An Irishman's Diary

It is that time of year when we Sagittarians celebrate ourselves and the good fortune of a world that has such people in it - people such as one of Ireland's great institutions, Seβn MacRΘamoinn, who was 80 last Tuesday. Polymath, raconteur, Gaeilgeoir, one of our more theologically literate lay Catholics, wonderful communicator, bon viveur par excellence, and unsurpassed company, Seβn is unique.

But sadly, for all those fine qualities which make him a treasure to his many friends and admirers, posterity will probably remember him above all else for just one great line. (Then again, many of us would be content with that.)

It is his offhand quip some years ago that he was like a census form - "broken down by age, sex, and religion".

Child of the diaspora

Like most of the best sort of Irish people he is a child of the diaspora. On November 27th, 1921 he was born in Birmingham of a Wexford father and a Sligo mother. The family returned to Ireland when he was two. He was educated in Dublin, Clonmel, and Galway before graduating there in 1944, when he joined the Department of External Affairs for a few years. Then he joined Radio Eireann, where he was to spend nearly 40 years there.

It was at the beginning of that career in 1947 when he and the late traditional musician Seamus Ennis went in search of Peig. A rumour had hit Dublin that she was about to die. It was greatly exaggerated - she lived for many more years - but such was the anxiety of our duo to interview her for the very last time that they decided to head for Kerry post-haste in Seamus Ennis's less than trustworthy Ford car. It broke down and the rain fell, and fell, and it seemed the thing to do was to be as wet inside as out. A long journey slowed to a crawl.

When they eventually got to Waterville in Kerry, they got word that there were Basque-speaking Spanish sailors on Valentia island, who also happened to be selling contraband brandy. Over they went, hoping to record the Basques singing in their own language. But they wouldn't. However, they still had to be entertained with a fee in kind, in those days when no fee at all was paid for taking part in programmes.

The entertainment resulted in a bill for 37 glasses of Guinness (costing about £2) which became the stuff of legend in the civil service as it wended its way past the mandarins in the then Department of Posts and Telegraphs en route to the Department of Finance, leading to outraged demands for an explanation for such profligacy.

But they did get the interview with Peig.

Versatility and panache

Speaking of those years travelling the length and breath of Ireland making programmes with the Outside Broadcasting Unit. M∅cheβl ╙ hAodha, former assistant controller of radio programmes at RT╔, said Seβn MacRΘamoinn and Seamus Ennis were "the shock troops of Irish radio, which could never be the same again. While Seamus Ennis was a traditional musician without peer, Seβn MacReamoinn was and is a broadcaster of such versatility and panache that there are few areas of Irish life and culture to which he has not contributed." It is worth recalling that accolade as we celebrate 75 years of Irish radio.

But if Seβn is remembered for a long, distinguished career in broadcasting, with that unique voice once described as being like gravel laced with honey, he is probably identified mostly with a passionate interest in the Irish language and in Church affairs.

Of Irish, in which he has written extensively, including for this newspaper, he once said: "Our language is our baby. It has been sick and it has been difficult, at times it has been spoilt and mishandled. But it is infinitely precious." He is probably one of the language's great agents. Anyone who has seen him hold court at the numerous Scoileanna Merriman down the years will have witnessed the exuberance with which he celebrates "as Gaeilge". No hint of the precious there and not a hint of that earnest puritanism which killed off the joie de vivre so strongly associated with the language in the early years of its revival. With Seβn around Irish is fun again.

He brought the same enthusiasm to his religious journalism. Very much a liberal Catholic in the mould of Vatican II, on which he reported extensively up to 1965, he has described that heady 1960s experience as "a marvellous thing. I think it was an act of the Holy Spirit. It opened doors and windows. It brought the Church kicking and screaming into the 20th century. It was a beginning, something of a revolution. . ."

"Loyal opposition"

Like so many others, he has been disappointed by what has happened in the Church since - the seemingly endless row-back against the spirit of Vatican II - so much so that he has described himself as a member of the Church's "loyal opposition". This is not "a concept that the institutional Church has regarded with great affection", he once remarked with some understatement.

His liberal-left perspective remains always clear as he continues to write with great insight and from an envious depth of knowledge in his columns for Doctrine and Life magazine.

And all this from a man who knows all the lyrics of Cole Porter and Jerome Kern songs, endless ballads, and a whole array of vaudeville tunes.

In his spare time he wrote the script for the watershed film Mise Eire by George Morrrison, was a theatre critic for the valued Bell magazine - that rare beacon in a dark age - and married Pat Hall from Vancouver, with whom he had Seona, Laoise, and Brian. It has been a very full and rich life.

Many happy returns, Seβn. They don't make them like you any more.