Autorentext

Dr Séamas Ó Catháin was born in Drumquin, Co. Tyrone, and educated at Christian Brothers Grammar School, Omagh, and at Queen's University Belfast where he graduated: BA in 1960, MA in 1966, and PhD in 1977. Among other academic posts, he has been appointed Professor of Celtic, Queen's University Belfast in 1980; Associate Professor, University College Dublin in 1990; Dean, Faculty of Celtic Studies, University College Dublin from 1990 to 1996; Acting Head, Department of Archaeology, University College Dublin in 1995-1996; Acting Head, Department of Irish Folklore from 1996 to 2000; Professor of Irish Folklore, University College Dublin from 2000 to 2005; Interim Head, School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics in 2005 and 2006; and Director, National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin in 2006 and 2007. He has been Editor of 'Bealoideas', the Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society from 1996 to 2005, and has received numerous honours and awards, including the Gael Linn Gold Medal in 1960, the Dag Strömbäck Prize of the Gustavus Adolphus Akademi, Uppsala, Sweden in 1994, and in 1986 became a Knight (First Class) of the Order of the Lion of Finland.

Klappentext

Séamas Ó Catháin was born in Tyrone in 1942 to a family of Catholic business people and farmers. His home town of Drumquin was ‘a stone’s throw’ from the border that separates the Republic of Ireland from the Six Counties of Northern Ireland. This book is an engaging, often eye-opening, account of his experience – as a child and as a young man – in three distinctive cultures, now radically changed. He describes the Tyrone of the 1940s and 1950s where Protestant and Catholic neighbours shared their lives at a personal level, but where institutions were divisive. His father’s prosperous business was ruined be­cause of a political event he supported. The schools and the curriculum were dividers of the two communities. The border was a nuisance to everyone. As a post-graduate student in the 1960s, he took up residence in the Donegal Gaeltacht of Na Cruacha, where ‘real old Irish’ was still spoken. He carried out a study of the place­names of Na Cruacha, recording the area’s distinctive music and speech. Shortly afterwards his research took him to the far north of Europe, to Sápmi (an area extending over parts of four countries, and generally known as Lapland). There he immersed himself in the culture and language of the Sámi people, at a time when their native language and customs were belittled and under threat.

Zusammenfassung
"I have run the gauntlet of many borders in my time, but the border I grew up with at home was far and away the most trying," writes Seamas OCathain (Professor Emeritus at University College Dublin, and former Director of the National Folklore Collection) of the Irish border - "a border policed by little corporals that was the bane of our lives."