When I Was Young: Nuair a Bhi Me Og (review)

When I Was Young: Nuair a Bhí Mé Óg, by 'Máire' (Séamus Ó Grianna), translated by A. J. Hughes, pp. 241. Dublin: A. & A. Farmar, 2001. $24.95. Distributed by Irish Books & Media, Minneapolis, MN.

Based on his recollections of growing up in the Donegal Gaeltacht in the 1890s and early 1900s, and first published in Irish in 1942, this is one of the few Donegal memoirs translated so far into English—the other major one being Micí Mac Gabhann's Rotha Mór an tSaoil, initially transcribed by his son-in-law, the folklorist Seán Ó hEochaidh, and later translated into English by Valentin Iremonger and published as Michael Mac Gowan, The Hard Road to Klondike in 1962.

Ó Grianna's writing style bears a strong relationship to the Gaelic oral tradition which formed a large part of life in the Rannafast (Rann na Feirste) area of Donegal, between the two inlets of Gweedore and Gweebarra in The Rosses, where the economy was based primarily on fishing and small farming. The memoir, dealing with his life from about 1895 to 1907—or from the age of five-and-a-half to 17—is structured around significant events in his early years: his first pair of trousers, catechism class and the trials of Confirmation, leaving school, the hiring fair in Tyrone and his first job in the anglicized Lagan area, his seasonal work on the harvest in Scotland and his love for the girl he calls "Highland Mary," named after the beloved of Robbie Burns, a poet whom he idolizes. Early in Ó Grianna's life, literacy was also very much an English-language experience, while Gaelic for the most part remained within the oral sphere. This dichotomy remained in force until 1910, when he attended Coláiste Uladh, one of the five colleges established by the Gaelic League to train Irish-language teachers. One of Ó Grianna's teachers at Coláiste Uladh was Séamus ÓSearcaigh, who had a significant influence on his future as a writer. ÓSearcaigh was impressed with his pupil's command of Donegal Irish and he consulted with Ó Grianna on a number of projects, including an Irish-language history of Cloghaneely parish which included a tale about Cú Chulainn. He encouraged Ó Grianna to commit to writing. Ó Searcaigh went further by convincing him to enter three folk tales for a literary section of the 1912 Oireachtas. Ó Grianna won the competition, which set him on the course of writing for a national stage.

He went on to publish more than thirty books, most under the pseudonym "Máire," which was his mother's name. She herself was descended from the ÓDomhnaill poets of Donegal, and the Mac Griannas (the original spelling of the name) produced other well-known writers in the Irish language, including Séamus's brother Seosamh. After leaving school, Séamus worked as a hired hand in the Lagan district of Ulster and in Scotland, before training as a teacher in Dublin. Supporting the republican side in the Civil War, he and his brother Seosamh, along with the Donegal writer Peadar O'Donnell, spent eighteen months in prison. Séamus later joined the civil service, working on Irish translations for An Gúm—literally, "The Scheme"—set up by Ernest Blythe, minister for finance for the Irish Free State, in 1925 to help promote Irish and to provide textbooks in the language.

This translation by A. J. Hughes, a lecturer in Irish language and literature at the University of Ulster at Belfast, is wonderfully idiomatic, bringing out the relation between Ó Grianna's prose and the Gaelic storytelling style. The volume also contains a useful biographical essay, "'Máire'—Séamus Ó Grianna's Life and Times"; the Congested District Board's Report on The Rosses from 1892, which sheds light on the socioeconomic background to the author's childhood; extensive notes; and indices of persons and placenames mentioned in the text. Now...