With the death of Manchán Magan, Ireland has lost a mountain of libraries. He was an inimitable, brilliant and singular artist; a writer, teacher, broadcaster, and student of spirituality and nature. His work in the Irish language, his travel journalism and documentaries, and his dedication to exploring indigenous knowledge, the natural world and its spiritual realms, had a profound impact and leaves an astonishing legacy.
In 2020, in the depths of the pandemic, he published what would become a landmark book, Thirty-Two Words for Field.
Within its first page alone, Magan presented the Irish language as a portal for deeper understandings and connections to the island of Ireland, its landscape, mythology, and spirituality. It’s an opening paragraph that lights up the synapses: “It was my grandmother, Sighle Humphreys, who taught me Irish and when I asked her one day what the word for hole was, she replied, ‘Do you mean one dug into the ground by an animal? That’s an uachas. Or one made by fish in a sandy riverbed for spawning? That’s a saothar. Or if it’s been hollowed out by the hooves of beasts and then filled with rain it’s a plobán. Or if a lobster is hiding in one it’s a fach. Or if it’s been created as a hideaway by a wild beast it’s a puathais.’”
Growing up in Donnybrook in Dublin, Magan spent his summers in west Kerry with his grandmother, immersed in the language, landscape and way of life. He was the great-grand nephew of The O’Rahilly, the Irish republican and founding member of the Irish Volunteers who was killed during the Easter Rising in Dublin. His great-great-great-great-granduncle was Aodhagán Ó Rathaille, the last Gaelic poet to have attended the ancient bardic schools of Killarney.
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He presented the podcast Almanac of Ireland, wrote for The Irish Times, and as the author of multiple travel documentaries – often made with his brother, Ruán – Magan’s curiosity and expansive sense of wonder brought viewers on journeys about Irish native trees, rural China, Inuit kayak builders, the Guanche culture of Tenerife, the Tarahuamaran people of Mexico, and an adventure around Ireland without speaking English in No Béarla. He was planning a follow-up series of the latter with the rap group Kneecap. In recent years, he gave up air travel to more truly live his values of sustainability, and prioritised slow travel, presenting Manchán’s Europe By Train for RTÉ in 2024.
Magan was equal parts highly social and also perfectly content in his own company. He built himself a straw bale and grass-roofed home, and later another, in an oak wood in Westmeath, where he reared pigs, hens, and kept bees. Last month, he did a powerful interview with Brendan O’Connor on RTÉ Radio 1, during which he spoke of how prostate cancer had spread throughout his body, and that he had no fear of death, believing he would return in another body to continue his work.
In collaboration with The Trailblazery he created Scoil Scairte, an online school that focused on creative, spiritual and indigenous wisdom as an entry point to exploring the Irish language. He traversed the Irish coast to gather shoreline words disappearing with the tides of time. He toured internationally with the theatrical performance, Arán & Im, during which he spoke of the wonders of the Irish language while baking bread, with the audience churning butter.
Before he was well known, Magan pursued his approach to the Irish language in uniquely idiosyncratic ways. For years, he gathered small but dedicated audiences for projects such as Gaeilge Tamogochi, where people entered a spiral-form installation of Irish linen in the lobby of Project Arts Centre in Dublin, to be gifted with a rarely used Irish word to preserve.
Deeply attuned to the feminine spirit of Irish culture, he followed Thirty-Two Words for Field with Listen to the Land Speak, which was recently adapted as a documentary series for RTÉ. Ornithologist Seán Ronayne applauded his kindness in helping him design his own speaking tour. Such acts of generosity, and passing on the many forms of knowledge he accumulated, were a trademark. He was a board member of the native woodland and land regeneration charity, Hometree, and an ambassador for The Rivers Trust.
A track by Kneecap, Drug Dealin’ Pagans, is structured around a voice note Manchán sent to the group upon leaving one of their concerts, “You don’t know what’s going on. Nobody knows what’s going on!” What he was referring to was witnessing the infectious joy of young people embracing the Irish language in a new, vibrant manner, and what such energy springing forth meant.
He was a luminous presence, and his friends, his wife Aisling, his family, his loved ones, his colleagues, his spiritual and creative clan, will all be devastated by his departure. But so too will every acquaintance, and anyone who engaged with his work, read any of his books, watched any of his documentaries, heard any of his interviews, attended any of his shows or talks, and understood his kindness and inspirational radiance. Magan was a wholly authentic force, full of awe and devoid of cynicism.
As Friday morning dawned, just as when Sinéad O’Connor died – to whom he dedicated the book, Focail na mBan (Women’s Words) – a rainstorm engulfed Ireland. Magan recently published another book, Ninety-nine Words for Rain (and One for Sun). He wrote of how if a pig stared closely ahead, a storm was brewing. If a spider retreated to the edges of its web, clement weather was on the way. If a cat crossed its paws, then a flood would follow within three days. “He described the language as potent and infinite,” Molly King of Dingle’s Other Voices said on Thursday night, “but that was him too.”
