John Walsh's cheekily titled book will appeal to anyone with the slightest interest in the history and, more importantly, the future of this most unique part of Ireland's culture, those districts which, miraculously, have managed to maintain the Irish language over decades of economic neglect and political stagnation.
Established by the State in 1925, Coimisiún na Gaeltachta was tasked with defining Irish-speaking districts and making recommendations as to how to promote the language therein. The commission's report was published in 1926 and it is this which provides Walsh with his material. His introductory essay (in Irish) is accessible and concise in laying out the role the commission envisaged for itself, its methodology and its aims.
He presents its findings in short thematic chapters dealing with such issues as the economy, education, administration and emigration by providing extracts as to what was said. Surprisingly, many of the original submissions were in English - a boon for any reader whose Irish may be weak.
The contemporary reader is immediately struck by the tone of many of the verbal reports. The paradox between then and now is startling: then the Gaeltacht was rich in people but poor economically, now it is poor in people but rich economically; then it was a foreign land, now it's Costa del Conamara.
It is worth noting that many of those who spoke to the commission belonged to the clergy or were professional men - and they dominate this narrative.
Further, they did not always agree with each other. One speaker told the commission that the "national schools are doing great work for the language. Not only are the children learning the language, but they take pride in their knowledge of it". Another rejects this, saying that the teaching of Irish has not rekindled the use of Irish in the home, due to "habit mainly".
Interestingly, the attitude to language is black-and-white. Bilingualism seems not to have been understood as a concept; the language question was an either/or one: "There are a great number of parents who have been to America, and more than a dozen of them have complained to me bitterly that English was not taught in the school; they don't want their children to be in the same difficulties in America as they were themselves."
Lack of employment or opportunities for advancement is a constant litany. The people of the Gaeltacht spoke Irish, but they were still people and they needed to eat. To paraphrase John Hume, "you can't eat a language" was the attitude of the day.
The emotional and cultural damage that emigration wrought on those who left and on those who stayed is sharply summed up: "The glaring defect of the system is the hopeless outlook. Emigration is the sole channel open to drain off the overflow of the population, and brains and physical energy are swept from us in the process of depletion."
Shamefully, that "drain off" is still with us.
Pól Ó Muirí is Irish Language Editor
of The Irish Times
Pól Ó Muirí
Díchoimisiúnú Teanga: Coimisiúna Gaeltachta 1926. By John Walsh.
Cois Life, 138pp. €12