Gael Linn prompts trip down memory lane

Three weeks away from home at a Gaeltacht summer school was a rite of passage, writes Pet O’Connell

An raibh tú ann? Do you remember sharing a bedroom with complete strangers on your first time away from home?

Did you cringe with embarrassment at holding the sweaty palms of a member of the opposite sex while attempting to dance the Siege of Ennis?

Did you harbour secret ambitions of sneaking below the radar of the bean a’ tí to creep out after dark?

Did you get your first kiss? And did you improve your Gaeilge?

The Gaeltacht summer college has been a rite of passage for generations of teenagers and, despite their sophistication, spending three weeks in the Irish countryside, growing up away from parental protection, is still one of the seminal experiences for today’s Facebook and Snapchat- connected youngsters.

Three weeks at a Gaeltacht summer college threw teenagers on the

varying mercies of the bean a’ tí.

And if your adolescent summers were spent immersed in Irish at Coláiste Bhaile Bhúirne in Cork’s Múscraí Gaeltacht during the last 40 years, then your past may be about to come back to haunt you.

The college marks its 40th year under the stewardship of Gael Linn in 2015 and, as part of planned anniversary celebrations, organisers hope to rekindle the teen memories of former pupils.

Gael Linn is assembling a collection of old photographs of the Gaeltacht college and its past students, with a view to mounting an exhibition this summer.

Pictures have been posted on the organisation’s Facebook page in hopes that past pupils will be identified in the photographs and reunited at a celebratory get-together.

A special Mass and social occasion are planned, and organisers are confident that among the thousands of former pupils there will be a scattering of famous names who can trace their paths to success back to Coláiste Bhaile Bhúirne.

The college was originally based in the now-derelict Coláiste Íosagáin, before relocating to the local secondary school, Coláiste Ghobnatan, in 1989.

Do you know these former pupils of the Gaeltacht

summer school at Coláiste Bhaile Bhúirne?

At its peak, Coláiste Bhaile Bhúirne ran to three courses, each of three weeks’ duration, with as many as 300 students accommodated at any one time in Coláiste Íosagáin and houses in the village and surrounding areas.

For locals who opened their homes to the students, the arrival of the páistí heralded the start of summers of hard but rewarding work.

Mary Lynch regularly kept 15 students in her home in Baile Bhúirne, a family tradition which has since passed to her daughter Gobnait.

“We were busy farming, but I always liked it and it was a bit of extra money,” she recalls.

“There was no bus for the students at the start, so when my husband Connie used to go to the creamery they would load into the car to get a spin to the college.

“Some of them would be very lonely at first and they wanted to go home, but I’d always say to them, ‘you’ll be crying because you don’t want to go home by the end of the course’.”

Students, some of them far from home, looked to the bean a’ tí to provide their creature comforts. Mary was well used to receiving strange requests, but even she was surprised to see her iron being used not on the ironing board, but on the table, by one of the guests.

“She’d no hair straightener,” Mary said. “And she was ironing her hair. She had it turned down low.”

Sharing a bedroom with strangers on your first

night away from home was a rite of passage.

Fellow former bean a’ tí Nellie Uí Dhuinnín, who took in her first students in 1976, recalls lending them all manner of clothes and even the sheets off her beds as makeshift fancy dress costumes for the nightly céilí.

She also reveals a secret vice of some of her young house guests in years gone by. “They used to play cards. Not for money now, but for the scones that were left after the dinner. That was what they would win.”

Gael Linn have two courses at Coláiste Bhaile Bhúirne this year, the first a three-week course in Cúil Aodha, starting on May 31, and the second starting on June 26 for two weeks, in Baile Bhúirne.

An optional water safety and rescue course is offered this year, in addition to sports, music, dancing, Irish language classes, visits, walks and drama.

See: www.gael-linn.ie . For vintage photographs of Coláiste Bhaile Bhúirne see Facebook: Gael Linn.

Gael Linn is seeking to identify past pupils of Coláiste Bhaile Bhúirne. If you can name any of these Gaeltacht summer college students, email [e-mail] or see Gael Linn on Facebook