Aloysius Patrick O'Brien:ALY O'BRIEN LLD, who has died in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada, aged 93, was, in his own words, a humble farmer.
To the scores of people from all walks of life who have been coming to visit him for more than 50 years, he was much more. Gaelic scholar, historian, folklorist and botanist, Aly shared his immense knowledge of his Irish-Newfoundland heritage and his native place with anybody who came to his door.
Aly (he was never known by his full given name of Aloysius) lived all his life on the family farm in Freshwater, two miles west of the town of St John's. He shared it with his two brothers, John and Mike, both of whom predeceased him. He was the last of his generation. His great-grandfather established the farm around 1820.
It has remained until now a working farm of 37 acres, close to the heart of the city.
At the age of 16, he graduated with a junior associate certificate from the Irish Christian Brothers St Patrick's Hall School. "I had hopes of going on for the priesthood," he told RTÉ broadcaster and writer Aidan O'Hara, "but I think because I was considered to be merely 'a country boy' from a small farm, I wasn't accepted."
Aly had a scholar's inquiring mind and he devoted his life to informing himself in all those areas that interested him, in particular the Irish language, botany, and Irish-Newfoundland affairs.
The people who farmed in the Freshwater Valley were mostly descendants of immigrants from southeast Ireland, 30 miles around Waterford, who settled there early in the 19th century. They were largely Irish speakers.
Aly's father, Denis, would tell his children that Irish was "a melodious language". Soon after he left school in 1931, Aly acquired a copy of Father Eugene O'Growney's Simple Lessons in Irish and began to study it with his father.
His early years were spent on the farm and working on the ornamental gardens of a local merchant. Aly took up botany in order to equip himself in the work of landscape gardening and to add to his considerable knowledge of traditional plant lore.
In 1931 he began writing a diary, an activity he kept up until recently. The entries reflect profoundly his Catholic background and the Irish-Newfoundland experience.
After the second World War, he acquired the Teach Yourself Gaelic Linguaphone and Gael Linn recordings. In 1970 he attended classes in Irish conducted by a visiting professor from UCD, Dr Risteárd Breathnach. His mastery of the language was such that eventually people began coming to him for lessons, including university professors from Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Aly became an acknowledged expert in Newfoundland botany, and for his contributions to this field of study and to Irish-Newfoundland studies, Memorial University awarded him with an honorary doctorate in 1982.
Aly was best known as a commentator on radio and TV for more than a dozen major documentaries on aspects of Irishness in Newfoundland. In 1980 he was featured in one of three Radharc film documentaries for RTÉ on the Irish in Newfoundland.
Viewers, especially in Ireland, were taken with how Irish he sounded. His accent, like those of his neighbours, had hardly a hint of North American influence. The series featured Newfoundlanders of Irish descent and made an indelible impression on Irish viewers who were bemused to hear these people on an island province off the east coast of Canada speaking in the distinctive speech and accents of southeast Ireland.
Irish people visiting Newfoundland often came knocking on Aly's door. They have included broadcasters, poets, academics, actors, civil servants, politicians and others. The Tipperary poet and writer Michael Coady was there in 1989 and, as often happened when visitors called to Aly's house and there was work to be done, he was invited to help with saving the hay.
After working in the sun for quite a while, Michael paused and mopped the sweat from his brow.
"I asked Aly whether he knew any Irish language equivalent for siesta. Leaning on his hayfork, Aly immediately suggested sámhán, a word he had not acquired from his many books but by oral transmission in the speech of Newfoundland. It was a perfect example of his unique character as a scholarly farmer and gardener and living repository of tradition.
"He embodied qualities that could have reflected the ideals of Virgil's Georgics - a deeply civilised sense of harmony with all of the natural world, combined with personal humility, gentleness and generosity."
In his book Na Gaeil I dTalamh an Éisc, Aidan O'Hara includes an extensive list of words from the Irish language that entered the speech of Newfoundlanders, many of them supplied by Aly. The book also contains his lengthy account of Irish-Newfoundland folk belief and practice.
Aly was particularly fond of Donnchadh Rua Mac Conmara's poem Bánchnoic Éireann Óigh and was heard reciting it in a recording played on CBC Radio, St John's Morning Programme, the day he died. On that programme Mike Boyle, a Derry man living in St John's and one of Aly's students of Irish, read a poem he had dedicated to his old teacher some years earlier. It is called Our Voice (for Aly O'B. and contains these lines that refer to Aly's great love of the Irish languages:
You kept the space warm
that spark in the darkness
now a flickering flame
of a desire
that could not be destroyed.
Aloysius Patrick O'Brien: born June 16th, 1915; died August 6th, 2008.