Will I owe native Irish readers an apology?
I wanted to like the move Irish Jam so badly. I love Eddie Griffin. I love Anna Friel. I was ready for it to be one of those, “let it run in the background on a weekend” movies. After all, I’m not above re-watching movies of questionable quality (looking at you, Men with Brooms).
The movie was predictable and unfunny, a waste of its actors and had an… uninspired villain. It wasn’t even filmed in Ireland, and the closest they came to an Irish actor was Friel. I looked up a handful of lists of “bad Irish Hollywood movies” and was surprised to see it missing from them all.
The “Oirish” or “Oireland” trope is something I had been wary of while developing ideas for the game and the music, but there were guardrails along the way. In the end, a video game is a video game. Music is music.
A novel, however, is tens of thousands of words. People. Placenames. Language, slang and syntax. Dialects. Vocal tics. Nonverbal mannerisms. Long stretches of wilderness without a save point or an encounter. Towns that are more than six houses full of pots for you to smash and hidden items to steal.
Over the entire four-month span of writing, I knew every sentence carried a risk of falling into that trope. I also knew the dangers of overcorrecting: historical and cultural accuracy for their own sakes turns a story into a textbook.
What to do? I leaned on one of my favorite shows for a template.
Firefly, a 2002 sci-fi show set in a far-flung, physically-impossible-to-replicate collection of stars, planets, and moons. It was a mish-mash of cultures which was understandable, given its setting.
Those living on Anglo-influenced planets among the “core” worlds were more likely to speak with perfect diction. Those living on the furthest reaches sounded straight out of western movies. Throughout it all was the heavy influence of Chinese culture, to the point where everyone could speak English and Chinese. Chinese was used more for interjection, flourish, and sometimes cursing. Added to it all was a layer of slang developed sometime after the worlds were terraformed and settled.
I didn’t take their approach as filter through which everything was portrayed. It was more of a template:
Spoken (and internal) dialogue will have some modern Irish slang. It will be clear in context. If it is clichéd, it will be the result of a mistake and not a product of laziness.
The narrator will not use modern Irish slang.
Simple spells will be in Old Irish whenever possible as one- or two-word commands.
More complex spells will be sentences. If there isn’t an Old Irish translation available, I’ll do my best to incorporate and properly modify/conjugate modern Gaeilge.
If an Old Irish or Gaeilge word is likely to be mispronounced, and the word isn’t significant to the overall plot, then I’ll modify the word, i.e. converting “mh” and “bh” to “v,” where a word’s use is limited. This includes one particular figure in Irish mythology cited by one of my characters as their answer. (If you know, you will know.)
I’m not trying to pretend. It’s my understanding that Irish people love to hear Americans talk about their ancestry as much as Americans like to hear other Americans talk about their fantasy football team or golf game. I’ve never been—mostly because at this point I know I’m only going to get one trip so I want to do it up big. I have ancestors on both sides, and my father’s family have held on to their roots well, but it’s been several generations since the most recent member came over.
Setting the story in the late 15th century was a choice—and not my first. I initially intended for it to be set in the 14th century. But after weeks of research and moving around plot points, I had to move it back. I’d either have to write around the Normans finishing their reformation of Ireland in the early part of the century, or write around the Hundred Years War and the Black Death in the latter part.
A 15th century setting allowed me to make general references to the Norman, Gael and Norse factions (and a passing reference to the War of the Roses), and adding an extra century of potential technological advances didn’t hurt.
I’m sure that there will be bits of dialogue or references that will make any native readers roll their eyes, much like I chuckle whenever I see palm trees rewatching Aurora, IL-based Wayne’s World. In those cases, please know the mistakes weren’t caused by a lack of effort or care.