Operation Fanacht

 Operation Fanacht;

The Gardai will be 'manning' (is that even a word any more?) several hundred checkpoints all across the country over the next three weeks, to ensure that we, the Irish people, remain close to home, (we're on an island lads, ffs), during the newly imposed Level 3 Covid19 Lockdown.
Operation Fanacht will hopefully finish on the 27th of October, a couple days before Halloween, when we will not allow our children go 'trick or treating', or apple-dunking, or other spit-swapping activities, for obvious reasons, though mask-wearing will be allowed, even encouraged.
Operation 'Fanacht' is the cutesy code-name for the enforced restricted movement of people around the country and within their own home-districts.

'Fanacht' roughly translated from the gaelic, means 'Wait', or 'Stay', in Irish, so it is an appropriate word for the mobility restrictions inherent in the Level 3 Lockdown, but as a stand-alone word, it is ineffective. 

Perhaps they ought, more properly have called it Operation 'Fanacht sa bhaile' or 'Stay at Home'. giving us clearer instruction?
Pronounced badly, by non-Irish speakers or careless announcers, 'Fanacht' can sound like, and be easily confused with another Irish word, 'Fánach'.
Now in my humble opinion, 'Fánach' would have been a far better code-name for the current restrictions. Fánach means 'wandering, straying, or vagrant'.
Given our history of emigration and our penchant for hopping into our cars, (or these days, mounting our bicycles or electric scooters) for the slightest reason, going to a third-cousins communion, or a distant friend's neighbor's funeral, or a sale in Harvey Normans in any town other than the one we live in, well, 'Fánach' would have been a far more appropriate codeword.
Most of us were first introduced to the word 'Fánach' in the poem we learned in primary school, 'An Spailpín Fánach', a poem that recounted the misery of being a paid labourer on the big farms and how much better life could have been had he not gone off to fight for a foreign army, where he in turn learned that the hills faraway were not as green as he had hoped.
Truth is we are an island nation and our global peregrination defines us far better than we can know.
'Fánach' also means aimless, purposeless, vain, and futile. Curiously that is the mood of many people in Ireland today under lockdown. Many of us have lost our way, lost our can do attitude, our 'joi de vivre', our reasons to be cheerful, part II.
'Fánach' also means random, or haphazard, and surely that is the definition of how we are currently being governed, in an unplanned, knee-jerk manner, with decisions being foisted on un without proper fore-thought, planning or empirical proof.
'Fánach' also means occasional, rare, or seldom, which I believe is the general response to the Covid 19 restrictions imposed on us this past six months, only occasionally, rarely or seldom have we disobeyed the rules, the morally and socially imposed mores of keeping ourselves safe and uninfected by this infectious virus, and signs by, very, very few of us have 'caught' the virus, only 1% or so of our population have been exposed to the disease, despite our 'lax' laws, mostly unarmed police, and happy-go-lucky younger folk, whose lives have been completely overwhelmed by the panic surrounding this pandemic.
'Fánach' also means sparse or little, which sometimes reflects the quality of our leadership these days, with very few people, politicians, business leaders, medics having the courage to stand up and lead by example, and I'm not even going to refer to the infamous game of golf in Connemara.
Finally, 'Fánach' also means trivial, insignificant, words that none of us use when speaking of this killer virus. We all need to work together, doing everything we used to do, but carefully, and in moderation, if we are to successfully emerge from this global pandemic and resurrect our communities, our vibrant towns and cities, protect our older generations while allowing our younger generations to live and thrive, and also, to safely reopen Ireland for tourism and safeguard the jobs and futures of the huge percentage of our population that rely on the hospitality and related industries.
Yes, its a pity they called it 'Operation Fanacht' or 'Operation Stall the ball', when we could have used an Irish word that isn't mono-theistic and could be so much more 'hopeful'!
Stay Safe.
Isn't the Irish language amazing!

Here is the first part of the poem, in the original Irish, then in English (my translation). The poet by the way is not known, or at least as far as I know, he is unknown.
'Go deo seo aris ni rachad go Caiseal.
Ag diol na ag reic mo shlainte
Na ar mhargadh na saoire im shui cois balla
Im’scaoinse ar leataoibh sraide
Bodairi na tire ag tiocht ar a gcapall
Da fhiafrai an bhfuilim hiralta
O! teanam chun siuil, ta an cursa fada
Seo ar siul an Spailpin Fanach.'
Translation
'Never, ever again will I go to Cashel,
Selling life and health for nought,
Nor to the hiring-fair, me sitting by the wall,
nonchalantly lazing by the roadside,
Well-fed country-farmers strutting on their horses,
deigning to ask me if I'd been hired,
"No, c'mon so, let’s go, the road is long"
And off with him, the Spailpín Fánach.'
and finally;
Random photo of Morris Minor at Achill, taken by Sean Calvey, included for no good reason. 

Brian Nolan 7/10/2020

Canary in the Coal-mine - The demise of the Irish Pub

Canary in the coal-mine! The demise of the Irish Pub.

Dessie O'Brien, whose pub in Kilrickle, between Loughrea and Aughrim, like thousands of others around the country, is Covidly-closed until the 1st of September, at least.
This man has put his all into keeping a beautiful, historic, culturally important rural pub alive. Over the past few years he has absorbed the missing grocery, the out of business newsagent, the the closed post office, and the non-existent coffee shop in the little village into his pub, re-inventing his welcoming hostelry as a catch-all, sell-all, serve-all, help-all 'general store and pub', a haven to provide a place of welcome and support for the good people of this rural hinterland, forgotten and by-passed, consigned to the rural dung-heap, so maligned by urban politicians, upwardly mobile urban civil servants and uncaring urban media.
Yet the people remain the same, strong, resilient, faithful, christian, talented, industrious, hard-working, friendly, community-oriented country folk, who like nothing better than to throw off the cares of a long day tending their farms (or double-jobbing to keep their farms), by popping into their 'local', for a pint and a chat, a friendly catch-up, a physical and conversational interaction, a local news bulletin not covered by RTE or GalwayBayFM, a face-to-face dialogue with a real, not a virtual 'friend'.
Psychologically, this pub (and all the others like it) is on the front-line, it is the tipping point, the fracture-joint, the point of no-return, for rural Ireland.
This crisis is akin in every way to the worthy efforts to 'save the corncrake and the curlew'. The rural pub is now firmly on the endangered list, threatened with imminent extinction!
Who cares you say! Who indeed... but mark my words, when these unimportant, unassuming, unnecessary rural pubs fail, close and disappear, and the dust settles, you will then be able to see the long line of dominoes tilt, and tip, and fall, bringing with them a treasury of cultural and community icons, the traditional music, song and dance scene, the art of story-telling, the local history buffs, the animal husbanders, the quaint cottiers, the characters, the quiet men, the wise women, the happy-go-lucky kids, the drop-outs and the geniuses, the cute hoors and the spiritual believers, the farmers, and the farm-hands, the hermits and the herb-growers, all of whom form and inform the very essence of rural Ireland, all of whom rely on the soon-to-be forgotten Irish Pub.
My words aside, this two photograph speaks volumes.The poignancy of these two images of Dessie O'Brien's empty, closed pub in Kilrickle brought a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat tonight. 

This poignant photograph of the empty pub reminded me of a song from the musical 'Les Miserables'.. 
'Empty Chairs at Empty Tables'.....