The Key

 [Image turned up by Bing on the clue ‘shelves full of government files’]

A short story from Ireland, of around 50 pages, published by the Dalkey Archive Press of Illinois and reference 5, in a parallel text with English alongside the original Gaelic. 100 pages in all; just text, no apparatus. The author, Cadhain, was an unusual chap from various points of view, not least for his idiosyncratic use of various Gaelics. He is to be found at reference 4. 1953 is the earliest date in my copy of the story, when the author would have been in his forties.

Rereading this story was prompted during the posting of reference 1 and it was previously noticed, ten years ago now, at reference 2.

The story of a civil service paper keeper who gets himself locked into a room full of files, old and new, and who, after various vicissitudes, is extracted, dead of a heart attack, a day or so later. A story spiced up with a good deal of broad humour, perhaps intended to capture the vernacular of the time – rather in the way that the good soldier of reference 7 had thirty years previously – but I have no idea whether Cadhain knew this book.

With the further parallel of the good soldier being set in what is now the Czech Republic, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, another empire full of zealous servants keen on the paperwork. Lots of boozing too.

And then there are the troubles of the Indian Civil Service, as told by Wilson at reference 8, which I happened to be reading at the same time. It’s all connected!

I have no idea how much one is missing by reading the story in translation, but I take from reference 3 the idea that part of the fun of the original was Cadhain’s playing with various dialects of Gaelic. And a better knowledge of the messy innards of Irish politics in the decades after independence would no doubt have helped too.

I associate to an Indian comment which I picked up from somewhere, to the effect that, after independence we might make a bit of a mess of things, at least at first, but it will be our mess.

The first half of the story is all about what happens inside the room; the second half is more about what happens outside, once it has been discovered that the paper keeper is stuck inside. This second half gets a little breathless as it gallops for the both comic and tragic conclusion.

Part of the fun for me was that I was a civil servant for a long time and, at least for a while, I had been involved with records, files and paper keepers.

But another part was the difficulty of grafting the administrative system on one country onto that of another country which may not be too keen on you being there at all, proclaimed good intentions notwithstanding.

What happens when the first country ups stick, and leaves the second country with a foreign, perhaps not particularly suitable administration? What about all the tricky records that may have been kept? Think Stasi in East Germany and the wealth of tricky records that they left for their successors in 1990.

And there seems to be a tendency for first countries, that is to say occupiers, to be very keen on paper based systems and records; an alternative to both trust in their own officers and trust in those being governed. In the olden days, this might have meant careful records of land ownership and land transactions, with a lot of wealth and rent being locked up in land. Think Domesday Book for an example close to home.

A tendency which perhaps promoted unwarranted belief in the power of the written word, of rules. Perhaps pushing the manoeuvres and compromises possible in a more oral system into the margins.

An entertaining and interesting read. Perhaps I won’t leave it for a third outing quite so long.

PS 1: at about the time of posting reference 2, I had puzzled about the word ‘Aryan’. Oddly, a connection to ‘Iran’ had not occurred to me. A connection confirmed, after various vicissitudes, by Gemini. On this occasion, he was rather thrown by the spelling mistake in my starting question – thrown being helped along by the misspelt word being entirely respectable, but quite different, in Turkish.

PS 2: I went on to let Gemini loose on the Indian comment. He did pretty well, although I did not recognise any of the books he suggested. But there must be lots of them, not to mention articles in magazines like the New York Review of Books. Maybe it will come to me.

But the important thing is that the sentiment almost certainly derived from Mahatma Gandhi. And Gemini goes on to observe that the slogan "Good government is no substitute for self-government" was originally coined by British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1905, this phrase was heavily popularized across the Indian independence movement…’. Not Winston Churchill’s finest hour.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/birthdays-special.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-paperkeepers-tale.html. 

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1irt%C3%ADn_%C3%93_Cadhain. 

Reference 4: The Key (An Eochair) - Máirtín Ó Cadhain – 1953, 2015.

Reference 5: https://www.dalkeyarchive.com/. 

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalkey_Archive_Press. 

Reference 7: The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek – 1921–1923.

Reference 8: India conquered: Britain’s Raj and the chaos of empire – Jon Wilson – 2016.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_languages.