An Beal Bocht: mouthing off at national identity

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2003 by Sarah E. McKibben

To mock and stymie audience expectations, An Beal Bocht affects all of the trappings of the authorized Gaelic autobiography, both verbal and visual, including a portrait of the author on the cover, a map (in the Irish version), and the editorial apparatus of the "as told to" memoir (making Myles na gCopaleen the "editor," rather than the author). In the original Mercier edition of the Irish-language text in 1941, the cover by Sean O Suilleabhain (who also created the map) shows a wiry, stooped figure in patched trousers, holding a small fish on a hook in one hand and a pair of oars resting on his shoulder in the other. He peers out from under his scruffy, unkempt hair with a slackjawed, apprehensive expression. By contrast, the original cover of The Islandman shows the author in muscular silhouette with oars over his shoulder, striding confidently forward, seeming six rimes taller than the tiny figures carrying currachs in the background. O Criomhthain figures as triumphantly heroic, while Bonaparte and his family are exaggeratedly pathetic and miserable, as the poor-mouthing (i.e., making oneself pathetic, complaining about poverty) of the title already suggests.

Maps were often provided in the first few pages (or end-papers) of Irish autobiographies and folklore collections, signaling their link to ethnographic and antiquarian attempts to secure Ireland and the Irish as an object of knowledge firmly under imperial control. In a mockery of such solicitude, An Beal Bocht (though not The Poor Mouth) includes a map of "An Domhan Mor" (literally, 'the big world'; that is, the whole world) as seen by the people of Corkadoragha. Instead of the carefully delineated and ruled structure of the conventional map, we have a topsy-turvy, insistently perspectival world. The familiar coastline of Ireland has become a diseased hand with three Gaeltacht regions clustered on the left thumb since Bonaparte's house magically overlooks all three main Gaeltacht areas: the Donegal region to the right, Connemara in front, and Kerry to the left. In this solipsistic landscape all compasses point west, and only the U.K., Ireland, the U.S., and a mythical bit of China are shown, with other regions marked "foreign." North Amerikay, known simply as "Thar Lear" (literally, 'across the sea'), features a minimalist geography of the favored emigrant destinations--New York, Boston, and Springfield--in a vertical line, scattered Money Order Offices, and "sea-divided Gaels" marooned amidst the long-horned cows of proverbial plenty. Instead of the earnest orientation for the reader offered in other works, disorientation is what this map promises and what the text delivers.

At the beginning of the 1941 preface, the text's "editor" stakes his unique scholarly claim: "Creidim gurb e seo an chead leabhar riamh dar cuireadh i gclo i dtaobh Chorca Dorcha" ("I believe that this is the first book ever published on the subject of Corkadoragha"; 1941:7, 1993:7). This marks it as a "pioneering" work of recovery in line with other folkloric rescue operations, with which Gaeltacht writing was often linked (Farnon 1997:92). O Nuallain takes aim not just at An tOileanach but at the whole self-interested and doctrinaire apparatus conditioning the approach to such materials. O Nuallain writes that he hopes his book will aid the language and its learners, since it is "go direach mar a fuair me i o laimh an udair" ("exactly as I received it from the author's hand") except "go bhfuil an mhorchuid fagtha ar lar" ("that most of it has been left out") due to lack of space and improper subject matter (1941:7; 1993:7). The text parodies the editor's introduction to An tOileanach, in which An Seabhac (Padraig O Siochfhradha) notes the omission of some material but asserts that this sanitizing editorial intervention does not detract from the narrative's completeness (O Conaire 1973:135; Farnon 1997:92). Such paradoxical assurances (that the text is exact yet omits the parts deemed inappropriate) suggests both the condescension with which Irish "folk" material was treated and the degree to which its nostalgic public face was determined by rigid expectations of what could and ought to be said in Irish.