Opposition to the office of Taoiseach after the next general election.

Other topics covered include the Irish role in the Spanish Civil War, the history of censorship in this country, and the role of the Marxist scholar George Thomson in developing literature in Irish. Writing in a minority language is a challenging affair: you have a small but highly-attentive and sophisticated audience. I always try to express myself in plain and simple terms, in an effort to broaden the readership. Hopefully it works: this is the second book in Irish I have produced in the last year – the other is Cinnlínte: Saol an Iriseora (“Headlines: The Life of the Journalist”, published by Cois Life).

Scéalta Nuachta can be purchased for €13 at iriscomhar.com

[ Cathal Póirtéir's review of Cinnlínte: Saol an Iriseora ]