History, Heritage, Folklore, and News from County Sligo, Ireland

Saturday July 1st 2009

Latest on Sligo's Coffin Ship 'The Carricks of Whitehaven'

An apology
I owe visitors to Sligo Heritage an apology as I have been promising an article on “St. Patrick & Bishop Bron in Sligo" for some time and have just now completed and uploaded Part 1. The explanation is that massive amounts of time have been taken up by SligoHeritage and the Co. Sligo Famine Commemoration Committee in liasing with Government and other agencies and individuals in Ireland and in Canada that might have been able to help us in our quest to repatriate some of the timbers of the Carricks of Whitehaven to Ireland (see below with links).

Carrick of Whitehaven project ends

Tremendous enthusiasm for the project was generated both overseas and in Sligo. Ambassador Patrick Binns in the Canadian Embassy in Dublin took up the challenge with great enthusiasm and generous offers of financial assistance were pledged from interested parties in Ireland and Canada. The project had developed to a stage where a delegation from Sligo was on the point of travelling to Blanc Sablon in Canada to recover the timbers when the devastating news came that following an investigation on site by archaeologists in the employ of Parks Canada there is a serious question whether the wreck and artefacts in Blanc Sablon are actually those of the Carricks of Whitehaven.

I am grateful to my correspondents in Blanc Sablon who brought the Carrick connection to my attention in the first place — and indeed the remains of the ship may lie somewhere on that shore. However until some evidence comes to light that may refute the assertions below regarding the hulk in question, the project is at an end. This is a portion of the report of Canada’s Parks Department archaeologists following a survey of the wreck, Ambassador Binns’ email to me following our conversation, and my reply:

Archaeological Assessment

“…Many elements of the beached hull section are not consistent with what we know of the Carricks:

The Carricks was copper sheathed, this hull was not copper sheathed (no sheathing, copper tacks or copper-alloy bolts).
This hull shows evidence of a small engine. The Carricks was a sailing brig and there is absolutely no evidence that it was transformed to become a steamship with propeller. On the contrary, the noted repairs in historical documentation found to date mention decks and top-sides repairs but do not mention propulsion. Also, the wrecking accounts still refer to her as a brig and not as a steamer, which they would have. In addition, it is highly unlikely that an old sailing vessel would have been equipped with the very latest technology, even more so since this vessel was used as an immigrant transport, ships notoriously in bad shape.
Propeller lying on shore at Blanc Sablon

The propeller found is too big for this hull, and too modern for the time-period of the Carricks.
Wood species is soft-wood, more likely Canadian-built than English-built vessel.
Estimated dimensions are too small for the Carricks.
The letter from the period states that the wreck or part of it was sold in Cap des Rosiers. For the wreck to have drifted this far is highly improbable and the interpretation that the bell was recovered to be sold or reused is more likely.

Joe:

Thank you for speaking with us this morning. We were disappointed to learn, and to advise you, that the Report on the Carricks of Whitehaven investigation has determined that the wreck observed is not the Carricks. I appreciate the enthusiasm, commitment and time which you and others have put into this Project. Despite the Report's conclusions, I would be pleased to meet with you, and others, in the future, to discuss the wonderful relationship between the Sligo Region and Canada.

Sincerely,

Pat Binns
Ambassador / Ambassadeur
Embassy of Canada / Ambassade du Canada

Thank you so much for all the trouble you have taken since the news of the 'discovery' of the hulk of the Carricks of Whitehaven.

Although the news is disappointing the generous response of the Canadian Embassy and the priority that you personally gave the project has been a heart-warming and a positive experience for us. Indeed it is entirely reminiscent of the generous response of the Canadian people, and particularly of the province of Quebec, to the ragged wretches that arrived on your shores in such great and overwhelming numbers in the mid 19th century.

Our Committee would indeed be very pleased to meet with you either in Dublin or in Sligo. We do hope that you will travel to Sligo sometime soon on which occasion we will be glad to give you a good Sligo welcome in an official, or indeed if you prefer, in an unofficial capacity. There is much to do and see here, and as we have seen, a great historical connection between the Sligo region and Canada.

Joe Mc Gowan (Chairman)
Co. Sligo Famine Commemoration Committee,
“Dún Caológ”, Mullaghmore, Co. Sligo”

Finis
And so the Carricks project comes to an end — but in Mark McGowan’s pragmatic and reflective response to the news we can see that our efforts were not, after all, entirely in vain:

“…There is a thrill in chasing the puzzle and the mystery and, though the end result was not what we might have wanted, the pleasure was in being part of that mighty little band that sought a common goal. It has been a pleasure to connect with you and the Sligo Heritage group. Should you ever need my assistance, don't
hesitate to contact that "Canadian McGowan”...”

Tuesday June 22nd 2009

The Bolivian pig
A frequent correspondent, Paul Burns, has been in touch with me lately to tell me that he has been reading A Bitter Wind. Paul's emails are always interesting so this one I would like to share with you:
"Joe,
I am enjoying The Bitter Wind very much, a chapter at a time, since it is not a book to be hurried, and each incident in it provokes reflection. This morning, I was reading the portion on pigs, which brought back several memories--and a pig joke that perhaps originated in Ireland.

One memory is of sitting in a dirt-floor restaurant in a very isolated town in Bolivia, while my driver had a flat tire repaired. There was an enormous dog sleeping in the corner, or so I thought before the "dog" arose and came over to my table to stare at me expectantly, almost at face level. I suppose it wanted food scraps, but since all I was imbibing was a soft drink, I could not oblige it, became nervous, and retreated out the door. A pig in a restaurant probably made all kinds of sense to Bolivians, but in my country it would result in the police being called.

My mother, born in a small town in the frigid north, said her father slaughtered a pig every fall and hung it outside the back door where it provided the family's meat for the winter--preserved by the intense cold in that portion of the country. She and her siblings grew up on pig meat and pig fat, and never a worry about high cholesterol. Years later, when she visited me in a South American country and I asked her to make those wonderful cakes and pies of my childhood, she agreed to do so of course, but she had to have lard. I had to search most of the grocery stores in the city to find "grasa de puerco," as the Latins call it, because even there lard was becoming a rarity. You hardly ever see it in our USA markets anymore. Despite that diet, mother lived to 101, which makes me wonder why I am swallowing these anti-cholesterol pills my doctor prescribed

Fortunes of a three legged pig
The joke concerns a traveler whose car breaks down on a country road. The farmer to whom he appeals for help calls into the next town to order up a tow truck, but since it will not arrive for several hours, the farmer invites him to join the family for dinner. At the table are two small children and a three-legged pig. The traveler struggles to avoid asking an impolite question, such as why there is a pig at the table, but finally he cannot restrain himself. Well, the farmer replies, when the boy was just a toddler he fell into the pig pen, and this pig fended off the others who might have regarded him as a free meal. Then later, the small girl fell into the mill race, and this pig dove in and dragged her to safety. I see, said the traveler. You certainly owe this pig a great deal, and I now understand why you regard it as a member of your family. Did it lose the missing leg in the mill race?
No, said the farmer, but a pig who has done all that much for the family, you can't eat all at once!

Keep up the good work,

Thursday 7th May 2009

Sligo Famine Ship emerges from the ice!

More on the Carrick of Whitehaven.
Before reading this item please go HERE and HERE and scroll down for background and previous articles on the wrecking of the Carrick of Whitehaven.

Further to this information I was astonished to learn last winter that the hulk of the ‘Carrick’, wrecked in 1847, still exists! Brian Burke who lives near Blanc Sablon informed me that the tide was low when the Carrick was driven on the rocks at Cap de Rosier in Gaspe:
“When the high tide came in it lifted the Carrick off the rocks. It was carried by the wind and tide down to Blanc Sablon.”
It seems the timbers were buried in sand that shifted a few years ago and exposed the wreck, or what was left of it. Blanc Sablon is c350 miles away from Gaspe on the northern side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Go HERE for Google map of the area.

Covered first in sand and then in ice
On discovering the existence of the Carrick I have been in contact with Brian Burke who further informed me that the wreck was covered in ice during the winter. He kindly offered to take a photo of the timbers emerging from the frozen ocean. It’s interesting to note that in Ireland we complain if the weather is not pleasant, sun shining and birds singing in April. How surprising it is to learn then that in this part of the world massive sheets of ‘bay ice’ cover the sea up to the end of April. Another correspondent, Donald Delisle, sent me photos of an icebreaker off the shores of Gaspe on the 30th of April. Consider then the plight of the poorly clothed and starving emigrants from Sligo arriving on those shores in normal conditions, let alone being shipwrecked in the freezing waters and thrown on the merciless rocks!

What should we do?
Now that we know where the remains of this ship lie shouldn’t we repatriate at least some of these historic timbers to Ireland and to Sligo? It must be done soon. Buried in sand the hulk was protected from the grinding action of the ice for many years. Now that it is exposed it cannot last much longer. Through SligoHeritage, and as much publicity as it is possible to gain from the media, I make the strongest appeal to the people of Sligo and persons with Sligo connections to acquire some of the planks of this vessel before it is destroyed and disappears forever.

To celebrate Bealtaine, the ancient Celtic festival midway between the spring equinox and summer solstice, Michael at Knowth has sent us this extended version of the Loughcrew Equinox Video. Go HERE

Easter Monday 2009

Easter Commemorations

Picture left shows a wreath being laid by Pearse Gilligan and Larry Mullin at the Markievicz Memorial in Rathcormack, Co. Sligo. The flag was raised by local resident Padhraig Branley. Larry read excerpts from a novel by Italo Siddu inspired by a visit to Lissadell House some years ago.

A grey-stoned oyster
Which has no pearl
Stolen by time
The gaze of old strangers
From the huge windows
… and no gazelle with a silk kimono…

Italo lives in Italy and is completing a novel based on the life of Markievicz which he expects to publish this year in Italian and English. Larry announced that as this is the 100th anniversray of the founding of Na Fianna by Constance Markievicz a lecture by author Anne Haverty at a Sligo venue is planned.
SligoHeritage host Joe McGowan read excerpts from Con's writings and a poem written to Constance Markievicz by her sister Eva:

What has time to do with thee,
Who hast found the victor's way?
To be rich in poverty,
Without sunshine to be gay,
To be free in a prison cell?
Nay, on that undreamed judgement day,
When, on the old-world's scrap-heap flung,
Powers and empires pass away,
Radiant and unconquerable
Thou shalt be young.
Eva Gore-Booth

Decision to transfer Cancer Services an Obscenity
The Government decision to persist in transferring the excellent breast cancer services from Sligo to University College Hospital Galway is an obscenity and should not be tolerated by the people of Sligo or Galway, said Galway City councillor Catherine Connolly, when she addressed those attending the Connolly Forum’s annual Easter 1916 Commemoration Ceremony in Sligo on Easter Sunday.

Led by Flag-bearers carrying the Tricolour and the Plough and the Stars, those participating in the ceremony marched from Cairns Drive to the Republican Plot in Sligo cemetery to hear the former Galway Mayor deliver the oration. Apparently seeing any display of patriotism as a threat to the State, two Garda Special Branch in a light blue, Dublin registered car, their faces concealed, watched the little group move off.

The speakers dealt with issues of political and economic concern to the people of Sligo: “For freedom to have any real meaning in the 21st century Ireland must have a public health system based on need and not greed and profit.” Cllr Connolly said. “Currently the ‘Dynamic Duo’ Professor Keane and Minister Mary Harney wish to make Galway a centre of excellence and in the process destroy a centre of excellence in Sligo. In so doing they ignore key telling features that characterise UCHG and make it impossible for it to be a centre of excellence…

Nationalise the Banks!
Cllr Declan Bree, who presided at the ceremony, said “We live in a time when there is a deep cynicism and a significant distrust of politics and everything associated with political and economic life in this country…
…In an effort to bailout the banks and property speculators and to prop up the establishment, our National Pension Fund is being raided and squandered. Those who control political and economic power have put their own survival first and will attempt to make not only the present generation but the next generation pay for that survival by putting the county in pawn to international bankers and finance houses….
“Instead of bailing out the banks the government should have nationalised the banks and repudiated their debts.” said Cllr Bree.
Following the oration as a lone piper played a lament, Ms Brenda Barr, laid a wreath on behalf of the Connolly Forum and Mr Brian Scanlon laid a wreath on behalf of the People’s Movement. The ceremony concluded with the National Anthem.

Good Friday April 10th 2009

Annual 1916 Easter Rising Commemoration Ceremony at the Republican Plot in Sligo Cemetery on Easter Sunday at 12 Noon. Speaker: Cllr. Catherine Connolly (Galway). Chair: Cllr. Declan Bree. Everyone welcome.

There will be a flag raising and wreathlaying ceremony at the Markievicz Memorial in the village of Rathcormack at 11.00 am on Easter Sunday morning.

In the news:
Assylum Seeker

The case of an assylum seeking Nigerian woman, Pamela Izevbekhai, has been making headlines here in Ireland over the past two years. She has a hard core of faithful supporters in Sligo but they may be feeling let down over recent revelations that documents supporting her case have been forged. Gerry McLaughlin of the Sligo Weekender reports that the mother-of-two may face a grilling from gardai over the faked documents which were used to back her claims to avoid a deportation order.
Detectives from the National Immigration Bureau will wait until the end of Pamela’s current Supreme Court bid to stop the deportation of herself and her two daughters Naomi, 8, and Gemina, 6, before considering questioning her under anti-fraud laws. Senior garda sources told the Sunday Business Post newspaper that they were “compelled” to launch an investigation where there was a belief that a forgery had been used in support of an application to the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner.

Fake documents
The fake documents claimed that Mrs Izevbekhai’s baby Elizabeth died from female circumcision in 1994. And she has been subsequently trying to prove the existence of her daughter Elizabeth through contacts in Nigeria. Ms Izebekhai claims her two daughters will also suffer female circumcision if returned to Nigeria. The Nigerian government have admitted to the United Nations that this practice is a problem they can’t police. Yet their ambassador Dr Kemafo Chikwe claimed that the practice was “very insignificant and was “voluntary”.
Ireland has previously been considered a 'soft touch' for assylum seekers wishing to enter the EU. The revelation that forged documents were used to support the case threatens to erode future support for asylum seekers: “She is just one of 2,000 claims but it does set things back. Already there has been a bit of a backlash,” said a source.

Meanwhile it has emerged that the government is refusing to offer Ms Izevbekhai a deal of staying in Ireland in return for dropping her legal challenge against deportation. The Department of Foreign Affairs has written to the European Court of Human Rights to say that the Department of Justice does not propose to make a “friendly settlement”.The Department of Foreign Affairs describe her legal challenge as an “abuse of process” and accuses her of “deception”. Ms Izevbekhai’s case was adjourned on Friday at the Supreme Court after her legal team withdrew from the case. Her counsel Mel Crystal said they had withdrawn because they had been presented with “conflicting evidence”. The court has also accepted an affidavit stating that the documents presented were fake.

March 23rd

For images of the Equinox Sunrise at Loughcrew on the 20th March go HERE

March 16th 2009

Irish Government Ministers flee the country!
Is there any other nation in the world where its leading politicians head abroad on their national holiday? It's very strange behaviour! Answers HERE.
The Irish Government announced it has dramatically scaled back the annual St. Patrick's Day travel plans though. Costs will be kept to a minimum they say, but yet Brian Cowen and nine senior Ministers will be jetting off to places foreign anywhere from America to Australia and points between. Seven junior ministers are also exiting the country to 'celebrate' our national holiday!
The Taoiseach will be in New York with Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin before heading to Washington to present the traditional bowl of Shamrock to President Obama at the White House. I'd volunteer to go myself but I just love it too much down on Achill Island (Go here and scroll down) on that day. (Truth to tell I don't think they'd put their hand in their pocket for me anyway!)
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan will be in London, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey goes to Canada, Energy Minister Eamon Ryan hits California and New York, while Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Eamon Ó Cuiv will hit Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. Seven Ministers of State will tour cities in the US, India and Europe while the Tánaiste Mary Coughlan and Ministers Mary Harney, Willie O'Dea, Batt O'Keeffe and myself are among those staying at home to run the country.
If you happen to see any of our travellers wish them a Happy St. Patrick's Day for me — and a Happy St. Patrick's Day also to my readers wherever you may be.

"After 16 years in Canada, I came home to Ireland. Big mistake. A really big mistake . . ." writes BRENDAN LANDERS.

EMIGRATION

THERE ARE three types of people who uproot themselves and emigrate to make their lives anew in a country that is not their own by birthright. Some are gifted with itchy feet and a lust for adventure – they abandon their homeland to satisfy their curiosity about the wide world beyond. Some are fortunate enough to happen upon a foreign place that touches their soul or to bond with a person who makes the prospect of migration more attractive than a life lived at home without the other. And some are forced to emigrate because their native place has nothing substantial to offer them in life.

Most of us who left Ireland during the 1980s fell into the third category. We went away not because we had itchy feet, had found our Eldorado or fallen in love with an exotic foreigner, but because Ireland had nothing to offer us. No jobs, no opportunities, no scope to follow our dreams or aspire to even a modicum of success in life. The Irish economy was broken and it would take a miracle to fix it.

Dismal Finances
Along with the dismal state of the nation’s finances, there was a sense that whatever wealth existed was hoarded greedily by a coterie of well-connected professionals, wide boys and golden circles. The land of our birth offered us nothing but tacit encouragement to leave. Brian Lenihan snr, the father of our current Minister for Finance, put it succinctly when he said: “Sure we can’t all live on a small island.”

Emigration was expected of us and so, forlorn and abandoned, we departed. We overcame our grief, our disappointment, our homesickness, our longing for the day-to-day company of our families and friends.

We settled and went about the business of building new lives for ourselves in our homes away from home. We didn’t expect to live in Ireland again.

Hope springs anew
Then, after a decade or so of exile, a sequence of remarkable events conspired to persuade us that maybe miracles can happen after all. We watched agog as Ireland underwent an awesome transformation. The country transmogrified from an impoverished backwater racked by unemployment and a culture of despair into the epitome of cool and a clamorous hothouse of self-indulgent affluence.

U2 became the biggest rock’n’roll band in the world and, unlike previous Irish rock stars such as Van Morrison, Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher and the Boomtown Rats, who all invariably moved to London at the first taste of success, they stayed in Dublin. Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan directed world-class movies that won Oscars and they stayed in Ireland instead of moving to Hollywood. Alan Parker made a movie of The Commitments and Roddy Doyle bestrode the world of literature, won the Booker Prize and didn’t move to Paris or New York.

By virtue of Michael Flatley’s dazzling footwork, Riverdance created a sensation in theatres throughout the world and Flatley actually moved to Ireland. The IRA declared a ceasefire and the country was at peace, albeit tentatively so. Michael D Higgins served as minister for arts, culture and the Gaeltacht. A poet in Cabinet, for God’s sake – it was like 1916 all over again. Tribunals were exposing corruption in a host of establishment institutions and there was much heady talk of a brave new world of openness, honesty, transparency and ethics in public life.

Mary Robinson, a principled, liberal woman, won the presidency and put a candle in the window of her residence in the Phoenix Park as a beacon of light and a welcome home to the children of the diaspora. For us, this was a revolutionary act of sensitivity unprecedented in the country’s history. US multinationals flocked to Ireland to invest their money and gain a toehold in Europe, and the eponymous Celtic Tiger was born. Money talked the talk and Ireland quickly learned to walk the walk. There was full employment. We went home on holidays and we shook our heads in bemusement at the profusion of “Help Wanted” signs in shop windows.

The Irish government sent emissaries throughout the diaspora, asking us to come home and take our place in the new Ireland. They promised jobs, prosperity, vindication and a proud place in a proud new Ireland. And we, poor fools, chose to believe them. How could we have refused, we who had, for years, deep inside ourselves, wondered what life might have been like if we’d been able to stay home?

Going Home
We dared to believe, stifled our doubts, bought into the new zeitgeist and gave up the lives we had so carefully and painfully constructed. We sold our houses, packed our furniture into containers, uprooted our families and came back to Ireland.

Things were good at first. We found jobs that paid well. So what if the houses cost a fortune – all our savings went into the deposit and we still had to borrow a small fortune – weren’t the universities free for our kids and won’t they have a wonderful life without the shadow of emigration hanging over their heads? And weren’t the old-age pensions going up? And wasn’t this a grand new country after all its troubles?

We blinked when we saw the old and infirm racked up like refugees on trolleys in hospital waiting rooms, enduring conditions that would be embarrassing in the developing world. We baulked when we saw the subversion of progressive initiatives like the Freedom of Information Act and the Equality Agency. We gaped in disbelief as successive ministers for finance behaved like lumpen proletariat lottery winners, squandered billions of euro in budget surpluses and pumped up inflation – had they no mothers, we wondered, to instill in them the good sense of saving for a rainy day?

We were overwhelmed with dejected deja vu when our taoiseach tied himself up in verbal knots trying to explain his ill-gotten gains at the Mahon tribunal. And we wept in despair when, in the face of his chicanery, the people re-elected him. But the final nail was hammered into the coffin of our disenchantment when the financial crash came and the Government’s first instinct was to make the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of society pay for its mistakes. We finally had to admit to ourselves that the golden circles hadn’t gone away, they’d just put on new coats.

Now here we are, utterly faithless in the disposition of our elected politicians, plagued with anxiety and insecurity, one job-loss away from ruin. Our savings are gone and our houses are virtually worthless. Our children face a bleak future and the heart-rending prospect of forced emigration. We made a terrible mistake. We came back. Because we wanted to, we believed that the country had changed.

Never again.
=========================================================================================

August 2008
1 Brennan, Mick, Derry (north of Grange)             Blacksmith
2 Clancy, Patrick , Bunduff                                   Harnessmaker
3 Clarke, Keith, Derry                                       Butcher/Beekeeper
4 Dickson, Walter, Tawley, Co. Leitrim            Stonemason
5 Kelly, Ted, Ballintogher                              Strawcraft
6 Rogers, Cillian, Dromore West             Artist
7 Kelly, Colm, Monasteraden             Farmer/woodworker

September 2008
8 Welch, Clare, Castlebaldwin            Information on flax growing, weaving etc.
9 Egan, Paddy, Ballymote                     Wheelright/Coachbuilder
10 Surlis, John, Monasteraden             Woodwork/Furniture
11 Monds, Bertie, Drumcliffe                     Craftsman, showed and trained horses.
12 Devaney, Paddy, Carraroe                  Ploughman
13 Gowran, Joe, Drumcliffe                     Traditional skills, wall building, wattles, willowcraft etc.
14 Melody Kieron, Drumfad                       Sculptor, stonemason

October 2008
15 George and Violet Hunter, Carraroe, Buttermaker
16 Holland, Rosaleen, Drumcliffe, Weaver/Liomra craft
17 Branley, Chris, Rathcormack    Miner/entrepeneur/rags to riches

18 Moore Seamus, Drumfad                  Strawcraft/farmer.
19 Harrison, Pakie, Creevymore, Cliffoney            Farmer
20 Maughan, Ted, Cherryfield, Ballyhaunis Tinker/Tinsmith/Traveller
21 Kane, Joe, Ballyhaunis                                     Tailor

November 2008
22 McCann, Johnny, Milk Harbour, Boatbuilder
23 Hession, Seamus, Sligo town                          Coffinmaker
24 Nealon, Tom, Tourlestrane        Basketweaver
25 Quirke, Michael, Teesan                                    Sculptor
26 Shannon, Mick, Sligo Instrumentmaker/blacksmith/musician
27 Hannon, Johnny, Monasteraden         Basketweaver            28 Rogers, Brian, Dromore West                   Thatcher
29 O’Neill, Peadair, Enniscrone                       Fisherman

December 2008
Scully, Kathleen, Killavil                                      Crochet, knitting
Henry, Mae, Killavil,                                     Folklore
Gillen, Martina, ‘Cat and the Moon’ Castle St., Sligo. Jeweller
Flatley, Michéal, Aughris,             Stonemason/local historian/folklorist
Gallagher, Lizzie, Moneygold. Weaver
Tansey, Seamus, Gurteen/Belfast                         Musician/writer
Duffy, Pat James, Killavil                              Local historian/folklorist
Cawley, Molly, Ballymote                                     Crochet/liomra/knitting
Flynn, Liam, Tubbercurry            Ploughman/Wrenboys/New Years Eve custom
Mullaney, Noel, Sooey:          Traditional cures/rate collector/ex-county footballer
Christy Harte, Lislarry (?)                    Fisherman
Mae Feehily, Calry                            Needlework, buttermaking, arts and crafts
Seamus O’Dubthaigh, Aghamore            playwright, stage carpenter, teacher, radio personality
Cronnolly, Michael                                    Instrument maker, musician
Lomax, Rodney                                    Boatbuilder

December 19th 2008

This year don't miss the winter solstice: Go HERE

For an article on the Christmas Mummers go HERE
Read all about the Wrenboys HERE

'One Irishman's Christmas' (while the tiger was still alive) HERE and HERE (scroll down)

Nollaig shona agus Athblían Faoi Mhaise agaibh go leir.
Happy Christmas to all my readers wherever you may be. Peace and happiness in your homes and hearts.

October 13th 2008

Given the strange times we live in this retrospective reflection by Michael Viney, who writes for the Irish Times, is worth reproducing for SligoHeritage readers:

ANOTHER LIFE
"Now is the time to skin the lawn. Stack the tiles of turf under the laurels, where they will rot down nicely for the seed-bed. Meanwhile, there are raised beds to dig and leaves to be gathered for winter compost. . .” That was this column, in October, 1981, with advice to the people of Mount Merrion on growing vegetables to meet hard times. “Are things so bad,” this newspaper’s leading article had asked, “that we all should, as in wartime, try to keep our own hens, plant our own spuds, dig our own turf? . . .The alternative lifers may counsel that we should . . .make sloe gin and blackberry wine . . .” For sloe gin, as I had to point out, you needed the gin to start with.

“Another Life” of that time makes wry reading. There were the Vineys, in the early experiments of a “simple” life, while too many people beyond the mountains were having austerity thrust upon them. Thrift, as we came to realise, is something of a luxury: the really poor can’t afford it. But at least we’d both had early training. In our childhoods - Ethna’s in rural Cavan, mine in wartime Britain - thrift was the perfectly ordinary grist of domestic life. We had both slept on worn sheets that our mothers remade sides-to-middle., I went to school, somewhat shamefaced, in a shiny silver mackintosh my father had tailored from a piece of barrage balloon.

Golden Rules
The great gulf in experience between the affluent, urban young of today and the reality of past recessions comes across now in fragments overheard from radio: “we’ll just have to do without so many lattes” - or the presenter of a farming programme on cheaper cuts of meat referring to “our parsimonious grandparents”. She meant thrifty but couldn’t dredge up the word. The American Depression of the 1930s breathes from the pages of a little yellow book sent to Ethna by an emigrant grandmother. The Golden Rule Book was published in 1933, when almost 16 million Americans were drawing home relief. It drew on the letters that had flooded in to a nationwide Thrift Suggestion contest. One New York businessman reckoned that the average man of his class could save $70 a year by shaving himself instead of paying a barber, and another $12 by shining his own shoes instead of paying a (black) bootblack. What was to happen to barbers and bootblacks, he didn’t say.

Along with sensible low-cost menus to ward off malnutrition came many suggestions for supplementing family income. There were practical ideas for canning garden surpluses and offering book-keeping services, but also the young lady artist drawing picture-maps to help the week-end guests of the wealthy find their way to country houses. A business wife cut out bridge luncheons and theatre parties and her husband mowed his own lawn, but, rather more authentically, was learning to mend her son’s sneakers with a patch from a tyre-puncture kit. For the American middle class, thrift in the Depression was using coloured tablecloths to save on laundry bills, but also stuffing a cabbage with minced meat and making it last two days. It was rubbing glycerine into a hot-water bottle to prolong its life, turning the collars of shirts, and framing last year’s Christmas cards to make this year’s Christmas presents.

To Spend or Save?
Thrift – or the fear of it – begins to loom again and one wonders how well equipped for it the tiger’s Irish orphans would be. Many are using more thrift than they know, having eagerly mastered skills that, for the middle class 80 years ago, were too cheaply hired to bother with, and with power tools and freezers to help, at least until the power runs out. The present crisis should be grist to the proponents of local currencies and skill-bartering schemes to help insulate communities from the spasms of global capitalism. The trouble is, of course, that thrift and self-sufficiency are toxic –to use the new word – to the modern economy, in which consumption is the engine of employment and growth. For a couple of decades, until age and comfort caught up with us, we were very poor citizens indeed, buying few goods and services and paying very little VAT . Our goats, ducks, hens and bees worked away for a pittance and paid no tax. What we sowed and harvested we consumed ourselves, thus denying the nation the multiplier effect of added value and transport.

So alternative lifers are the last people to offer sound advice in a recession. Should we have been out there with everybody else, borrowing as a way of life and helping to create the debt that makes the capitalist world go round?

(I am grateful to Michael Viney for permission to reproduce the above article with sketch. Michael's books are: 'A Years Turning', 'Another Life', 'Ireland: A Natural History and, just published with his wife Ethna: 'Ireland's Ocean: A Natural History')

At the 5000 year old Loughcrew megalithic cairn T in Ireland, the rising sun
on the mornings around the equinox illuminates the passage and chamber.
http://www.knowth.com/loughcrew-equinox.htm

The Office of Public Works staff in attendance at Cairn T,
Loughcrew on the mornings of Saturday the 20th of September, Sunday the 21st
September and Monday the 22nd September from 7.15am until 8.30am.
http://www.newgrange.com/news8.htm

For a video of the illuminations click on:
http://www.knowth.com/loughcrew-equinox-video.htm