"Cén áit i nGaillimh a bhfuil Éire ann?" / "Where in Galway can Ireland be found?"
"Cén áit i nGaillimh a bhfuil Éire ann?"
“Á, mhuise, a Mháirtín, téirigh go B’leá Cliath.”
Ba é sin a dúirt duine d’fhir an oileáin le Máirtín lá amháin nuair a sciorr a lámh as áis cléibh feamainne dhá uair i ndiaidh a chéile.
Faoin am seo, thuig Máirtín nach bhfanfadh sé i bhfad eile ar an oileán. Fuair sé tacaíocht ón múinteoir i Scoil Eoghanachta, Seosamh Ó Flannagáin, le post a fháil ar an míntír. Bhí sé le dul le sagartóireacht ar dtús ach tháinig fliú na bliana 1924 air. Faoin am sin, bhí sé mí thar aois le freastal ar choláiste ullmhúcháin le bheith ina mhúinteoir.
D’éirigh le Máirtín post a fháil sa deireadh i bpríomhoifig phoist chathair na Gaillimhe ar Shráid Eglinton. Bhí roinnt bheag postanna curtha i leataobh do ‘stócaigh as an bhfíorGhaeltacht’ mar gheall ar an meas nua a bhí á thabhairt don Ghaeilge faoin Saorstát agus mar gheall ar an mbrú a chuir gluaiseacht láidir Ghaeilge na cathrach ar na húdaráis.
Bhí patrún traidisiúnta imirce an oileáin á bhriseadh ag Máirtín nuair a chuaigh sé soir go Gaillimh seachas siar go Meiriceá faoi mar a rinne a mháthair roimhe.
“Aistriú ón gcarraig don chathair
Ní indéanta gan a dheachú a íoc.”
Ach bhí Gaillimh chomh deoranta céanna leis agus a bhí Meiriceá féin. I ndiaidh na hoibre, thugadh Máirtín cuairt ar an mBalla Fada nó ar Shráid na Céibhe, áit a mbíodh cuimse daoine bochta as Árainn agus Conamara i mbun seanchais san oíche.
"Where in Galway can Ireland be found?"
“Ah, mhuise, a Mháirtín, go to Dublin.”
That’s what one of the islandmen said to Máirtín one day as he let the creel of seaweed slip from his grip for the second time.
By this stage, Máirtín understood that he would not spend the rest of his life on the island. The local schoolteacher in Scoil Eoghanachta, Seosamh Ó Flannagáin, assisted him in getting a job on the mainland. Máirtín initially intended to enter the priesthood, but was incapacitated with the flu of 1924. By then, he was also a month too old to enter a preparatory college to be a teacher.
Máirtín finally succeeded in securing a job in the main post office on Eglinton Street in Galway in January 1928. Due to the increased emphasis on the Irish language under the Free State, coupled with the particularly vibrant Irish language movement in the city, a number of positions were reserved in the post office for ‘young lads’ from the ‘true’ Gaeltacht.
By heading eastward to Galway, rather than westward to Boston like his mother before him, Máirtín was breaking traditional island emigration patterns.
“A move from the stones to towns
Has its price, you must pay.”
Yet Galway was perhaps as foreign to him as America. After work Máirtín would make his way to the Long Walk or Quay Street, which was then brimming with impoverished people from the Aran Islands and Connemara who gathered together to tell stories in the evenings.
“I was lodging with an island woman on Merchant’s Road beside the docks. She never charged me a penny for staying there. That meant I could send a ten-shilling cheque home every week to my mother. If it weren’t for that money, I don’t know how she and the others would have survived.”