Raymond Ó Baoill
Passionate advocate of Irish and gregarious chair of Humbert Summer School
Raymond Ó Baoill, who has died unexpectedly aged 65, was a gregarious and passionate advocate of the Irish language and a man closely associated with the annual Humbert Summer School in Ballina, Co Mayo.
“Ballina’s learned seanachaí in the mould of Master McCarthy,” is how journalist John Cooney remembers him, comparing his erudite friend with the poet-schoolmaster in Thomas Flanagan’s The Year of the
French.
Ó Baoill was the eldest of five children born to Kevin and Charlotte O’Boyle in Williamstown, Co Galway. When the family moved to Claremorris, Co Mayo, he attended primary school there and then went to St Muredach’s College in Ballina, a town where his father had set up his own oil distribution business.
Two teachers at St Muredach’s, Fr Lynn and Fr Conway, are said to have fuelled Raymond’s interest in Irish and French. He studied Irish, French and politics at UCD and later took law at TU Dublin and King’s Inns.
His first job was as a tutor in the coláiste samhraidh, or summer Irish college sector, and he went on to become national organiser of Coláiste na bhFiann.
In winter, he and his great friend Pádraig Ó Ceallaigh, known as Páidín, would run monthly social sessions for the Irish college students to ensure they could maintain their linguistic skills.
He was appointed to Bord na Gaeilge in June 1982, by which time he had married and settled in Celbridge, Co Kildare. He and his wife, Paula Sloyan, first met in the Mercy Convent, Tuam, Co Galway on November 12, 1980, when he was working for Coláiste na bhFiann.
“I was as passionate about the Irish language as he was,” Paula recalls. The couple were engaged the following January and married on December 19, 1981 — dates that Ó Baoill kept in his meticulous diary.
During his time in Bord na Gaeilge, and latterly Foras na Gaeilge, he promoted the Gradam/ Gnó le Gaeilge scheme to support the use of Irish by businesses.
Among those who took to the idea was Fergal Quinn, of Superquinn, who was keen to promote bilingualism in his outlets in Dublin.
Ó Baoill’s many strengths included his “lack of pomposity” and a non-judgmental approach to Irish, according to Seán Boyne, former political editor of the News of the World and author of Gunrunners: The Covert Arms Trail to Ireland.
“When my book was published in 2006, Raymond asked me to talk about it through his Gradam programme, and I also knew him through La Cave wine bar in Dublin’s South Anne Street and the Ely in Ely Place,” Boyne said.
Cooney, director of the Humbert International Summer School, recalls how Ó Baoill invited him to celebrate Bastille Day with a lecture on General Humbert and the 1798 Rebellion in Mayo at a Gradam session on July 14, 1996. But Cooney had a problem, as he had little or no Irish.
“He resolved our linguistic dilemma by proposing I should open the talk with a few words in Irish, which he would write out phonetically,” Cooney recalls.
“This ruse worked so well that RTÉ’s Liam Ó Murchú — famous for the bilingual chat-show Trom agus Éadrom — congratulated me afterwards for ‘speaking Irish with the sonorous Polish gravity of Pope John Paul II’,” Cooney said.
He recalls how Ó Baoill arrived at the Humbert Summer School in Ballina in 2008 with “a new flashy sports car which matched his equally new attire — a twin-breasted, flamboyantly striped black suit, a flowery tie, an expensive and eye-dazzling shirt and a tidy, ornate handkerchief which highlighted his pocketed-shirt”.
Cooney found Ó Baoill to be an ideal chairperson of the Humbert School, as he was a voracious reader with a keen interest in national and international politics.
His son, Cathal, said he had an extraordinary memory for detail and would ensure birthday greetings included an account of events, local and global, that had occurred on the day each of his children was born.
Never a zealot, his love of the language led him to set up Irish language classes and social nights wherever he went, including Enniscrone, Co Sligo, where he moved after his early retirement. Adults who attended his classes came to his funeral, along with many former colleagues — which his family appreciated.
Latterly, he was assisting Cooney with translating Irish language writings of the late Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich for an upcoming biography.
Raymond Ó Baoill is survived by his children Doireann, Iseult, Cathal and Bróna, their mother Paula, his siblings and extended family.