"Hard Road to Klondike" --Fascinating Irish Book and Film

My Irish-Gaelic class, held every Wednesday evening at the Irish-American Club East Side (in Euclid, Ohio), read a book in Irish called "Rotha Mor an tSaoil," which means literally "Big Wheel of Life." The book has been translated into English with a different title, "The Hard Road to Klondike." A few years ago (1999), Desmond Bell, a documentary filmmaker who is also a professor at Queens University Belfast, made a film of the book and titled it "Hard Road to Klondike." The 55-minute film is not widely available, but I was able to borrow it from the Oberlin College Library. Last night our Irish class viewed the film at our regular Wednesday night meeting.

The book is the autobiography of Mickey MacGowan, born in 1865 in a Gaelic-speaking region of County Donegal, Ireland [more coming].

Great Resource for Learning Irish-Gaelic

I have another blog that I have neglected lately focused on learning Irish-Gaelic: http://learningirishgaelic.blogspot.com/. My latest entry mentions a tremendous resource for all learners of Irish called The Gaelminn Gazette, a digital magazine (or "e-zine") for learners. This magazine can be reached by going to the home page of Gaeltacht Minnesota, http://www.gaelminn.org/index.htm, and then clicking on the link "Latest Gaelminn Gazette."

Gaeltacht Minnesota is a tremendous resource and we are very grateful to them, Go raibh maith agut!

Irish needs intelligent, well-organized groups like them if the language is to be saved and if it is to thrive. It probably also needs ragtaggle groups like "Gaeltacht Cleveland," we who meet Wednesday nights, 7-9 PM, at the Irish-American Club East Side, in Euclid, Ohio (E. 228th Street and Lake Shore Boulevard--in the basement near the pub). Come and join us!

Whiskey, Water, and Irsh-Gaelic

"Uisce beatha." For the past few years, I've been studying Irish-Gaelic [what we normally just call "Irish"] at the East-Side Irish-American Club in Euclid, Ohio. The Irish word for "water" is uisce, pronounced something like /ISH-kuh/. This is the source of the English word "whiskey." The actual Irish word for whiskey is uisce beatha, pronounced /ISH-kuh BAH-hah/, which literally means "water of life."

Irish is a very interesting and difficult language for most people. It has a very foreign feel to it at first, with sounds and rhythms so different from most varieties of English. The rules and exceptions are absolutely astonishing, and I will discuss that from time to time in this blog. These rules could only have been invented by some perverse . . . well, Irishmen and Women, probably as a puzzle to befuddle the Sasanach (the English), the speakers of Bearla (the English language). Most likely a pint or two was involved in this process, maybe some uisce beatha.

In Sligo town, in the northwest of Ireland, there are circular brass covers in the sidewalks that say something like "Sligeach Uisce" (Sligo Water), and a tricky Irishman told me that it was proof that whiskey was piped to every house in town. I will try to upload a photo of one of these.