Céad míle fáilte for the Irish language - in Italy and America. The RTE broadcaster and author discovers gaelic has gone global.

FOR WHOM THE ROAD TOLLS
It starts with floods, sodomy and the clash, aka a Saturday View discussing a country not waving but drowning under a deluge of water, child abuse and social partners being highly anti-social. During a break, Noel Dempsey cheers me up by revealing that the M3 is six to nine months ahead of schedule.  My satisfaction that the journey from Kells to Dublin will be 20 minutes shorter is somewhat diminished when I realise that I’ll be paying two tolls per trip almost a year earlier than expected. On The Sunday Forum next day, it’s eyes down for a full house and a round-table on the report about the Dublin archdiocese. Producer Yetti Redmond has assembled an A-list cast - Mary Raftery, Andrew Madden, David Quinn, Patsy McGarry and Fr Aquinas Duffy - so it’s a case of ‘light fuse and retire’.  They don’t need much help from me.

BORN IN THE USÁ
On Tuesday a number of former Fulbrighters are invited by Colleen Dube, who runs the Fulbright Commission office here, to meet the European branch chief.  We are a small cohort who have been allowed to spend six months to a year at an American college courtesy of the US Department of State.  We are joined by Americans who have similarly benefited (in the opposite direction) from this great wheeze of Senator William Fulbright. The star turn is Molly, a young American doing an MA in Irish at NUI Galway.  She speaks our native tongue more fluently than anyone in the room, apart from another American, Emily, who is doing a similar course.  Molly has just landed a part in Ros na Rún as a nurse.  She is an absolute ticket and will leap through the TV screen.  There are probably as many Americans studying the Irish language in Notre Dame and Boston College as there are in UCD or Trinity.  I suspect they’ll be scooped up by the CIA and sent in pairs to spy on countries where Irish is not spoken. Like Ireland.

CIUNAS!
It brings to mind the story told to me by a resident of the Rath Chairn gaeltacht in Co Meath, Máirtín ‘Korea’ Mac Donnchadha.  A native speaker, he fought with the American army in, you guessed it, Korea.  He was taken prisoner by the Chinese and in the prison camp struck up a friendship with an Offaly-born POW from the Royal Ulster Rifles.  Both talked Irish to each other incessantly until they were stopped by the Chinese prison guards.  It may have been the last time that the use of the Irish language was banned.

WILDE IMAGININGS
I take a break from trying to teach history in my spare time in TCD and have a coffee with Pauric Dempsey of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA).  We discuss its new Dictionary of Irish Biography, co-edited by one of my old teachers in UCD, Professor James McGuire.  There are 9,000 entries and the few that Pauric didn’t write himself he seems to know all about. He tells me about Oscar Wilde’s older brother, William.  Hands up who knew Oscar Wilde had a brother? Apparently the resemblance was so uncanny that Oscar persuaded his sibling to wear a moustache so that they would not be confused.  Which begs the question - who really sued the Marquis of Queensberry and lost? Are we certain a freshly shorn William Wilde didn’t end up in Reading nick? He might have done the hard time and written his brother a letter complaining about conditions.  This could, in turn, have prompted Oscar to dash off The Ballad of Reading Gaol.  Don’t scoff.  I’m pretty sure it was Oscar who once wrote ‘Plagiarise, plagiarise. Let nothing evade your eyes’.

SPÁM EMAIL
I get a spam email from Gianni Pezzutto with the subject line ‘Dia dhuit a chara’. Normally it would be despatched to Trashville but (as intended) I’m intrigued.  It begins: ‘Is é do thoil logh linn chun cur isteach do time.’ From the Neapolitan gaeltacht? The Erse gets worse.  Molly and Emily would be disgusted.  There’s a link to a website for electrical goods.  Full marks for trying - but I’m not going to flag the web address.  Ta bron orm Gianni, mo chara. Myles Dungan is an RTE broadcaster and author of Conspiracy: Irish Political Trials, published by the RIA and RTE.

The Sunday Times
06 Nollaig 2009

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