One great English poet, Edmond Spenser described Geoffrey Chaucer as “the Well of English undefiled.” In Ireland Spenser’s reputation is of a man who advocated genocide, and in England it is thought that Chaucer, when a public servant, was on the fiddle. But that’s all by the bye.
With a good conscience I will rifle Spenser’s phrase and adapt it. So welcome to the Wells of History Defiled.
There has grown up a species known as “Counterfactual History” or “What If” History. It might be excused ifit was aimed at people who knew that William, Duke of Normandy ,won the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and a writer of “Counter-factual” history wrote a story or a play where King Harold drove William and his Normans into the sea and they drowned.
In normal circumstances, if a teacher of history taught young schoolchildren that King Harold had been the victor at Hastings, he would be sacked or otherwise disciplined, or taken away by people in white coats for psychiatric assessment.
Perhaps I should say “in ideal circumstances” for “counter-factual” narratives are the counterfeit currency palmed off on millions. When James Joyce resolved – “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race” he did not mean counterfeiting it.Thirty years ago Fine Gael’s Patrick Cooney directed teachers to tell their pupils that the IRA was the cause of all violence in Ireland.Polite critics might call such forgery “Counter-Factual History.” But some of them might borrow the robust language of the English poets and call it “fucking lying.”
For at least thirty years Irish schools and universities and widely circulated media have taken their cue from Patrick Cooney. So a generation has grown up which couldn’t write even a couple of informed paragraphs on Eamon de Valera or, for that matter Sean MacEoin, “The Blacksmith of Ballinalee,” Cooney’s heroic uncle.And a learned Jesuit, Seumus Murphy, couldn’t tell Daniel O’Connell from Daniel O’Donnell.
In the Six Counties a great percentage of Unionists know virtually nothing of Irish history, ancient or modern,or the Irish language. They pride themselves on THE TITANIC, a death-trap, which took more lives than the 1916 Rising. But do they appreciate, for example, the vision and work which within seven years of the departure of the Black and Tans created that milestone of twentieth century engineering, the Shannon Scheme?
The BBC’s play “Desecration” by Hugh Costello will have been heard not just in Britain, most of whose inhabitants know nothing of Irish history, but in Ireland, where North and South, the achievements of the Irish State are no longer recognised and the blood, toil, sweat, tears and vision of its founders – the Irish people and those they electedto lead them – are derided.
I described “Counter-Factual” as a species of history. It is actually specious history, corrupt, rotten and defiled.
Comments are closed.