‘In Granny’s world, wearing a shawl and speaking Irish made you a peasant, while a hat and coat and a command of English made you a cut above the rest. There’s a family story about the day she was walking down Shop Street in Galway, ‘thinking about something’ when a barefoot shawlie woman came towards her from the opposite direction. In a moment of aberration, wearing her good hat and her decent cloth coat, Granny stepped into the gutter and ‘gave the shawlie woman the flags’, or flag¬stones, that made up the pavement. Apparently she was so mortified she went straight home, got into bed and refused to get up again. It was obviously her default position when life went horribly wrong. So for years it never occurred to me that she might have known Irish. Now I wonder if she spoke it herself as a child. Her stories of the Too-ha-day were told to me in English. But the rhythms and turns of phrase she used in them came straight from the Irish language. Was that how she’d first heard them herself? I’ll never know the answer. But I do know that somehow, despite her coat and hat, Granny had inherited the shawlie women’s tradition. I wish she hadn’t lived in a world that taught her to be ashamed of it.’ ~ The House on an Irish Hillside. Chapter 3.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 07:49:47 +0000
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