Couple whose book was banned celebrated as censorship legislation is on the way to repeal

(This article is produced by our Gaeltacht team. You can read an English version of this piece here)

A CHAPTER OF censorship in Ireland is drawing to a close, as the Government is preparing to repeal legislation that banned a celebrated book about a couple in the Cork Gaeltacht — a book that sparked a vigorous debate in the Oireachtas and across the pages of the newspapers in the 1940s — along with works by other major Irish and international writers.

Just days before artists, musicians and theatre people gathered on the shores of the lake at Gougane Barra at the weekend to mark the occasion of ‘The Tailor and Ansty’ — the book written by Eric Cross about Tadhg and Anastasia Ó Buachalla that was banned in the 1940s — the Censorship of Publications Acts were raised by way of a question in the Dáil.

Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism Patrick O’Donovan confirmed that the appropriate steps to repeal the Censorship Acts were being taken by his Department, in response to a question from Liam Quaide, TD for Cork East. O’Donovan explained that responsibility for the Censorship Board had transferred to his Department from the Department of Justice last August.

“It is a commitment in my Department’s Statement of Strategy to complete the statutory steps in sequence to repeal the Censorship of Publications Acts, along with statutory instruments, and my Department will take those preliminary steps in due course,” he said last week.

Quaide said, however, that it was a strange state of affairs that they were still waiting on legislation to formally repeal this censorship regime, given that the Government had agreed to repeal the legislation in 2023.

“The Tailor and Ansty is no longer banned but the ban on this book gave an insight into just how mean-spirited and fearful censorship in Ireland was,” he told The Journal.

“The roots of the book lay in the life of Cork and a culture that was tightly controlled by both the State and the Church treated the folklore and the plain unvarnished speech of ordinary people as a threat.”

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It was a pure coincidence that the gathering was taking place at the Gougane Barra Hotel in Cork’s Múscraí Gaeltacht at the same time as this question was being raised in the Dáil. It was an event organised by filmmaker Lelia Doolan and other members of Aosdána in recognition of Tadhg Ó Buachalla, who died around this time in 1945, and his wife Ansty — a shortened version of the unusual name Anastasia.

Tadhg and Ansty were a couple who lived in a small house a few hundred yards from the venue of Saturday’s gathering, the Gougane Barra Hotel. Tadhg had a reputation as a gifted storyteller and Ansty had a sharp wit too, and people would visit the house often.

Among those who visited was Eric Cross, a writer from County Down, who gathered the stories from the mouths of the pair and had them published as a series in the literary journal The Bell, a publication founded by Seán Ó Faoláin.

He brought the stories together in a book published in 1942, but it was banned in September of that year on account of what were considered crude references to animals and their mating habits.

This was a period in Irish history when the Catholic Church had a firm grip on public debate and politicians were anxious about speaking out on questions touching on sexual morality, for fear that a priest or bishop might read them from the altar. That was the equivalent of a political death sentence.

At Saturday’s event, a new play was read for the first time — By the Mockstick of War — which brings to life the public controversy that followed the book’s publication in the Seanad and across the pages of the newspapers, as well as the effect it had on the Tailor and Ansty themselves.

The work, put together by Eavan Aiken and Ray Roth based onthose debates, gave a flavour of the discussion the book provoked.

Senator Sir John Keane said the following as he criticised the legislation that had banned a list of authors too numerous to count, including George Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway and the Irish authors Kate O’Brien, Frank O’Connor, Seán Ó Faoláin, Liam O’Flaherty and Austin Clarke:

What are the standards that are adapted by those whom I advisedly call the literary Gestapo? Is it that no one shall be allowed to read a book that cannot safely be read by a boy or girl in their formative years? Is that the standard on which the whole of our literature is based? If that is so, we are turning the whole country into a national seminary.

Keane recited a number of stories from the book onto the Seanad record to demonstrate that they were not as obscene as was being suggested, but those passages were subsequently cut from the official record — a measure of just how severe the censorship regime was.

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Other senators contributed to the debate, taking a different view from Keane — a Protestant businessman who was firmly opposed to what he saw as a Catholic/Gaelic mindset that he believed was taking hold in the country at the time. Senator Helena Concannon, a Catholic historian from Derry, said the following:

If we are to going to do away with censorship, we would open our gates to a flood of evil.  If Dante came to life again and wanted to think of a really severe punishment for his political enemies, he would condemn them for all eternity to read book like The Tailor and Ansty.  There could not be any torture that would get at their innards more fiercely.  This is the sort of thing that our censors have to read every day. They do it from a sense of duty to their country and a sense of duty to God. And it is dreadfully hard work!

As a conclusion to the commemoration, artist Shane Cullen read a declaration which calls for a day dedicated to freedom of expression based on a motion passed at an Aosdána assembly two years ago. It was Margaretta D’Arcy — actor, writer and peace activist, who passed away last year — who proposed the motion, and it was Cullen himself who assisted with it.

The declaration acknowledges that a decision has been made to repeal the censorship laws and calls on “those with responsibility in the cultural sector, and on our political representatives in the Oireachtas, to take a leadership role in marking and promoting an annual day to protect Articles 18 and 19 of the United Nations Charter on Human Rights, and to extend an invitation to organisations such as PEN, Amnesty International, and all writers and arts organisations to help build a strong ‘Day of Resistance’ to protect the rights of every artist and the right to freedom of expression.”

The organisers of the event are hoping that 25 April will be recognised as Freedom of Expression Day, and Lelia Doolan said this was fitting as a commemoration of Tadhg Ó Buachalla, who passed away at this time of year in 1945.

After the events at the hotel, the crowd made their way to the graveyard next door and a wreath was laid on the couple’s grave. Composer and musician Peadar Ó Riada played a polka on the concertina to bring the official proceedings to a musical close.

The Journal’s Gaeltacht initiative is supported by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme

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