New book explains De Valera's Déise link and love of a native Waterford dialect
Dangerous Ambition, by Colum Kenny
A newly released book on Éamon de Valera highlights his regret that he never learnt the Irish spoken in Co Waterford, which was the dialect of his own grandmother.
As author Colum Kenny explains in his book, 'Dangerous Ambition: The Making of Éamon de Valera' (Eastwood Books, €20), de Valera was born in Manhattan but was sent, aged two-and-a-half, to a townland near Bruree, Co Limerick, to be reared by his grandmother and uncle, Pat.
At a meeting in Waterford in January 1946, when he received the freedom of the city, De Valera said that it was “something of a revelation for him to learn that the dialect of the Decies extended as far as Co Limerick where his grandmother lived”.
Decies Irish was spoken in Co Waterford but also in parts of counties Limerick and Tipperary, being distinct from the Irish dialect spoken elsewhere in the province of Munster.
He added that “the Irish I learned since [moving to Dublin] has been the dialect of Connacht", before adding: “I think if I had known it was the Decies dialect my grandmother spoke I would have tried to learn that dialect and would have used it rather than any other.”
He is reported to have remarked: “Alas, that it is not the sound of the Decies I have, although these were the first sounds I heard when I was a young lad. Near Bruree, at that time, nearly all the old people were native Irish speakers, and it was the Ring [Co Waterford] dialect they had."
'Dangerous Ambition' is the last in a quartet of recent books by Kenny, where he challenges our views of aspects of the ‘Irish Revolution’ of 1916 to 1922.
The quartet consists of full-length biographies of both Arthur Griffith and Éamon de Valera, along with two succinct volumes reviewing the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations of 1921 and the Irish Civil War that followed them.
This book explores the childhood, character and early life of Éamon de Valera before he founded Fianna Fáil in 1926.
Author Colum Kenny, a professor emeritus of Dublin City University and senior journalist, recently gave an address in Toledo, Spain, about de Valera’s use of at least three Irish ambassadors in Madrid in his futile search for roots in Spain.
