My grannie was the only one there who could actually READ the Book of Kells, so we drew quite an audience! Someone came up and asked if she could read it...she snorted, "Of course I can. It's in Latin!" As if everybody could read Latin.
My grannie, Jane Walsh Reilly probably hadn't spoken to anyone in Irish since the 1930s as there were few Irish speakers in San Francisco, but she kept up her Irish studies her entire life. Daily she was nose deep in Dineen's Irish Dictionary looking up words.
My grandfather was instrumental in founding the KRB club in SF: Knights of the Red Branch. Among other things, they organized Irish cultural events, Irish language classes (and ran guns too, but that's another story. The photo of Liam Mellows in our lower field is proof enough of those IRA connections).
Despite holding a PhD. in linguistics from Stanford, Jim Duran was the most pragmatically practical from the Of course you can gung-ho just do it school. He was the one who encouraged me to study Irish Gaelic. He was one of the few people I knew who was fluent in Irish but then, he was fluent in many languages. How many languages does the man speak anyway? Eleven?
At first I thought he was putting me on. But then he slew my ears with polyglot tongues, in languages I didn't even know existed.... Why on earth would he learn Angolan, I thought. But then I remember him telling me he was at the Fort Ord Language Institute and spoke several African languages as well. Angolan. Oh the government... But that was the days of the Black Panther Movement, Stokley Carmichael, Angela Davis, Symbionese Liberation Front, Patty Hearst, etc. Angola was in the headlines a lot.
One of the last times I saw Jim was at LAX. We were heading out to Guatemala and El Salvador. Or was it Cabo? We ran into him at the luggage carousel. Weirdly, my boyfriend John Oliver Simon also knew him—as Jaime! At the same instant we both shouted out to him: Seamus! Jim! Jaime! and did a quadruple take and laughed. So it was a double meeting of the minds.
Jim organized a poetry reading and book party, Falling to Sea Level, (Aldebaran) for us at Angel's Gate Poetry Reading Series in San Pedro. I remember standing by the side of the Pacific Coast Highway with Jim along the cliffs just north of San Pedro Harbor mouthing a few words in Irish, when he began to unfold snippits of his life, it was pretty fantastical. I thought he was jiving me, but I later found out it was all true...
Last I heard he was teaching at the University of Cork. Someone else said, No, he was in Galway. I recently found a paper of his online—in Irish—on dialects of the Aran Islands, so I couldn't make heads or tale out of it—well maybe donkey's tails—in that I could make out a few words here and there, follow the gist, conjugate a preposition or two, but that was about it....
Because of Jim, I redoubled my efforts and I got my grannie to teach me what she could of the old Hibernian Club Gaelic League Irish from her Grammars, but speaking it was another matter.
I want to do a shout out: Hey Jim,wherever you are, I finally learned some Gaelic. I thought it was impossible. I studied Celtic languages at UC Berkekey with Joe Nugent, Breen O Conchubhair, with professors Kathryn Klar and Linguistics Chair, Dr. Gary Holland...Old, Middle and Modern. Irish, some medieval Welsh too.
Despite holding a PhD. in linguistics from Stanford, Jim Duran was the most pragmatically practical from the Of course you can gung-ho just do it school. He was the one who encouraged me to study Irish Gaelic. He was one of the few people I knew who was fluent in Irish but then, he was fluent in many languages. How many languages does the man speak anyway? Eleven?
At first I thought he was putting me on. But then he slew my ears with polyglot tongues, in languages I didn't even know existed.... Why on earth would he learn Angolan, I thought. But then I remember him telling me he was at the Fort Ord Language Institute and spoke several African languages as well. Angolan. Oh the government... But that was the days of the Black Panther Movement, Stokley Carmichael, Angela Davis, Symbionese Liberation Front, Patty Hearst, etc. Angola was in the headlines a lot.
One of the last times I saw Jim was at LAX. We were heading out to Guatemala and El Salvador. Or was it Cabo? We ran into him at the luggage carousel. Weirdly, my boyfriend John Oliver Simon also knew him—as Jaime! At the same instant we both shouted out to him: Seamus! Jim! Jaime! and did a quadruple take and laughed. So it was a double meeting of the minds.
Jim organized a poetry reading and book party, Falling to Sea Level, (Aldebaran) for us at Angel's Gate Poetry Reading Series in San Pedro. I remember standing by the side of the Pacific Coast Highway with Jim along the cliffs just north of San Pedro Harbor mouthing a few words in Irish, when he began to unfold snippits of his life, it was pretty fantastical. I thought he was jiving me, but I later found out it was all true...
Last I heard he was teaching at the University of Cork. Someone else said, No, he was in Galway. I recently found a paper of his online—in Irish—on dialects of the Aran Islands, so I couldn't make heads or tale out of it—well maybe donkey's tails—in that I could make out a few words here and there, follow the gist, conjugate a preposition or two, but that was about it....
Because of Jim, I redoubled my efforts and I got my grannie to teach me what she could of the old Hibernian Club Gaelic League Irish from her Grammars, but speaking it was another matter.
I want to do a shout out: Hey Jim,wherever you are, I finally learned some Gaelic. I thought it was impossible. I studied Celtic languages at UC Berkekey with Joe Nugent, Breen O Conchubhair, with professors Kathryn Klar and Linguistics Chair, Dr. Gary Holland...Old, Middle and Modern. Irish, some medieval Welsh too.
It was impossible, but we translated the Tain Bo Cuailaigne, the Tain Bo Fraoch, and the Mabinogi... But after ten years lying fallow in the back fields of the mind, and with no one to speak it, I now know enough to know that it's truly impossible and that I don't know enough in order to read your papers on Irish linguistics. (chun: in order to)
Last summer, however, I was surprised to find that I could slog my way through a Manx story (only if I read it out loud), I was able to translate place names while in the Hebrides and I'm slowly building my repertoire of Irish and Scots Gaelic music...that's where I came into this crazy circle, wanting to learn Irish and Hebridean mouth music...such a long, long time ago.
Last summer, however, I was surprised to find that I could slog my way through a Manx story (only if I read it out loud), I was able to translate place names while in the Hebrides and I'm slowly building my repertoire of Irish and Scots Gaelic music...that's where I came into this crazy circle, wanting to learn Irish and Hebridean mouth music...such a long, long time ago.
