Blood Sacrifice: Bas in Eirinn

This posting is rated AW (Academic Warning) for literary ranting, obscure reference, and twisty theory.

Today in the Literary Revival Tutorial some interesting ideas came up for which there was no time for discussion. Since I have been discussing them In My Mind, I thought I would put them into words and then put them here because you guys might be more interesting to discuss this with than the Dear Little Friends of my tutorial.

So, it would seem that the topic of Blood Sacrifice comes up a lot in early 20th century Irish drama, and, I might add, in early 4th century epics, too. It’s sort of the ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’. In the Táin (4th century) Cuchulainn gains personal glory for sacrificing himself to die for Ulster’s defense against the armies of Connaught. In Yeats’ play ‘Cathleen Ni Houlihan’ (played in 1902) the young man about to be married runs off to join the rebellion for the greater glory of Ireland, and the play was loved by the audiences. Then in Augusta Gregory’s play ‘The Rising of the Moon’ (1907) has an Irish person in the pay of the British Army decide to let a rebel go free in the name of nationalism, rededicating himself, it would seem, to the nationalist cause. However, Yeats (in 1904) criticized this idea of sacrifice for glory by having Cuchulainn go mad in ‘On Baile’s Strand’ after killing his own son in single combat and then going out to fight the waves in a final futile act. Finally, in 1926, Sean O’Casey offered a play called ‘Juno and the Paycock’ which criticized all this blood sacrifice as stupid because all you get at the end is a bunch of dead young men and grieving families with not a whole lot of political and economic change.

But the point of Cuchulainn’s death in the 4th century Táin (and Enkidu, and Beowulf, and Siegfried, and Arthur ad nauseum) is not political and economic change, but glory. And surely the men who were executed in 1916 got glory as well as death. So is O’Casey missing the point? So what if mothers grieve: the boys died well. Or so the heroic theory goes. So in the tutorial and in another class by another professor, it was suggested that this idea of Blood Sacrifice and glory were passé now, in the early 21st century. We are more civilized now, and anyway, didn't Yeats and O'Casey write plays that criticized the idea? Both of the professors who said that this idea is no longer current are in their late 30s maybe early 40s, and they are referring to events of the early 20th century which included the war for the Free State and the following civil war. The civil war here ended in 1923 so the horror of this civil war is younger than that of the American civil war for Americans. Yet another professor, a history professor, commented a result of all this upheaval, splitting families, and divided country, was that the Irish population of the 30s, 40s, and 50s was very cautious about adopting anything new. So, currently in Ireland, this idea of dying for a cause is viewed with great caution and is not in vogue.

Nevertheless, I think the idea of dying for a cause, be it passe in Ireland, is still invoked in a lot of places. The most obvious example, I would think, would be the suicide bomber rhetoric. But I also think about the monks in Burma who certainly knew they were laying it on the line for an idea. However, I don’t think they were doing it for glory. I also think I hear the Blood Sacrifice rhetoric from the US army, but interestingly enough, one hears the O’Casey sentiment from people protesting the war. Nevertheless, in these protests, I really think I hear the Blood Sacrifice being used again: I hear people say, “These young people are dying for nothing” which would then imply that if they are dying, it should be for something. Blood Sacrifice is good if the cause is right, in this argument.

So to the assertion that these early 20th century Irish plays no longer resonate because the idea of Blood Sacrifice is no longer current could be false. I think the idea of dying for an idea is too old and too deeply located in the limbic brain for humans not to respond to it. I agree with O’Casey that it is so often a waste of a beloved life, but I do think Blood Sacrifice for ideas is still resonant on planet earth whether one agrees with it or not.

The Rocky Road to Dublin

This weekend, I went to Dublin to see the National Library's exhibition on Yeats and the viking ship, The Sea Stallion, at the Nation Museum. To cross this little island, it takes about two and a half hours on the train, which is very pleasant, but getting to the train is a whole other story. The buses don't start in the morning until 7:15, and the direct train I wanted left at 7:30, so I had two choices: walk or take a taxi. Well, Ralph sent me an email saying that he would *really* prefer that I take a taxi, so at 6;00 am I tried to call the taxi service to get one. No go: fifteen minutes of busy signals. Well, at 6:15, I knew the walking window closed, so I set out. It took about 45 minutes as a pretty brisk stride to get to the train station. I stuck to main streets which were all very well lit, and as I trotted into the morning city (it was officially 'civilian twilight' according to the computer) I saw all these full cabs leaving the city! No wonder I couldn't get a cab: this was prime cab time. I guess the late clubs were getting out at 6:00. Anyway, there was nothing to worry about because the city was actually suprisingly busy at this time.

So the train was lovely, and I read a book called The Poor Mouth, which is a satire of the Gaelic League. It is hysterically funny. I will come home with a copy that I will lend to everybody, it is so good. Now, you wouldn't think of Dublin as being a cosmopolitan metropolis, but it certainly feels like it after living in Limerick for a while. The Yeats exhibit was very well done. I really liked the copy the of the 'creativity survey' that some social scientist sent him. Can you imagine sending a Nobel prize winning poet a creativity survey where the person has to fill out little boxes about creativity? There were places where Yeats had crossed out entire questions and written in "It is impossible to answer this."

After Yeats, I went to see the replica viking ship at the National Museum. While I was there, a primary school class was also there on a field trip. The little boys were all dressed in tin foil armor, with painted cardboard shields, and tin foil/cardboard swords. They had also made little tinfoil helmets, and one boy had made cardboard horns out of toilet paper tubes for his. All the little girls were dressed in burlap bag tunic like things with belts. Not a scrap of tinfoil was wasted on any of these girls. *sigh* They were having a great time despite their teachers' gender forming imperialism. They ran around the boat and shouted with abandon. Inside there was a video about the people sailing the boat from Denmark to Ireland. Evidently they had to be towed a bit when the wind went down and the rowers got tired. It looked like it was hard work! This boat was a replica of one of five boats that had been scuttled to protect a Danish harbor, but the wood of the boat they excavated was Irish wood, so clearly the boat had been made in Dublin. Now, the regular history that circulates about Vikings in Ireland is how they burned, plundered, and killed monks like nobody's business until Brian Boru kicked their collective asses at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. However, when you have a great tourist attraction like this boat, the story gets a different spin. Here are the fantastic Norse who came to create a stable economy in Ireland and were great craftsmen who built cool boats like this. Lochlann go brea! They hailed the Sea Stallion as "coming home to Dublin" and it was a great thing! As I am spending time studying the interpretation and creative use of history and imagined history, this perceptual flip-flopping on the Viking issue is thoroughly entertaining.

Taking the train home, I arrived in Limerick while the busses were still running, so I hopped on the bus back to the University. Waiting for the bus and taking the bus takes about 45 mintues to get home: the exact same amount of time it takes to walk, only it is less sweaty. Anyway, I get on the bus just in time to watch some street theatre. I was just getting on the bus when a man, who I must assume was very drunk, careened across the street and fell on his face right in front of the bus. His none too steady mates were hot on his heels, and, I suppose in some kind of misguided solidarity, fell down on top
of him. Through the windscreen of the bus, I saw the two topmost men weave to their feet, and then they appeared around the street side of the bus dragging their friend onto the pavement. He was utterly inert, so they sort of draped him up against the building, and he lay there with his rugby shirt all pulled up under his arms, resting peacefully in the filth of the street, with, I swear to you, the most beatific smile on his face. As the bus progressed up the street, we passed a woman who was also clearly inebriated, and she was reeling down the street at such a pronounced zig zag that she would run face first into a building wall, rebound, only to catch herself and head back into the wall about three feet further along the way. I only glimpsed two iterations of her progress before she was lost to view. We had to pause a little longer at one stop where another alcohol affected person had to profusely thank the bus driver for stopping before getting off the bus. It was all as appalling as it was hysterically funny.

Now, Gentle Reader, lest you chide me about presenting a potentially negative stereotype of Limerick, I have to say, I am merely reporting what I witnessed from a public bus at 8:00 pm. I'm sure from a Cincinnati public bus, I would collect similar variations on the human condition. The people at the university are very sensitive about the whole alcohol issue and there is much debate about how to work with the negative effects. At the student orientation, one presenter asked the study abroad students, "So, what do you associate most with Ireland?" I think he was fishing for green hills, shamrocks, St. Patrick or James Joyce, but one young man in the crowed immediately piped up with, "The Drink!" Clearly the presenter was embarassed, and he said, quite sincerely, "Yes, I know people say that. As an Irishman, it really pains me that this is so because there is so much more than The Drink to my country." I think the young American was faintly embarassed by what he might have meant as humor. Actually, the pubs here are social events. To go for drink means to sit down and have a nice chat, not go get pissed. I think that is so in America also, at least in my experience (which is oh so very broad when it comes to the bar scene, dontcha know). Anyway, I tell the story of The Man Who Fell In Front Of The Bus because of how striking his smile was, even as he appeared to be in the depths of awfulness.

A photo journal

I spent Monday documenting the day. A common ethnographic exercise is to give people cameras and ask them to document what is important to them. I haven't consciously analyzed my set of photos except that I laughed at myself that I felt it was important to document my food. Many pictures are a little blurry because to be as non-intrusive as possible with my project, I rarely used the flash. I have put the photo album up in Snapfish. Let me know if you have forgotten how to log in as me to see them. K suggested that I use Flickr so you don't need a password, and I am working on learning how to navigate Flickr and do the downloads. For now, here is the stuff on Snapfish. I have captioned the photos, so look at the captions that come at the bottom of the photos while you play the slide show.

Peteris Vasks

Hey! I just went to hear the Irish Chamber Orchestra play, and if you were looking for a sound you haven't heard before (except for K who probably already knows this), go to your library and GET a copy of Peteris Vasks' Violin Concerto "Distant Light". It is mind blowingly wonderful. Watching people play it probably made it more amazing because it was so intense, and they were all hopping up and down. The violin solist looked like he was going to cry in the middle of the piece. I was sitting in the third row right next to the cellos and the double base so the sound was intense, searing, poignant...

Poetry Festival

This week was the Cuisla International Poetry Festival in Limerick. I went to hear three poets read their works in the St. John’s Daghdha Space. The Space is a “desanctified” church, which has been turned into a dance studio and art center. The altar apse has a blue roof painted with golden stars. Where the altar was now hangs a huge AV screen suspended on cables so that it look sort of like a huge white square cross, a sort of freakish metaphor for modern media. The crowd who attended this poetry reading must have represented the artsy creative fringe Limerick community, and they looked very similar to the Cincinnati artsy creative fringe. It was a crowd dressed in black, brown or dark green, sensible shoes, and slightly loose clothing. They were generally between 30 and 60, with longer hair, the only dye in evidence being shocking red henna on the women who were wearing long fringy black skirts. Because these were rather famous poets who were reading, there were a few nattily dressed people in pumps and shiny wingtips who wore clothing that fit.

At the side of the “stage” was the snack area, which served the obligatory tea/coffee/finger food, but before I launch into my narrative about these amazing poets, I really must tell you about the snacks. Oh, what snacks! Last weekend, at the Blasket Island Conference, they had a reception where they served not enough wine and some very flaccid trays of wilted lettuce, spray can salmon pate on package rye rounds, and yellow cheese squares with salami chunks. Terrible food, and so little of it! But at the Cuisla poetry reading, they had the most delectable gourmet snacks I have ever tasted and not had to pay for. First of all, they had gallons of hot hot tea with whole milk and pots of sugar. The snacks included, smoked chicken with melted parmesan on farm-house wheat bread, focaccia with bruschetta and mozzarella, soda bread with caramelized onions on pesto topped with camembert, and mini-quiches made with butter and cream and smoked ham. For dessert they brought out a bucket loader sized tray of scones and a chocolate mousse pie with walnuts. The snack table was decorated with yellow roses.

And the poetry was as good as the snacks. The first reader was Desmond O’Grady who read poems written when he was teaching poetry in Alexandria, Egypt. He was described by the introductory hostess as having “eyes as deep as the sea and as engaging.” He must have been about 80 years old, slightly stooped, wearing a blue checked suit coat with a salmon pink pocket-handkerchief. His nose and cheeks were very pink. He said the key questions we must ask our selves are: who are we, where are we, what are we doing here. Once you have answered those questions, you should write a poem about where you have ended up. You write that poem because “poems are the blossoms of the soul growing on the blank page.” The acoustics of the old church were such that I could only hear 80% of what he said, the rest was inflected murmuring. He started out reading a poem about a river. He said, “Here in Limerick, we call our Nile the Shannon, but in Egypt they call their Shannon the Nile.” He wrote a poem about that. He said he wished to celebrate the spontaneous, rich, overflowing language that we value. He knew Arabic, English, Irish, French, Greek, Scots Gaelic, and Welsh, but he read all his poems in English.

The next two poets were introduced by a 50 year old woman with flaming red hair wearing a butter yellow shawl over a blue jacket and yellow T-shirt. She garnished her English liberally with Irish such that it was hard to tell which language was on at any given moment, they were so smoothly blended. She told us the poets bring us love and mystery, and they remind us of our glorious past.

The first Irish language poet was Paddy Bushe from south Kerry. He read his poems first in English and then in Irish. His Irish was rolling and flowing pastel gutturals and sibilants. While he read, church bells rang, scooters accelerated by, and a siren drifted past. It seemed like his performance included the poetry hall and the wide world all around. He says he wrote a poem about the place where Amergin, the druid and poet, came to shore on Ireland, and in the smoke of the burning ships he claimed Ireland as his own. Bushe says this ancient poet made landfall in his mind, so he had to write a poem about him. He wore a slate blue shirt, a pine green jacket, navy blue pants, and black shoes. Another poem he read was about an arctic hare that he saw while he was in Greenland. His poem was about how he wished the smart, wary hare safety from the hunting hounds, and he said “the world is now a hare between two packs, and I would that we should not die, our white fur spattered with blood.”

The second Irish language poet was Cahil O Searcaigh from Donegal. His voice was high and nasal with the northern substitution of /t/ for /th/. His Irish was hard and precise with deeply rounded vowels, sharp sibilants, and swallowed gutturals. He started his presentation in Irish and then added English as he felt necessary. I would say that more than half of this educated audience knew Irish. People were chatting in Irish during the delectable snack breaks. Searcaigh said of Limerick, “This city rubs me like a new shoe, but leather softens and stretches.” He read a poem about gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins that he said he preferred to call the Magnificent Seven. He said it with such a cheerful leer that I had to cover my mouth to not shout with laughter. This man is so ALIVE with the business of living. He is not a tall man, and he is round. His face is, pink, chinless and round. He was wearing a Nepalese wool cap, a collarless tweed jacket, and a Ganesh t-shirt. In one of his poems, he quotes a popular song, and the audience sings softly along with him. There is no clapping between each poem, but there is extended and enthusiastic clapping after the entire reading.

No one who has heard these two poets can say that Irish is a dying language. It was so powerful and expressive. In Irish grammar, the agent is the noun, and not the person so that things happen at you and to you. You don’t have things; things are at you or with you. The language inflects for direction and movement so you know specifically where things are and if they are moving or not. The people at this Cuisla would smoothly switch between Irish and English so that the two blended. O’Grady called this the “rugged landscape of the Irish language.” Time was also different at this event, similar to how it was at the Blasket Conference: it was fluid and things happened when it was time for them to happen, and one could not use a clock to find out when that was. The readings started when the poet was ready, and people had snacks and chatted for substantial intervals between poets. North American child that I am, at first I consulted by program, and looked around, and consulted my program again, and then decided that the program was merely a set of guidelines, so I went and had more snacks to keep me company until something new happened.

I had walked to the Cuisla, so I was walking home again afterward. I stopped by the Aldi to pick up toilet tissue and toothpaste, as the Aldi was on the way home. In the parking lot of the Aldi, I hesitated. I did not want to take the regular route home along the main street because it was a loud four-lane highway type road in one place and quite an unpleasant place to walk. I looked out over the parking lot and across the fields that lay between the Aldi and the river. I knew the riverside path lay there, and I supposed one just walked across the fields to get there. How hard could it be? I slid under the fence and set off. The path I thought I was following turned out to be a cow path, and it ended in a clump of bushes. I forged left and suddenly found myself up to my ankles in duckweed. Luckily, I was wearing gortex boots, so the only result of my drainage ditch detection was a damp cuff. On the other side of the full drainage ditch was a huge sign that said “Keep Out.” I saw horses in the distance and thought it would be a good idea to take a different route. I knew that there were athletic fields that bordered the river walk off to my left, so I jumped three quarters of the way across the ditch and pulled myself, my toilet tissue, and my toothpaste up the nettle covered slope on the other side. When I reached the top, I had managed to maintain my toiletries, and I had added a bunch of nettle stings to the things I was bringing home. I trotted off though the subdivision to find the athletic fields. Following the sight of goals posts that stuck up over the roofs, I turned down a street and marched straight into a travelers’ camp.

Travelers are a distinct group of people in Ireland who are itinerant workers, sort of professional homeless people who have a distinct culture, music, and demographic. The State is trying to get them to settle down, so they are giving them subsidized housing. This street was completely separate from the subdivision, divided out from the middle class by a tall cinderblock wall so that their street was private. It was covered with trash, wrecked cars, and campers in various stages of decay. A young boy was riding a colt up and down the street. There was a powerful air of transience about the two cinderblock homes that backed up to the fields along the river. Gripping my poetry notes and my package of toilet tissue, I strode past the houses and the suddenly silent people in the litter strewn yards, only to discover that the end of the street was cinderblocked off, and there were gates to the athletic fields, but they were locked and had three surveillance cameras focused on the walls around the field. I rejected Plan A (climb wall on tape) and chose Plan B, walk back through the Travelers with a cheery mien. I made a greeting noise at the people in the street, and they just stared at me until I had passed. As I was leaving the camp area, I saw a door in a tall iron fence through which two girls had just passed. It looked like it went in the direction of the river, so I passed through the gate. The path went through a narrow lot full of thrashed shopping carts, fire rings, and pile of plastic detritus. Thirty second later, I was on the Shannon River walk with the middle class chocolate Labrador Retrievers and moms doing Stroller Fit exercises. The juxtaposition of conflicting genres had a twilight zone effect on me. My bathroom supplies, my nettle stings, my poetry notes, and my self trouped along the picaresque river full of swans and great blue herons and back to my academic cell.

What with the poetry, the grocery store, the Travelers, and the river, I had such a strong feeling of being part of little human eddies of experience. I am part of a swirl of people in Limerick, in the middle of constant shift, perched on the edge of Europe, on the far west end of an island listening to old men tell stories about drinking wine in Egypt.

Dingle Vikings

I loved typing that title. What a funny combination of words, but really, today I am talking about Vikings in Dingle. This picture (above) is me interacting with the Ogham Stone on top of Slea Head. I went to the Dingle peninsula with my Gaeilge class. The Irish language department paid for our bus fare and our conference fee. We just had to pay for accommodation! What a great way to support students, huh? I was glad to benefit from their generosity, and the trip was great. However, I had learned my lesson last weekend, and I booked a B&B at a farmhouse two miles from the student hostel. That turned out to be a good move because when I checked in with one of the young people who stayed in the hostel, they were, indeed, drinking heavily, screaming, and running around until 5:00 am. My young informant told me that she was so tired that she went to bed early while they were still screaming. She went to bed at 4:00. Personally, I got home at the elderly person's early hour of 1:00 am and slept to the sound of the atlantic ocean caressing the cliffs just below the farmhouse.

The conference was great. There were about 150 people there, the majority of whom were native speakers of Irish. I got to practice all my little social formulas like "please", "thank you", and "pleased to meet you." I also got to practice my literacy with "chugat" and "uiatch" (push and pull on the doors). Nothing like experiential learning, I tell you. The lectures were mostly in Irish with simultaneous translation in English on headphones. It was a little disorienting to hear a woman's voice speaking in my ears while a man stood lecturing at the podium, but after a minute of disorientation, it was sort of cool to utterly adjust ones gender norms.

The lectures dealt with the influence of Scandinavian culture in the western isles of Ireland. Many place names and words for money and fishing are of Scandinavian origin in Gaeilge. There was much discussion of the "plundering" that the norse did in reference to the monasteries, and there was much mention of the battle of Contarf where Brian Boru sent the Viking's packing for about 15 years, but really the focus was more linguistic than anything else. One 89 year old gentleman, who did not speak Gaeilge, asked for the microphone for three minutes, and in four minutes he gave a little polemic about how silly it was to speak of "plundering" as if that was all the scandinavians did. He mentioned the economic centers of Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, and Cork (which remain the economic powerhouses of Ireland today), and he mentioned that the stereotype of a man with horns on his head burning everything in sight was a terrible stereotype and a minority of the good people who came to stay and assimilated into Irish culture. He was really quite het up. He was very politely received by the Norwegian, Danish, and Finnish members of the audience. Then the next lecturer got up after that and gave a lecture about about the "plundering vikings."

The social aspects of this conference were quite different from the other academic conferences I have been to. First it was very small, so everybody sort of knew everybody else. Also, Dun Chaoin, the town, is very very small. The center of town is Kruger's Pub, where everybody went to after the conference ended, where they all proceeded to drink heavily. I learned a lot by sitting next to these slowly inebriating scholars and listening to them expound in the corner of the pub. There was lots of music too. There were two uillean pipers, one guitar, two fiddles, one accordian player, and one concertina player. There was also a man who did sean nos dance to a few tunes, and another young man who sang an aire. In general, they played and all the patrons continued their conversation. The noise level was astounding as people spoke over the music. However, when there was a solo, like the sean nos dance, a fiddle solo, or the singing of the aire, then whole pub went silent and listened. The level of communitas among all these people was very high.

After listening to all this talk of the Blasket islands, I wanted to get out and contemplate the landscape of the lectures, so Sunday morning I walked out on the Slea Head. Those pictures are posted on my snapfish site. I have posted how to get to my snapfish page in the post just before this, if you want to see pictures of Slea Head and Dingle. It was raining a little, and the wind was up. It was great to be out in the grey day admiring the moss, listening to the sea, and thinking about viking longships coming up the bay. Here is a sign that gives you all the options you have at Slea Head: parking for plundering vikings, and a picnic with a view. You don't get that combination of choices just everywhere...

Photos of Connemara and Kylemor

If you want to see some photos from the Connemara trip which inspired the one act play "Dead Right in Letterfrack" (see an earlier post), you can log onto Snapfish. Go to http://snapfish.com and login as me: ruth.benander@gmail.com, Aiz600. I have also posted pictures from our visit to Kylemor Abbey, a Benedictine convent.

Mongolian Singers

So I went to see a concert of Mongolian traditional singers. The type of singing they do has been designated a national treasure by UNESCO, so it was kind of a big deal. They were a very interesting expression of what "tradition" means in a global culture. They wore shockingly brightly colored silk robes. The men wore bright yellow and orange silk tunics that fell to their ankles. The tunics had the high collars and the cavalary style closure on the sides. The tunics were also heavily embroidered with swirls and had dark contrasting piping all round the garment. Around the tunics they wore huge six inch wide belts. One guy had turqoise studs all over his belt. Their boots were also heavily embroidered with swirls and were turned up at the toe like elf boots. When the men walked, one could see the blue jeans peeking out from the tops of the boots. The youngest of the musicians had black hair with yellow highlights and enough mousse to puff his hair out like a rock star. When he played the horse head fiddle he totally rocked out like he was on MTV, not a traditional music stage. He was the embodiment of cultural synchretism: a young man who clearly loved Hendrix (he clearly copied Hendrix guitar moves on the horse head fiddle) but who was a virtuoso at an ancient tradition of singing and fiddle playing. The one woman who was part of the group was a little person, which probably accounted for the knee high four inch heeled black boots she was wearing. Her silk dress came to just above her knees, and it was much more Chinese looking than the wild tunics the men wore. She wore heavy western makup that made her face very shiny in the stage lights. But when she sang, this little person put out a huge sound. She sang the Mongolian Long Song style which has a lot of ornamentation and tremendous dynamics going from a room filling opera sound to a soft sweet whisper in the same phrase. It was beautiful, but I was on the edge of my seat because I was afraid she would fall off her boots while she was singing, and it would have been a long fall!

The group of four singers had two instruments: a two stringed fiddle with an ornate horse head carved on the finial, and goose headed mandolin type two stringed instrument. the goose head had a bright red beak! It was sharp such that if the player really rocked out, he could put out an eye. Two of the men sang the two tone throat singing where the the singer sings two notes at the same time, an octave apart. That was another big sound, and it sounded almost super human. One of the singers seemed to be the throad singing specialist, and when he stood to sing, he was so relaxed. He hooked his thumbs into his wide leather belt and looked like he was just standing in line for a bank teller machine or something, but he was making this huge sound that resonated like a bagpipe!

They sang love songs, songs about missing one's home town, and songs about their national hero. All the same content as Irish traditional songs, really. When they played and sang they did not tap their feet, but in the Irish tradition, the musician always taps one foot to the beat, sometimes very loudly such that it is part of the tune. So there were these Mongolian people singing with motionless feet, and there was the Irish audience, tapping away with their feet.

Dead Right in Letterfrack: a one act play

Dead Right in Letterfrack
A One Act Play

Connor, 21 years old, Irish
Fergus, 21 years old, Irish
Ruth, 44 years old, American
Julia, 33 years old, Danish
Bus Driver, 50 years old, Irish
Girls, between 19 and 22 years old, German/French/Spanish/Irish
Boys, between 19 and 22 years old, German/French/Spanish/Irish

Letterfrack is a town in Connemara.

Scene i
[An empty bus sits at the stop. A group of students stand around with backpacks, waiting]
Connor [runs up carrying three backpacks, out of breath, throws pack to the ground, begins shouting]: Nobody get on the bus! Don’t let anyone get on the bus!
Fergus [leaning against a wall, tweed cap askew]: It’s not our bus, Connor.
Connor: Oh. [pause] So I’ve got the list anyway. [He bustles around ticking people off the list who are present].
[the empty bus pulls out and another bus pulls in.]
Connor [stuffs list into one of his packs]: Everybody get on the bus! Put your things in the boot! Get on the bus! This is our bus!
Girl: Fergus has fuckin’ stupid hair!
[general laughter]
Fergus: Hey! Where have your hands been!
Girl: In your fuckin’ hair! [Shrieks with laughter]
[the group slowly boards the bus]
[On the bus.]
Connor [striding up and down the aisle of the bus]: Okay! Everybody sit down! Hey! Sit down! Listen up, lads: I have to count ye so sit down!
Fergus [to the bus driver]: This’ll be a pisser.
[A girl comes running towards the bus, her back pack bouncing as she runs full tilt for the bus. ]
Fergus [shouting out the door of the bus]: Hurry up! We’re leavin’ now!
Connor: Stow your pack in the back, in the boot! Fergus, put her pack in the boot!
[the girl tries to get on the bus, but the driver inches the bus forward each time she tries to get on. ]
Fergus: Ya fuckin’ crazy bastard! [laughing. Pushes girl into the bus and jumps in behind her.]
Bus Driver: I’ll hafta see yer ID before you can get on the bus.
Girl [confused]: Okay [starts to open her day pack]
Ruth: No, no. It’s okay. He’s just playing. You don’t have to show any ID. [Pulls girl past bus driver]
Fergus and Bus Driver laugh.


Scene ii
[Two hours later. The bus pulls into a shopping center.]
Connor: Okay! Listen up lads! We’re stopping at this Tesco for fifteen minutes! Got that? Fifteen minutes! [He gets off the bus first and as each person gets off the bus he says]: Fifteen minutes!
[Forty minutes later. The students return to the bus, most bringing cases of Molson Gold. Connor and Fergus carry two cases each.]
Bus Driver: No drink on the bus. Put it all in the boot.
[The bus fills. As it pulls out of the parking lot, there is the sound of bottles opening in the back of the bus. Soon after, the back of the bus is howling 1980’s broadway show tunes, singing one word of the lyrics in three.

Scene iii
[The bus arrives in Letterfrack and comes to a halt in the center of the village. There is a pub to the right, and a pub to the left. It is full dark.]
Connor: Get off the bus! Everybody get off the bus! We’re here!
[People disembark. Connor and Fergus hurl all the packs in the back of the bus into the road behind the bus. Ruth and Julia retrieve their packs and walk into the darkness following a sign that says, “Monastery Hostel”. Connor and Fergus go into the near pub.]

Scene iv
[People straggle into the open door of the Monastery Hostel. It is silent and deserted. Everyone mills around in the hallway.]
Girl: A quoi faire?
Boy: Und jetz was?
Boy: Que hacemos?
Ruth: I guess we just take places in the rooms.
[Connor and Fergus bustle into the crowd.]
Connor: We have the whole hostel. Just take a place somewhere.
Boy: Any place?
Connor: You’re dead right!
Fergus [shouting with glee]: It’s quarter past beer o’clock, lads!
[People disappear into rooms and put down their packs to claim their hostel beds. Then, everyone assembles in the common room. There is a peat fire burning in the 19th century iron grate. Paperback books in many languages stack most flat surfaces. There is a candelabra burning on the mantelpiece of the fireplace. The room is furnished with battered mission style armchairs and a couch. Benches line the walls. The windows begin to fog as more people assemble. Eventually 53 people squeeze into the room. Most hold a beer, some two beers. A bottle of wine begins to circulate around the room. Fergus stands up on the fireplace fender so that he stands above the crowd.
Fergus: This trip is all about great craic. We always have a lot of fun here. This is a place about having fun. Do you hear me?!
[Muted cheers]
Connor: Tomorrow we’re going hill-walking so I hope everybody has good boots. If anyone is tired or has a medical problem, you have to communicate with us because the secret is good communication. We can’t help you if you don’t communicate with us. We’re here to see that everybody is all rigth. Right?
Fergus: Yer dead right.
Connor: Okay, so breakfast is at nine. We’ll get you up at half eight.
Fergus: Yeah, we’re gonna come around and bang pots and pans in your room at eight cuz we gotta get goin’ to get up on the mountain. Don’t be late!
Connor: Right lads, listen up. We have to be on the bus at half nine so be sharp.
[Everyone disperses.]

Scene v
Ruth and Julia go into their dorm room. A girl who has lost her bag in the confusion of bags in the road lies sprawled on her bed in her clothing, fast asleep. Ruth and Julia change into their pajamas.
Ruth: That was a long bus ride.
Julia: Yeah. I thought we would die for certain when the bus driver was swerving all over the road.
Ruth: I think he was doing that to make the people who were standing in the back of the bus fall over. Do you think he hit that sheep?
Julia: No, I don’t think so. We would have heard it if he had.
Ruth: He drove straight for it while it was trying to get out of the way.
Julia: He swerved, you know, and I think he swerved just in time.
Ruth [doubtfully]: Okay. I’ll feel better if I believe you.
Julia: So believe me. Oh, I’m looking forward to getting some rest. It’s been a stressful week.
Ruth: Good night. [turns out the light]

Scene vi
[The room is in darkness. A sliver of light is exposed around the loose fitting door of the room.]
Sound of feet clattering down the stairs.
The first four bars of Heart and Soul are played on an out of tune piano.
Sound of Fergus’ voice: Shut up!
The first four bars of Ode to Joy are played.
Fergus’ voice drowns out the piano as he howls the opening instrumental to “I love you baby.”
Girls voices’ come in at the verse: I love you baaaabeeeee, na na na na na naaaaa na na naaaaa, I love you baaaabeeeee. [they don’t know the words and the song trails off]
Sound of feet running up the stairs.
Brief silence.
A door slams.
Many feet run into the hall.
Unintelligible shouting in French.
Sound of Connor’s voice: I’m fuckin’ Irish. That what it is. I’m fuckin’ Irish. I’m gonna teach you Irish, right?
Boy’s voice: Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?
Sound of Connor’s voice: I’m fuckin’ talkin’ to you in fuckin’ English, but I’m gonna teach you Irish, right? Pog mo thon! Ya fuckin’ got that, lads? Pog mo thon!
Sound of Fergus’ voice: Yer dead right! Yer dead right!
Boy’s voice: Vive la France.
Feet clatter up and down stairs.
The piano clangs as if person has fallen on it.
The sound of a body hitting the wall.
Connor’s voice: Ow! Ow! That hurts!
Sound of Fergus and others laughing.
Connor’s voice: God damn it! I must be bleeding out my ass! I’ll never have a family. Damn that hurt. Fuck!
Fergus’s voice: Yer dead right! Yer fuckin’ dead right! [laughing]
[general laughter]
Feet on the stairs.
Connor’s voice: I’m bleeding! I’m fuckin’ bleeding.
Fergus: Fer crissake. It’s just red wine.
Boy’s voice: Hey! Oh!
A door slams.
Girl’s voice: will you take these things? Hey! No, no, no. What will you do with those socks?
Boy’s voice: So where do you think we will find them? Downstairs?
Girl’s voice: Tu sais tres bien.
Sound of body falling down the stairs.
General laughter.
Fergus’ voice: Yer dead right! Yer dead right!
Connor’s voice: God damn. Fuck all.
Sound of vomiting.
[Inside the darkened room]
Julia: Ruth? What time is it?
Ruth: Five.
Julia: Have you gotten any sleep?
Ruth: I think I dreamed that I slept.
Silence.
Birdsong.

Scene vii
[8:00 am. Ruth is mopping up the vomit that splashed on the door of the room she and Julia are sharing. Connor walks into a nearby room of sleeping people.]
Connor: Everybody up! Everybody all right?
Boy: Shiiiiiit.
Connor: Yer dead right. [clapping loudly] Up! Up! Up! Up! Everybody up, lads! Take yer time getting up! I’ll be back in a minute. Breakfast at nine.
[He repeats this refrain in another room. Coughing and cursing follow him. Someone begins to sing the Marseillaise.]


Scene viii
Fergus and Connor are sitting at a table in the dining room. It is 9:30.
Ruth and Julia approach the table.
Connor: Did you sleep well? [there is no trace of sarcasm in his voice]
Ruth: Sleep?
Julia: Well, it was kind of loud, like all night. I looked around Letterfrack this morning to see if there was a B&B where I could stay tonight, but they are all full. Do you think there are other arrangements that could be made here so it might be a little easier to get some sleep tonight?
Connor [looks anywhere but at Julia]: I don’t know, like, ya know, there are so many people [his voice trails off].
Fergus: Look. That’s just how it is. You’re with a group of college students out for a bit of fun. [he stands and turns his back to Ruth, Julia, and Connor]
Ruth [addressing Connor, who has remained seated but is looking into the distance]: Well, sure, yeah, you’re out for a bit of fun, and that’s grand, but, see, it was the screaming in the hallway. We just wondered if the screaming could just take place in another location after midnight, that’s all.
Connor [looks at Fergus’ back still resolutely turned towards them]: It’s, like, I don’t know there’s much we can do really.
Ruth: Okay. We’ll see what we can do.
Connor jumps up and leaves. Fergus has already disappeared.
Ruth and Julia sit down and pour tea.
Ruth: Well, I guess professor Fergus’ lecture set it out pretty clearly: Fuck you.
Julia [puts her head in her hands. She rubs her eyes tiredly.]: Yer dead right.

Reflections on culture change in teaching and learning

Look out: this one gets a bit academic. This weekend I am going to Connemara with the Outdoor Pursuits Club for the whole weekend, and Saturday night will be a "night out for a bit of craic (fun)" so I will do my Oscar Wilde post on that one Monday night. However, this one gets a bit dry with all the metacognitive ruminations on pedagogy. (just a little taste of what's come, that last phrase is. hope you liked it.)

Evidently the Irish education system is in the process of change. The older system involved a lot of independent reading. You attended a lecture, and you read the extra sources, and you read more if you wanted a good grade. Then you went to a final exam and wrote an essay based on a series of rhetorical questions that functioned as essay titles. At least that’s my impression so far. The whole grade for the class was out of that final exam for which you only got a score as feedback. It was also a tradition of complete specialization where if you “read history” that was all you read. The whole general education thing did not exist. The University of Limerick was founded in 1971 out of a technical school, and its strength is still in science and technology, for which it is enthusiastically funded. The newest endeavor is the World Academy of Irish Music and Dance, which was partially funded and supported by some U.S. cooperative agreements. The Sports science, equine science, and engineering are the most attended programs here, but the World Academy of Music is catching up, I think.

So, since this is a young school and based on technology, so it hasn’t got a lot historical baggage, not like Trinity whose pace of change could only be glacial. So the University of Limerick has just acquired a new President who promised to have a new focus on, what else, Teaching and Learning. The cool new vogue at the U. of L. is “continuous assessment” and “feedback”. The new president is also threatening a move towards general education requirements. What this means is that they are trying to make courses more interactive. Thus, for every two hours of Lecture, there is a one hour of “tutorial”. The tutorial is supposed to be the interactive time where the instructor has some kind of discussion with the students. The tutorial is supposed to be part of the “continuous” assessment where the students get course points for showing up at the tutorial. Another part of the continuous assessment is to have essays assigned during the term instead of just at the end of the term. You are supposed to get feedback on these essays, but it is unclear what form the feedback takes.

However, institutional culture change is really hard. Now in week 4, I have seen attendance at the lectures dwindle significantly. Even now in week 4, the instructors still beg for students to attend the tutorials. Already students have missed a great deal of the “continuous assessment” which is part of their grade. However, they may not fully realize this. The history department has publicized a PTA scale that they use for their feedback on essays. It is not clear how other departments deal with this. A new proposal for more fairness in grading here is to have people from outside the school (or department? I’m not sure) grade the essays so that the students are “graded for what they know, not who they are.” Now that seems like a controversial proposal! As a professor, I’m not sure how I would feel about that. There is a general complaint about grade inflation, and this would be one way to address it. The rating scales would have to be really clear. I would want to teach to a good test, if I had to teach to externally judged standards. The UL student newspaper is not happy with this, and one of its writers published an editorial stating that the students did not support this external assessment.

So, students are accustomed to a system where attendance in lecture is of no consequence, the tutorials are novel and incomprehensible (thus not taken seriously), and the culture of cramming for exams is deeply ingrained. As for the professors, the lecture-and-leave-‘em mentality is strong. In one tutorial one of the professors tried to have a conversation with the chairs in a circle, but it was a one way interview between the student nominated and the professor, which was witnessed by other members of the circle. In another tutorial, the professor had groups discuss a poem and report back, but he did not have enough time for real interaction and the students were so unfamiliar with group work that in all four groups it was one dominant student who took on the role of professor. The professor turned the reporting into an interview with the student, witnessed by the others, and the students were so buffaloed by the concept of having an opinion, that the professor had to interview them to get it. Both professors were trying, but clearly it was early in the system, and everybody was learning how to do it. I have not attended a class in which there has been a give and take of ideas. Well, the Irish language class has an instructor who is younger than the majority of the older women in the class, and he has been bullied by these powerful crones into a give and take of ideas during the “lecture” (the poor dear reading his notes off a word document displayed on the class screen). Powerpoint has arrived at UL with a vengeance, but many people seem to merely read from the slides that are packed with text. Two of the lectures I attend have more sophisticated use of PPT, which makes the lectures much more interesting. One lecturer appears to have just typed paragraphs of the reference text into her slides which she read to us. I discoverd this when I read the text and found that it had been read to me in class. Poor thing: she was young enough to wear low rider pants and a tiny t-shirt that framed her fat. I believe she is still learning about what it is to give a lecture. Maybe this was her first one. Someone has to talk to her about the costume, or is this me getting all Victorian again?

I know that I have done the “witnessed interview” discussion in my own classes, and now I better understand that I need to facilitate better student to student participation, and teach the class how to do this kind of discussion. I also poignantly realize how much time is necessary to support a real discussion. Many of these lecturers use the tutorial as more lecture time with some rhetorical questions blended in (which makes me fume). I understand that if I want to have a real conversation about a topic, then the whole 50 minutes has to be devoted to that. There is not appropriate time for anything else. Gosh. I’m learning so much, and all this metacognition of paying attention both to WHAT is going on (all this new content) as well as HOW it is going on (the teaching and learning) is really intense. I am fueled by McVitties Digestive Biscuits.

Pole Dancing

The last posting was about death, so it stands to reason that this one should be about sex. I went to see a show at the local theatre called "The Naked Truth." It stars several popular soap opera actresses as they tell a poignant tale of betrayal, love lost and found, sex discovered, domestic voilence and cancer survived. You know, typical grrl stuff. But it was the context of the viewing more than the rather cliched melodrama that really struck me.

A few years ago, I was in a bookshop in Dublin, and I came across a book on the sale table called "The Irish Joy of Sex." Well, says I to myself, "I didn't know they had their own book on it," so I opened it up and every page inside it was blank. I suppose it would have only been one euro even if it had had text. Nevertheless, I found it a thoughtful comment on the topic. So it was with this cultural background in mind that I went to see a play that billed itself as "The Naked Truth: its a woman thing. A play by women for women that men should see." There I was, in a packed theatre, watching a play that had a 20 minute intermission during which the loudspeaker urged us, "And now we will have a 20 minute intermission. Please drink responsibly." True enough, the little bar was mobbed. No beer was served, but enough whiskey and wine coolers were packed away in those 20 minutes to equal the take in ticket sales. Thus it was a highly receptive audience in the second half, but I did notice that the bar was open a good half hour before the performance started. Anyway, this well lubricated audience was 90% Irish women between the ages of 30 and 50 (do the math: they (we) were teenagers in the 70's and 80's). The performers were about the same age, but the play was done in working class English accents. The music was pulsing American disco from the 80's and 90's. I know this because I recognized the majority of the songs from my kickboxing-aerobics days. So these middle aged Irish women were watching working class English women learning how to pole dance to American disco-pop. Not only that, but the finale is a real set of pole dances.

The progress of the play is the usual cliche: clutzes bloom by dint of hard work, shared struggle, and community feeling. And this audience bought the Miracle Play hook, line, and sinker, such that in the finale, when the apparent clutzes came out and did polished dances, the audience just cheered right along with delighted willing suspension of disbelief and almost naive support of the women on stage. But what were they cheering for? For women their own age wearing see though bustiers or latex nurses uniforms, spiked heels, stockings and garters, shimmying thier fannies up and down poles and wagging their tits at the audience. Ah, how, um, liberating and empowering. The audience staggered to their feet and gave the half naked performers a standing ovation for humping their poles with such womanly authority. Granted, it was funny, but I was still trying to wrap my mind around the nature of the juxtaposition of conflicting genres. Oh, and the song that the performers took a bow to was, I suppose, a rallying cry for feminist empowerment, "Sisters doin' it on the stage."

I have to admit that I discovered my prudish limit when I was genuinely grossed out by the woman who turned her back to the audience, jammed the pole between her butt cheeks and shimmied so that her butt fat jiggled around the pole. I can only suppose that this is a classic "pole move" designed to titillate. I'm afraid it had rather the opposite effect on this audience member. Now excuse me whilst I remove my Victorian frock.

Keening and catharsis

Yeats deals a lot with the nature of death, but in my folklore class, we have recently taken a different tack: the practice of keening and the old traditions of the wake. Funerals in Ireland are still huge community events. Last week two volunteer fire fighters were killed in a fire, and the news today showed the funeral processession through the town. It was huge! The whole entire town turned out to march behind the coffins, draped in the Irish flag, lead by a bagpiper, to the church which filled to overflowing. The service was piped outside the church on loudspeakers so those who had to stand outside could hear it.

In the folklore class, we were looking at pre-19th century funerary rites which included wakes and keening. The Irish word for keening is "Caoineadh" and one of the most famous Caoineadh is the "An Caoineadh Airt O Laoghaire" from the 18th century. The folklore of the keening woman is fascinating. Since the 4th century the Catholic church has been writing against the practice of the wake and keening. Despite this opposition, keening at wakes continued into the 19th century. Keening was done by professional older women who were often hired to facilitate the keening at a wake. This older woman would be the focus point for the family's grief and faciliate the grieving process. She was also seen as sort of a medium who would help comfort the soul and help it find its way from this world into the next. The stories say that she (the group of keening women) would create these elaborate grieving performances of great weeping, raging, and loving poetry to properly mourn and celebrate the life and death of the person. Their hair would be loose and flying around, their clothing would be in disarray, their anger would be raging, and their grief would be wild. Not much of the extemporaneous lament poetry is recorded because the keening was perceived to be such a powerful act of ushering the dead between the worlds. It was not allowed to be recorded, and it was not considered good to put it in writing.

The laments that are kept are powerful pieces of poetry. They included urging the dead person to get up and quit being dead, cursing the dead for causing so much grief, cursing the ones who were responsible for the death, telling the dead person how beloved they were, and celebrating the acts of the person in life. From the accounts, the keening was a professional and powerful show. The folklorists hypothesize that the keening woman, through her performance and her poetry, would help the family and the community assembled at the wake to vividly travel through the stages of grief (per Kuber Ross), and help the family reintegrate into the community.

The Catholic church is violently opposed to the practice. Even in a 1990's video called "Waking the Dead" (a great video) a funeral director says that it is so much better to have a funeral taken over by a funeral home, and not have the dead person at home, because it takes all the stress out of the family having to make tea for the visitors. I swear, the guy on the video says that! I almost fell out of my chair, it was so crass. But the Catholic church also wrote in a 19th century synod that wakes were bad because of the expense the family went to in providing food and drink for the guests. The church maintained that all that money would be better spent by giving it to the church. I am not kidding: this is officially recorded.
Did the people writing that realize how crass that sounds?

My project is involved with how the modern mental health agencies are coming back around to valuing the traditional wake practices that were almost completely stomped out by the Famine, funeral homes, and the Catholic church. In the Journal Of Palliative Medecine, there is an article about how the keening practices were actually quite valuable as a way of helping people deal with grief. In the Irish Journal of Grief Counseling, there is an article that found when people got together after a family member died, and they talked about the person, they felt better. Surprise surprise.

Actually, folklorists have posited that the church and the funeral homes are opposed to home wakes because it takes the locus of control of death out of their hands. Power grabs do often seem to underscore issues like this. Of course the power of these Wild Keening Women must have scared the holy hooley out of the priests. Worse, here were older women in the community with power that should rightly belong to the priest. They HATE it when old ladies have respect and power. I can't help but think about the story I heard from Priscilla about trying to have a little wake for a family member where they had set candles at the head and foot, and were reading prayers, when the firemen came in to retrieve the body. The person had been gone for about an hour, but they wanted to resusitate her. Priscilla reports that she said, "But she's dead." The firemand protested, "But don't you want her to live?!" and Priscilla had to point out once more, "But she's dead." Evidently the fireman was so distraught that he couldn't do his life-saving job that all he could do was put out one of the candles. This is such a poignant story of how conflicted our modern lives are concerning death and the leave taking it requires.