My father’s bookshelf is a staple childhood memory. I can remember when my head reached only the third shelf, where the solid spines of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Tibetan Book of the Dead stared back at me. Even more clearly I remember my first bedtime stories, there were no forks and spoons, or cats jumping over the moon, but instead, Jane Eyre’s immovable will, Miss Havisham’s twilight romance.
By the time my head reached the sixth shelf, I was a college student, and suddenly, Peig Sayers’ autobiography, and Tomas O’ Crohan’s, The Islandman, stared back at me. Their back covers claimed they were originally written in Irish Gaelic. Our ancestors were from Ireland, but like most of the Gaels that fled during the lean years, they shed their old-world identities like a worn coat. Today, my family has no memory of the Irish tongue, or of what drove our ancestors to finally, and irrevocably, leave their pasts behind.
I can trace all that has happened in my life, the years leading up to my first year at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and my fluency in Gàidhlig, back to discovering those books, I consider them the stone-drop source of the ripples that have come to an end on the Western shores of Scotland.
I spent a semester abroad in the Gàidhealtachd of Ireland, learned a bit of the language, wrote my senior thesis on Tomas O’Crohan’s memoir, and afterwards, received a grant to go to Cape Breton for a year to learn Gaelic. I played Cape Breton tunes on my fiddle, heard the islander’s singing the Gaelic words to the melodies, and wanted to learn. I applied to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, and at the end of August, found myself on a train from Glasgow to Mallaig, squinting to make some sort of meaning out of the Gaelic station signs, my ancestor’s own language as foreign to me as brail.
The first few months at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig were extremely difficult. Unlike most of my peers, I hadn’t grown up hearing the language, or gone through Gàidhlig medium education. The sounds and structures of the language were completely new to me. To catch up, I knew what I would have to do, give up the comforts of speaking English, sacrifice my eloquence in my native tongue, and hope that it would eventually come in this new one.
A student from the city might have difficulty adjusting to the rural setting of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. For me, it was completely conducive to what I wanted to do. There are few distractions, sea and the mountains for inspiration, and enough happening on campus to make you feel that somehow, you’re still at the centre of it all. While many of the students left for the big city on the weekends, I stayed on campus, to be closer to the language, and by Christmas, I’d stopped speaking English completely. What had one been gibberish to me began to take form and sense, what had once seemed insurmountable had shrunk considerably in size.
The real test came when I went to live in Uist for three weeks in February, to work at a Gàidhlig medium primary school. I had to ask myself, would my learner’s Gàidhlig make the cut outside the learning environment of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig? When I arrived on the shores of Lochmaddy, I went into the ferry station to ask about buses, mustering my courage to address the woman behind the desk in the language, ‘Hallo? Ciamar a tha thu an-diugh?’, ‘I’m fine, thanks’, she replied in English. Well, that’s one down I thought. Was she offended by my obvious American blas? Did my brightly patterned Wellies scream tourist? On the taxi ride to my B%B, I was too shy to address the driver in Gàidhlig, luckily, all this would change the second I reached Flòraidh's house.
Small and stout, with a knot of white hair, and a surprisingly youthful face, I received a brisk hug from Flòraidh as soon as I entered the door. She addressed my confidently in Gàidhlig, and I replied back to her the same, apologizing for being late, explaining that I’d had a bit of difficulty finding a lift. ‘Oh, tha thu fileanta!’ She replied in wonder, ‘you’re fluent’, straight from the mouth of a native speaker, my will was restored. My driver, who had begun to edge conspicuously towards the door the second the conversation turned away from English, muttered a quick 's e do bheatha’ in response to our thank you.
The next three weeks passed like a dream. I was thrilled to be in a community where Gàidhlig was natural and alive. I was praised for my language skills, offered support by those who, admittedly at times, had trouble understanding what could inspire an American to come all the way to the Western shores of Scotland to learn the language in the first place.
I must admit, I have trouble answering this common question myself. What I can tell people is that learning Gàidhlig has changed me permanently. It has been said that, ‘to have two languages is to have two souls’. Indeed I feel like the richness of my own life has easily been doubled. I have wonderful new friends I wouldn’t speak a word of English to, deep connections that have been forged through the medium of Gàidhlig, and enough fluency in the language to go to Uist and converse comfortably the islander’s in their native tongue. The language doesn’t live within the walls of the classroom for me, it’s as alive as a fiddle tune and a cup of coffee, and will continue to be so, I hope, regardless of where ever I travel next.
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