The bookshop is often a staple of writers’ musing. Many authors will offer up an essay on their role in their creative lives. The Donegal writer, Seosamh Mac Grianna (1900-1990), was no different and wrote some very evocative pieces on visiting them in Dublin in the 1930s. He liked to walk to these literary Aladdin’s caves; it was a kind of pilgrimage for him. Bizarrely, in this internet age, the trip to the bookshop has not gone out of fashion. The opposite in fact; a quick browse on YouTube will bring up hundreds of videos of such visits and where to find the best shops in Edinburgh or London or New York or Paris.
If you are a reader, you probably find it hard to walk past a bookshop without calling in. You do not need to call in, of course, as your shelf is full of books you have not quite got around to reading but call in you do. And the second-hand bookshop is the most enticing of all because that will involve a lot more rummaging around in the hope of finding something a little different.
So, at the end of November, I am in Belfast; looking for a nice bottle of whiskey not a book. (Someone has a big birthday coming up.) And there it is – a new, for me, second-hand bookshop. Well, I do not need another book but they are selling for a worthy cause. In I go and browse. I won’t buy anything. I won’t. Within minutes, I have found an old book in Irish – Láimhleabhar Siopadóireachta: The Shopkeeper’s Reference Book.
It is published by Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, an Irish-language organisation that has been swept away by the ‘reforms’ of the all-Ireland body, Foras na Gaeilge. However, in my days dealing with Irish-language journalism, it was Comhdháil who did the hard lifting when it came to pushing Irish-language matters, legislation in particular. Seeing their name, I freely admit, gave rise to a little bout of nostalgia.
The book itself has no publication date but seems, from what I can gather, to have been published in 1940. It contains useful phrases and chapters on various commercial undertakings – hardware, furniture, chemical, fish, fruit and groceries. Each area has a list of vocab and verbs to help improve your Irish should someone drop in and ask you for a suit or half a pound of tomatoes. The Irish is as modern as it gets for the 1940s; the Irish for air-tight is “aerdhíonach” and lubricating oil is “íle smeartha” and acceptor circuit is “timthriall gabhála”.
Prices are in old money – when the Irish still had their own money – and some helpful phrases included are “Pingin an ceann” a penny each or “Réal an dosaen” Sixpence a dozen. (Ask your grandparents!)
There is an introduction in Irish by the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valéra, where he explains that Irish has not developed as other languages have and that the lack of technical terms holds the language back. The aim of the book is to help fill that gap and improve people’s Irish. That is Dev, by the way, recognising the ‘working language’ and endorsing a modern vocab for a modern language. Not exactly the stuff of a backward-looking ‘traditionalist’ as he is often caricatured.
As so often with such things, it is the human element that we discover accidently that gives the book its emotional charge. Firstly, there are the ads. There is Ó Glasáin, the tailors, Upper O’Connell Street, letting you know that they stock only Irish goods of the best quality and James J. Daly at 7 & 8 Beaver Street (“off Amiens Road” according to the ad) who will sell you brushes. A quick internet search shows, poignantly, that Mr Daly’s sign is still above his long-shut factory, a part of Dublin’s forgotten working-class roots. Dublin only does American corporations now.
And then there is the Central Tie Company with its Dublin made ties, 100% pure silk. Silk must have been a big thing back then as the first page of the booklet contains some “useful phrases” which reference this material in particular.
Indeed the first question you might have asked while shopping, according to the official handbook, was: Have you any silk stockings? An bhfuil stocaí síoda agat?
I did not make that up. That is genuinely the first question under the section “Abairtí Úsáideacha”/Useful phrases.
I will give you a while to compose yourself. Are you ok now? Can I continue?
Now wait for it. The second sentence is: Would you mind showing them [the silk stockings] to me? That is accurately translated as “Ar mhiste leat iad a thaispeáint dom?”
Again, I will give you a while to compose yourself while you take that all in. I know! I know! You thought the Irish people in general and Gaeilgeoirí in particular did not go in for such things as silk stockings, let alone asking to see silk stockings. It is a lot to take in, isn’t it?
The bad old days, eh, when the Catholic Church ruled with an old fist and it was far from silk stockings we were reared!
Still, books are no good without readers. Remarkably, this book has the name and address of the owner in Irish. Here I must be a little discreet, not for fear of legal censure but simply out of courtesy for someone’s memory. The owner of the book was a Belfast woman, who I did not know but others might. She wrote her name in the Gaelic Script and used the older form for Belfast, Béal Feirsde. The contemporary spelling has a “t”.
The street in which she lived is still extant and is in the New Lodge area of North Belfast, an area that was predominantly nationalist and working class and suffered grievously during Partition and throughout the Troubles. The occupant of the house for long enough was ER (Mr), a labourer, her father, I believe, but, by the beginning of the 1960s, the house’s occupant is listed as, KR, his daughter I am assuming and our book owner. She would have been obliged to use the English form of her name. However, gloriously, she is listed as being a teacher!
She, like so many other northern nationalists, had got on and got up, despite the sectarian barriers that they had faced. I doubt, after all this time, that she is still with us. However, that is not why I am reluctant to name her. There is a line at the back of the book, written by SÓG, which suggests she learnt her Irish in Ros Goill, a Gaeltacht area in North Donegal: “Do not forget Ros Goill and Ros Goill will not forget you.”
Further, and even more movingly, there is a second note, also in Irish and signed by a second admirer which says: “You are the nicest woman in Ireland.”
You know what, I bet she was.
There then is your heart-warming tale for Christmas; a very simple story of the promotion of Irish, north and south, across the barricades and the decades. A much-needed and innovative reference book, Dublin businesses trying to survive and drum up business, Dev giving the Irish-language movement some encouragement, the Irish speakers of Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge putting something modern and of value in print and then, in North Belfast, the nicest woman in Ireland, taking up the challenge of teaching a new generation and passing on some Irish.
Same old story really – though I honestly never heard anyone refer to silk stockings during my days on foot patrol in the Irish-language sector.