Archive News
Why texting should never replace the written word
Date Published: 25-Jul-2012
If the leaders of the 1916 Rising had email, would they ever have bothered to print up the Proclamation – or could they simply have set up a ‘Free Ireland’ Facebook page and urged people to ‘like’ it to a level that proved we wanted an end to British rule?
Would Pearse have written to his mother on his death bed in Kilmainham jail or simply sent her a surreptitious text message on a smuggled mobile phone – and if it all continued in a similar vein, where would we go now to read a slice of our own evolving story?
Letters and the written word have played such an important part in history – ours and the world’s – but what will we leave for historians of the future to work on by way of contemporaneous evidence from great events?
Those days spent combing the National Archives for words written by those history-makers themselves will give way to the soulless thoughts of a text message; no need for white gloves or careful handling when it’s just a download from a website in cyberspace.
Of course it makes it all the more accessible but is that really the point? Even now and in a more personal context, wouldn’t you prefer a handwritten note or letter to a mere text or email? Aren’t words from a pen more interesting that those typed with one thumb?
What about those postcards that people used to send from their holidays, with idyllic scenes from Spain or Cyprus that might have carried a message of no consequence greater than ‘kids have vomiting bug – wish you were here’?
Years on those postcards were still stuck on the fridge or a cork board as though you’d been there yourself, and they conjured up images of far flung places as you passed by on a wet winter’s day.
Now all you get is a text message, with perhaps a picture of your friends giving a big thumbs up during their dinner – a picture you don’t even bother to download, let along go to the bother of keeping for posterity.
The other problem with texts is that, while postcards are delivered by a postman at some stage during the day, a text message has a habit of hanging out in some cyber cloud until it knows you’re fast asleep and – making no allowances for time differences – it shocks you from your slumber at four in the morning to tell you how someone else is enjoying their holiday.
And then what about love letters, those embarrassing epistles of youth that poured forth with a form of poetry that mightn’t make it onto the Leaving Cert syllabus but which bared many a young soul at a turning point in their lives?
Can you imagine the lovebirds of today printing out their text messages and binding them together with a bit of twine so that their grandchildren might find them and discover a different side to old Granny in eighty years’ time?
There have been legendary writers of love letters too – like Napoleon, whose early passions for his new bride Josephine were mostly confined to print because the Little General was whisked off to war just days after their marriage, when he was ordered to leave and command the French army near Italy.
Indeed the problem here was that Josephine rarely wrote back, and he began to hear rumours that she was being unfaithful to him. Perhaps she was texting him and he was just out of coverage in the trenches or on the field of battle.
As it turned out, Napoleon’s letters became more intimate and loving, but quickly turned sour when it was confirmed that she was having an affair – giving historians more of an insight into Monsieur Bonaparte than they might otherwise have hoped for.
For all of the advances in technology – and most of them are to be cherished – we still rely on the printed or written word as the first draft of history. But this isn’t just about the past.
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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