Aloysius O'Brien; Newfoundland's last Gaelic speaker (GREAT)
Hyfler/Rosner
Newfoundland's last Gaelic speaker 'was like a man from an
earlier time'
Farmer and self-taught linguist, he lived in one of the
oldest houses in the province and used organic,
crop-rotation methods of the Old Country. His farm was the
last of 400 in the area
J.M. SULLIVAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
October 13, 2008
ST. JOHN'S -- Aloysius O'Brien's life and vocations composed
a template of the Irish presence in Newfoundland. His
mother's family came from Waterford and his father's family
from Kilkenny. A farmer, he used the organic, crop-rotation
methods of the Old Country and he successfully preserved his
old world property from real-estate development. A linguist,
he taught himself a Gaelic dialect that, while still the
genesis of many Newfoundland words, is now extinguished in
the province and has likely fully died out with his passing.
He was a devout Roman Catholic and had learned religion and
Irish history from his schooling with the Irish Christian
Brothers. His interest in Irish culture went beyond his deep
commitment to the language, and he was so steeped in the
Irish-Newfoundland traditions and transitions of the late
19th and 20th centuries he was a walking primary resource
for researchers and filmmakers.
But Gaelic was his strongest passion. It was what the Irish
immigrants had spoken. In the early 19th century it was the
predominant language on the Avalon Peninsula, and
Gaelic-speaking priests were favoured by some local
congregations. To this day, pockets of Newfoundland sport an
accent seemingly straight from Ireland, but it was never a
written language or taught in schools. It was almost
entirely out of use by the end of the First World War,
although such current Newfoundland parlance as "hangashore,"
"scrawb" and "gob" are Gaelic in origin, and in the 1980s
folklorists were still finding singers in St. Mary's Bay, on
the southern Avalon Peninsula, who could belt out songs in
Gaelic. Many Newfoundlanders also know the old Irish name
for Newfoundland: Talamh Au Eisch, or "Land of the Fish."
Mr. O'Brien's paternal grandmother, Bridget Conway, had
spoken Gaelic, but his father did not. Mr. O'Brien was
fascinated by his family's Irish history and traditions and
determined to conserve them. He taught himself Leinster
Gaelic, also called Irish of the Books, ordering language
records and cassette tapes advertised in magazines, and
reading booklets published by Father Eugene O'Growney, a
priest who laboured to record and protect the Irish
language.
"I am not fluent in the language, either," Mr. O'Brien once
said. "To be fluent with it you must be immersed in it." But
such immersion was no longer possible.
In 1970, Dr. Richard Walsh, a visiting Irish professor, gave
a lecture on Gaelic at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Mr. O'Brien attended, but his own knowledge was so extensive
and so obvious that he was soon the one behind the podium,
leading night courses. While a teacher, he remained a
farmer. In a quaint overlap, one evening's class was
postponed when all hands went to search from some cows that
had strayed from the farm.
Aly O'Brien was the youngest of three boys born to Denis
O'Brien and Margaret (English). (Serendipitously, his
birthday was June 16, which is known as Bloomsday in homage
to Leopold Bloom, James Joyce's protagonist in Ulysses.)
Neither he nor his older brothers John and Mike ever married
and they spent their entire lives in Thimble Cottage, which
may be the oldest dwelling on the Avalon Peninsula (the land
deed dates to 1843). He attended school at St. Patrick's
Hall, topping off his curriculum with a year of Latin. He
finished with formal education in 1931 but, a true polymath,
never stopped learning, and never stinted on sharing his
knowledge on Irish-Newfoundland history and agriculture.
The O'Briens were a famed St. John's farming family. Their
Oxen Pond Road Farm on Nagle's Hill was a city fixture more
than 150 years old. The lovely, cozy and well-made
19th-century farmhouse was built by their great-great
grandfather John O'Brien, with two stories in front, a roof
sloping to one story in back, low ceilings, a hearth big
enough to sit in, hand-hewn ceiling beams and French doors
opening onto an apple orchard. The area is not known for its
arable land (not much of Newfoundland is) and John O'Brien
spent 30 years scraping the rock from 14 acres.
Thimble Cottage had survived the 1892 fire, which, according
to St. John's songwriter Johnny Burke, started at the
O'Briens' barn. The farm was the last of 400 that had once
operated in St. John's. By the 1980s, it was 11 hectares,
with 20 worked by the O'Brien brothers.
Aly O'Brien worked on the private, ceremonial gardens of
such local merchant families such as the Bairds, and then at
the Memorial University Botanical Gardens near the farm,
while John, the eldest, was a master carpenter, and Mike,
the middle brother, was employed by importer-wholesaler
Charles R. Bell Ltd. They grew and sold hay and vegetables
and produced milk and homemade butter.
When it was founded, Oxen Pond Farm was some distance from
the city, but today it is surrounded by suburbs and adjacent
to the Avalon Mall and the Health Sciences Complex, the
province's largest hospital. The O'Briens fought development
and expropriation and turned down multi-million dollar
offers for their acreage, holding on to their memories of
how the valley had been once fruitfully harvested, before
the urban encroachment came.
"It was all farmland," Aly O'Brien once said. "And in the
gardens of most homes, there were apple trees, rhubarb and
small fruits - strawberries, raspberries and currants. That
was the environment we knew for half our lives. Then the
developers cleared away every last bush and every tree near
our boundaries. It was a terrible-looking sight."
Their firm resolve against municipal development and
commitment to their history was heralded by many in St.
John's. In one act of protest, documented in Harrowsmith
Country Life Magazine, Aly O'Brien heard rumours that some
of their land would be expropriated for roadwork, and began
a Japanese garden in the endangered area. It had walkways,
flowers, fern borders and rechannelled streams paced with
stones. It was not just designed as a beautiful space, but
also as a sign the land was being used. No roadwork
commenced.
Concurrent to his agricultural work, he had pursued his
linguistic education. Indeed the two interests balanced his
days. "My way of life has been demanding physically," he
said, "but I have kept at the studies."
Right after high school, to continue and expand his
knowledge of languages, he took correspondence courses,
ordering cassette tapes and textbooks through the mail, and
he could read and speak some French, Spanish and Greek, as
well as produce the Latin base of all the considerable flora
and fauna he knew from his work. "Nearly all the languages
of Europe come from one stem, which is Indo-European in most
cases," he once explained. "I had a fair amount of Latin in
my upbringing so, since more dialects are derived from
Latin, I can often understand what is being said."
In 1982 he was awarded an honorary degree from Memorial
University in St. John's for his work in horticulture and
Irish Gaelic. "I always thought of Aly as that little piece
of St. John's who lived in the hills," said MUN Professor
Shane O'Dea, who introduced Mr. O'Brien at that convocation.
"He was rooted immensely deeply in that land."
As a farmer and linguist he was often interviewed, both in
the province and across the country and in Ireland - but
that wasn't his only time in the spotlight. He was also an
actor, appearing in several local CBC-TV productions, and he
was featured in the highly popular documentary series Land
and Sea. He had a great presence, his charm and amiability
coming straight through the microphone or camera lens.
"He was like a man from an earlier time," said Eleanor
Dawson, the Director of Arts for the provincial government.
"He was gentle and soft spoken with a lilting voice."
In 1992 Thimble Cottage was designated a registered heritage
structure.
ALOYSIUS O'BRIEN
Aloysius Patrick O'Brien was born in St. John's on June 16,
1915. He died there on Aug. 6, 2008. He was 93. Predeceased
by his brothers, he leaves several cousins.
