Following the success of Séamus Ó Beirn’s play An Dochtúir at the Oireachtais in Dublin 1904, it was presented to full houses at Galway’s Town Hall immediately on the player’s triumphant return. Among the audience one evening was Sir Roger Casement, the notable humanitarian, a British consul by profession but, ironically, an anti-imperialist by nature.
He had overstepped his diplomatic role to robustly condemn Belgium for its brutalisation of the people of the Congo. His report was, however, well received by the British establishment, perhaps because it feared that little Belgium was getting too big for its boots, and too wealthy from its African ventures. Casement received a knighthood.*
In August of the same year as the Casement report was published, and not withstanding the enormous publicity it generated, Casement was enjoying a brief holiday in the relative peace and calm of the west of Ireland. Even though Casement was not an Irish speaker, he was developing an interest in the Irish language.
He noticed at Kilronan, parents were speaking what he described as ‘a poor attempt at English’ to their children’ - ‘and they with a rich, splendid speech of their own’. He noticed that in other places too ‘the general mass of Irish speaking parents have kicked the language out of doors.’
He was intrigued by Ó Beirn’s play, especially when he heard that on the small island of Twain, a forgotten corner of Galway Bay, the inhabitants were involved in a bitter dispute over the teaching of Irish in their school. The parents had withdrawn their children, owing to the schoolmistress’s inability to instruct the children in their own language. As a result the school had been closed for some years and had fallen into disrepair.
The authorities warned that if the people of Tawin wanted their school to reopen, the building must be paid for by the local people, and they had no right to insist that the teaching must be through the medium of Irish. The matter was at a standstill for years, with both sides refusing to budge, and the schoolhouse fell into ruin. Casement drove out to the island, connected to the mainland by a narrow bridge beyond Maree, and heard to whole story of the protest from Séamus Ó Beirn himself.
Heartfelt letter
The population of Tawin, scarcely more than two hundred families, dependent on small farming and fishing, did have some who were dubious about the loss of English in their national school. But the majority was strongly in favour of the boycott.
It was agreed that with Casement’s help and influence, an appeal would be made nationally for sufficient funds to build a new school, and to have an Irish speaking teacher.
Of course the reason why many parents ‘had kicked the language out of doors’ was a realisation that the only way their children would make anything of their lives was through emigration. The Irish language was useless on the streets of New York or Boston, and would be laughed at on the building sites in Britain. By insisting the children speak English, their parents believed they were doing the right thing.
Casement saw this himself. In a heartfelt letter to Douglas Hyde, co-founder of Conradh na Gaeilge, which encouraged Irish culture, its music and language, and was part of the growing national identity at the time, he lamented that on his tour all he had seen was the ‘dull, apathetic, dead-heart of the Irish-speaking Ireland’.
‘The people have no spirit, or knowledge of their past or any hope save to go to America! I heard that on all sides…Tawin - poor, brave, fighting little Tawin - is going there too. Some of the young men of An Dochtúir are soon to go, there is nothing for them to do at home…’
Nevertheless, he takes comfort in the fact that there are thirty Irish children of Tawin who are still at home …and have the Irish and love it.’
The letter was published in Padraic Pearse’s An Claidheamh Soluis; a fund to rebuild the school was established and the money poured in, exceeding the cost of the building sufficiently to include a small library.
Irish village
Over the following months a series of letters flowed between the grateful people of Tawin for donations received, and from contributors who were cheered by the example of the islanders. Father O’Flanagan observed that the success of this effort in Tawin would mean that Conrad na Gaeilge had accomplished ‘in at least one district what it has not hitherto accomplished anywhere - it will have restored Irish as a vernacular to a district from which it had all but disappeared’.
Miss Mallt Williams, one of the leaders of the Welsh language movement, wrote that Tawin was setting an example not only to Ireland but to the Celtic world, and that she had much pleasure offering a contribution for a brick in that schoolhouse that would be dedicated to the teaching of Irish. She hoped ‘for ever’.
Adding: ‘ Surely Ireland will also see to it that the young men of Tawin are not lost to her through that terrible evil, emigration, and some rich patriots will offer them employment and a living wage in their own land. Ireland never wanted her Gaelic-speaking children more than today. Well done Tawin!’
Séamus Ó Beirn wrote a final letter to the Galway Observer (November 26 1905 ), thanking everyone who subscribed, assuring them that at a recent meeting of the village ‘ people old and young were there, Irish the language’… who ‘ wished me to convey to the many friends who subscribed towards the school fund their heartiest thanks, and to make that thanks more acceptable, they wish it to be known that henceforth Irish is to be the language of Tawin’.
Ó Beirn concluded that excess funds allowed the islanders to proceed with the erection of the library making Tawin ‘not only a thoroughly Irish village, but one worthy of the great revival movement which has made the change possible.’
Next week: Not everyone agreed with the new Irish school.
NOTES: * Roger David Casement (1864 - 1916 ) was born into a Protestant family of poor means at Sandycove, near Dublin. His mother had him secretly baptised a Catholic. Talent and intelligence alone brought him rapid promotion in the British diplomatic service. His report on the Belgium exploitation of the natives in the lucrative rubber industry in the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo ) led to a major scandal. The Belgian King Leopold was forced to relinquish his personal sources of wealth there. The writer Joseph Conrad was impressed by Casement when they met in the Congo. Conrad remarked that Casement ‘could tell you things! Things I have tried to forget, things I never did know..’
Casement similarly championed the cause of the Putomayo Indians in Brazil, who were also being exploited in the rubber industry.
I am again indebted to Nollaig Mac Congáil and his essay Fíoradh na Físe Gaelaí in the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society Journal (Vol 62 2010 ).
