RTE No 20 Interior - Road to Emmaus Journal

Road to Emmaus Vol. XII, No. 2 (#45)CROAGH PATRICKWe have a national Irish radio and television station now, but there is stillan on-going decline. Before independence, Irish was often beaten out of youin the schools. My grandfather went to school in the national school system.They had to wear a tally-stick around their neck, and every time theyspoke Irish it was notched and they were beaten at the end of the day. Sothere was tremendous pressure to have English to get on in life. The world ofcommerce, of respectability, of advancement, was all in English. Then, afterall; he wanted to be a modern Irish person. Irish is still in sharp decline, eventhough it’s obligatory in school. You can’t matriculate without it, but it’s notpart of the deep culture.Now, the areas around here speak it, but my children don’t, even though Ispeak to them in Irish. My sister lives south of us and her children do speakit, because they’ve been brought up in an Irish-speaking village. Irish is stillspoken in parts of Belfast as part of a nationalist identity.Roman Catholic mass on summit of Croagh Patrick with Archbishop Neary, 2008. First Station of the Reek, 1985.Independence, they tried to beat Irish back into you, which left many peoplewith ambiguous feelings toward the language.This attitude has changed now, but not the deep change we need. We don’thave the strength of the language like in Wales or in northern Scotland,where the Presbyterian Church is very conscious of holding onto the language.In Ireland, despite an official position of support, the cultural impactof colonization and anti-Irish prejudice is strong. The people most againstthe Irish language are the generation who’ve abandoned it, like my father.His parents and older sister were Irish speakers, but he had no time for it atThe Tragedy of the National Archives; Later LiteratureRTE: Are there accounts of people climbing Croagh Patrick during the periodof the penal laws?MICHAEL: We know they did, but there are only spartan accounts. Our bigdifficulty with historical records is that in 1922 during the Civil War afterthe British left, the historical records in the Four Courts in Dublin were destroyed.Our whole history went up in smoke. Anti-treaty forces, opposed3637