From the big town, take the road west. Keep going, then keep going again. There’s a shop in the village and a big enough Centra along the way, but it’d be no harm to pick up a few bits in the supermarket. It’ll be a fair trek, but a beautiful one; ocean seemingly everywhere, tumbling bare hills pocked with ragged sheep. You’re there when there’s no further to go and/or if you can convince under-fives they see the Statue of Liberty. You’ll be given a map with an X marking a house known by the woman’s name, the door will be open. Drop your bags; the ceilí starts at eight.
Eachléim, Contae Mhaigh Eo, 1999.
Gleann Cholm Chille, Contae Dhún na nGall, 2025.
I’m in my third Gaeltacht of the summer so far; I did a week on Cape Clear to do a teachers’ course, I’d a week hanging out on Inis Meáin and having long exhausted the phrase ‘the last place God ever made’, here I am in Gleann Cholm Cille, west Donegal. This is Gaelteacht-gaelteacht though and I’m doing a course in translation, or what Oideas Gael calls ‘a learning holiday’.
It is my favourite kind of holiday.
I signed up ages ago, thinking there’d just be a handful of us in the back room of some community hall, but there are around 120 here of all levels, from beginner to advanced. I’d say nearly half – or at least a good third – hail from abroad. There are American students taking study-abroad modules for extra credit, people of Irish ancestry connecting with their roots, and a good smattering of Europeans with no connection to the country beyond an interest in minority languages. It’s July in a border county so there are plenty here too from the Six Counties, and they represent themselves well; theirs is the finest Irish I’ve heard spoken here.
I’m having the best time. It’s a course in translation I’m doing, and here I’ve met the tribe I’m always on the hunt for; those happy to spend ten minutes discussing the difference between ‘the competition of Gaeltacht football’ and the ‘Gaeltacht competition of football’, the correct usage of fáilte romhat, or laughing at ‘Intinn na Céimeanna’ on a HSE sign. Such people are few and far between, faraor, so what a joy it is to be among them.
Anyone who has attended a cúrsa samhraidh knows there’s a formula, and the formula – regardless of age, creed or credential – goes as follows:
- Classes.
- Activities.
- Meals.
- Walking between all three.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; Eachléim in the 1990s, An Cheathrú Rua in the early 2000s, any Gaeltacht anyone ever went to ever.
On Sunday evening, I could have been fifteen again; standing outside the halla after a ceilí, one amongst a stream of people heading towards the shop to clog it up and ask for items they don’t stock, talking, stumbling through Irish sentences and embracing the bonanza of conversation-starters that being here gifts – cad as tú, cá bhfuair tú do chuid Gaeilge, an raibh tú anseo riamh. It was a sensation I felt several times this week, whether walking down to the school with backpack or sitting around the busy table at the house.
The Formula is still on the go because it works. The class-activity-meal trifecta is a great break from normal life of running and racing; there is a structure, someone to tell us where to go and when. There’s 120 new and interesting people, a common cause, two pubs, zero pressure, a beautiful landscape, and there’s basically no thinking outside of classes.
Think of it as a non-thinking-thinking break.
Speaking too of The Formula, there was a ceilí. Of course there was a céilí. I’d no heed but I went because the American girl I’m staying with was going and I didn’t want to be a bad sport. I always have an instinctive aversion to such events, but you can bet money on it that the middle-aged retired teacher who’s in charge (it’s always a retired teacher) will spot me and pull me in to make up a set. And you can bet more again that I’ll end up having an absolute ball. Everybody dances with everybody else, the craic is palpable even through the elephantastic pounding that passes for a Walls of Limerick or Siege of Ennis. Those of us reared here had the advantage of a basic rhythmic understanding of what to do and when – having, as we do, the one-two-threes tattooed upon our brains. They brought us water in massive jugs and after the hour, my watch registered 40 minutes of intense exercise.
And there’s an end-of-course show too, that we cobbled together at the last minute. There’s been compulsive stopping at the shop, and excessive eating of crisps and ice-cream. Gorgeous scenery, raggedy sheep, indifferent locals. The activities are the same as they ever were, and the only variation in the songs sung is that we do Donegal ones here.
And tomorrow there’ll be, just as there was when I was fifteen, a little sadness when our family-for-a-week scatters to the winds. The dynamic has little changed, even as adults; shyness, appraisal, wariness and performance on the Sunday that disappears on the Monday, leaving us our actual selves – funny, messy, kind, sharp, quirked-up – to enjoy and be enjoyed.
It’s a tricky assignment, gushing about Irish college without being twee or Sunday Miscellany-ish, but the simple truth is that I just loved this week. I loved this sweeping valley not far from the sea, this country town with instant friends, this house full of sound women, this course and all the Irish I learned. I thought maybe I’d just lucked-out but the fact that so people travel here from the USA, Europe, the UK and all over Ireland – many of them year-on-year – would suggest that the joy of being here is not particular to me.
And all of that, with none of the hassle of being fifteen.
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