AISÉIRÍ FLÓNDRAIS

Albert published this book in 1958 in response to a request from two prominent Irish speakers. The idea was to outline the struggle to achieve equal status for the Flemish language with that of French. They felt this might be useful to those campaigning for the revival of the Irish language in Ireland.

Albert included some background on Flanders and the Flemish language which is actually a dialect of Dutch. And he also outlined some of his own political philosophy. He never really knew whether the book was ever any use or not.

Despite all his efforts in attempting to learn Irish and subsequently support the language through his publishing company he became very disillusioned at the government's weak attempts to revive it. This was simply becoming a form of tokenism and was sad to see.

He was looking for a grant to publish Aiséirí at the time but, because some of the content was anti-French, the grant was denied. A certain French professor, awardee of the Légion d'Honneur, was on the adjudication panel and could not be seen to endorse this kind of thing.

His friend and translator, Donncha Ó Céileachair, arranged for the book to be read to De Valera, who had very poor eyesight by this time. De Valera could not overrule the decision regarding the grant, but he arranged that Albert would be reimbursed for the cost of publishing it himself.

Speaking of Donncha, he was Albert's translator not only for this book which was published in Irish, but also for his Irish language French course books. These were in demand as some schools in Ireland at that time taught most subjects through the medium of Irish and there were few text books.

There is one piece in Aiséirí which I'm sure he would regret, and that is where he is shown claiming to have been sentenced to death. He was not sentenced to death. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. Mind you, his first prosecutor claimed he would be seeking a "double death sentence" for him, whatever that meant.

Unfortunately, his Irish was not good enough to have adequately proofed Donncha's translation of his story. I don't know if he even tried. But, in the book itself, he thanks Bráthair Ó Maoileoin for proofing the text.

To this day I don't know whether the claim arose from a misunderstanding in the translation or from an over-exuberant session during which he lost the run of himself. Had he been competent to do so I'm sure he would certainly have picked up the mistake in the proofing and corrected it.

Get the book.

The book is available to readers in Europe here, and to those outside Europe, and particularly in the USA here