Maolcholaim Scott

Bannaght Columb Killey as yeearreeyn share voish Mannin

The blessing of Columb Killey and best wishes from Mann. By Phil Gawne [English version of Manx below]

Choud’s ta recortyssyn soilshey dooin ta feailley ny margey er ve goll er cummal ayns Skeerey Cairbre jannoo ard-eailley jeh Columb Killey er dyn 1733. Ayns e chooinaghtyn, screeu Dr Juan y Clague, eshyn ren recortys beeal-arrish as arraneyn as carryn tradishoonagh as hooar baase ayns 1908, “ta cooinaght aym pene er ollan, snaie olley, eggaghyn dy eaddagh, eeast chirmit, eeast sailjey as lhiare goll er creck er’n nah laa as feed Mean Souree er Laa Columb Killey” as “ta mee er nakin wheesh as feed bwaagyn ayn ry hoi creck lhune eddyr yn daa ghroghad.”

Hie yn margey magh ass ayns ayrn s’jerree y nuyoo keead jeig agh v’eh aavioghit ayns 1912 ec yn Ard-jaghin Kewley as ta laa seyr ny skeerey er ve ayn er dyn shen, lesh spoyrtyn, taishbynys troar as ellynyn, as kiaull as rinkaghyn. Hig keeadyn dy leih dagh blein dy chur shilley er ny goaill ayrn ayn as she laa mie inshit foast ayns blein heshoil ny Manninee

Records show that there has been a festival, or fair, held in Arbory Parish celebrating Columb Killey since at least 1733. In his recollection of the fair, folklorist and song collector Dr John Clague who died in 1908 says “I remember myself wool, wooden thread, webs of cloth, dried fish, salt herrings and leather, sold on the twenty second day of the middle month of the summer, on St Columba’s Day” and “I have seen as many as twenty tents for the selling of ale between the two bridges.”

The fair appeared to have died out in the latter part of the nineteenth century but it was revived in 1912 by Archdeacon Kewley and there has been a parish holiday with sports, arts and produce show and music and dancing ever since. The fair attracts hundreds of visitors and participants every year and continues to be a highlight of the Manx social calendar. 

It can be a challenge for teenagers to come together and use Gaelic, but an odyssey by bus and boat is helping a group in County Derry to meet that challenge.

For a number of years, a 50 seater bus from the Donegal Gaeltacht has been travelling to County Derry and onwards to the Isle of Lewis. The bus is full of teenagers and those helping them, and their face is set on Fèis Eilean an Fhraoich, the youth festival in Lewis, and on young people of their own age who speak Scottish Gaelic.

The journey is organised by a youth group, Club Óige Luraigh, one of a network of Irish language organisations which has developed in a rural area of County Derry. The club works in partnership with the Fèis in Lewis, and with Muintearas, a Gaeltacht youth organisation in Ireland:  there are teenagers from the Donegal and Conamara Gaeltachts on the bus as well as from Derry.

The young people from Ireland take part in music activities and iomáin (hurling/shinty) in Lewis as well as language classes, and drama workshops help them to use Scottish Gaelic.

Joe Ó Dochartaigh, a youth worker at Club Óige Luraigh, says that the annual odyssey transforms the work of the youth club. Even though they have had Irish-medium primary education, those teenagers who do not speak Irish at home can succumb to pressure to speak English among themselves. But the annual odyssey to Lewis has its own effect: as the young people put effort into the feis and the long journey there and back, they choose to speak Irish among themselves, a choice they maintain on their return home to County Derry.

New Friendships

New friendships are another result of the odyssey; friendships between people in Lewis and County Derry, between teenagers in County Derry and in the Gaeltacht in Ireland. Young musicians from Ireland have been invited to play at the big Lewis musical festival, the Hebcelt; families from Lewis have come to visit families in County Derry. One young man who has been on the journey, Dubhaltach Mac Conmidhe is studying for a degree in Scottish Gaelic in Glasgow.