Ó Riain, Flann

by James Quinn

Ó Riain, Flann (1929–2008), cartoonist, writer and Irish-language activist, was born on 18 September 1929 in Lucan, Co. Dublin, the son of Edmund Ryan, a garda originally from Hollyford, Co. Tipperary, and his wife Nora (née Brennan) from Co. Laois. His father spoke little Irish himself, but wanted his son to be fluent and took a posting to Aranmore, Co. Donegal, where the young Flann began his primary education. As the family moved around with his father's postings, Flann attended the national schools at Dunboyne, Co. Meath, and Ardfert, Co. Kerry, the Christian Brothers' secondary school in Tralee, Co. Kerry, and Coláiste Íosagáin, Ballyvourney, Co. Cork. After qualifying as a primary school teacher at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin, he taught briefly in Cappamore, Co. Limerick, before moving to Scoil Chiaráin CBS, Donnycarney, Dublin. On 30 June 1958 at St Gabriel's church, Clontarf, he married Norita Collins of Timoleague, Co. Cork; they had three sons and three daughters.

From a young age he enjoyed drawing cartoons and writing stories for children (often in Irish), several of which were broadcast on Radio Éireann in the late 1950s. He also did the drawings and wrote the script for Dáithí Lacha, a popular, five-minute animated film in Irish for children broadcast on RTÉ television from its earliest days in December 1962 until July 1969. A static comic strip produced on a shoestring budget and shown one frame at a time, it made Dáithí (a duck) Ireland's first home-grown television cartoon star and spawned the books Dáithí Lacha (1965) and Dáithí Lacha '67 (1966). Ó Riain followed it in the early 1970s with the cartoon series Rí Rá agus Ruaille Buaille.

In 1962 he won a cartoon competition with the Irish-language monthly Comhar, in which he published cartoons regularly from 1965; he also wrote some articles in Comhar such as 'Cartúnaithe an lae inniu' (Meitheamh 1965) and 'Dialann éisteora' (Eanáir 1987). Using the name 'Doll', he published cartoons in Hibernia, and from 1969 became the regular cartoonist with the Irish Independent and Evening Herald, while continuing to work as a teacher. With a sharp eye for human folly and absurdity, he poked fun at politicians, property developers, official bodies and many other targets, and during the 1970s was probably Ireland's leading political cartoonist. The entrenched positions of parties in the Northern Ireland conflict and the hypocrisy of official attitudes towards the Irish language provided him with much of his material. His work won many press awards and was exhibited at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin (November 1972), the Munster Arcade in Cork (August 1973), the Bank of Ireland Exhibition Hall in Baggot Street (March 1979), Kitty O'Shea's pub in Grand Canal Street (December 1983), and at regular events such as Writers' Week in Listowel and the Merriman Summer School. Some of his best work was published in collections such as I gComhar le Doll (1970) and Euphoria is a lovely word (1972). After he was released by Independent Newspapers (his appeal for unfair dismissal was rejected by the courts in February 1979), he worked for a time with the Sunday Tribune.

A keen handballer and basketball player, Ó Riain was treasurer of the Amateur Basketball Association of Ireland for two years. He also worked to promote the Irish language and was an active member of Conradh na Gaeilge. A founder of Comhar na mBunmhuinteoirí, a national organisation of primary-school teachers established in September 1968 to encourage the use of Irish in primary education, he was also a member of Comhairle na Gaeilge, but resigned in February 1971 in protest at its failure to take effective action to prevent the Department of Education from closing the primary school in Dún Chaoin, Co. Kerry. In his regular correspondence to the letters pages of national newspapers, he complained of the difficulties in dealing in Irish with government departments and semi-state bodies. He was especially critical of the lack of Irish-language programmes on RTÉ, and in June 1977 spent a week in Mountjoy prison after refusing to pay a £25 fine for not having a television licence (members of Conradh na Gaeilge picketed the prison during his stay). In October 1978 he spent a day in prison for refusing to pay a parking fine because the ticket was issued only in English. Facing prison again in November 1989 for his failure to pay a £50 fine for not having a television licence, he dumped his television set in the lobby of the Department of Communications.

Ó Riain was a committed nationalist, who believed that Irish nationalists had a duty to persuade northern unionists of the benefits of a united Ireland, and in 1971 he issued a public invitation offering to host a unionist couple on a visit to Dublin. A couple from Belfast responded and spent a weekend with himself and his family in their home in Clontarf, enjoying several evenings of Irish music and culture. Subsequently Ó Riain stayed in Belfast with a presbyterian who attended Irish classes. He argued that cultural exchange was the best way to bring people together and that an interest in music, song and local history transcended political and religious divisions. A keen musician who played the tin whistle, flute and other wind instruments, he was a founder member and chairman (1968) of the Howth branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and enlivened many a session of the Merriman summer and winter schools with his playing. He admitted to a secret ambition 'to throw a fleadh ceoil into total disarray by playing a rake of reels on his ocarina' (I gComhar le Doll, back cover).

He wrote a popular placenames column, 'Where's that?', in the Irish Times from May 1998 to February 2009, which allowed him to indulge his love of language, local history and folklore, and provided the material for his Townlands of Leinster and the people who lived there (2000). To encourage the learning of Celtic languages, he also published Lazy way to Irish (1993) and Lazy way to Welsh (1995), which used cartoons as the main medium of instruction. After the break-up of his marriage he moved to Ardane, Aherlow, at the foot of the Galtee mountains in Co. Tipperary, where in the early 1990s he carefully renovated an old nineteenth-century national school. He lived there with his partner, Annette McHugh, and became chairman of Gaelscoil Thiobraid Arann. He featured in the Aisling gheal programme broadcast on RTÉ 2 television on 29 April 1980 and, to celebrate fifty years of his work, in the TG4 programme File na gcartún on 10 January 2001.

Ó Riain had a number of bugbears, of which he complained regularly (with some humour) in letters to the press. He opposed Ireland's entry into any European military alliances, and disliked all displays of militarism including artillery salutes and the inspection of armed guards of honour by foreign dignitaries. The accents of RTÉ presenters and news readers were a constant source of irritation to him, and he complained that an alien variant of southern English Received Pronunciation, which he called the 'Montrose accent', was being imposed on the Irish people. His personal history may have had some bearing on this: when in the late 1950s he asked to read on air the children's stories he had written for Radio Éireann, he was told that his accent was not suitable for radio. He died in St Vincent's Hospital, Tipperary town, on 6 December 2008 and was buried locally. His collection of books was donated to Tipperary Libraries in 2011.