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\n Darach \u00d3 S\u00e9aghdha<\/p>\n
Author and linguist<\/p>\n
In Calling 353, bestselling Motherfocl\u00f3ir author and podcaster Darach \u00d3 S\u00e9aghdha casts a linguistic eye on how we talk about what it means to be Irish, the signs we post to each other about Irishness \u2013 and what really lies beneath it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NOEL GALLAGHER ONCE described his younger brother Liam as \u201ca man with a fork in a world of soup\u201d.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a memorable image, and I often wonder if the elder Gallagher brother had ever heard Lloyd George\u2019s description of negotiating with \u00c9amon De Valera (\u201clike trying to lift mercury with a fork\u201d) when he said it.<\/p>\n
The melodious Mancunian brothers are due to visit Ireland next year for another lucrative concert, their long-running feud now buried under a pile of money so high you could break a leg if you fell off it. There\u2019s also a documentary on release about Oasis and their return to the stage, which will no doubt find a willing audience.<\/p>\n
Unlike another English musician with Irish heritage who was recently in the news, there\u2019s no debating or dismissing the Gallaghers\u2019 connection to this island. We\u2019ve seen Mammy Gallagher on Gogglebox, and Noel scored a point in Croke Park before committing himself fully to music (he was playing for Lancashire\u2019s CLG Ois\u00edn against Kilmacud Crokes, who he still dislikes).<\/p>\n
And yet\u2026 in a previous Oasis documentary (there have been a few) when discussing other members of the band, Noel remarked that bandmate Tony McCarroll\u2019s family were \u201cvery Irish\u201d.<\/p>\n
The comment stayed with me, it seemed that there was a lot of feeling buried underneath it.<\/p>\n
That Noel, with his Irish parents and him and his siblings with Irish names, and their immersion in Manchester\u2019s Irish diaspora would look at another family and think of them as more Irish than his, it seemed like he felt something was lacking in his.<\/p>\n
Friends from similar Irish backgrounds in English cities have suggested theories to me as what he might have meant, and overwhelmingly the most common suggestion was that the other family was a very large family, and the father being present was probably a factor.<\/p>\n
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\n Our kid: Liam Gallagher with Irish mum Peggy. Alamy<\/p>\n
Alamy\n<\/p>\n
A world of soup<\/p>\n
National identity is a slippery thing to talk about even when it isn\u2019t under the kind of bad-tempered scrutiny that it is currently getting in Ireland. Who gets to be Irish and who gets to decide if someone else gets to be Irish?<\/p>\n
Forty years ago, the United Nations commissioned a report <\/a>on the problem of discrimination against indigenous populations around the world, a task which required a definition of \u201cindigenous\u201d more nuanced than citizenship to make any sense. What they came up with was a list of possible factors, including: occupation of an ancestral land, common ancestry with occupants of that land, practice of culture or cultures of that land, and language practice (the brilliant Irish language journalist Daith\u00ed De Mordha has written about this<\/a> with particular reference to how Irishness is a cultural identity rather than a bloodline).<\/p>\n With this in mind, it is possible to recognise how some people from outside Ireland can have a real and meaningful connection to Irish culture. And it is also possible to recognise that starting their careers in a more mature economy than Ireland\u2019s might be a colossal advantage over their peers in Ireland.<\/p>\n No soup for you<\/p>\n Prior to their triumphant return to the stage last year, another news outlet suggested that Oasis might be the best Irish band of all time. This brought back memories of the late \u201990s when some music critics would describe Oasis as \u201cthe best Irish band since The Smiths\u201d (or, in some cases, The Beatles).<\/p>\n Cute and provocative as these remarks may be, they tell one story while concealing another. Specifically this \u2013 in the early \u201990s when Oasis were coming up, it was really, really hard for an Irish band to break through. Obviously it was and is hard for any band to break through, but Irish bands were at a particular disadvantage, because it was hard to gig in England.<\/p>\n Before Ryanair, flying to Britain was very expensive \u2013 especially with loads of equipment.<\/p>\n The ferry was an option but that took more time \u2013 time which was precious if band members still had day jobs to maintain before the music started paying. But were these efforts appreciated? Reader, they were not.<\/p>\n Stephen Ryan, the singer from The Stars Of Heaven (you may have heard Everything But The Girl\u2019s popular cover of their song The Lights of Tetouan on the radio) complained that the music press didn\u2019t think that a band from Ireland were foreign enough to be interesting \u2013 they could have been from Sheffield as far as they were concerned.<\/p>\n College radio was breaking a lot of bands in America, and the nerds who ran those stations followed the British music press with interest, so much so that American bands like The Pixies were strategically touring Britain to get noticed on college radio back home. For all the talk of Irish pubs and Irishness becoming cool in the 1990s, it was still hard for Irish bands playing modern pop and rock to crack on.<\/p>\n