Today, I am meant to be away with my daughter, but for various reasons (Covid being the least of them) I am not. Another writer messaged to say they discovered they also have Covid just before they went out to something with their own daughter. We offered mutual sympathy, both aware of so many awful things ongoing in the world, and she proposed that we are allowed to “mourn the memories you cannot make”. It struck a chord, because I’ve been thinking a lot about lost things.
Recently I visited New Zealand, and at every event, the Irish language came up. Questions of why it’s not spoken as widely or fluently as Te reo Māori. The last time I was there, at Verb Wellington, Māori was spoken at each event, and was palpably embedded in many aspects of life there. At a panel with Becky Manawatu, author of the brilliant Auē, we talked about the importance of having a mother tongue (itself a complicated term). Ireland and New Zealand are island nations, formerly colonised, with similar populations. I spoke of – with increasing horror on the face of some audience members – the Bata Scóir, or tally stick.
This was a small wooden stick worn around the neck by schoolchildren in 19th century Ireland. For every word of Irish spoken, a scratch would be added to the stick. At the end of the day, a child would be punishing according to the number of marks on the stick. Irish was considered a badge of poverty, and physical violence was seen as an acceptable way to diminish its proliferation. Sure, we have gaelscoileanna today (Irish language schools, where every subject is taught trí gaelige), and Kneecap, but levels of public usage between here and New Zealand was stark. Language and politics are entwined here. In discussions about Ireland and its history, it’s hard to separate this from religion, particularly the institutions that did huge intergenerational damage. The violence of the Bata Scóir wasn’t just meted out at school; parents would administer it at home and children were encouraged to tell tales on other children. A neighbour could also call to the house and report a child for speaking Irish. This community complicity around shame and punishment was historically endemic in Ireland. Whenever young women ran away from Magdalene Laundries, it was often their own families or the local police who brought them back to be re-incarcerated. My faith wavered long before I knew what the church did, and I read this new essay today by Patrick Freyne on losing his religion and found a lot of recognition in it.
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The same trip included Melbourne Writer’s Festival, where I took part in an event about ghosts, with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Leslie Jamison and Louise Milligan. On some level, each of us spoke of things or people that were missed, lost, never fully re-found in the same way. While in the city, I visited two branches of the National Gallery of Victoria, which are home to works by many first nation artists.
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