Sceach

Filmed performance (10 minutes) and publication (A5, 12 pages)

Filmmaker: George Hooker; Graphic Designer: Cian Pawle-Bates; Film Collaborators: Jenny O’Neill, Conchobhar Ruadh; Supported by: Dunlavin Arts Festival, Wicklow County Council.

What did Irish sound like in Leinster when it was still the language of everyday life? Drawing on a rare 1933 pamphlet, Donn Piatt’s Gaelic Dialects of Leinster, this project re-imagines the regional pronunciation and vocabulary of East Leinster Irish as it may have been spoken locally and brings it back to the place it came from. It is a celebration of the richness and diversity of distinct dialects rooted in place, and is a conscious act of decolonial remembering of ruptured generational knowledge.

At the heart of the work is a short film, shot in Dunlavin, Co. Wicklow, in which Rónán collaborates with two Wicklow Irish speakers. They create their own roaming contemporary hedge school to explore and practice distinctive local dialect features. Subtitled in Irish and English, with vernacular spellings drawn from the source text, the film is both a creative document and an act of linguistic recovery and recreation. The film is accompanied by a self published booklet containing pronunciation and vocabulary of recorded East Leinster Irish, as well as illustrations and playful exercises to practice the dialect.

To view the film, or receive a copy of the publication, please email me.