A life's work reviving the Irish language - Oliver O'Hanlon on Liam Ó Briain

Irish Times

5 hours ago

Irish language
was not taught in the school that Liam Ó Briain attended. He had to learn it himself – from a grammar book.
Despite this impediment, he went on to make the revival of the language one of his main goals in life.
Born in the North Wall,
Dublin
, in 1888, he went to the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street. He started using the Irish version of his name while still at school. He went to Gaelic League meetings until his parents and teachers suggested that it would be better if he concentrated on his schoolwork.
The playwright
Seán O'Casey
was the first person that Ó Briain spoke Irish with. O'Casey had come to his door to invite him to join the local branch of the Gaelic League. Ó Briain persisted with the language and won a scholarship to attend UCD.
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There, he studied Irish, French and English and helped to found its first Irish club. After receiving his BA and MA, he was awarded a prestigious NUI travelling scholarship to the value of £600 (€694). This enabled him to go to Berlin and Bonn in Germany and study with the Celtic scholars Kuno Meyer and Rudolf Thurneysen (who was an authority on Old Irish).
He returned to Ireland in 1914 and joined the Irish Volunteers. During the
Easter Rising
, he fought in the St Stephen's Green garrison with the Citizen Army. Imprisoned afterwards in Frongoch internment camp in Wales, he described it as 'the best university' he ever attended.
Ó Briain moved westward from the capital after he secured the post of Professor of Romance languages at University College Galway in 1917.
In 1928, he helped found
Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe
, the national Irish language theatre. Ó Brian was fundamental to its establishment and its running.
He secured a grant from the minister for finance Ernest Blythe, who was an avid supporter of the language. Ó Briain played the part of Fionn mac Cumhaill in the very first play that was performed there, Diarmuid agus Gráinne.
Based on the old Irish saga, the play was written especially for the opening by Micheál MacLiammóir, who starred in the leading role as Diarmuid. Máire Ní Scolaí played Gráinne. MacLiammóir's partner, Hilton Edwards, was stage manager.
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The first meeting of the new shareholders, including Liam Ó Briain (second row, fifth from the right hand side) of the Abbey Theatre was held in 1965. Photograph: Jack McManus/ The Irish Times
In the build-up to opening night, the Connacht Sentinel newspaper described the play as 'probably the most ambitious and elaborate yet attempted in Irish'. It added that it 'promises to be a pageant of colour such as has never been seen before in Galway, or probably Ireland'.
Blythe attended on opening night, describing the event as one of 'national importance'. Galway city was in 'a position of vital strategic importance' in terms of the struggle to preserve the language, Blythe also said. This made the opening of the new theatre in Galway of greater 'interest and significance' than if it had been established in Dublin, Cork or Waterford.
Ó Briain was secretary of the theatre for its first 10 years. In addition to that, he translated many of the plays that were performed there. These included works by French dramatists Henri Ghéon, Pierre Jalabert and Molière.
Ó Brian was a Francophile. He was awarded the Légion d'honneur by France in 1951 for his efforts to promote goodwill between the two countries.
He also translated plays from Spanish and Italian, as well as work by local playwrights. JM Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows was also translated as Déirdre an Bhróin. He played a role in the play with 'his customary finesse', as one newspaper put it, when first staged in 1931.
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Ó Briain retired from lecturing in 1959 and returned to his native Dublin. He kept up writing and translating. In 1967, he was commissioned to translate Dion Boucicault's The Colleen Bawn. An Cailín Bán was first performed by a company from the Abbey Theatre before an audience of Aran Islanders in Kilronan on Inishmore.
Ó Briain was one of the translators of Ag Fanacht le Godot. The Irish version of Samuel Beckett's celebrated tragicomic play premiered in Galway in November 1971 and ran for two nights at Dublin's Peacock Theatre in February 1972.
Apart from plays, Ó Briain also looked at other ways to promote interest in the language. He was the first chairman of An Club Leabhar, an organisation that sought to get people reading books in Irish.
He died at age 86 in 1974. The actress Siobhán McKenna gave a reading at the funeral mass in St Andrew's Church, on Westland Row in Dublin. Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave and former president Éamon de Valera (who Ó Briain had known since at least 1909) attended the service.
Speaking in Irish at the graveside in Glasnevin Cemetery, Micheál MacLiammóir recalled the setting up of Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe and described Ó Briain as a 'broad-minded man who embraced a great many cultures'.