An Irishman's Diary

‘THE people – the peasants they are called to make the proletariat feel superior – are wise. They have always been wise. Give them Radio na Gaeltachta. Give them regional radio. Death to the Top Twenty” – Michael Hartnett.

The quote is from the late poet Michael Hartnett and is contained in Pat Walsh’s very readable and newly-published biography, A Rebel Act: Michael Hartnett’s Farewell to English (Mercier Press). Hartnett’s decision to forsake English (temporarily) and write his poetry in Irish is well-known, though I suspect that his work as a radio reviewer is not. However, the fact that he spent much of his time listening to RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta (RnaG) to improve his Irish should not surprise anyone who has learnt – or is learning – Irish. It is true to say that Irish speakers do not always get the chance to speak Irish with native speakers – even when in the Gaeltacht – but it is also undeniably true that Irish speakers have the chance to listen to every single dialect every single day of the week due to the efforts of RnaG, which is celebrating 40 years a-broadcasting.

I belong to that generation of Belfast Irish speakers who could not receive the station that well fadó, fadó and fadó it was. My Irish teachers would bring little tapes (remember tapes?) from RnaG into the classroom in the early 1980s and we would gather around the tape recorder (remember tape recorders?) like some sort of French Resistance cell and listen as the richest Donegal Irish gushed forth: “This is Rann na Feirste calling, this is Rann na Feirste calling.”

Needless to say, the tapes were not always of the highest quality and the teacher would explain that he had to put the aerial in the attic and hope that the wind blew from the west in order to pick up the station at all. We would nod sagely and our ears would once again engage in auditory wrestling with the unfamiliar sounds of the language through the static. Of course, Donegal was not that far away and it is difficult to imagine now, in this digital age, just how hard it was to come by these little tapes and how precious a resource they were.

(Happily, RnaG is now available online throughout the planet and the planet is a better place for that.)

For us, the station poured out native Irish, the real deal, the gold standard. The sort of mystical, magical Irish that many of my generation in Belfast aspired to. You did not speak Irish until you had a grip on the Donegal dialect and you did not have a chance of learning that unless you glued your ears to RnaG and listened to the language as it passed over the peaks of Errigal and Muckish. I imagine that was the case for those who listened out for news from Connemara, Kerry and other Gaeltacht areas too.

Since those schooldays I have continued to listen to RnaG and have, now and again, found myself interviewed on it – though I hope that my guttural attempts at speaking have not caused any poor student any lasting harm! I could not imagine how impoverished my cultural life would have been without RnaG; it has been a window into a very special part of this country’s life and I cannot be the only one who has sat and listened to interviews in fluent Irish with emigrants in the US about presidential elections or their life in the UK, or to reporters speaking from Paris about the latest developments on the continent, or to a bit of local gossip and wondered at the immediacy of it all.

There is an intimacy too. One of the first things I noticed as a listener was the “scéalta báis” or death notices that followed the news. Here was a Gaeltacht community marking the passing of its own and naming those who had died in their own familiar names: their Christian name and then the name of their parents or a physical characteristic: Micí Sheáin Néill/Micí, son of Seán, son of Niall; Joe Fheilimí/Joe, son of Feilimí; Annie Bhán/White-haired Annie. Even in these days of rapid change, there are still names that are immediately identifiable with certain areas. The Donegal Gaeltacht boasts a richness of Gallaghers, Boyles, O’Donnells and Sharkeys and the ancient protocols are needed to help distinguish between them all.

It would be wrong to leave the final word about the station to death, however. Yes, RnaG faces many challenges in its role in serving a Gaeltacht audience, a non-Gaeltacht Irish-speaking audience in Ireland and abroad and, of course, in enticing the young and ensuring that they understand that the station can be one of their cultural tap roots. All this must be done against a background of restricted resources and a fractured linguistic map, a map where even the heartlands are under threat.

That said, there is always hope. RnaG introduced a policy of playing music in English a few years ago after 9pm. (What would Hartnett say?) If I am on the road late, I always tune in and marvel at the confident way in which young presenters offer me music from all the corners of the globe in their own vibrant, street Irish. I heard a presenter once urge his listeners: “Chillaxaigí” – relax. And I did.

Lá breithe shona, RnaG.