Cuimhní doimhne / Deep memories

The Irish language uncovers a particular way to understanding memory. A memory is not just a thing that’s stored and recalled. Memory is more like the awareness of past events, and that event can be brought into that consciousness by something related.

Deep memories have a particular psychological charge, I have found in my own lived experience. They co-exist in that place of dream and synchronicity. Allow yourself to treat old deep memories with a sense of respect and awe. You might dream the memory on, or draw it out, or add a new happier ending in a short story or poem.

Cumha is a word or strong emotion in the Irish language that’s not easy to translate. It’s related to strong and deep emotions such as homesickness, longing and parting sorrow. You could translate it perhaps as the sense of grief for a place or person who has left or you have left.

There is a seanfhocal / proverb that links cumha to the idea of memory (see our top Irish proverbs):

This gives a sense that if you are homesick or have a sense of longing, the only real solution is to entertain memories about that place or person.

At a recent monthly workshop for An Ciorcal Beo members at Bitesize Irish, we spoke about cumha and memories.

We spoke about memories that help us survive, revisiting old places, grief and death, keeping the memory of people alive, and the shared nature of language in its inherent memory.

Which brings us to a subtle aspect of how the Irish language expresses memory. As a simple translation, cuimhne means memory:

The phrase below, however, gives us more insight:

It’s not that cuimhne is a thing that’s stored, but it’s more of a process of relatedness where one event happening now or something that’s said brings a past event into present awareness of the past. What I’m trying to say is that we can treat cuimhne more like the working memory, that part of our consciousness, that we are aware that something happened.

I invited participants of the reflective workshop to think about an old memory you have, reaching far back. And I asked them to write about this experience with the open prompt “Is cuimhin liom go…“. I invite you to do the same in your own time.

Poem

I composed a poem about an experience involving a deep memory:

Deep Memory
By Eoin Ó Conchúir (copyright 2026)

I went for a coffee
with the man from the shop
on the street of the monks,
and the books, and Enzo’s chip shop.

He spoke of a teacher
I had when I was five.
I said, “now that’s an old memory
I did not know I had”.

Later that day,
when visiting my mam,
an old couple I heard,
speaking Irish and holding hands.

“Hello”, says I,
and after a quick chat,
I realise they are the parents
of that teacher that I had.