Cormac de Barra

Presenter, TG4's Imeall

An Béal Bocht by Myles na gCopaleen / Flann O'Brien (1941)

"I bought the book on a whim as I was leaving for my first summer in America. All my college mates were armed with their J-1 visas. I was armed with An Béal Bocht and a harp!

"It changed my perception of home. We grew up with Irish as our first language and some things were held sacred and never to be mocked. Sitting 3,000 miles from home and reading a critique of the Irish psyche written in Irish was refreshing. The über-Gaeilgeoirí and their Irish-hating counterparts are both worthy of ridicule and here was a book from the '40s that still had resonance decades later.

"It struck me that this should have been standard issue in schools as an anti-Peig device. It used these tales of woe as a basis but tore them apart through wit and sarcasm and with language that was as eloquent as in any of the great Irish texts. Irish lost the stigma for me of being an anachronistic burden and became simply a language. The money-grabber in us was also shown up by Flann O'Brien. The image that summed it up was the piglets dressed up as children so the inspector would mistake them for Irish speakers and count them in for an extra 'deontas' (grant).

"With all this talk of grants and An Bord Snip Nua, the quest for easy money and "compo" are still embedded in our psyche. Many of those compo-seekers are merely using a different form of the same Béal Bocht that their Irish-speaking forefathers used before them."

Imeall, 11.05pm, Wednesdays, TG4