The Colony
Gaelic (i.e. Irish) is a compulsory subject in Irish schools. While living in Ireland, I learned that debate always brewed as to its utility and role, but for my family, it was just something different and interesting. As outsiders, we had no weighty thoughts about Ireland’s identity, and as parents, we liked seeing our children learn something new. Matt has a colleague who grew up on Inisheer, which is part of the Gaeltacht (rural districts where Irish is the predominant language); when she speaks to her family, it’s in Irish. There is also a growth of Irish-speakers in urban areas due to the popularity of Gaelscoileanna, schools outside of the Gaeltacht that instruct all subjects in the Irish language. Our friends have sent their three girls to one for secondary and/or primary school. So there’s an overly simplistic primer on Gaelic…from a non-Irish person.
Language provides a fascinating frame for viewing a culture and an identity, which means that language can also be controversial. (See also: Catalan in Spain.) I just finished Booker longlister The Colony by Audrey Magee. It’s a poetic look at an unnamed island in the Gaeltacht, its inhabitants, a British painter searching for authentic inspiration, and a French ethnographer/linguist engaging in a multi-year study of the island’s language patterns. Can a population and its language-use evolve? Who has a say in that? And what role does language play in colonization — for both the colonized *and* the colonizer?
Because of the island’s isolation in The Colony, an otherworldly aura permeates, yet Magee punctuates this scene with very real vignettes of The Troubles and associated violence. If you do some quick research of the true names and incidents Magee brings in, you learn the book takes place in 1979. (The final act of violence in the novel will be recognized by many readers.) Otherworldly doesn’t mean immune.
{In a totally non-coordinated plan, I’m currently reading Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. Talk about a 100% perfect nonfiction pairing with The Colony.}
{PS: Look below to see a snippet from our time on Inisheer this summer.}
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