\nThe warriors my ancestors served ever since Christ\u2019s day.
\n<\/em>From Cabhair ni Ghoirfead \/ I Will Not Cry for Help<\/em><\/a> <\/span>by Aog\u00e1n \u00d3 Rathaille.<\/p>\n
Many poets, and all mystic and occult writers, in all ages and countries, have declared that behind the visible are chains on chains of conscious beings, who are not of heaven but of the earth, who have no inherent form but change according to their whim, or the mind that sees them. I remain haunted by the death of the writer and broadcaster Manch\u00e1n Magan. Ongoing outpourings on my social media feeds, and across mainstream media, reveal I am not the only one so affected. Over his lifetime, it\u2019s fair to say, he became a national icon \u2013 \u2018regarded as a representative symbol,\u2019 and now even \u2018worthy of veneration.\u2019<\/p>\n Above all perhaps, Manch\u00e1n \u2013 properly pronounced Man-a-ch\u00e1n as I was recently informed by a Gaeilgeoir<\/em> from west Kerry \u2013 tapped into, and indeed engendered, renewed appreciation for the Irish language, stripping it of associations that led many of my generation to recoil from it in our early years.<\/p>\n Instructively, Hugh \u00d3 Caol\u00e1in<\/a><\/span>, reachtaire<\/em>\/chair of Trinity College\u2019s Cumann Gaelach<\/em> recently argued that the language now occupies a new cultural space in the national consciousness:<\/p>\n I think there has been a huge mentality change. It doesn\u2019t represent conservatism any more. It\u2019s progressive. It\u2019s about non-colonialism and reclaiming our indigenous culture. A lot of young people look at the culture that was and realise such richness is being lost.<\/em><\/p>\n Indeed, according to P\u00f3l \u00d3 h\u00cdomhair (20) another member of the Cumann:<\/p>\n As a gay man, I would always view Irish as a symbol of a modern progressive, non-colonial, inclusive Ireland. <\/em><\/p>\n It is hard to imagine that progressive shift occurring in the absence of Manch\u00e1n\u2019s almost messianic zeal. As a journalist, he embraced media old and new \u2013 from video blogs to best-selling literary-historical works \u2013 all presented in the inimical style of shaman-scholar-wanderer.<\/p>\n His output was prolific and multi-dimensional. Whereas Gaelic-Irishness once seemed restricted to asserting a singular national identity, Manch\u00e1n brought appreciation to a more inclusive and elevated plain, which might occasionally lapse into an arrogance<\/a><\/span> he was aware of being prone to.<\/p>\n A light-hearted description<\/a><\/span> of English as \u2018a relatively recent West Germanic language\u2019 developed by \u2018gangs of land-hungry Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians,\u2019 hordes of whom displaced an apparently more noble Irish language, unfairly denigrates a tongue he revelled in, and which has been the preferred medium for many Irish writers who have left an unmistakable imprint.<\/p>\n Moreover, the early English were also subjected to colonisation, after the Norman invasion of 1066, which accounts for why over half of its vocabulary<\/a><\/span> derives from French. Indeed, English wasn\u2019t an official language in England until 1362, when the Statute of Pleading<\/a><\/span> first made English an official language of the law courts.<\/p>\n Furthermore, after colonising England the Normans crossed into Ireland in 1169 at the behest of an Irish chieftain, Diarmait Mac Murchada. He had sought military assistance from the Norman lord Strongbow, giving his daughter Aoife\u2019s hand in marriage in return.<\/p>\n Thereafter, the Normans under Henry II conquered most of Ireland, bequeathing distinctively \u2018Irish\u2019 names such as FitzGerald, Burke and Lynch. Most of them living beyond \u2018the Pale\u2019 of settlement around Dublin, however, eventually adopted the Irish language and customs. They later declined to convert to Protestantism, thereby forming part of the Irish nation, \u2018more Irish than Irish themselves<\/a><\/span>,\u2019 which emerged in the wake of the seventeenth century Plantations.<\/p>\n The heady brew of language and identity may create divisions, which often dissolve when subjected to historical scrutiny and poetic meddling. Manch\u00e1n was mostly engaged in scrutiny and meddling, but faint traces of his forebearers\u2019 chauvinism occasionally appeared.<\/p>\n Proselytizing \u2018the first, official language\u2019 is only one aspect of Manch\u00e1n\u2019s legacy. He also awakened reverence for the land and people through documentary work in particular, for television and radio, and unashamedly drew attention to numinous presence \u2018immanent in the landscape<\/a><\/span>.\u2019<\/p>\n After long travels, and encounters with peoples on the edge, he fostered awareness of our connections to aboriginal cultures, as well as drawing attention to exploitative practices etched into our landscape. He was unafraid to float metaphysical concepts and point to the uncanny; or allow the truth to get in the way of a good yearn.<\/p>\n What follows is a personal reflection on a public figure I knew a little, and whose educational formation I shared to a surprising degree. I also use this as an opportunity to explore ideas around language and identity, which foreground Manch\u00e1n\u2019s own work and upbringing, as well as my own.<\/p>\n Encounters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I distinctly recall three encounters with him. Each left a mark. The first was at Another Love Story music festival, in 2017 or thereabouts. Our conversation ranged over environmental issues. Initially, I was wary of someone who worked within mainstream media, providing cover with slim doses of virtue, as I saw it. Yet I found we shared many of the same ideals.<\/p>\n The diaphanous sprite on film seemed remote from this formidable presence in the flesh. After all, this was a man who had crossed continents, daring to go to places that made me cower. I wasn\u2019t won over entirely, however. I wanted more from him, more unsettling resistance.<\/p>\n We next met at Dublin\u2019s first Extinction Rebellion demonstration in 2019, a movement which at that time exhibited a child-like innocence, at least for many Irish participants. He had the same friendly presence, despite my reticence, but I found something else there now, a commitment to resistance<\/em>.<\/p>\n That first demo occurred at precisely the same location, in front of the GPO on O\u2019Connell Street, as another rather more pivotal gathering in 1916. Nearby, on Moore Street, one of its leaders \u2013 who showed up despite believing it to be a doomed enterprise \u2013 Manch\u00e1n\u2019s granduncle Michael Joseph O\u2019Rahilly \u2013 known as \u2018The O\u2019Rahilly<\/span><\/a>\u2019 \u2013 was shot by British machine gun fire. He made it as far as a nearby laneway, now called O\u2019Rahilly Parade, where he succumbed to his wounds.<\/p>\n There was a glow to Manch\u00e1n that day. Later, I recall him forming part of a vanguard that staged a sit-down protest, blocking car traffic along the quays. I watched on, unwilling to face what seemed, with Garda\u00ed in attendance, another doomed enterprise, inviting arrest. Now who was the real resistance fighter? It would not have been his first time behind bars<\/a><\/span>. But the authorities were all too canny that day. There were to be no high-profile martyrs.<\/p>\n The last encounter I had with Manch\u00e1n was in late 2020 at the Fumbaly Caf\u00e9, the remarkable enterprise and creative space owned by his partner Aisling. Those were the dark days of Covid lockdowns, when faces were hidden from view as in a bad dream. Everything seemed impossible.<\/p>\n I vividly recall him insisting that a big change had come over the world. He asserted, prophetically, that the kind of musical and food events that I had been putting on were in the past, and so it has proved. In truth, he left a bleak impression. I wonder about the ill-effects of isolation on his gregarious soul.<\/p>\n Educational Background<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Recently, I learned that Manch\u00e1n and I attended, five years apart, the same Jesuit school in Ranelagh, Gonzaga College, where his funeral took place.<\/p>\n If ever we were to meet again in some celestial sphere, or after reincarnation, I would be intrigued to find out a bit more about his experience there. He has revealed that he wasn\u2019t entirely comfortable in a setting<\/span><\/a> which, at least in my time, seemed calibrated to produce upstanding members of the professional classes.<\/p>\n There were creative outlets, in school plays and operas, and academic endeavour was encouraged, but it hardly nourished alternative ideas. Religious instruction was prescriptive rather than expansive. Mysticism, or anything autre<\/em> for that matter, was hardly in vogue in Gonzaga in the late 1980s, while the Irish language only seemed relevant as a Leaving Cert subject. School Irish certainly provided me with no insights into the extraordinary literature that emerged in the oldest written European vernacular language north of the Alps<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n I have looked back over a few photos of Manch\u00e1n among classmates in school annuals. Like myself, he did not participate in any of the rugby teams given such prominence. He looks like a slightly forlorn dreamer, albeit a tougher school might have knocked the day-dreaming out of such an ethereal character.<\/p>\n The Gonzaga Record<\/em> contains two references to Manch\u00e1n from his fifth year in 1988 \u2013 aged between sixteen or seventeen. An account of the school opera recalls: \u2018Backstage was handled admirably by Manchan [spelt without the fada presumably to his annoyance] Magan, and things never got far out of hand.\u2019<\/p>\n It is surprising to find that Manch\u00e1n is not treading the boards, centre stage, mesmerizing audiences. I half-expected to find an account of him wearing a cloak of crimson bird feathers, like his great-great-great-granduncle Aog\u00e1n \u00d3 Rathaille, the last great poet of the Bardic school. Manch\u00e1n had noble pedigree, and in later life at least, he didn\u2019t hide any light, or ancestry, under a bushel.<\/p>\n Theatrical design, nonetheless, relies on a capacity for improvisation, which presumably he also harnessed when building the first strawbale house in Ireland, an \u2018ecological, mortgage-free home<\/span><\/a>\u2019 home in Westmeath for less than \u20ac6,000 in 1997, after he was left a small sum of money by his late grandmother.<\/p>\n The 1988 Record<\/em> also contains, fittingly, a picture of him next to a large litter bin, which he and twenty-five other students pushed around Dublin\u2019s city centre, collecting rubbish and raising money for charity.<\/p>\n The unusual symmetry in our educational background runs deeper. We also both attended the co-ed Mount Anville Montessori school, attached to the girls\u2019 secondary school of the same name in Goatstown, from around aged four to eight, before entering the all-boys Gonzaga \u2018Prep\u2019 School.<\/p>\n Furthermore, after completing his Leaving Cert, Manch\u00e1n enrolled, as I did, in nearby UCD to study History, although he studied Irish along with it, while I did pure history. Nonetheless, that\u2019s perhaps seventeen years of almost the exact same educational formation, five years apart.<\/p>\n Mother Tongue<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n As alluded to there was a significant fork in the road insofar as Manch\u00e1n studied History and Irish<\/em>, a language which took on huge significance throughout his life. Indeed, it was his first language and mother tongue<\/a><\/span>. This vital connection deepened over childhood summers spent in west Kerry, where Gaelic remained the lingua franca<\/em>. He was also raised alongside his maternal grandmother Sighle Humphreys<\/a><\/span> (1899-1994), a firebrand Republican and Irish language activist.<\/p>\n Fluency in Irish gave Manch\u00e1n an opportunity to present travel documentaries, at the behest of his brother Ruan, for TG4 from 1996. It was then that he really took to the stage, and never really left it.<\/p>\n In contrast, I trace a troubled relationship with Irish to my mother\u2019s preference for European sophistication \u2013 she spoke French, Italian and German. Born in leafy Donnybrook, close to where Manch\u00e1n grew up, she had little sympathy for Republicanism either, writing a letter to the Irish Times<\/em> in 1966 expressing disapproval with the 1916 Rising on its fiftieth anniversary. She argued there was another, non-violent, path to independence.<\/p>\n The other side of my family was a different story however. My namesake paternal grandfather from Sligo acted as auditor of UCD\u2019s Irish language society, as \u2018Proinsias \u00a0Tr\u00e9anl\u00e1magh,\u2019 in the late 1920s. His father, my great-grandfather Luke Armstrong<\/a><\/span>, acted as \u2018Head Centre\u2019 for the IRB in Sligo during the Land War of the 1880s. He was accused of treason, and only narrowly escaped the hangman\u2019s noose. Moreover, my father gained a partial university scholarship through a somewhat utilitarian attention to the language.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, for me, especially in my formative years, Irish represented a conservative authority in school, and even a violent nationalism I repudiated in the midst of the Troubles. It didn\u2019t help that I had an Irish teacher in secondary school who I felt bullied by, which only repelled me further.<\/p>\n Moreover, like Manch\u00e1n I spent my summers in the west of Ireland living in an alternative reality to my Dublin suburb existence. As a garrison town, however, the hinterland of Sligo has a very different relationship with the Irish language<\/a><\/span> to west Kerry. An historic crossing point between Connacht and Ulster, there are enduring ties to Northern Ireland. A rail line connected Sligo with Enniskillen until the 1950s. The prevalence of English since even prior to the Famine did not, however, prevent the poet W.B. Yeats and his painter brother Jack from drawing on its lore and folk tales to furnish their art.<\/p>\n I also went to an Irish College in the Gaeltacht of Connemara for a few weeks one summer and got along fine with the language. But the accommodation offered by the host family was cramped and shabby, and the food appalling \u2013 under-cooked frozen pizza leaves a nasty aftertaste.<\/p>\n Then at college, studying history, I made a good friend whose father participated in the so-called Language Freedom Movement<\/a><\/span>, which campaigned during the 1960s against Irish as a compulsory language. He kept a photograph of this father speaking at a rally with placard in hand \u2013 and a fist seemingly attached to his chin. That fist belongs to the arm of a priest, the future primate of all-Ireland, Cardinal Tom\u00e1s S\u00e9amus \u00d3 Fiaich<\/a><\/span>. For me at the time, that image epitomised exactly what the Irish language stood for.<\/p>\n In contrast, I took pride in the achievements of Irish writers in English. I recall empathising with James Joyce\u2019s Stephen Hero<\/em>, when Stephen Daedulus decides to take a course in the Irish language. His teacher Madden takes exception to Stephen \u2018running down your own people at every hand’s turn.\u2019 In my copy of the novel I marked Stephen\u2019s response: \u2018I would like to learn it – as a language, said Stephen lyingly.\u2019 Thus, Joyce chose \u2018silence, exile, and cunning.\u2019<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>From Irish Fairy and Folk Tales<\/em> by W. B. Yeats.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/RebelforLife.jpg\")
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