Irish accents are renowned the world over. Open your mouth in any crowded place and someone is certain to ask: "And what part of Ireland are you from?"

True, there was a time when the melting pot that is America almost demanded that its newcomers, even those from the Emerald Isle itself, drop their native way of speaking and conform with English as spoken (mutiliated?) in the United States. That day has passed, even though the mutilation continues, as evident by numerous frontline sports broadcasters who speak in an idiom that refuses to distinguish between "he" and "him", "she" and "her", and mingle singular and plural with maddening regularity.

In Canada there was and is no such insistence on converting from one's natural accent. One example. Last Saturday two men, strangers to each other, exchanged a few polite words in an Ottawa supermarket store. One had emigrated in 1953. His accent was still Belfast to the core. The other was softer in tone, one which has since been certified as the sweetest of all Irish accents.

It is now official. Donegal people have the most dulcet toned voices in all Ireland.

According to a newspaper report, a popular program on FM radio conducted a test in which listeners were invited to phone in their reading of a specific short piece of text. In no time its phones were besieged by callers from all arts and parts, each declaiming in their respective accents the now immortal words:

"There is a thin man in our village who lives down by the roundabout. He has one child, a goat and a cow".

Listeners were invited to vote for the accent that they felt was the most pleasing to the ear, and the caller they identified with the sweetest brogue was a Donegal man, one Hugh Harkin from Termon, a twenty-two year old engineering student.

Second came the Cork accent, and third Louth.

To the Donegal writer of this item of imperishable profundity, the result came as no surprise. He spent decades dictating speeches in an office where his colleague, an Englishman, often remarked, "When I listen to you dictating, John, your voice puts me to sleep!"

Finally, just what is a Louth accent? Does anybody know?

--30--