Archive News
We must have silver stuck down the back of the couch
Date Published: {J}
Ever since the latest McCarthy Report came out last week, there’s been a lot of talk about Ireland selling off the family silver as though there was a big dresser somewhere in Leinster House packed with forks, spoons and salvers that might somehow drag us out of hock.
The fact is there would want to be the equivalent of a small mine of the stuff to even begin to contemplate such drastic action, but all this talk of silver seems almost uncouth in these straitened times.
And anyway, what do they all mean. Have you ever met someone who did sell off the family silver? And if they did, who would they sell it to?
Would it be those parasites who offer to exchange your wedding ring or granny’s jewellery for cash? Or is there a silversmith out there who refashions your old knives and forks into a new cup?
What exactly is the family silver anyway – are there families out there who have silver cutlery instead of the cheap stuff the rest of us cut our pork chops with?
I’ve always worried about those children who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth; isn’t it very dangerous for babies who haven’t an ounce of sense to be sucking on valuable spoons? The silver spoon could choke them.
Apparently we’re thinking of selling off the family silver now – although in our case, given that we’re talking about Coillte, it appears we think money grows on trees.
Sonia O’Sullivan won silver medals at the Olympics and World Championships which she might be persuaded to part with in the national interest, and Fianna Fail sold us down the Swanee for forty pieces of silver – so the least they could do is offer that back to the state by way of some very small compensation.
We’ve had a few stars of the silver screen, and clearly the current crop of household names like Saoirse Ronan, Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, Gabriel Byrne and Liam Neeson would fetch a few bob on the open market.
We also have six sets of silver letters to flog after they were removed from the front of branches of the world’s baddest bank last week that spell Anglo Irish Bank over and over again – like a sort of recurring bad dream.
Of course we couldn’t sell all of the letters – just the ones that say ‘rankish’ because we need to hold onto the rest of them to come up with the new name for this financial albatross around our necks. We’re calling it ‘Big Loan’.
Or maybe we could pretend that Silvermines is actually a business as opposed to an area in Tipperary. The only problem there of course is that, even if we had a silver mine somewhere, they’d expect to get it for nothing – just like Shell did when we discovered gas off the Mayo coast.
Staying with precious metals, however, we also have a fleet of silver birds for sale – as in, the helicopters that were once the transportation mode of choice for our developers. Like these high flyers, they too are now grounded – like our ghost estates, they are now gathering dust.
To sweeten the pot, we could throw in Roger Casement’s sword which was unveiled last week by Jimmy Deenihan, wielding it like a hurley, and we’d even part with the Ardagh Chalice, a job lot of Roses of Tralee, Jedward, Mary Byrne, Westlife, Gaybo, Twink and Bono.
We could certainly throw in the old silver fox, Colm McCarthy, who keeps issuing these reports that cause mass consternation every time he puts pen to paper. The man really is a national jinx.
But we’re keeping Micheal Ó Muircheartaigh because even at the age of 80, he has scarcely a silver hair on his head.
And more importantly he’s a national treasure – and even when we’re stony broke without the price of a pint, there are some treasures we’re not prepared to part with.
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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