Evening star., 1953-09-20
Reading and Writing
Young Irish InteIIectuoIs Feel New
Impetus Must Come From Gaelic
By Mory McGrory

u u b u l N 10y A1rmall).-
Two questions are going the
rounds in Ireland these days.
The Irish ask the Americans
if they've seen the film, ''The
Quiet Man." The Americans
ask the Irish if they've read
Love Among the Irish," Sean
O'Faolain's Life article.
Most of the Irish I talked to
regarded John Ford'S techni-
color romp through their gor-
geous west with amusement
and even approval. But the
mention of Mr.. O'Faolain's
Celtic Kinsey report brings a
certain stiffening of attitude.
The Quiet Man" is con-
sidered such a tourist talking
point that Connemara, a Won-
derful and wildly beautiful
district of Galway, is becom-
ing known as "Quiet Man"
country. 1t seems a pallid
description for a marvellous
region of stony hills, fuchsia
hedges and heather-coVered
bogs. On a bus tour I made,
every scene that had figured
in the film was pointed out,
and snapshots of the princi-
pals, property of the conduc-
tor, were passed from hand to
hand.
Decline in National Pride
1 did meet a young Galway
Schoolteacher who took a very
dim view of it. He assured me
that such an episode as John
Wayne dragging Maureen o..
Hara by the hair over the bogS
could never have taken place,
and he expressed an amaze
ment that Dubliners would
queue up tamely three-deep
to see such a libel when in an
other generation they had
rioted over Synge's "Playboy
of the Western World" He
thought it showed a lamenta-
BILE decline in national pride
and spirit.
The Abbey Players, whose
own theater was burned down
few years ago, are holding
forth with undiminished vigor
and skill these days in the
Queens Theatery a house
which Dubliners find sadly
lacking in the atmosphere that
so powerfully emanated from
the old Abbey. The current
play, This Other Eden," by
the late Louis Dalton, is its
current success offering. 1t is
a satire which says harsh
things about the new Ireland,
and is a great success.
IreIond's New Yoke
"This Other Eden" is a
rather thin play, but the lines
are excellent, and, the COM
pany, of course, is superb. It's
theme-one you hear discussed
a good deal around Ireland
these days-is the decline of
the high hopes of the revolu-
ton into mediocrity, respecta-
bility and hypocrisy. One of
the characters, who had played
a glorious part in the trou-
bles, says bitterly at one point
that Ireland is now hugging
unto itself a yoke far heavier
than any of their foreign op-
pressors had dared to impose.
Censorship comes in for the
most telling thrusts.
The principal is an English
man who has come to Ireland
in search of freedom from So
cialist oppression, while the
heroine is an Irish girl who
went to England because she
wanted to read a book" The
line that brought down the
house the night l saw it was
when the disillusioned revolu-
tionary tells a friend it's all
right to use a certain word not
in the drawing room currency,
because it's in the dictionary,
and the dictionary hasn't been
banned-yet."
Every one I talked to
thought the play was a treat
very funny and very true. 1t
was a little hard to under
stand why they should take
to their hearts such barbS from
one man and furiously reject
them from another. After all
Mr.. O'Faolain said little more
and said it with statistics-in
Love Among the Irish" Yet
there was a four-column de-
nunciation of the piece in the
De Valera newspaper, the In
dependent, in addition to 9