Archive News
ÔGlass cathedralsÕ to the car not the only Celtic Tiger memorials
Date Published: {J}
I hate those awful new ‘words’ which are now being coined almost by the day, it seems. They usually start with one of the tabloids and, before long, the alleged words become part of the normal everyday language in common use.
For instance, what demented sub-editor on speed came up with the word ‘Crimbo’ for Christmas? Now I know that very often sub-editors need a shortened version of a word like Christmas so that it will fit into a newspaper heading . . . but there was a very old ‘Xmas’ in existence.
The same guys invented ‘Corrie’ for Coronation Street . . . and I know I’m not alone in these ‘pet hates’ because a long-time friend of mine in the newspaper business has always verged on violence when he encounters the word ‘Xmas’ for the first time in any given year. Consequently, I always tried to get it into my copy not later than the month of October and waited for the torrent of abuse!
Reason I begin like this on a totally unrelated topic is that I decided this year that – being patriotic – I would take my holidays at home. Thus, it appears, I became one of the ‘Staycation’ crowd who spent time around the country in relatively decent weather, as distinct from ducking under a giant umbrella to avoid slowly cooking on a beach somewhere abroad.
And, as I drove through the new tunnel under the Shannon, it occurred to me that, when many other memories of The Celtic Tiger years have died away, the so-called ‘prosperous years’ will be remembered for probably two things – banks which beggared whole generations with dicey loans to developers, and a system of roads and motorways that may yet be part of our economic salvation.
There are any number of other memorials to ‘the good years’ dotted all around the country. Many of them, however, are doleful affairs that seem like they were caught in a time warp and have stood there as a sort of mute testimony to a collective loss of commonsense fuelled by rocketing property values.
For instance, there is hardly a town worth the name that does not have what I call a ’glass and chrome cathedral’ to the automobile, built in the years when new cars sold in their tens of thousands.
These ‘cathedrals’ are now empty mementos of the days when you were no one if you didn’t have a new car . . . or better still, two of the darn things!
Other sad memorials also dot the skyline in cities and out-of-the-way distinctly rural areas which can be hundreds of metres, or indeed a few kilometres, away from the nearest town. They are the completed, or half-completed, housing estates which make up just some of the 300,000 unoccupied homes built in the boom, and now exposed to the weather.
They say that there are two things which deteriorate without human contact – people and houses! And what a sad sight these abandoned estates make . . . many of them without roads, sewerage systems, lighting, and, most importantly, without families in the houses. Maybe the sadder ones are the half-completed estates with families living in some of the houses.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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