The Leaving Cert nightmare that refuses to go to sleep

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I HAD a dream the other night – no, not the Martin Luther King type – but it’s one  that has recurred fairly regularly since a June day back in the mid-1970s when I sat in the gym area of Tuam CBS trying to grind out a result from the Leaving Cert of that year. There is really no other exam that leaves such an impression as the Leaving Certificate. Diplomas, degrees, masters and PhDs may come and go for the luckier ones, but the exam that never seems to leave the mind’s eye is the Leaving Cert and its association with the longer days of Summer.

My problem the other night when the sub-conscious had assumed control of the mind in the hours of deepest sleep, was that once more, I was sitting at the lonely single desk in the Tuam CBS gym with a higher level (honours we used to call it in my day) Irish paper in front of me.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I had opted for the higher-level paper (a C in ordinary level Irish was the height of my ‘Gaeilge’ achievements in the real world), and despite a detailed perusal of all questions on the paper, I didn’t understand one single word of Irish that confronted me, not alone to answer any of the questions.

I managed to make a temporary escape from the exam hall (all these things are possible in the world of dreamland) but discovered to my horror that when I went to elicit information from passersby, no one had a clue what I was on about, and to make matters worse I had forgotten the exam paper.

A brother of mine – long since then departed this world – then arrived on the scene and attempted to give me a crash course in Irish that would enable me to make a stab at some of the questions but my great fear was that I was about to set a national record for the lowest ever marks achieved by a student sitting the Leaving Cert honours Irish paper. For some reason, a huge ‘4%’ figure kept appearing in front of me. The return to the exam hall though was ignominious with some illegible notes written on the skin area, from wrist to elbow, that turned out to be no help at all to me.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.