And alas with this cliffhanger, we leave the girls for now and end Chapter 9. Shockingly I actually managed to stick to my goal of containing chapters into 20 pages, for both Bata Neart and Back Office! The buffers have also been in the best condition so far in my cartooning career.
I will now focus the summer weeks on Coffee Party while I try to up my game and improve my skills, and come back anew to tackle Chapter 10 and the fight with the Formorians.
I hope to relaunch in September along with Back Office and I’ll update here once I have a solid date planned.
Until then, thank you for sticking with me for yet another chapter of this story 🙂 As usual please feel free to drop a message and the @AskAoife and @AskAshling rule are always available for questions directly to them 🙂
Test your might! Test your might!
MORTAL KOMBAT! 😛
@AskAshlingandAoifeandHellFionaForThatMatter: What, if any, are your favourite stories, legends, or heroes of Ireland?
@Azreal: Well…I know I’m not a fan of Children of Lir, because it gives Aoifes a bad name 😀 But I do like any legend where the heroine “has an Aisling” about stuff that is about to happen.
I really like that becuase….well…yanno…. ;D
@Azreal: Which is why I’m not really a fan of the old legends. If we ever studied them in class, Aoife would suddenly start poking me saying:
“Hey Ash-liiiing! Hey Ash-liiiing! Guess what this girl is doing in the story! Go on! Guess! Ash-liiiiiiing!”
Ugh….
..and you always guess right too! 😀
As least you stopped replacing the adjective “Dreamy” with “Ashling-y”, that was getting weird.
I kind of had to, no-one knew what I meant. Some cafes thought I was complaining when I said that I enjoyed their “Ashling-y Coffee”
Hey….should we go down the hall and bring Fiona into this, just like Azreal asked?
Oh god no…all of this 4th Wall stuff…it would not “compute” for her.
I’m just letting this reality bending nonsense slide while trying not to think about it. You seem to thrive here some reason….which I’ll let slide….
@AskAshling: Um, has Aine explained exactly WHAT command you are supposed to give? O.o
Or are you just going to copy her?
@AskAoife: Have you had any awkward moments where Aine did something that was perfectly normal in her culture, but is really inappropriate in ours?
@Delta: Oh…I’m just going to copy her. She says weird stuff in Gaelige that I barely understand, and I just try my best to get the pronunciation right. Imagine if I mis-pronounce something! I might destroy more than John’s car!
@Kessy: Erm…with Áine? Eh…heh heh…yea maybe one or two things….
….
Like…erm…she doesn’t seem….doesn’t seem to be all that shy when we’re in the room. I’ve given her jim-jams to wear…but…well…*oh god*….she’d doesn’t use them… I’m a little afraid of what will happen if anyone just walks in without warning…
….
And then there’s the whole sleeping situation….it’s almost like she’s never had her own bed or something…it kind of took me by surprise…
OK Showing my american stupidity here a bit but, is there anywhere left in Ireland where Gaelige is still spoken regularly?
@Howard: I wouldn’t call it American Stupidity at all Howard. Very few people beyond Ireland are even aware that we have our own language (and that even includes people in our closest neighbours in Europe! (UK, France etc…)
To answer your question, yes there are areas in Ireland where Gaelige is spoken regularly. We refer to these areas collectivly as “The Gaeltacht”
Road signs like the one above serve as a notice that you are about to enter an area of the Gaeltacht. In these areas, Gaelige is used more often than English, and all official signage will only be in Gaelige. The Irish language is the first official language in Ireland and is the only one that is legally required to be used on signs. English is officially a secondary language and is added for the sake of practicality in the rest of the country. Thus, when you enter the Gaeltacht you’ll encounter that all signage is only in Gaelige, even the road warning signs:
The Gaeltacht itself is mostly made up of pockets of areas along the coasts of Galway, Mayo, Kerry and Donegal. It used to be much larger, but the spread of urban Ireland (which tends to be English-speaking) has reduced that area over time. Here’s what it looks like now:
(Looking at the map) Hmmm, that’s interesting. Maybe I was wrong about everyone in my family only speaking English. My great grandmother was born in Donegal in 1888, although I don’t know where in Donegal. Since it looks like a big chunk of the country is still part of the Gaeltacht today, I’m guessing there’s a good chance she’d have grown up speaking Irish in the 1890’s?
@Kessy: I’d say there’s a very good chance that she spoke Gaelige. Here’s what the Gaeltacht looked like when it was first established in 1926:
Donegal is a fairly remote part of Ireland. It is very mountainous and not heavily populated. It looks like the main settlements such as Letterkenny and Donegal Town were not included in the Gaeltacht, which suggests that they mostly using English. However it wouldn’t surprise me at all that even if she had lived in these towns during the 1890’s that she would be able to speak Gaelige.
So remember….if you have by any chance inherited a wierd necklace from her…..you need to use Gaelige to make it work ;D
Actually, I know that my g grandmother (Catherine Reddy) grew up on a farm in County Donegal, so I figure that makes it pretty close to certain that she could speak Gaelige. I did actually meet her when I was a baby, although I don’t remember her at all. That’s pretty neat – it brings the Gaelige in my heritage a lot closer.
Catherine’s father had actually emigrated to the US, and actually got his US citizenship (which a lot of immigrants never bothered to do in the 19th century – the only real difference it made was being able to vote.) But he had to go back to Ireland in order to take over the family farm. So Catherine was born in Ireland, but already had US citizenship because of her father.
Given that story and the location, I’m thinking Catherine most likely grew up speaking both English and Gaelige.
Haha! It’s funny that you should mention inheriting a weird necklace from her… My mom just died this spring, and my siblings and I were going through a couple boxes of her stuff and we found a bunch of weird necklaces. We think they came from our grandmother, who was Catherine’s daughter. I believe they were just rosaries and Catholic stuff, though. Supposedly one of them was some sort of relic – a piece of bone from a saint or something. None of us are Catholic, so we gave them all to our uncle. We didn’t try saying anything in Gaelige to them, though. 😉
I live in Louisiana and there are pockets (very small pockets mind you) where french is spoken but nothing like this. It Must be nice to be part of a country with such a rich and ancient culture… Also it would be nice to be in a country not currently at the mercy of a moron hell bent on making everyone else on earth hate us, but that’s a whole other ball of wax ha ha!
@Kessy: I’m no expert in searching family lines, but out of curiosity I did a search for Reddys in Donegal at the time. In 1857 there is a record of a James Reddy, and he lived in the Croagh township.
Here’s a Google Maps link to that area: https://goo.gl/maps/LiKW3J4uaM92
I don’t know if he’s your Great-Great-Grandfather, but the area is almost entirely farmland (still is), and it is also inside the 1926 Gaeltacht. So if I guessed right, the chances of Catherine being a Gaelige speaker are still looking good 🙂
@Howard: Don’t sell the richness of your own culture short, sure it is a younger culture but no less rich. You’ve also got the fun twist of living in what essentially used to be France (and also New Spain for a short stint…)
The rich and ancient nature of Irish culture is one of the reasons that drove me to originally start working on Bata Neart. While growing up, I remember being very annoyed that Western pop-culture would often pigeon-hole the Irish as being little more than car-bombing superstitious drunkard Catholics who’s main positive contribution to society appeared to be filling the ranks of the NYPD. When it came to our culture, many of our stories & legends were glazed over with a focus instead on Leprechauns and kissing stones on castle walls.
When it came to our history, public attention seemed to rarely go earlier than the Great Famines of he 1800’s, ignoring the fact that Ireland has been populated since about 4000 BC and has a whole load of history and legends within that 6000 year block of time.
It has always been my hope that with Bata Neart that I could create a fun fantasy comic that at the same time would show people an Ireland that has its own language and a history that is as mysterious as it is ancient. Also to show that it has mythology that includes more than just breakfast cereal maskots, but also a whole host of creatures both wonderful….and terrifying.
I kind of hope that I am actually pulling this off in my own small way 🙂
As for your “Tangerine-in-Chief”….well….I do hope the US does something about him this November (assuming he hasn’t been forced to resign by then / arrested for various reasons). Few other countries throw a general election right in the middle of an executive term like that, and in theory your Mid-Terms look like a clever way to get your Presidents to watch what they are doing. I hope US voters use their vote well when the chance comes. However politically-speaking, don’t put Ireland on a pedestal by any means. We have voted absolute morons into power over the years, while many voters spent 70-plus years voting on the basis of which side of the Irish Civil War your party belonged to (I wish I was kidding about that…)
Wow, that looks really rural. The satellite makes it looks like the camp ground down the road has several times the population of the village.
Careful, genealogy research can be addictive. James Reddy isn’t my g-g-grandfather, but he might be my g-g-g-grandfather or some other relation. Catherine’s parents were Edward Reddy and Teresa Dougherty. Or he might not be related at all. One time I was looking for a distant aunt and uncle of mine in the US Census. I found them, but I also found another family that lived close by where the mother and father both had the same names as my relatives, and three of the children in each family had the same names.
Oh, and before the 20th century, people often changed the spelling of their names or just changed their names full stop without any particular record or apparent reason. I know that one branch of the family spells the name Ruddy. It can be a real puzzle sometimes.
I’ve only done research in US records, are there Irish genealogy records available online?
@Kessy All this talk has got me a bit curious about my heritage. Where or how did you do your research I would not mind finding out where exactly I hail from. Always been told I’m Dutch but no real proof of that.
@RAWR I just had a chance to read your.. um I mean the girls comments, how much would it scramble your brain to have Fiona enter into the chat and have a 3 way conversation in your head! ha ha
@Howard: It’s been a few years since I did any real work on genealogy, so I may not be up to date on the tools available online. But I think I can probably help you to get started. The first place to look is your family. Talk to any living relatives you have about family history and compile all the information you can. Dates and places of births, weddings, and deaths are important, also any churches your family went to. Where they lived and when can be a big help, whether it’s just a general area or a specific address. And make sure to get information about people’s siblings, not just your direct ancestors.
If you don’t mind paying their fee, https://www.ancestry.com/ has some really helpful tools. In particular they have scans of US census records that you can search online. https://www.familysearch.org/ is another site that has some stuff you can access for free.
All levels of government keep archives, so you should look for them for places your family lived. If anyone served in the US military, you can try the National Archives for service records. https://www.archives.gov/research/military State archives have death and birth certificates, although most birth certificates aren’t public record because of privacy laws. Counties typically have wills and property records. Cities and other local governments often have their own archives, so you should check them out. Be aware that a lot of this material has not been scanned and you may have to physically go visit these places to access the information.
Local newspapers can be very helpful with obituaries and birth, death, and wedding announcements. Churches and cemeteries also have records. check for any state or local historical societies in the places your family lived, you never know what they may have.
Depending on how much time and effort you want to put into it, this can be a real undertaking, but it can also be really rewarding. Whenever you try looking in a new place, you’re rolling the dice – you may find nothing useful or you could find entire generations of your family that you never knew anything about.
@Howard: I have an Aoife living in my brain…it’s already plenty scrambled 😀 I might consider bringing in Fiona, I just haven’t seen the need yet.
@Kessy: There are records available, many free of charge. The following is supported by the Irish Government:
http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/
Good luck 🙂
Ughh dude your messing with my routine here! I got no new comics to read on my graveyard shift I have to work every week your killing me! lol
Oh yea and thanks Kessy for all the info that was most helpful. I been looking into it.
@Howard: Really sorry, both to yourself and everyone reading for my radio silence. Rather foolishly I opted to make a 16 page chapter for this year’s Coffee party book and went all in. I’m inking the very last panels right as I type this message.
Here’s a sneak peek:
If it helps at all, next week I have planned to draw the first 2 pages of the next Bata Neart chapter, which will be very Aoife-centric. I’m also going to start putting the ground-work into “Aoife’s Guide to Bata Neart”, which I’ll build up as a gradual comic in it’s own right.
@Howard: I’m glad I was able to help, good luck with your search! ^_^
@Rawr: Ohhhh, an Aoife-centric chapter sounds like fun!
A funny coincidence happened that you might be amused by. Thanks to the records you pointed me to, I found information about a new set of g-g-g grandparents I didn’t know about before. And the husband was named James Ruddy. So you were actually close!
Mobile Suit Gundam Colasite Muire. 😛
Mobile Suit Gundam Colasite Muire….Wing
😛
I don’t recall anyone asking this:
@AskAoife: What are your favourite anime / manga series?
Favourite? Like I have to pick one? Hmm…not easy….
Off the top of my head I would say “To love Ru”, because I’m a sucker for alien-girls, and maybe “Ah My Godddess”, because I’d love to have goddess like Beldandy assigned to me 😀
But those are just 2! I like a lot more than that!!
(Impulsively starts watching “Oh! My Goddess”) Whoa, a dial telephone? Just how old is this anime, anyway? I haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid.
So, Aoife likes sudden girlfriend appearance type of shows, huh? LOL Somehow I’m not surprised. ^_^
@Aoife: You didn’t have to limit yourself to just one or two. We’re interested in all your interests.
@Kessy: The “Oh! My Goddess” manga began serialization in September 1988. Depending on which anime version you happen to be seeing anywhere from 1993 to 2011 for the latest OVA series.
@Azreal: ALL of my interests?!! *Blush*
Erm….heh heh…y-you don’t need to know all of them Azreal…
Eh heh….heh….
(Shyly goes to hide in a corner while the blushing dies down)
@Azrael: I’m watching the 93 OVA. But I think the last time I saw a dial telephone was.. prolly the early 80’s. And my parents tended not to replace things that were still working perfectly well just because there’s a new model.
@Aoife: Oh really? Well, while you’re hiding in the corner, I think I’ll check to see what’s hidden under your mattress… (evil grin) (doesn’t actually look)
Ok dude, September is here where is our new comics *Looks around impatiently*. lol
@Howard: Apologies Howard, I was meaning to put up the launch announcement earlier this week, but I got side-tracked.
The announcement page is now up!