Is he cutting off is fingers and throwing them at people?
I think the real tragedy is that the politics of the freestate and what came after were complete ideologically ill-equipped to help the Gaeltacht thrive and I don’t mean as a kitsch reservation or theme park but in a way that could have allowed the native speaking communities assert themselves over their future. Udaras na Gaeltachta came way too late and too IDA-ish (read unsustainable)
Such drama. Irish culture is not dead, nor gone, nor dependent on John Bhaba to keep it alive.
There’s plenty of people speaking Irish, and more every year. There’s plenty of Irish music being played, and more playing every year. You can hear Irish music in lots of places – excellent music, played by excellent musicians.
You can go to down to Kinvara any morning after a big tide and see people loading up on seaweed. People don’t need John to trace their ancestry – the RCC and the state have and are digitising all their records, you can look it up from the comfort of your home.
You don’t need to keep alive a tradition of driking tea from a bucket – we all did that as youngsters, on a boat or in the bog, and it was shite. You don’t need to keep alive the tradition of brewing poitín – it’s fucking poison, even the legal stuff is rank. You don’t need to keep alive the tradition of burning turf – it’s a crap fuel and literally taking the ecology of our island and fucking it up a chimney.
Saying ‘We were never hungry. We hadn’t much, but we had enough.’ is rose-tinted bullshit. What we had was TB, dampness, shitting in holes in the ground, silent abuse, and you better believe there was hunger.
I don’t want to be hard on him, and fair play for the efforts he’s making, but Irish culture is not just doing specific things in a specific way in specific places, just because thats what used to happen a hundred years ago. That’s akin to DeValera’s idealistic rubbish, that does more harm than good.
> The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age.
Yeah, well fine words doth butter no parsnips.
With the level of migration and the native birth , This type of Irish culture has little chance of survival.
If the Irish language is to have any chance of becoming relevant again, it will have to urbanise.
I love the modern culture to be honest. Love that my kids are in classes with kids from 20 different nationalities.
7 comments
Tldr. What’s wrong with him?
Is he cutting off is fingers and throwing them at people?
I think the real tragedy is that the politics of the freestate and what came after were complete ideologically ill-equipped to help the Gaeltacht thrive and I don’t mean as a kitsch reservation or theme park but in a way that could have allowed the native speaking communities assert themselves over their future. Udaras na Gaeltachta came way too late and too IDA-ish (read unsustainable)
Such drama. Irish culture is not dead, nor gone, nor dependent on John Bhaba to keep it alive.
There’s plenty of people speaking Irish, and more every year. There’s plenty of Irish music being played, and more playing every year. You can hear Irish music in lots of places – excellent music, played by excellent musicians.
You can go to down to Kinvara any morning after a big tide and see people loading up on seaweed. People don’t need John to trace their ancestry – the RCC and the state have and are digitising all their records, you can look it up from the comfort of your home.
You don’t need to keep alive a tradition of driking tea from a bucket – we all did that as youngsters, on a boat or in the bog, and it was shite. You don’t need to keep alive the tradition of brewing poitín – it’s fucking poison, even the legal stuff is rank. You don’t need to keep alive the tradition of burning turf – it’s a crap fuel and literally taking the ecology of our island and fucking it up a chimney.
Saying ‘We were never hungry. We hadn’t much, but we had enough.’ is rose-tinted bullshit. What we had was TB, dampness, shitting in holes in the ground, silent abuse, and you better believe there was hunger.
I don’t want to be hard on him, and fair play for the efforts he’s making, but Irish culture is not just doing specific things in a specific way in specific places, just because thats what used to happen a hundred years ago. That’s akin to DeValera’s idealistic rubbish, that does more harm than good.
> The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age.
Yeah, well fine words doth butter no parsnips.
With the level of migration and the native birth , This type of Irish culture has little chance of survival.
If the Irish language is to have any chance of becoming relevant again, it will have to urbanise.
I love the modern culture to be honest. Love that my kids are in classes with kids from 20 different nationalities.