Archive News
Traditional tunes just seem to hit a different note
Date Published: {J}
I’d love with all my heart to love traditional music, sean nós dancing, ceilis, sessions in the pub – but the awful truth is that I’d actually have a more enjoyable evening sticking needles in my eyes.
And I can only envy those who rub their hands in anticipation of another evening spent listening to six people playing fiddles, bodhrans, banjos and – the most evil of all instruments – tin whistles while supping pints on a pub with a big open fire.
I just don’t get Irish music and I wish I did because there are critically acclaimed bands and artists like De Dannan or the Chieftains, who are appreciated by mass audiences without a drop of Irish blood in their veins right across the world.
I’ve always had a grá for Plaxty but only when they’re singing – the instrumental stuff provides an opportunity to make tea or use toilets.
Irish dancing is another mystery to me – why parents would want to dress their little darlings up in ringlets and what look to me suspiciously embroidered bedspreads is beyond me. And that’s just the boys.
There’s a rigidity to competitive dancing that suggests they’re modelled on the movement of a swan – utterly still on top, but pedalling manically under the waterline. You look at a child with head still and arms anchored to their sides, and at the same time their little feet pummelling like piston engines.
I loved Riverdance as an interval act at Eurovision; like everyone else, it raised the hairs on the back of my neck – but the notion of sitting through a couple of hours or it or Lord of the Dance or whatever other derivations we have now would be more pain than any man could bear.
And yet these shows pack them in across the planet, in places where they wouldn’t know Irish music or culture from a hole in the wall.
Riverdance could have half a dozen different companies on the go at any one time and still they cannot sate the international appetite for their tap dancing and choreographed steps.
And in their defence, they made Irish dancing sexy by stripping away those old costumes and ringlets, introducing bare chests for men and little minis for the girls – and at least there was movement that suggested the entire body was involved in the operation as opposed to just the parts below your two knees.
Ditto with Irish music in the competitive sphere – half a dozen people playing instruments like they were taught by Cold War Soviets in a salt mine….devoid of emotion, save for the orchestrated wink from one to the other that supposed to indicate to one and all that, behind the furrowed frowns, inside they’re actually having great craic.
The only thing that can make this worse is when foreign enthusiasts join in. And while tourists with an interest in our music and culture are to be treasured and applauded, the ones who want to join in a session with tunes they learned off the internet need to be rounded up and given a pub of their own to practise in.
For more, read this week’s Connacht 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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