FOLENS & CO

Albert Folens in French Class
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Albert Folens was a Flemish patriot. He was also my French teacher for a brief period in secondary school. A strange combination you might think, but Albert was a most literate and civilised man and he did not allow the injustices that that language's promoters perpetrated on his people to contaminate his love for the language itself.

When he wasn't teaching me, he was filling a gap in the school textbook market in both Irish and English. It started with roneod (duplicated) exam notes and slowly developed into basic quality text books. The company he founded ended up producing first class high quality textbooks and other books and it's still at it.

I am not concerned with it here, but the ingredients of his personal life add up to one hell of a story, which I hope will be aired some day. He was a man of integrity, courage, loyalty and passion. His reputation has been traduced by lesser men, and perhaps some day this wrong will be righted and justice prevail.

But enough of the high flown prose. This post is looking at some of the early books he published from around the time he was my teacher.

Some time earlier he had self-publshed a political apologia in Irish, Aiséirí Flóndrais, and at least two volumes of his Irish language French course, Nuachúrsa Fraincise, were published by Sáirséal agus Dill.

The books I am concerned with here are school textbooks and notes published by what became Folens & Co.

Before I launch into them I'd like to thank Peadar and Bernie for the lend of the originals. Unfortunately I had not kept any of my school textbooks though I do have a copy of Aiséirí Flondrais which I treasure.


[Housekeeping: if you click on any image you will get a photogallery of larger versions of all the images. You should find that useful particularly for following the sequence of reproduced pages. To return to the text, click the X in the top right corner.]

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DÁNTA

I can remember the earliest of Folens' duplicated exam notes which included the Irish language poetry. A great help in preparing for the exam. The volume above, however, dates from six years after my first Inter Cert.

The poem at the head of the list caught my eye. I remember it well and have had reason to write about it since. But more about that later.

The treatment of the poem was designed to cover all the bases as far as answering likely exam questions was concerned.

The text is reproduced for convenience.

Then you're told what type of poem it is - "a fragment from a long satire on social affairs in Ireland in the eighteenth century". While accurate this description is disingenuous as we'll see later. As the fragment deals with the beauty of the countryside it can be described as a nature poem.

Then we have a description of the basic content of the poem - the poet on walkabout in nature.

This is followed by an explanation of the poem - a line by line prose equivalent.

Then the main ideas in the poem.

Followed by a pen picture of the poet.

Then we have a line by line glossary of terms.

And finally a set of likely exam questions and answers.

So you can see that this is a pretty comprehensive toolkit for facing into the exam.

I said earlier that the reference to the poem, from which this fragment is taken, as a satire on social affairs was a bit disingenuous. The satire is actually a raging rant excoriating the clergy and other celibate males for failing in their duty to satisfy the urgent desires of the women they are neglecting and leaving them in a state of high frustration. The poem has many explicitly sexual passages.

I have written about it elsewhere.

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FIANNAÍOCHT

Bruíonn Chaorthainn is part of the Fiannaíocht, the old mythology of Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Fianna.

I remember this one well. A tough nut to crack. It is to normal Irish prose as Virgil is to Caesar. Caesar wrote bog Latin, something on the style of what I was used to as an altar boy. Virgil's text was like the more difficult of the Irish times crosswords.

Well you might need a dictionary for this one. Full of words and phrases no longer used in the current Irish vernacular save perhaps by the most obscure of Irish poets.

The notes tell us that it is written in the alliterative style but at the same time bereft of needless flourishes. Every word has its place and tells us something.

The author of the notes goes to great pains to set the context for this particular tale. The alliterative style means that the text has to dig deep into the store of then available Irish vocabulary. When overused, as it was later, a text could descend into a string of clichés. But not in this text which is well crafted and moves apace.

The notes go on to classify the different types of alliteration used in the text.

Finally, we get a critique of the story and its structure.

If you're still with me, you will have realised that these exam notes were no skimpy venture. This was solid stuff. Folens saw an obvious gap in the market and filled it brilliantly.

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I'm just including these two title pages to give an idea of the wide range of Irish language notes in Folens' series.

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GEOLOGY

And then there were the actual text books. English language text books, containing generic material, or that based on British examples, would have been available.

Folens' texts were both accommodated to the Irish exam syllabus and contained Irish examples, where possible.

The illustrations were plain and intelligible. No doubt students could have added their own colours, if needed. The cost to the publisher and the equipment needed for colour reproduction would, no doubt, have been prohibitive at that point in time.

You can see from this later title page how popular this particular book was.

I did all my secondary education, with the exception of the English class, through the medium of Irish. And the absence of text books in this area was acute. I remember in my science class, in the absence of an Irish language text book, we spent most of the class copying notes and illustrations from the blackboard into our science copies.

I don't know if Folens subsequently came to the rescue in this case.

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PAST PAPERS

In the Irish education system, at least, there was great reverence for past papers. They gave you an idea of the likely approach of the examiner. And, as questions tended to be repeated down the years, they enabled you to economise in your studies, and maybe leave more time for football or the cinema or whatever.

Lo and behold, in this pile of past papers, I found my Leaving Cert Honours paper. I'm sort of afraid to read it in case it brings home how far downhill I've fallen since.

Anyway, this is the full paper, if your curiosity tempts you to read it.

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IRISH HISTORY

This is my last example, a broad sweep of Irish history.

You'll get the tone from the final two paragraphs.

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I'm glad to be able to produce the above examples in a tribute to a man I much admire.