In ómós: A brief guide to the work of Manchán Magan
Breacadh
It’s the indigeneity of Irish culture. There’s elements in our culture — in every culture — but we still remember some elements in Ireland, of where there are people united to the Sun, to the stars, to the seasons and to the trees. So it’s an idea of [being] indigenous to the planet Earth. That’s the concept. You’ll find it in Galicia, in Norway, in Ireland — you’ll find it all over the world. These elements in their culture and mythology connect them to an indigenous way of Being-in-the-world, and what that means is basically a way of being non-human-centric. It’s non-manipulative and non-exploitative. It’s realising you’re part of a bigger whole.
—From Manchán’s last interview, several weeks ago, about 20–21 minutes in.
Last weekend’s news of the loss of one of Ireland’s greatest cultural and linguistic figures was predictably crushing for anyone who cherishes our island’s native traditions and folklore. In an age which increasingly makes ár gcultúr agus ár dteanga dhúchais seem alienated and displaced, Manchán Magan was its greatest champion and celebrant. For those who care deeply about preserving and allowing to flourish our ‘indigenous way of Being-in-the-world’, the absence of his voice will no doubt be felt for quite some time to come.
However, anyone familiar with his work, and his incredible burst of interviews, podcasts and other work in the last year, while he was struggling with cancer, should most certainly take inspiration from his life, as opposed to despairing over his passing. It’s crucial to stress that Magan was no traditionalist, conservative or nostalgic curmudgeon, but someone who enthusiastically rode the tiger of Heraclitan flux. His writing, filmography and activism were always directed toward transformation and rebirth, and in that spirit, it’s surely only right to celebrate and promote his life’s work to further generations of people.
One wonders, considering his beliefs in spirituality and the afterlife, is it a mere coincidence that he happened to pass right at the beginning of Deireadh Fómhair, and the coming of Samhain — the traditional Gaelic period of thinning between our material world and that of the Otherworld? Perhaps, but as one engages with this introduction to the man’s work, consider that we are in such a unique spiritual time of the year, where the voices of other worlds are at their strongest:
Samhain marked the start of winter, when the harvest was saved and stored, and the cattle had been brought back from their summer pastures - a time when foliage dies back and harsh frosts and withering winds kill off plants and animals. It’s also the basis of the modern festival of Halloween. Samhain was thought to be the time of the year when the threshold between worlds was thinnest. There’s evidence that our ancestors regarded Samhain as the end of one year and the beginning of another, the equivalent of our New Year’s Eve. In the same way, they believed that night preceded day, not the other way around, as we now have it. The long hours of darkness give birth to the dawn each morning, like a baby from the womb.
—From “Listen to the Land Speak” (2022), p. 124.
Bánú: Treabhchas agus “The Struggle” (2003)
There are few better places to start with Manchán Magan’s work than with the passionate docudrama The Struggle (2003), co-created with his brother Ruán, which explores their republican family heritage. After producing several acclaimed travel documentaries together, the brothers here begin to develop a powerfully rooted and grounded 21st-century engagement with the lost Irish-Ireland ideals of yesteryear.
This dúchas of his own family heritage was an essential part of his work with his brother. In answering the common Conamara greeting ‘Cé dhár díobh thú?’ (Who are you of?), the Magans had near-providential ancestral roots in Gaeldom. For starters, they were descendants of the legendary bard Aodhagán Ó Rathaille, also a native of Kerry, though specifically the Sliabh Luachra region. And on top of the ancient Gaels, the brothers were deeply entangled in the Easter Rising and its immediate political aftermath, through their grandmother, Sighle Humphreys — the focus of their first historical documentary.
Following the example of her prestigious uncle, The O’Rahilly, Humphreys embraced the life of a Cumann na mBan patriot through the Independence Era. As portrayed in the aforementioned work, The Struggle, her home at 36 Ailesbury Road became the scene of an epic raid and shootout between Ernie O’Malley and Free State forces during the Civil War. Presenting this deep family lineage through television encapsulated the revivalism of Magan’s work. For him and his brother, only through radical engagement with that which binds them to the soil, to this land and to their namesake, would they truly awaken their súil eile — the voice of their spiritual destiny:
On the day I was born — 54 years after Easter Monday, 1916 — my grandmother was still snagged in the consequences of his act (and, as I write this, 49 years after I was born, I am still quite tangled in it). I was the child of her only surviving child, and so for her I became a direct offshoot of his actions and was duty-bound to continue his legacy. She set about instilling in me the selflessness, grit and tírghrá she associated with him. My siblings and I were putty to be moulded in his image. Every word of Irish we spoke was both an honorific token in his memory and a bullet aimed at those in Westminster who had caused his death.
—From “Thirty-Two Words for Field”, p. 29.
Of course, it’s important not to take these points to mean some type of vague and atrophied nostalgia. Whether it be the aisling songs of Aodhagán Ó Rathaille or the valiant tabhartas (offering or sacrifice) of Humphreys, these stories were always framed in an overflowing of passion, a foráil seirce (excess of love) for that which makes us most human; the living expression of our shared roots and heritage. Magan uses the term treabh (family), with The O’Rahilly being a type of treabhach which can also be translated as “ploughman”, as a guide of one’s ancestral and cultural destiny. In essence, Magan’s early cinematic explorations were an attempt to celebrate treabhchas — the cultural fruits of our shared collective unconscious.
Fáinne geal: “No Béarla” (2007) agus “Déanta in Éirinn” (2012)
Is féidir linn glacadh leis go bhfuil an Ghaeilge marbh, nó nach mór marbh ar aon nós. Cinnte, beidh sé dodhéanta do aon duine a shaol a chleachtadh trí mheán na Gaeilge amháin anois. Ach, leis an ráiteas seo a chinntiú, tá sé i gceist agamsa dul ar turas timpeall na tíre ar fad, ag tosnú anseo i mBaile Átha Cliath le féachaint díreach cé chomh fada is féidir liom dul gan focal Béarla a labhairt. An mbeidh mé i staicín áiféise, eachtrannach i mo thír féin?
—From “No Béarla” (2007).
As the Celtic Tiger came to its end, the Magan brothers’ work increasingly provided a gentle but persuasive counterweight to the all-encompassing globalisation and anglicisation of the 2000s. The aisling laments of Ó Rathaille and the fiery passion of Sighle Humphreys spoke through their work, reminding the public that an English-speaking, corporate and consumerist Ireland will make us all foreigners in our own country. As Ó Direáin had bemoaned generations previous: go mba strainséir mé i mo dhúiche feasta.
They tackled this tension directly with the famous yet controversial classic of Irish-language television, No Béarla (2007). Here, Magan travels across the major cities of our island, seeing how far he can get by, with one simple rule: not speaking a word of English! This programme was followed by Déanta in Éirinn (2012), applying the same test for the sole purchase of Irish-made goods. Both works were explosive, striking at the heart of the Irish managerial class’s Faustian trade with modernisation, which stretched back centuries, and is quite literally carved into our maps and land:
[On the British Ordnance Survey of the 1800s:] It should be noted that the scholars employed by the English surveyors were Irish. They were aware that their superiors wanted names that approximated the pronunciation of the Irish names and, as the work was being done during the 1830s and 1840s, during the height of the Famine, they may have thought that Ireland’s future lay in embracing the English language and its wider world. Repeated bouts of starvation had made it clear that their Irish culture was at an end and that their survival depended on abandoning the old ways and embracing the foreign culture. The money they earned for their work may even have been going towards preparing their children for exile.
—From “Thirty-Two Words for Field” (2020).
At a time when Ireland was experiencing such tremendous economic growth, it took true bravery from the Magan brothers to tackle these subjects head-on. It was absolutely essential that the gigantic march of Anglicised modernity did not continue unchallenged, and aren’t we all the better to have these testaments to the Irish-Ireland ideals?
As the 2010s progressed, he increasingly reflected a type of millennial, hippy version of his ancestor Aodhagán Ó Rathaille — bemoaning the same scathing critique of foreign materialism found in the works of the Kerry bard, as well as in those of Dáibhí Ó Bruadair, among others. The impact of this critique on the new generations of Irish-speakers can hardly be shrugged off, as Magan, in his last interview last month, modestly reported the influence of No Béarla on the lead singers of Kneecap — so much so, they had planned to produce a sequel this autumn:
But it [No Béarla (2007)] meant so much to Kneecap, so we were going to do a re-jig of that, where I’m like the old Gandalf figure, probably in my wheelchair and on my walking frame and just telling them: “Do it again boys and do it harder! Do it tougher this time!”. So we’ll definitely get that done this autumn.
—From Manchán’s last interview, about 21–22 minutes in.
Súil: Dinnseanchas, “32 Words” (2020) agus “Listen to the Land” (2022)
In this period, Manchán Magan became in many ways the central voice behind the revival of the Irish-Ireland cultural ideal. Few were able to so gently yet powerfully argue for the necessity of reviving ár dteanga dhúchais:
Gaeilge is our birthright — something that we should be immensely proud of, not only for its cultural wealth and social and psychological subtlety but also for the insights it offers into the flora and fauna, the climate patterns, the moon cycles, the ocean currents and the otherworldly dimensions of this, our island home. Whether we pass it on as a precious heirloom or let it dissipate and die is up to us. Is í ár dteanga í, agus beatha teanga í a labhairt.
—From the preface of “Tree Dogs” (2021).
Especially after the pandemic, Magan took to articulating this celebration of Ireland’s native folklore, landscape and ethnic heritage in a wonderful mix of popular writing as well as television. Leaning more and more into eastern spiritualism and tribal mysticism, Magan articulated a revolutionary vision of appreciating dinnseanchas:
The Dinnseanchas is therefore a neat symbiosis of memory and land. It can be hard to decipher this facet of it now, as the tales have been tainted by medieval fabrications added by later storytellers or scribes. There is also the issue that we have forgotten how to unpack the complex truths often hidden within far-fetched tales. By extracting the wisdom and memories contained within a place name through a mix of analysis and intuition, we can cast light on profound truths about people, gods and nature.
—From “Thirty-Two Words for Field”, p. 152.
The works, as quoted here — “Thirty-Two Words for Field” (2020) as well as “Listen to the Land Speak” (2022) — marked perhaps the essential literary contribution to the rising 2020s Gaelic Revolution, which we are clearly in the heart of right now. Emanating through this work was a defence and passionate embrace of that which is most intimate, authentic and decentralised. Whether that be holy wells, ancient pilgrimages or long-forgotten phrases for the natural landscape, the soil of Ireland clearly spoke through Magan, as it did through Amergin long ago:
Gradually, we are coming to realise that the world depends on little things: insects, spiders and mites, as well as mosses, microbes and tiny plants that we tend to ignore as we go about our lives. Irish has kept careful note of them all, and as we rush for higher definitions on our cameras and screens, it is reassuring to see how the language can focus so sharply and deeply on the minutiae that make up the macrocosm. These words remind us of just how wide, deep and nuanced our forebears’ understanding of the world was.
—From Tree Dogs (2021).
As seen here, these works were fundamentally a rekindling of ancient truths — the quiet whispers of our ancestors — and one could see much of E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful philosophy in it.
Éirí na gréine: “Rewilding the Mind” (TBC)?
It’s a third book in the series! Thirty-Two Words for Field, Listen to the Land Speak, third book? Probably called Rewilding the Mind... And what I want to do is write that third book in the series, that’s pointing out the elements, in Irish poetry, Irish mythology, Irish folklore and the Irish language that highlight that we’ve actually maintained a huge amount of those insights right up through to the 21st century.
—From Manchán’s last interview, about 20–21 minutes in.
Perhaps we could all take from his example, and embark on our own journeys of discovery, in rewilding our minds in favour of that which is most rooted, embedded and authentic to our own being-in-the-world. This is the ecological liberation of our collective unconscious that Manchán Magan dedicated his life to — against base materialism, slop and gigantism, but instead looking within ourselves, our family trees and our local soil — and embracing the universal dignity in all created beings.
To put another way, perhaps we should all follow the peata corr which the great man highlighted in An Féineachas. The pet crane was said to be able to stare directly into the Otherworld, as a sort of custodian of our ancestors and the spirit of the winds and soil. As an Fhómhair comes to a close, and Samhain begins, it may be worth taking heed and considering whether you can open your súil eile, as did Manchán Magan and the cranes of old:
Apart from the role of cranes in the transmigration of the soul, their power lay in the belief that their single open eye could stare directly into the Otherworld and that, by standing on one leg, they could shift between worlds without being fully present in either. As the tide ebbed, the bag appeared to be entirely empty. This is a further example of the inter-dimensionality of the Irish world. It’s similar to the ceantar–alltar dichotomy we encountered earlier, in which ceantar means ‘region’ or ‘locality’ and alltar means the Netherworld, with only a thin veil separating the two. Yet passage between them is possible only at certain times of the year and by certain people.
—From “Thirty-Two Words for Field” (2020), p. 307.