Graveyard Clay: Cré na Cille

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Cré na Cille (Graveyard Clay) is the most acclaimed work by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, writer, teacher, academic, and language activist, who was born in the townland of Cnocán Glas (green hillock) near An Spidéal (Spiddal), in the coastal region known as Cois Fharraige (by the sea), in the south Conamara Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking region). In spite of its proximity to Galway city, about twelve miles away, Cnocán Glas was wholly Irish-speaking. Because the formative years of his life were spent in this community, Ó Cadhain escaped the influence of a secondary boarding school in an English-speaking area, to which most Irish speakers were of necessity subjected at an early age, if they were to get any post-primary education. That accounts, in part, for the depth of his knowledge of the spoken language, but his parents, of course, were a major influence. Both his mother, Bríd Óg Nic Conaola, and his father, Seán Ó Cadhain, were traditional storytellers, as were his grandfather and his uncle and other relations; and his brother Seosamh, who assisted in the editing of the English-Irish Dictionary (Dublin, 1959), had a remarkable knowledge of the vocabulary and idiom of Conamara Irish.

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