Sir, – Susan McKay mentions that the DUP’s Gregory Campbell once said that if there was an Irish Language Act he would use it as toilet paper. (“Seamus Heaney celebrated hope and not old divisions”, Opinion, December 16th).
Mr Campbell may be surprised to learn that he shares his frugal toilet habits with some 1950s Connemara farmers
Not long before his untimely death in 1990 the journalist and author Breandán Ó hEithir spoke on RTÉ about his work in the 1950s as a travelling book salesman for Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge. Driving his book-laden van around the boreens of Connemara he was puzzled to discover that there was an insatiable demand among elderly farmers for large treatises on esoteric philosophical and literary subjects. The rest of his stock was ignored. These heavy tomes had been translated into Gaelic in the 1920s and 1930s and printed at great expense by An Gúm, the State body charged with reviving the Irish language. Hundreds of copies were now been sold off at a huge discount in order to free up storage space.
The mystery was only solved when Breandán Ó hEithir was taken short one day while talking to an elderly farmer outside Carna, Co Galway. On entering the farmer’s outdoor toilet he was amused to find one of An Gúm’s subsidised tomes hanging from a six inch nail and ready for immediate use. – Yours, etc,
KARL MARTIN,
Bayside, Dublin 13.