Oireachtas Irish language festival returns to Connemara

When south Connemara hosted its first Oireachtas Irish language cultural festival four decades ago the main marquee blew down just as a céilí was about to start.

No one was injured, new venues were found and The Irish Times praised the organising committee's "Gaeltacht brio" and "improvisational flair".

Some 40 years later the occasion will be marked over the weekend in Connemara’s Cois Fharraige with festivities that include a concert by 20 of the finest sean-nós singers from home and abroad.

The sean-nós event, which will be attended by President Michael D Higgins tomorrow night, is being held in memory of Ciarán Ó Con Cheanainn, a singer from Cois Fharraige who died shortly after winning the prestigious Corn Uí Riada at Oireachtas na Gaeilge in Cork six years ago.

Oireachtas Chois Fharraige 1974-2014 opened yesterday at the Poitin Stil singing pub in Indreabhan, Co Galway, by Ros na Rún actor Joe Steve Ó Neachtain, who made a "short, stirring" speech at the same venue four decades earlier.

Community spirit

A youthful Ó Neachtain spoke then of the community spirit which had ensured that outside toilets and wells were replaced by a group water scheme and industry was established in the Gaeltacht area – although it was still “one big factory” for emigration, he said.

This time a still youthful Ó Neachtain recalled achievements recorded over the past 40 years, including Irish language radio and television and NUI Galway’s academy or “acadamh”. However, he expressed fears for the future of the Erse and said that a “new proclamation” is required to encapsulate a commitment to the first language’s future.

Film-maker Bob Quinn, who recorded much of the 1974 event, screened a compilation of that material. Video was a "raw technology" at the time, according to Cumann Forbartha Chois Fharraige chairman Donncha Ó hÉallaithe.

"The idea of the Oireachtas being moved from Dublin to the Gaeltacht came from journalist Desmond Fennell initially," said Mr Ó hÉallaithe.

Movement

Four years before, Cearta Síbhialta na Gaeltachta, or Gaeltacht civil rights movement, had organised a Oireachtas festival in Ros Muc to show it could be done – broadcasting a Mass with singing by Seán Ó Riada and Cór Chúil Aodha on pirate radio as part of its campaign for an Irish language station.

Irish Times western correspondent Michael Finlan described how the first Connemara event unrolled "a tapestry of rich culture and tradition" which "brought back, for a moment, a mode of life that has dimmed in the past".

“Usually at this time of year, with the summer tourist season ended, the roads around Cois Fharraige are as bare as the face of the moon,” he wrote on September 11th, 1974. However, the contests, the ceilí dances, and even cabaret produced “the biggest traffic jam ever seen in Connemara”, he wrote.