Donegal and Kerry's Gaeltacht connection
As Donegal burst the Dublin bubble on Sunday evening to secure their place in the All-Ireland final against that Saturday’s winners, Kerry, he turned to me and said “cluiche ceannais idir na fadudas agus na n’fheadars a bheidh anois againn.” It will be a final between the fadudas (pronounced, fa-doo-das) and the n’fheadars (pronounced, nad-dors) now.
To those of you without a grasp of our native tongue, faduda is a Donegal variation of fá dtaobh de, which means ‘about’, ‘around’ or ‘concerning’ a particular thing. So, for example, if a Donegal man says “níl a fhios agam a dhath fá dtaobh de (faduda)” he is telling you that he knows nothing about it.
A Kerry man on the other hand would say “n’fheadar faic mar gheall air” — I know nothing about it — n’fheadar being a close relation of the ‘yerra’, so often heard from Kerry folk this time of year i.e. “yerra shur, we may as well finish off the job now.”
So, after a lifetime listening to Raidio na Gaeltachta and 15 years working with them, it suddenly dawned on me a fortnight ago that although we share the same basic language, Kerry people and Donegal people are two very different tribes whose differences are obvious, even to those, such as my Conamara friend, who speak the same language as us.
From the very outset, Raidio na Gaeltachta set about celebrating those differences, while at the same time demolishing all barriers between Gaeltacht communities. Of the magnificent seven original founding broadcasters on Easter Sunday 1972, two were from Kerry and two came from the Gaoth Dobhair/Doirí Beaga area — Timlín Ó Cearnaigh and Feardorcha Ó Colla, whose son Máirtín and I marked each other in a few National League games in the mid ’90s. Máirtín is now a top referee and was, at the time, the first Gaoth Dobhair man since Neilly Gallagher retired in 1975 to make the Donegal senior team.
Micheál Ó Sé, who set the standard in Irish language sports broadcasting from the start, tells of another seminal event three years before Raidio na Gaeltachta’s inception that saw it become the touchstone for all inter-Gaeltacht footballing relations to this day — Comórtas Peile na Gaeltachta.
In the late ’60s, a Kerryman, Tony Barrett, and a Gaoth Dobhair man, Antóin Ó Cearbhaill, came upon the notion of an inter-Gaeltacht football competition that would have at its core the key principles of ceol, craic comhluadar and caid — one that would see sport unite what geography and the entire length of the island of Ireland separated.
Thus on Nollaig na mBan (January 6) 1969, a bunch of hardy souls from the Kerry Gaeltacht, having ventured north to Gaoth Dobhair’s home patch on Machaire Gathlán to play a football match, became pioneers for one of the GAA’s truly national competitions, a competition that has grown into something bigger than its founding fathers could ever have imagined.
Comórtas Peile na Gaeltachta and Raidio na Gaeltachta have been our umbilical chords to Donegal and to other Gaeltacht counties for as long as I can remember. If people outside the Gaeltacht ever doubted Ódhrán Mac Niallais’ ability to deliver on the big stage, those who were at Comórtas 2013 in Rinn ua gCuanach in the Waterford Gaeltacht would have been able to tell them that this boy was the real deal.
Similarly, anybody who watched Ryan McHugh’s showing at Comórtas 2014 earlier this year in Maigh Cuilinn, could have predicted that he was more than capable of filling the shoes of his brother Mark. Before their father Máirtín Beag and their uncle wee James ever won their All-Ireland medals in 1992, we marvelled at their energy and their balance as teenagers looking on in Gallarus in 1990 when Cill Chártha were in the middle of the famous three-in-a-row.
We have seen the talent and grit of players such as John Joe Doherty and the Hegartys from Gleann Cholmcille, whose best known resident, Paddy Beag Mac Giolla Easpaig, is the life and soul of every Comórtas and whose local team, Naomh Columba, made the news at this year’s Comórtas when, in the best spirit of GAA altruism, volunteerism and participation, they stopped off to help a local farmer with the footing of turf.
Donegal Gaeltacht teams such as Cloch Cheann Fhaola, Ard a Ratha (Anthony Molloy, Martin Gavigan and Damien Diver) and Clochán Liath (Tony Boyle, Adrian and Raymond Sweeney) have gone on to win Comórtas over the years and have added so much on and off the field.
But Gaoth Dobhair are Gaeltacht aristocracy within Donegal and without. Since their foundation in 1931, they have won 14 county senior titles and their representation between senior and minor on All-Ireland final day next Sunday is a source of huge pride to all involved in the club.
Current senior manager and the club’s first All Star, Kevin Cassidy, speaks highly of the work being put in over the past decade and I have seen at first-hand the background work carried out by the likes of Breandán Ó Baoill, Donnchadh Mac Niallais and Tom Beag Mac Giolla Easpaig, who brings his incredible emotional intensity to every training session with the youngsters on Machaire Gathlán.
Football means an awful lot to these people and it isn’t hard to see why minor panel members Ciaran Gillespie, Cian Mulligan, Michael Carroll, Niall Friel, Gavin McBride and Gary McFadden have developed into the players they are today.
Some day soon, those of us in the Kerry Gaeltacht will get to see these six players light up the Comórtas Peile just like Cassidy, Mac Niallais, Eamonn and Neil McGee (the archetypal teak tough Gaoth Dobhair footballer according to local aficionado, Fr Seán Ó Gallchóir) have done.
Like so many Gaeltacht communities Kerry and Donegal share much more than just a common language and a passion for football. In his booklet, The Sea Heritage of Dingle, Pádraig Long tells us that a ketch, The Premier, used for trawling during the period before the Great War of a hundred years ago, was the first Dingle boat to trawl from Killybegs and a motorised craft known as The Pride of Ballinacurra, skippered by Paddy ‘Waistcoat’ Brosnan, an uncle of Paddy Bawn, of footballing fame, played a big part in the revival of the Killybegs fishery in the 1930s.
Emigration, too, was a common bond and even if many Donegal Gaeltacht folk emigrated to Glasgow, many more went to London and New York where they would acquaint themselves with droves and droves of Kerry people.
Like Kerry, Donegal GAA has lamented the departure of so much of its playing talent with the most recent wave of emigration.
Indeed, it is just over nine months ago that secretary of Donegal GAA, Aodh Máirtín Ó Fearraigh (another Gaoth Dobhair Raidio na Gaeltachta man!) told us that in 2013 98 adult players transferred permanently out of Donegal, the highest number since 2010, Ó Fearraigh’s first year as secretary. Parts of West and South Kerry have similar stories.
So, between the language, the fishing, the landscape and the emigration, the fadudas and the n’fheadars have a lot more in common than they might care to acknowledge this past fortnight.
But the football is all that matters this week.
nFógra: The Kerry and Donegal teams of Raidio na Gaeltachta will broadcast a two-hour co-production this Saturday from 7-9pm in Cassidy’s of Camden St, Dublin. Michelle Nic Grianna and Pádraig Ó Sé (whose son Tomás plays for Kerry minors) will present the show featuring interviews and light-hearted banter with former players, special guests and live music. All are welcome.
