DE LEIM THAR TEORAINN

"I have run the gauntlet of many borders in my time, but the border I grew up with at home was far and away the most trying," writes Séamas Ó Catháin (Professor Emeritus at University College Dublin, and former Director of the National Folklore Collection). Born in Drumquin, County Tyrone, to a family of Catholic business people and farmers, he grew up "a stone's throw" from the border that separates Donegal in the Republic from the six counties of Northern Ireland - - "a border policed by little corporals that was the bane of our lives." - "Is iomaí sin áit sa domhan a bhfuil cúrsa na slat thar teorainn rite agam ach dheamhan dath níos measa a chonaic mé riamh ná an teorainn a bhí sa bhaile againn," a scríobhann Séamas Ó Catháin (Ollamh emeritus de chuid Choláiste Ollscoile Bhaile Átha Cliath agus Iar-Stiurthóir Chnuasach Bhealoideas Eireann) faoin teorainn in Éirinn - "mar ar ghnách leis na ceannairí beaga custam a bheith ina dtiarnaí uirthi agus orainne."  

De Léim thar Teorainn ["Jumping the Border"] is an engaging account of his experience - as a child and as a young man - in three distinctive cultures, now radically changed. He describes the Tyrone of the 1940s and 1950s where Protestant and Catholic neighbours shared their lives at a personal level, but where institutions were divisive. His father's prosperous business was ruined because of a political event he supported. The schools and the curriculum were dividers of the two communities. The border was a nuisance to everyone. As a post-graduate student in the 1960s, he took up residence in the Donegal Gaeltacht of "Na Cruacha", where "real old Irish" was still spoken. He did a study of the area's place names, and recorded the distinctive music and speech of "Na Cruacha". Shortly afterwards his research took him to the far north of Europe, to Sápmi (known as Lapland), a cultural rather than a political territory which spreads over four countries, and where he immersed himself in the culture and language of the Sami people at a time when their native language and customs were under threat and belittled. Séamas's many international distinctions and awards include: Knight (First Class) of the Order of the Lion of Finland; the Dag Strömbäck Prize of the Gustavus Adolphus Academy, Uppsala, Sweden; and the Ruth Michaela-Jena Ratcliff Prize, Edinburgh. He is an honorary member of the Finnish Kalevala Society; a member of the Folklore Fellows of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, Helsinki; and a sometime member of the Advisory Board of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen.