'It’s going to be a lifelong mission': The family bringing Irish language and heritage to Kilkenny

The journey to a certain point in South Kilkenny will lead you on roads of all kinds. From the busy motorway, through winding regional routes and eventually narrow, mud-flaked boreens.

On one of these quiet lanes you may pass an old farmhouse that looks like many others, but across the gate, something is developing quite unlike anything else in the country.

The property, now called Teacht Aniar, has recently been bought by former Wexford hurling captain Diarmuid ‘Gizzy’ Lyng and poet Siobhán de Paor as their family home and site of an Irish language and cultural heritage centre.

The centre will allow visitors to learn survival skills, speak Irish outside of a formal setting and gather together for community celebrations.

The couple and their children Uisne, Eirú and Tuireann have lived in the house since last summer and after getting the opportunity to buy it, a mixture of savings, loans, and a crowdfunding effort of €44,000 has allowed the family to put down roots in Kilkenny to get started on the project.

“I found it hard initially because of that idea of fundraising for what partly is your house, partly for the Irish language, so there’s a degree of shame or whatever that is,” says Diarmuid.

“But actually, asking for help was the best thing we ever did. People are delighted to do it, so delighted to help,” he adds.

The system of Meitheal, the Irish tradition of cooperation and help between neighbours, is at the heart of Teacht Aniar, and the community response shown has convinced Siobhán that their vision will become a reality.

“We couldn’t have anticipated the amount of goodwill that came with it and also who gave. There was a lot of our own community who, like ourselves, wouldn’t be very wealthy but wanted to give something anyway,” she reflects.

“They gave their services and offered their time so there was an awful lot that came in which wasn’t monetary. In doing it we became totally committed and the vision that was sort of vague became completely solid. Now, I don’t really have any doubt that we’ll realise it.”

As well as the house, the site also contains stables which will be renovated into accommodation, a barn to host events, a river and several acres of wild land.

Siobhán and Diarmuid have spent the last eight years hosting retreats and events with their Wild Irish movement and Teacht Aniar will be a permanent home for them to facilitate people in reconnecting with indigenous, environmentally-friendly practices through the lens of the Irish language.

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While there are similarly-oriented endeavours happening in the country, none of them are done through Irish, something which can be an important step in the revitalisation of the language.

“It’s significant because it’s the emergence of something outside the Gaeltacht, it’s the emergence of something outside state funding, it’s moving a step further away from this idea that we have to protect the language,” Diarmuid outlines.

“It’s a little bit like ‘oh poor Irish.’ No, we’re moving towards this thing because it’s exceptionally valuable and we want to share that value. It’s this wellspring of wisdom and knowledge and information that’s sitting there and if we start tuning into it I think we’ll all be better off.”

Photo: A deer tanning workshop at Teacht Aniar with Diarmuid McGivney. Credit: Siobhán de Paor

In the context of the climate emergency, Irish and the re-discovery of nature-based solutions go hand in hand as using the language brings back a link to a time where the people who spoke it were in tune with their surroundings in a way that has since been lost.

“Heritage skills are very sought after now because people know that our context is environmental degradation, that’s not changing," Siobhán explains. 

“Resource shortage is our future and that’s the context of all businesses. Heritage skills, sustainability principles are things that we don’t have, that we lost in two generations of the English language but had in the Irish language.”

“When you’re talking about returning to an ecologically sound consciousness, Irish is a shortcut because you’re going back to that, you’re fortifying that return by doing it in Irish,” she adds.

Siobhán believes this re-indigenation and returning to old ways of interacting with nature and language is a necessity for strengthening the country for the challenges of the future.

“We’re going to become multicultural now so we need to be a host nation, a host culture. When you’re a host culture, you need to be strong to integrate new cultures and because of our 800 years of oppression or whatever, we aren’t strong.”

“We’re strong in a kind of grassrootsy way, but it’s not through all the tiers of our society, and I think if we don’t strengthen our indigenous culture then we won’t be able to host new ones,” she asserts.

The form that Teacht Aniar will take in this re-indigenation movement is constantly in flux with the couple content to listen out for incoming opportunities and ideas rather than strictly adhering to a schedule as they embark on the project they never plan to stop adding to.

“I don’t think it’ll ever be finished, it’ll be a lifetime,” Siobhán says. 

“Maybe when I’m 85 and go upright to bed for the last time. It’s going to be a lifelong mission,” Diarmuid adds.

It isn’t until you get a full sense of the sprawling woods and fields that you really understand what they mean.

The wild nettle patches flank a path down to a crystal clear stream which is one of many features that offers visitors a contrast from a more urban life and the vastness of the space allows for endless innovation.

“When we go down to the river in particular, you have to soften your ankles and your knees, you have to get into the animal a little bit to navigate the world down there,” Diarmuid describes.

“If people are just very much used to concrete flatness, it’s straight hips and straight legs. I feel like something’s lost in that functionality.”

Even with the diverse range of retreats and workshops that Diarmuid and Siobhán facilitate, the act of simply being immersed in nature is the most profound takeaway for many.

“They come for the skills of tanning and weaving, but the most remarkable thing for them was just to be in the barn and outside down by the river where they could go for a dip,” Siobhán says.

“That they were in a natural setting with a community kind of vibe, that was what a lot of them brought home as much as the skill,” she concludes.

Three bilingual family days are planned at Teacht Aniar to be scheduled shortly while their last retreat to the Gaeltacht for some time will take place on Cape Clear Island from September 19-21 which can be booked at wildirish.ie. 

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