Last Saturday I spent an afternoon in Omagh – always a pleasurable experience in itself – at the Dún Uladh Cultural Heritage Centre. They were having a day of lectures on matters relating to Easter 1916. It was loads of fun and wonderfully thought-provoking.
Dr Liam Campbell spoke first. He’s Heritage Officer for the Foyle Trust. His lecture was about land and water. Sounds prosaic, except that he showed some beautiful slides of ordinary, non-touristy places and provided some startling information which was news to me at least.
For example, do you know who owns the bed of Lough Neagh? Yes, Virginia, it is indeed a very big bed. But if you thought it belongs to the people of Ireland or even Northern Ireland, you’re wrong. The owner is the Earl of Shaftesbury. I kid you not.
You might say “Well, in practical terms does it matter? He can hardly fish it out and sell it off in bits.” No, but when the level of the Lough was reduced, it left exposed a considerable amount of land, and guess who was the owner of all that land? Yup – the Earl of Shaftesbury. What’s more, if you go removing sand from the floor of Lough Neagh, you’ll have to pay a royalty to the E of S for every spoonful. Patrick Pearse must be groaning in his grave.
Then we had Eda Sagarra’s talk. She’s an Emeritus Professor in Trinity College, Dublin and at the moment she’s writing about northern Nationalists in the Irish Free State. She has first-hand knowledge, since her father was Kevin O’Shiel, an Omagh man. O’Shiel practiced as a barrister in the North-West of Ireland and stood as a Sinn Féin candidate in 1918, just falling short of securing the Fermanagh North seat. He was a friend of Michael Collins, and among the first judges to be appointed to the Dáil Courts. He was a senior legal advisor to the government of the Free State and prepared Ireland’s case for admission to the League of Nations. Professor Sagarra’s lecture was stuffed with anecdote and humorous, personal detail. Every professor should be like Professor Sagarra.
The third lecture was from Dr Tomás Mac Síomóin and was in some ways the most challenging of the three. Mac Síomóin is a scholar, novelist and used to lecture in Biology at Dublin Institute of Technology. The reason his talk was so interesting was that he reflected on colonial repression and how it affected the attitudes of Irish people in the nineteenth century towards their own language and culture. He sees this cultural shame and cringe-posture as still alive in the post-colonial Irish Free State, and was part of why they failed so abysmally to achieve the aim of reviving the Irish language. He quoted a number of writers, notably Albert Memmi, the French sociologist. Writing about the colonized personality, Memmi said: “He seeks to remodel himself according to the coloniser’s prescription. Or he seeks to repossess all that colonization has torn from him”.
You can cringe or you can confront. Recognise anyone there?
Dr Mac Síomóin also contended that this trauma of colonization can be passed down, not just culturally, but chemically, to the next generation and beyond. That is, we inherit attitudes and self-perception in our very DNA. And we try to cope with this inherited trauma through using alcohol or drugs to muffle the pain and give us a degree of self-confidence.
I didn’t agree wholly with any of the speakers, but it was the kind of afternoon where you come out, your mind filled with new ideas and new understanding. The afternoon confirmed for me what I’ve always contended: feed people dumb game shows and talents contests, and that’s the cultural junk-food they’ll crave. Feed the public ideas and reflections on the state of their own country, reasons that it’s the way it is and what might be done about it, and they’ll thrive on the diet. That’s why the talks at Belfast’s Feile an Phobail are so popular.
Dún Uladh is a Comhaltas Cultural Resource Centre. Hats off to Breándan McAleer and those he works with for days like last Saturday. Please sir, we want more.
The Dublin Theatre Festival 2016 is currently underway, Esteemed Blogmeister, and runs for 18 days.
Running concurrently is the Dublin Theatre Fringe Festival which is no thespian slouch neither: consisting as it does of (phew) 65 productions and 300 performances. Dubiquity just doesn’t come into it. Which, of course, is Ubiquity with a D.
One mentions this because the Annual Dublin Farce Festival jogs for much longer, logging in as it does for 365 days, year on year, going forward. Simultaneously, there is also the Annual Dublin Cringe Festival which consists of the mono-minded media on Liffeyside.
While this media falls into different categories -Theatre, Dance, Circus, Comedy, Music, Live Art, Cabaret and Spiegeltent – in all cases each cast and crew are reading from the same TUT / DOB-approved script.
Again it possess that sine qua non of the self-respecting Cringe Festival: the phew factor. Meaning, news management of the phew, by the phew and – crucially – for the many.
For those of us who modestly admit to belonging to the massed ranks of the masochistic the main crux of the same Cringe Festival is the sheer scope of the fawn-coloured fare on offer : it is a veritable smorgasbord of shoneenism. One often finds oneself at sixes and sevens while trying to decide which particular plate with which to go into high fives mode.
Morning time media, in particular, is in a continual state of flux, when it comes to, erm, Personalities if not of perspective. The latest addition to this cohort of megabuck eunuchs in the studios of Newstalk fm is the Philip Marlowe of Crime Reporters.
Whereas that Famous Seamus walked the mean streets of LA without being mean himself, Paul Williams, the PM of AM, as it were, has so far, in fairness, already managed to chalk up half of that achievement. If one substitutes Dubland for LA. (But, no doubt, tiocfaidh a LA, la eigin).
Despite being brand new to this microphone job on the Kornflakes Shift, Paul Williams has already managed to scoop the Cringe of the Month Award. Which bodes well, in a Bogie kinda way, for a stellar radio career for this printing ink thinker-type feller.
Lig don fear fein labhairt / Let the man himself speak:
-Ja ! Zey vant uz to speak ze Mandatory Gaelic !
What fired up his ire here was the newspaper story which reported how an unfortunate GAA referee had pleaded in vain with some players to desist from speaking in Leprechaun. Or rather, the reaction to this report: a tsunami of predictive abuse from the Keyboard Warriors of the Ku Klux Klan of Kompulsory Leprechaun.
Now when it comes to the KKK of KL our Paul Williams is a neo-Broadcasting hack who clearly prefers the formal Tux to a handmedown aw-shucks anorak . He repeated himself:
-Ja! Zey vant uz to speak ze Mandatory Gaelic !
In fairness, going backwards, he displayed laudable restraint by not then adding the de rigeur:
-Donner und Blitzen !
Then, in a remarkably professional reduction of the public to the private, Paul Williams launched into a five-handkerchief reminiscence of his harrowing time at the horny hands of a goosestepping Dorfschulmeister in his native dorf of Ballinamore. This dreadful Dortschumeister once (gasp) beat himself and some schoolpals of his into a (gasp) pulp.
-A pulp no less !
(One repeats this, for who knows, perhaps Quentin Tarantino himself might even be on the look out for a follow up to his masterpiece, Pulp Fiction. To be tentatively known as, erm, Pulp Faction ?)
And what, pray, were Williams Og agus a chairde scoile pulped for ?
-For not being able to recite – for Gawd’s Sakes ! – the Our Father as Gaelige !
The ‘as Gaeilge’ part, incidentally was spat out with all the compulsory enthusiasm of a toddler tasting a deceptive spoonful of Milk of Magnesia for the first time.
The clinical ability of a born Broadcaster to down two words with the one ochone ought not to go unremarked upon. Or indeed, three words with the one ochone as Paul Williams does so effortlessly here , and in such an understated way too.
Witness the way, mar shampla / for example he caught two thirds of the hat-trick of the Hateful Three (to go all Tarantino) in the initial report from the public sphere – the GAA and Leprechaun – while then seamlessly seguing on to the old report from the private (his own) world – the Leprechaun and the Roman Catholic Church.
Re-spect.
So, into which of the categories of the Cringe Festival (see above) does Paul Williams and he to be only a wet week or so in the positon fit into? Comedy ? Cabaret ? The dogs in the mean streets of DOB-lin are already barking :
-Spiegeltent.
Fascintatingly, Spiegeltent is a Dutch word which has smoothly insinuated itself into the English-language theatre of the Free Southern Stateen. Which is, as Paul Williams , the PM of the AM, proclaims, proudly and prolifically, will be the only English-speaking nation left in the EU after Brexit .
A Spiegeltent , by the way, is constructed of wood and canvas and decorated with mirrors and stained-glass, intended as an entertainment venue.
To conclude: even five minutes spent lending a masochistic ear to the provocatively entertaining and yet curiously poignant patter of Paul Williams will convince one of the irreperable damage which this Kult of Kompulsory Leprechaun has done to his ability to kommunicate in the German Queen’s English.
Take , at random, his pronunciation of the simple four-letter w-word:
-Were.
In the Ballinamore-brewed baritone of Paul Williams it invariably comes out as (gulp):
-Wor.
As in :
-Myself and my schoolpals wor beaten to a pulp so we wor. News that will bring great glee I’ve no doubt to the Keyboard Worriors of the Ku Klux Klan of Kompulsory Leprechaun’.
Given his obsequious obsession with the Guardians of the Peace in the Free Southern Stateen even unto being widely recognized as their (gasp) Self-appointed One Man PR, when it comes to putting a title to Paul Williams autobiography, already Paddy Power is saying it is 6 to 5 it will be:
-Wor and Peace.
“I ent have no gun/I ent have no knife/but mugging de Queen’s English/is the story of my life…”
Agard’s poem, ‘Listen Mr Oxford Don’ raises significant issues about colonization of the mind. In this part of the world some talk Twaddell, some prefer to discuss constructive ambiguity and for others it is a case of “whatever you say, say nothing.”
Across the Irish sea, some of our nearest neighbours are talking about sovereignty and independence in the context of a repeal bill designed to remove the European Communities Act from the statute book and signal the end of EU law in Britain.
The media in this country inform us that the British Prime Minister will begin the Brexit process in March 2017. “Hard borders,” will represent part of our shared, brutal history and “soft borders” our future, with champagne socialism being relegated to the past in order to make way for champagne unionism and the last word to Agard:
“…I am making de Queen’s English/accessory to my offence.”
“You can cringe or you can confront. Recognise anyone there?”
CARA and GARC? Though maybe cringe isn’t the right word for CARA.
“That is, we inherit attitudes and self-perception in our very DNA”
That’s not news to me, I’ve known it for a very long time. There’s a worldwide silence when it comes to DNA and politics because it inevitably brings us to the question of Race. In the 19th and early 20th century race was spoken about quite openly. People think the Nazi’s were the first to ever speak about it but that’s totally inaccurate. But it was the Nazis that blackened the image of any reasonable debate on race and how our different DNA effects us physically and mentally. But that’s a whole different topic.
I wouldn’t say there’s a problem in Irish DNA but I would say there definitely is in the Irish psyche. I spoke about this just last night in my previous comment where I bashed Nationalism for being pathetic when it comes to Orange Parades and Unionism in general. We could stop Orange Parades tomorrow, there’s no doubt about that. What would happen if thousands of people in Ardoyne came out and sat on the road and said: “Enough, no discussion, no parades, end of”. It would end. The PSNI couldn’t do anything about it. One street did this at Drumcree and the Orange men haven’t marched for 20 years. Why doesn’t Nationalism do this? to put it bluntly: their weak minded. That might sound harsh but it is weakness. Its nothing to do with this fake notion of “peace”. We don’t have peace here and never will whilst this island is partitioned. There is certain nationalists, especially in Sinn Fein, who aren’t what they use to be. You could blame age, I don’t know but maybe they have low self esteem or maybe their more worried about their pay packet and 2nd homes because money is buying “peace” or stopping violence. So instead of standing up to openly provocative, anti-Catholic parades they choose to tolerate them. Think about that, I want Nationalists reading my comment to stop and actually think about it for a few seconds: Catholics actually tolerating the demands of anti-Catholics to march in a Catholic area….
Of course the psyche of Unionism is something we have spoke about many times. I know there’s Unionists who read and comment on this blog but the usual impression I get of them is predictable, its one of denial or sometimes they support the Orange men’s demands for sectarian reasons which they usually wont admit to but they make up poor excuses to support them, like “tradition”. The Unionist psyche has comes directly from the era of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, where Protestants were unjustly and immorally above a vast majority in every field of society. It was the threat to this system was why they opposed Home Rule in 1912. This has built the current Unionist psyche of sectarianism, protestant fundamentalism and aggression. Protestants in the outside world aren’t like this. Indeed some of the most ardent supporters of the McBride Principles were Protestant clergy and Churches in the USA. Of course not all Protestants in the North are like this either but unfortunately the reality is a majority support such sectarianism or are indifferent, which is just as bad. These parades matter to them because they want to keep a psyche alive in both Unionism and Nationalism that Protestants rule the roost. Orange men openly admitted that to author Susan McKay and others. They are slow to admit it now days because they’re becoming a minority.
The only way this current nationalist psyche can be changed is by new and strong leadership. The same goes for the Irish psyche overall. Roy Keane, when it comes to the Irish football squad, is breaking the Irish psyche of “we cant achieve or win”. It takes time but we already see improvement. Michael Collins broke and did away with elements of the Irish psyche. Collins was the son of a farmer in Cork who brought the British Empire to its knees with less than 3,000 men in Ireland. He was voted 2nd by British Historians as “Britain’s greatest ever enemy, for his skill and tactical genius” ahead of George Washington and Napoleon. Kemal Attaturk came 1st.
Indeed Dan Breen, an old tough IRA man, once said of Collins: “I loved him, I would’ve layed down my life for him and it would’ve been a small price to pay. You must remember, when we were boys we were SLAVE MINDED, SERFS! but then he came along and picked us up, we looked upon them (Old IRA) as Gods!”.
This Serf mentality still exists in many Irish minds, including many politicians. This mentality needs to go or the people who have the mentality and are dragging everyone else down needs to go, one or the other. Who I worry about isn’t really the adults running about today, they should be big and ugly enough to look after themselves but I worry about the children of our nation. I don’t want their young impressionable minds infected by this British planted junk mentality.
One thing any new great man like Michael Collins will encounter is opposition, strong opposition, from the very people he’s trying to help. But sure that’s well known in History.
Well said Ryan, croppies telling croppies to lie down is truly pathetic and demonstrates how croppies can be distracted by loot and the illusion of importance.
I couldn’t care less if priests involve themselves in politics but if they do then they should address the causes of disputes rather than the symptoms I.e partition has produced the symptoms such as GARC etc. You will not hear anytime soon fr donegan addressing that subject that’s for sure. Unless of course his bosses give him the OK. Because we all know he and his ilk really don’t speak for the people, rather their job is the control the people.
Ryan
I know you are young-ish and I don’t mean to be patronising, but if you had lived through the troubles I feel you would be less keen on such confrontational methods.
“What would happen if thousands of people in Ardoyne came out and sat on the road and said: “Enough, no discussion, no parades, end of””
That would lead to thousands of loyalists on the streets, rioting, intimidation. maybe the army on the streets, just the spark to get things started again.
Is that what you want?
Boring as it is we now have a kind of peace, and a kind of settlement in Ardoyne.without anyone dying.
Compromise is necessary where victory is not possible.