Learning from Ireland’s Cultural Revival

Where is Scotland’s Manchán Magan?

For those not aware Magan is the author of Thirty-Two Words for Field, Lost Words from the Irish Landscape, a surprise publishing hit. The small publisher Gill Books ordered just 5,000 copies for the first print run of Thirty-Two Words for Field but within a few months it had sold 24,500. Sales have now passed 62,000.

Magan died of cancer last week aged 55, and the aftermath of his passing has produced eulogies not just to his life but to his legacy in rekindling a commitment to Irish language and culture. President Michael D Higgins lauded him for “opening up our collective heritage to more people than could ever have been imagined”.

Magan’s surprise success comes on top of a raft of literary successes, with Anna Burns winning the Booker Prize for Milkman in 2018 and Paul Lynch winning with Prophet Song, in 2023. Sally Rooney and Sebastian Barry among others compete to make up an enviable generation of writers.

But Magan’s celebration is not a superficial nationalistic venture but one that taps into Ireland’s rich lore and unearths hidden treasure of knowledge. He said: “There’s an ancient language alive in Ireland that people have spoken for thousands of years. It is a portal to many realms and it is waiting for us.” He saw Thirty-Two Words not as a wake but “a hurlamaboc (‘rambunctious celebration’)”, adding: “I am not despairing about the gradual fading of the richness of the language because Irish is as much a story as a language, and most stories never really die.”

So, where is Scotland’s Manchán Magan?

As the National Mòd in Lochaber draws to a close we can celebrate the historic Bard of An Comunn Gàidhealach, an honorary title bestowed on individuals for their outstanding contribution to the Gaelic literary canon. This year it is given to Stornoway-born poet Anne C. Frater, who takes over the mantle from Meg Bateman, published poet and lecturer, to become the Mòd’s 61^st Bard since the honour was first introduced over 100 years ago.

Deserved as such honours are, they do not represent the sort of populism that Magan’s work represents.

The key might not be just around Magan’s infectious enthusiasm and common touch, but around Ireland’s cultural self-confidence and approach to the arts. In a couple of weeks we’ll see Ireland’s oldest Irish language and arts gathering (Oireachtas na Samhna.) returning to Belfast, after almost 30 years since the last meeting in the northern capital. The city is hosting up to 10,000 people from October 29 to November 2, with Gaeilgeoirí (Irish speakers) travelling from across the island of Ireland for five days of events across arts, music, sean-nós singing and the spoken word. Meanwhile, several years after launching a trial, Ireland is set to make its basic income for artists program permanent starting in 2026.

According to Harrison Jacobs for Art News [‘Three Years After Trial Launch, Ireland Is Making Basic Income for Artists Program Permanent‘]: “The announcement follows the release of an external report by UK-based consultants Alma Economics, which found that the pilot cost €72 million to date but generated nearly €80 million in total benefits to the Irish economy. The report also found that recipients’ arts-related income increased by more than €500 per month on average, income from non-arts work decreased by around €280, and reliance on other social programs declined, with participants receiving €100 less per month on average.”

“The economic return on this investment in Ireland’s artists and creative arts workers is having an immediate positive impact on the sector and the economy overall,” Patrick O’Donovan, minister for culture, communications, and sport, said in a statement.

Such forward-thinking programmes are almost unthinkable in Scotland, where cultural cringe persists alongside shaky and precarious arts funding. So the question: where is Scotland’s Manchán Magan? lands on a cultural landscape of hostility and neglect of our own culture and a complete lack of vision or ambition for the arts.

If we consider Irish writers’ success at the Booker Prize, we can remember too when James Kelman won the award in 1994. It’s worth quoting his acceptance speech at length:

“A couple of weeks ago a feature writer for a Quality Newspaper suggested that the term “culture” was inappropriate to my work, that the characters peopling my pages were “pre-culture” — or was it “primeval”? I can’t quite recall. This was explicit, generally it isn’t. But — as Tom Leonard pointed out more than 20 years ago — the gist of the argument amounts to the following, that vernaculars, patois, slangs, dialects, gutter-languages etc. etc. might well have a place in the realms of comedy (and the frequent references to Billy Connolly or Rab C. Nesbitt substantiate this) but they are inferior linguistic forms and have no place in literature. And a priori any writer who engages in the use of such so-called language is not really engaged in literature at all. It’s common to find well-meaning critics suffering from the same burden, while they strive to be kind they still cannot bring themselves to operate within a literary perspective; not only do they approach the work as though it were an oral text, they somehow assume it to be a literal transcription of recorded speech.”

“This sort of prejudice, in one guise or another, has been around for a very long time and for the sake of clarity we are better employing the contemporary label, which is racism. A fine line can exist between elitism and racism and on matters concerning language the distinction can sometimes cease to exist altogether.”

… There is a literary tradition to which I hope my own work belongs, I see it as part of a much wider process — or movement — toward decolonization and self-determination: it is a tradition that assumes two things: 1) The validity of indigenous culture; and 2) The right to defend in the face of attack. It is a tradition premised on a rejection of the cultural values of imperial or colonial authority, offering a defence against cultural assimilation, in particular imposed assimilation.

Unfortunately, when people assert their right to cultural or linguistic freedom they are accused of being ungracious, parochial, insular, xenophobic, racist etc.

“As I see it, it’s an argument based solely on behalf of validity, that my culture and my language have the right to exist, and no one has the authority to dismiss that right, they may have power to dismiss that right, but the authority lies in the power and I demand the right to resist it.”

 

So we can measure champions of gaelic culture such as Sorley McLean or Ronald Black (editor of An Tuil, anthology of Scottish Gaelic Verse), or Anne Campbell, author of the Peat Glossary (a “counter-desecration phrasebook”), or historically figures such as Alexander Carmichael (editor of Carmina Gadelica) – or more widely Martyn Bennett – but the ability to celebrate our indigenous language and culture is dependent on a wider political commitment. Without that, we will be eternally looking across the Irish Sea in envy.