An Beal Bocht: mouthing off at national identity

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

If the elegiac turns out to be evacuated of meaningful referents, the past may not in fact be so ideal. The requisite nostalgia about life in the Gaeltacht seems particularly inappropriate to Corkadoragha, a miserable place provoking fatalism among its trapped inhabitants. Bonaparte comments, "Mo lean, is amhlaidh a bhi i gconai. Is minic a chuala me an Seanduine Liath ag cur sios ar cruatan agus ainnise an tsaoil a bhi ann fado" ("Alas! it was always thus. I often heard the Old-Grey-Fellow speak of the hardship and misery of life in former times"; 1941:15, 1993:18). Heritage demands putting the youngster into the dirt by the fireplace because, "mar is leir d'aoinne a leas na dea-leabhair Ghaeilge" ("as is clear to any reader of the good Gaelic books"), "is neamhrialta minadurtha an oiliuint agus an tabhairt suas a bheas air gan aon taithi aige ar an ngriosaigh" ("it's an unnatural and unregulated training and rearing he'll have without any experience of the ashes"; 1941:13, 1993:16). Similarly, brutality in school turns out to be an inescapable part of what is elsewhere called "cinniuint Ghaelach" ("Gaelic fate"; 1941:73, 1993:84). As Bonaparte's mother says, "Bhi se riamh raite agus scriofa go mbuailtear gach tachran Gaelach ar an gcead la scoile do" ("It was always said and written that every Gaelic youngster is hit on his first school day"; 1941:127, 1993:31-34). In a parodic reversal books do not testify to the historical mistreatment common to the national schools but instead prescribe that treatment, just as they prescribe Gaelic victimization generally. Bonaparte's cliched suffering originates in audience expectations of a narrative of unmitigated colonial oppression of the "Stage Gael" who has replaced the Stage Irishman since independence (Kiberd 1995:498). That the schoolmaster's accent is an Irish one testifies to the explicit or tacit consent of the Irish themselves to such linguistic "progress" that results in the jettisoning of the very traditions later deemed essential to national identity.

Similarly, the simplification that goes into nationalist pieties draws repeated tire in the novel. The story's descriptive elements are also drawn from the cliches of Gaelic autobiography; thus literary convention (what "was always said and written") leads to further absurdities, for example in details of the landscape itself. Thus, regarding all the little lime-white cabins in the hills, "ni fios ce a chur suas aon cheann diobh" ("no one knows who built any of them"), they spring up, mushroom-like, purely because "Bhi se riamh de shiorchinniuint ag na fior-Ghaeil a bheith ina gconai (mas inchreidte na leabhair) i dtigh aolbhan in ascaill an ghleanna agus tu ag tabhairt an bhothair soir ..." ("It has always been the destiny of the true Gaels [if books be credible] to live in a small, lime-white house in the corner of the glen as you go eastwards along the road ..."; 1941:14; 1993:16-18). Nothing but a lime-white cabin would in fact be visible in this aesthetic, so nothing else will do.