Finding my voice in the stony grey soil
I call myself and people like me ‘Inbetweeners.’ That is, we’re Irish to the core, but we have English accents; we live in a kind of limbo, never properly English in England, and never fully Irish in Ireland.
My childhood summer-holidays were far removed from two weeks on Gran-Canaria’s beaches. No, it was three months in Grand-Cavan’s drumlins for us. Those summers were idyllic; and I don’t recall ever being conscious of my accent. It was only when the parents returned home with me in tow, that I started to hear something strange. It was the first year in my Irish secondary school when I became acutely aware of my sound.
Looking back I realise I was probably a bit of a novelty for the other kids; but on my first day I didn’t recognise that. At breaktime kids surrounded the new boy firing questions at me while chuckling at my Manchester-accented replies. Had I been a confident boy, I’d have embraced my difference and exploited a Northern-English-Cool; but instead I wilted and withdrew.
In English Class, a lad called out, “Miss, ask the new fella to read, he sounds like the ones off Coronation Street.” My face burned red; the teacher noted my embarrassment and gave me a free-pass for my first day.
But then my sense of ‘otherness’ was compounded by As Gaeilge. Given my primary-schooling was in England I was excluded from Irish class. I’d sit at the back listening to my peers speak in this melodic language, the sound of which made me feel increasingly foreign. Back in English class when the teacher did ask me to read aloud, I refused with a silent head swivel. So, in English class I wouldn’t speak, and in Irish Class, I couldn’t.
I became increasingly mute, feeling audibly and physically ugly. First year turned to second and I returned to more of the same ugliness in school. Although as that year progressed a lad befriended me, and ironically it was my sound that drew him to me. He heard my accent as an asset that placed me in the realm of the nation’s favourite soccer team, Manchester United, whose success was underscored by the team’s many iconic Irish players.
Thus, I tentatively embraced my sound – I used summer visits to my sister in Manchester to top-up my accent; and hang around Old-Trafford collecting stories and United paraphernalia. I returned to school with a kind of kudos.
Yet while outwardly and above I affected a fit in Ireland, underneath I still felt like an ill-fitting fraud. Until a snug-under-incident gave me reason to find a further fit.
It was a balmy May evening and I was in my bedroom day-dreaming. My window looked on our backyard, wherein mum had hung out a weekly wash. I became aware of a group of girls talking animatedly, and knowing the net-curtains concealed my view, I peered out. Three girls from school were discussing my clothes on the line with a tone that suggested fanciful inclinations, “I love that jumper on him,” said one. Then another announced with an enthusiasm that made me bristle with a mix of embarrassment and flattery, “Would you look at his underpants, even they’re GORGEOUS!” I slumped on my bed, soared and inwardly roared, “If they think my underpants are gorgeous, they think I am, too!” It was my ugly-duckling to swan moment.
Sure enough at school, I began to be told, “She fancies you…” My confidence upped some more. But still my sound inhibited my potential. By now, I’d started to read in English cass, but my accent still grated with me.
Then in my Leaving Certificate year I met the man who liberated me – Patrick Kavanagh. Now, my home life was very comfortable, far removed from the stifling drudgery Kavanagh describes in his masterpiece ‘Stony Grey Soil'.
But it was a pivotal line in his poem that was transformative for me, “O stony grey soil of Monaghan, you burgled my bank of youth.” In those words I felt an affinity; where Kavanagh blamed the Monaghan landscape for stealing his boyhood passion and creativity; I blamed my Manchester accent for robbing me of the same.
I brought this analogy up during our class analysis and it generated positive discussion. “Would you like to read it, Gerard?” asked the teacher. I stood up and read aloud, imbuing my poetic compatriot’s words with empathy and pride. I was an Irish lad reading an iconic Monaghan man’s words with my Manchester sound – I’d finally fully embraced my soundings and found my voice.
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