I saw this week that the Edentubber Martyr's memorial has been vandalized. I must admit that I'm not a memorial kind of person and have never seen said memorial. Unfortunately I've encountered other monuments that have been desecrated.
I should state as a disclaimer that I don't necessarily equate the Ludlow massacre monument with a group of individuals (however well intentioned) who blew themselves up. But I can appreciate what a monument means to a community, particularly an embattled one.
While in Ireland I did go to see Milltown and Sean South's grave. In Milltown particularly the flowers and memorials were fresh and well kept. Regardless of politics one had to appreciate the state of the Republican plot. I saw the Republican plot in Limerick during the 50th commemoration of Sean South and so we were all of kind of packed around McGuiness as he spoke and then we listened to a rather off kilter rendition of Sean South of Garryowen (and yeah I bought the book).
The Edentubber momunent (or at least the commemoration) has not been without "controversy". I had been looking for the Edentubber Martyr's post as a segway into my time in stab city (which I enjoyed immensely BTW) during which I got caught up in a RSF demo, got questioned by Special Branch*, and then marched with the Provos because really, after shopping for hours in the rain I thought, why not? On the way, I noticed that a thread on an earlier posting from El Blogador. At 91 comments at the time of my reading its doing fairly decently at stirring some debate. But lets be honest. There's really no need for all this commotion if we could only appreciate for a minute the concept of contextualization. Now, now, I know that it was brought up and summarily dismissed by the third post. But lets be honest that has more to do with party hackery than anything else. El Blogador while an honest sort, has occasionally (As I've pointed out before) been known to descend into party hackery. Now I'm not at all cynical at the fact that an SDLP blogger is playing up being a Republican Party shortly after certain happenings (And yes I do know that self linking is a totally Pete Baker kind of move, but fuck all).
But as I was saying, on a dreary new years eve...I previously noted that I happened upon the 50th anniversary of Sean South. Not the commemoration, by any means but the one in Limerick, which while not bad was certainly not not up to par with having replica weapons and trucks in tow. Never the less it was interesting and enjoyable. If only for the fact that it was the only time in Ireland that we were able to sit and have a drink with someone on a normal basis (after the fact of course). The secondary chuckle brother was there of course, as was Martin Ferris. We saw the signs and because of my neurotic nature showed up over half an hour early.
Due to my ignorance of Irish politics I had no idea that the RSF commemoration was due to assemble shortly before (ie 2:15 RSF v 2:30 PSF). So we showed up at 2:00 when we saw the piper started to assemble. At the beginning I was a little a startled by the lack of support of support that PSF was able to pull for this event. Now I knew that Sean South was no Bobby Sands but I figured that the 50th anniversary would be able to draw more than some pensioners, a few Fianna and some rather thuggish looking individuals in army sweaters who turned out to be the color guard (A personal note If I may, if you must be dressed in paramilitary get up of green sweaters then please ensure that you're in decent shape. Man boobs are quite unbecoming, no matter what your politics may be).
We chatted for awhile with a younger fellow who was looking a but rough from a broken nose ('tis the drink you know). We were chatting with him when Special Branch came upon us after hassling the Fianna kids got boring and approached. As our companion was local it was the usual name and address. They seemed shocked when asked for my hometown and I replied "Denver, Colorado". I didn't see fit to explain that I really hadn't flown all this way just to attend a RSF event as I generally dislike authority and political policing especially.
What I was struck by in regards to Martin's speech was the disconnect between talking about the past and talking about the future of Stormont. It wasn't that I felt he was insincere, just that when it came to talking about the North and the political situation he was in his element and he was able to develop a rhythm that his references to the commemoration (Sean South) was lacking. One must think that when one addresses numerous funerals of his contemporaries historical figures tend to be somewhat dull in their color. Or maybe it's the famous disconnect between the South and the North, who knows?
Though I would like to tackle the myth that Sean South...Wait hold on for a moment. We've totally had a domestic intrusion into our fine Saturday morning of blogging, drinking and generally being a lazy bum. While I can enjoy Mexican food with little or no ill effects, the cats are apparently a different story and they decided to voice their displeasure by vomiting on the stairs and peeing outside of the litter box. My lovely wife was feeling a little overwhelmed by the whole thing so I decided to help by offering to buy her breakfast. This cheered her sufficiently that I could retreat here to commiserate on what a bad person I am for leaving my lovely wife (still recovering from surgery mind you) to clean up two out of the three bodily functions any animal can produce. God I am such a horrible human being.
But I don't feel so bad that it's impossible to continue this narrative. So where were we? Oh yes Sean South. His death launched him into the pantheon of martyrs which is fine but his remembrance is ensured by a song which is as often as not is just another bar room ballad (and this for a member of the Legion of Mary). I've got nine copies of the song at last count. Mainly because at the commemoration people kept mixing up the words between versions and it piqued my curiosity, so I went digging for versions. May it be noted for posterity and no other reason in particular that my favorite versions are Charlie and the bhoys live version which starts as fairly respectful (complete with some lyrics form the Battering Ram version) and quickly descends into barroom irreverence complete with wrong lyrics and the crowd chanting "the I, I, IRA" in the background. Next up is the Oliver Kane version which is fairly run of the mill except for the fact that he uses an accordion. Straight up that makes him the shit. If you play the accordion you're cool, no ifs, ands, or buts. At the bottom of the pile is (of course) an American band by the name of Shillelagh Law. Seriously, if your going to call yourself an Irish rebel band then you do need to have some respect for the subject matter. Their version, complete with harmonic overlay from The Minstrel Boy and with an ending that proclaims loudly, "Tonight we invade England!" followed by drunken crashing and horns is actually very disrespectful. Now following that condemnation I will actually get into what I wanted to say to begin with.
No matter how big an event his funeral was and no matter "canonized" he's been after the fact you have to know that somewhere is Limerick in some bar some guy on his way to take a "slash"**(thank you Malcolm) was saying "I knew Sean South, and he was a fuckin' prick. Fuckin' piece of shit was probably happy to die with all his Catholic clap trap about martyrdom and what not". Not pretty, but probably true.
*I would've sworn that the lead detective was Micheal McDowell out on a weekend jaunt to harass "Republicans". The quotes will remain until we figure out who's really a Republican and who's just a communalist/nationalist/fascist/bigoted/defender.
**What the fuck is it that the Irish have about using the trough in the pisser? I mean seriously, you can save civilization, but you can't move on up the to the urinal? I mean hey, maybe you're just nostalgic about about getting piss on your shoes and having your drunken compatriot chit chat with while he sways precariously over and you wonder how disgusting is it to know that not only do you have your own splash back to deal with but also this inebriated stranger's as well.
2 comments:
Nice to have you back in the e-world, Zach.
As for Irish urinals, the one that demanded care and attention was in McDaid's on Harry Street (just round the corner from Grafton Street) in Dublin.
As a Trinity student in the early 1960s, I made McDaid's a regular haunt, if only because it was where one viewed Behan, Kavanagh, Brian O'Nolan (a.k.a. Flann O'Brien) and that half of the Dublin literary world.
The urinal was down a flight of stairs, off the front bar. Fairly early in the evening, the build-up of butt-ends would block the drain. Then the tide would rise inexorably.
There was a further problem: no illumination down there.
So, you had to make a blind judgment call. How far down the steps to go, before ...
If you got it wrong, you made an enemy for life of the fellow punter three steps down. There's was always the additional problem, especially towards closing time, with those who had imbibed too generously, slipping on the now greasy steps and descending into the waters below (perhaps taking others with them).
Malcolm,
Yeah I almost declared a hiatus, but in the end just sat down this weekend and pumped out a couple of pieces that had been sitting in the draft pile for far too long. Now admittedly my real life friends are also wondering if I dropped off the face of the earth as well, but they'll just have to learn to deal with it.
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