An Irishwoman’s Diary: Paying tribute to Prof Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh

'Anyhow you're better off listening I think sometimes. . . there's a lot of talking done . . . more than is needed. " Pat Farnon couldn't capture life better as he walk-talks from his "wee white cottage" to town and back in Mikel Murfi's beautifully crafted piece of theatre, The Man in the Woman's Shoes. "There's a shocking amount of words in the world, enough now to last till the end of time, " Farnon, alias Murfi, observes. "But, ah, people think they have new things to say, I suppose."

Perhaps it’s the noise created by social media, or it was always thus; but for every one of those “new things” we can’t stop hearing about, there are so many thoughts of people we don’t get to hear enough of at all.

Take, for instance, historian Prof Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh of NUI Galway (NUIG), who has been a teacher, a writer, a university vice-president, governor, member of the NUI senate and of the Fulbright Commission, a chair of Údarás na Gaeltachta, of Bord na Gaeilge, and a current member of the Council of State.

“He seems to have read everything, weighed everything and arrived at judicious verdicts on everything, and presented [them] with such unobtrusive skills that it all comes across so smoothly that the reader, gliding over it, is left with no idea of the amount of work and thought involved,” Prof Joe Lee says of his peer.

“It is not until one attempts something similar that one realises just how demanding the genre is,and what sovereign command of the literature it requires,” he adds.

Catch a glimpse of Ó Tuathaigh on one of his frequent forays to the Saturday St Nicholas’s church market in Galway, and you’d never think that this was a man who knows more than a thing or three about the state of the Irish language, the land question, de Valera, the North, Melbourne’s Irish administration, home rule in English politics, Ireland before the Famine, or the GAA.

Tribute

Liberally laced with “ability, energy, tenacity and idealism”, the historian’s intellect knows no bounds, Prof Lee notes in his introduction to a 414-page tribute to the Limerick-born scholar.

His versatility and the way he has “prodigally” given of his time to others, is reflected in the number and range of contributors caught between the sturdy covers.

Some of the diverse subjects addressed in the book include the challenge of translating the plays of Martin McDonagh into Irish; the establishment of the labour movement in Galway; the influence of American social reformer Henry George on the Irish land movement, the workings of the Limerick city dispensary. And then there's the Woman's Way connection. "I am almost 50 years of age and I remember no good days but the present ones, " is how "Mrs K in Carlow" introduces herself in a chapter by NUIG modern Irish and European history lecturer Catriona Clear. Her essay focuses on letters published by the magazine during the first six years of its existence.

Women’s status, including contraception, marriage and earning mothers, cropped up in 18 per cent of letters, while children and young people, education and training accounted for about 14 per cent.

Contraception

Letters to the magazine opposing birth control usually took the tack of praising the unplanned family.

A writer calling herself “Happy Mother, Laois” wrote that she was annoyed at being commiserated with on the birth of her seventh son. However, “Mrs AF, Wicklow” described how four of her nine children had died and “every second one” was born with a disability. Her priest had told her that the laws of the church couldn’t be changed, Clear writes. Marital breakdown was “never discussed at all”. Nor was there much mention of England, and only 10 letters on emigration. Still, “Mrs MI, Cork” felt that the letters column should be compulsory reading for “every priest, bishop” and deputy in the Dáil.

It’s a chapter that Prof Ó Tuathaigh would show as much interest in as any, as an invaluable snapshot of social history. Prof Lee notes that he is driven by a “fundamental interest in identity” and he quotes Ó Tuathaigh’s own acute observation: “the Irish are like Orpheus, forever looking back at Eurydice they are attempting to bring home from the Shades.”

Culture and Society in Ireland since 1750: Essays in honour of Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh edited by John Cunningham and Niall Ó Ciosáín, is published by The Lilliput Press.