Vox Populi
11-18-2007, 10:21 PM
The language movement, a movement astray
Máirtín Ó Cadhain
http://www.rsym.org/images/stories/OCadhain.jpg
Máirtín Ó Cadhain was born in 1906 on a small farm holding in the Cnocan Glas area of the Connemara Gaeltacht. After schooling he went on to qualify as a school-teacher. In 1936 he was dismissed from post in Carn Mor School by Bishop O’Doherty when he refused to break his connection with the republican movement.
Blacklisted from the Gaeltacht schools he moved to Dublin where he got a job in the office of An Fainne. During this period he was very active in organising the IRA and he became a member of the nine-man council of the IRA. He was arrested in 1940 following his oration at the burial of Tony D’Arcy who had died on hunger-strike. He was interned in the Curragh camp until 1944. In prison his long-standing disagreement with the IRA leadership, over its lack of a political and economic programme, came to a head and he drifted out of the organisation.
Following his release from internment he worked on several sites as a labourer until he got employment as a translator in the Government Publishing Department. As a creative writer himself he found this work tedious and unfulfilling. Then in 1956 he secured a post in which he was in his element when he was appointed lecturer in Modern Gaelic in Trinity College.
Throughout his adult life until his death in 1970, Máirtín Ó Cadhain was an active republican and a tireless worker in the Irish language revival movement.
His famous document on the Irish language can be read online at - http://www.rsym.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=1
Máirtín Ó Cadhain
http://www.rsym.org/images/stories/OCadhain.jpg
Máirtín Ó Cadhain was born in 1906 on a small farm holding in the Cnocan Glas area of the Connemara Gaeltacht. After schooling he went on to qualify as a school-teacher. In 1936 he was dismissed from post in Carn Mor School by Bishop O’Doherty when he refused to break his connection with the republican movement.
Blacklisted from the Gaeltacht schools he moved to Dublin where he got a job in the office of An Fainne. During this period he was very active in organising the IRA and he became a member of the nine-man council of the IRA. He was arrested in 1940 following his oration at the burial of Tony D’Arcy who had died on hunger-strike. He was interned in the Curragh camp until 1944. In prison his long-standing disagreement with the IRA leadership, over its lack of a political and economic programme, came to a head and he drifted out of the organisation.
Following his release from internment he worked on several sites as a labourer until he got employment as a translator in the Government Publishing Department. As a creative writer himself he found this work tedious and unfulfilling. Then in 1956 he secured a post in which he was in his element when he was appointed lecturer in Modern Gaelic in Trinity College.
Throughout his adult life until his death in 1970, Máirtín Ó Cadhain was an active republican and a tireless worker in the Irish language revival movement.
His famous document on the Irish language can be read online at - http://www.rsym.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=1