"Tradition can survive only in a traditional society, a society that reveres its own heritage." Dr Peter Kwasniewski, liturgical expert and author
I guess I was just born to be Traditional then. Here for those who want to know more about revering traditional Irish culture, is an Irish-language film, Oídhche Sheanchais ('Oídhche' now being spelled Oíche).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VknAyF65MY
Filmed in a house on one of the Oileáin Árann, Aran Islands, "back in the day" apparently. The one thing I'd say is you can't smell the turf burning. I want to smell it, somehow. It doesn't work for me without that ageless, conjuring aroma.
Of course, Irish is spoken now also in Dublin and Belfast as well, and even then in the days of the Free State there were efforts to encourage its use in urban environments. (I'll have to write about those when I get time.) This film here actually gave the not-to-subtle suggestion that Irish was far, far, far removed from everyday Irish life. I would guess about one-third or so of the Irish then (and now) still think of it that way, something remote, unrelated to their rather angst-filled post Celtic Tiger lives.
My one great Aunt who was the oldest of her siblings, Aunt Mary Fannan, spoke Irish well because her parents didn't speak English when they came to the U.S. back in the 1870s or so, yet when my mother in the 1920s asked her to teach her (me mom) an Ghaeilge, Aunt Mary would say, (actually, she really did use the 'lace curtain' phrase) "We're lace curtain Irish, we are! We don't speak that!" But my mother would harass her till she taught a bit to her (which she was happy to pass on to me in the 1960s, the only one of her sons who wanted it, sure.
That sort of mentality – that Irish language was something to be ashamed of – was so strong after the Famine that the very word 'Gaelach', which is the adjective of Gael and Gaeilge, came to mean 'shoddy' and 'defective' and 'crappy'.
No reverence for its own heritage there, in post-Famine Ireland. (Well, sure, there were exceptions, some quite important, too.)
Somehow, Aunt Mary got that idea ingrained in her but she couldn't infect my mother with it. My brothers have a bit of it, as well, I'm sorry to say. I always thought that sort of mentality was anti-self, as it were. As Peter Kwasniewski says above, "Tradition can survive only in a traditional society, a society that reveres its own heritage."
As I get time, I'll load some stories similar to this one in the movie that I have from Scéalta Chois Cladaigh, dá n-inseacht ag Seán Ó hEinirí, Cill Ghallagáin, in Maigh Eó. Seámas Ó Catháin was the collector, translator, and annotator. John Henry was the teller of these shore and fishing tales, and he didn't speak English.
An Préachán
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