On an Irish Island by Robert Kanigel Read Free Book Online Page A

Napoleonic Wars. Nationalistic fervor swept the country. Interest blossomed in the country’s roots, culture, and very identity—especially in its heroic Viking past, when the original Norwegians, theNorsemen, marauded the coasts of WesternEurope, plundering, forming settlements, and mixing with local peoples, including theCelts, forebears of today’sIrish. All this needed study, and Marstrander was to be enlisted in the new work. He was to go to Ireland, Bugge told him, and learnmodern Irish; the Old andMiddle Irish he’d studied in school were too remote from the way it was spoken now. A special scholarship had been secured for him. Was he ready to go?
    How long did Marstrander weigh his answer? One wonders because of how he later described the scene. He had been named to the Norwegian Olympic team, in pole vault, for the 1908 games in Athens; he was torn about what to do, and said as much to Bugge. (Of course, the 1908 Olympics were held inLondon, not Athens, so the story loses some veracity.) Bugge would have none of it.
Hic Rhodus, hic salta,
he replied, referring in Latin to an Aesop’s fable Marstrander would have known: An athlete back from games on the isle of Rhodes boasts of his formidable long jump there and swears he can produce witnesses to his feat. Don’t bother, he’s enjoined, simply repeat it:
Here’s your Rhodes; let’s see you jump.
Bugge needed an answer then and there.
    Soon, Marstrander was on his way toDublin, where he was a guest ofRichard Irvine Best, secretary of the new School of Irish Learning there. Then he headed west across the barren, mostly flat plain toGalway, and from there reached WestKerry—Kerry, perhaps, because the Donegal and Connemaradialects had been explored, whereas that ofWest Kerry represented stillfertile scholarly ground. InTralee, he stayed at a place he remembered as theTeetotal Hotel, which “served whiskey from morning till night.” The locals spoke as little Irish as he did.
    After taking the same train across the peninsula as Synge had, he arrived inDingle. There, by one account, a former islander advised him that if it was “the living Irish” he wanted he should head for the Blaskets. No need for that, someone else told him—there was plenty of Irish to be heard right there inBallyferriter. Besides, “ ‘there’s not much sense in going into the island and drowning yourself.’ ”
    In Ballyferriter he stayed atWillie Long’s, where, like Synge, he was soon disappointed.“I did not get in contact with the ordinary man,” he wrote, which was necessary if he hoped to learn “the difficultIrish language.” Long, he concluded, was too big a local figure; people were afraid to open up in front of him. Marstrander was treated “like a bust on a pedestal.” Local farmers to whom he was introduced clammed up. Conversations stopped when he entered the room. One scholar has noted howGaelic League organizers during these years found many people“ashamed to admit they knew Irish,” which was associated withilliteracy andpoverty; even in Ballyferriter, Irish was deemed inferior, unsuitable for church, school, or commerce. Once, in a local pub, Marstrander was again assured that Ballyferriter ought to suffice for Irish. No, he said, nodding to a conversation going on beside them inEnglish, “my enemy is just behind my ear.”
    It was time to get out. One day in early August, he packed his bags, hired a donkey to get him toDún Chaoin, made his way down the steep path to the little quay at the base of the cliff, and was rowed over to the Great Blasket.
    What happened next is today firmly enshrined in Blasket lore, not least because Marstrander so delighted in telling it. On his arrival, he was met by a delegation of villagers. The king welcomed him with anold Irish greeting. Marstrander expressed thanks in his best Irish,
Ta buiochas agam ort a Ri,
making “an honest attempt to get my tongue right for this unusual sound.” He failed, utterly. Um, yes,