IT’S easy to get distracted when visiting Anraí Mac an Ultaigh’s home – finished and unfinished canvases, together with musical equipment, bonsai trees and books lie stacked around his living room.
The west Belfast former maths teacher took early retirement in 1992; having contracted Lyme disease some years earlier, the daily grind had become increasingly difficult. A recent diagnosis and treatment offers him small spurts of energy to explore his creativity before pain and fatigue overcome him.
“Because of my health I just write when I’m able," he says. "The big problem with me is that ideas come to me as I am about to fall asleep. I would get up to just write a few sentences but it always ends up being more.”
Having held an exhibition of his painted works in 2018, late last year the 71-year-old father and grandfather launched Seal S’agamsa, his fifth book in the medium of Irish, at Culturlann Mac Adam O Fiach on the Falls Road.
The title of the book loosely translates to ‘My Time’. It pays tribute to the people of the west Belfast Gaeltacht and Mac an Ultaigh’s time among them. But Seal S’agamsa can also mean “it’s my round” because this a collection of stories told through their social context – stories that celebrate the informal aspects of being part of the community, a concept that is illustrated on the collection's cover, which shows the author among Irish-speaking friends at a bar in An Spidéal, Co Galway, in 1971.
Set against the backdrop of bars, clubs and ceilis, this light-hearted anthology takes readers from the birth of the Irish language community in west Belfast in 1936 via the establishment of the Cumann Chluain Árd language school in Hawthorn Street in 1944 to the foundation and growth of the city's Irish-medium primary and second-level Gaelscoileanna.
Mac an Ultaigh stresses the importance that socialising played in his own journey through Irish.
“I’d learned some Irish at school but had no real interest. But when I was about 18 I was playing in a folk group with a school friend, Aodán Mac Póillin,” he says. Mac Póillin, with whom the writer remained close, was a prominent member of the west Belfast Gaeltacht until his untimely death two years ago.
“Aodhán wanted to go to the Chluain Árd. Until then I didn’t even know it was there, even though I only lived round the corner in Fort Street.”
The Cluain Árd, Mac an Ultaigh says, was more than just a language class. It was a social hub where ceilis, theatre and live music played a collaborative role in engaging the wider community.
“I was able to sit there each night and pick it up bit by bit. Aodán coaxed me to go so that we could learn some songs in Irish – we wanted to expand our repertoire beyond the Clancy Brothers’ greatest hits."
The idea of community is important to the author too – the support offered by other speakers, the sense of belonging and of having a role to play.
“The people in the cumann who spoke fluently were very forgiving of novices and it made you feel comfortable and informal. And everybody did everything for free. Every year, just after Christmas, the roof would leak and somebody would get up with hessian sacks and tar to fix it.”
Indeed, one such incident at the start of the Troubles, to which the author alludes in the book, led to a near miss with a passing British army patrol.
However, even in those troubled early years Cluain Árd attracted people from all over Belfast. And in spite of living a few streets away the writer was as alien to the place as members from the Shankill.
In those first few years, Mac an Ultaigh says, community was small and everyone who spoke Irish knew each other.
“It was rare to meet someone I didn’t know who spoke Irish – it would’ve been unusual.”
He contrasts this to today but believes the language remains a social catalyst. Mac an Ultaigh recalls meeting an old friend and fellow Gaeilgeoir in a bar to watch a rugby match: “Within 15 minutes there was a small crowd of us, some of whom were strangers to me until then, conversing quite comfortably in Irish.”
He is passionate about Irish and even refers to himself as An ghealt fhanaiceach (the fanatical lunatic). And although reluctant to be drawn on the recent controversy regarding an Irish language act, he admits that seeing the campaign being driven by young people is an immense source of pride and optimism.
As for those who denigrate the language, he would rather see people drawn to it, as he was, than forced to respect it.
Expressing his creativity is not new to Mac an Ultaigh – he, like is father, is also a painter but protests that he was “motivated by mediocrity” to try another medium.
Many members of the Irish language community attended the launch of Seal S’Agamsa, including Seán Mac Seáin, one of the founding fathers of the west Belfast Irish language community, who read – or, more accurately, reenacted – excerpts.
Seal S’Agamsa is a tribute to that community – or as Mac an Ultaigh says “a sort of apology,” due to ill-health and personal reasons, for not having been able to offer as much practical support as he would have liked while Irish language education was burgeoning.
The book has 33 stories – the house number of the writer’s boyhood home – told affectionately and with a great deal of humour and poignancy.
So, while there’s a great deal of regret on the part of the author, Seal S’agamsa reads much like a love letter. And if the large audience at An Cultúrlann was anything to go by, it has not been an unrequited love.
:: Seal S’Agamsa by Anraí Mac an Ultaigh is published by Coiscéim, priced £7.30 (€7.50); it can be purchased online from anceathrupoili.com or litriocht.com or in person at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, 216 Falls Road, Belfast.
