Abstract
Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s famously difficult Irish language novel Cré na Cille contains a cluster of Breton words that have not all been recognised as such. These words are a clue that the French-speaking airman, arguably the only character in the novel with a significant “arc”, is in fact supposed to be a Breton. His immersion in Gaelic Ireland, his frustrated hope of fulfilment in philological studies and pan-Celticism and his ultimate lapse into patriotic Frenchness mirror the experiences of Breton nationalists of the 1940s – some of whom were helped by Ó Cadhain himself to take refuge in Ireland after the Second World War – and represent a subtle critique of Brittany’s pan-Celticist hopes within the novel’s larger multifaceted critique of Irish rural life.
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