Pride, Poets and Battles

I have not blogged for over a week now as, yes - I went away on holiday. Back to my native Ireland to visit family and friends in Dublin and then on to the historic city of Drogheda north of Dublin, where I spent several days.

All the talk in Ireland at present is about the economic crisis and what is expected to happen next. The government have established a commission with the wonderful title of 'An Bord Snip' - in English, the Snip Board. The name says it all and its function is to find places where the state budget can be cut. Ireland is in a very bad economic situation. It was the most open economy in Europe and had the highest levels of US corporate investment, mainly because of its policy of very low corporate taxation, which was favoured by the Fianna Fail government. That government, with the support of its property developer cronies, then built up a huge bubble based on property prices and credit. The bubble has now burst and the Irish government is looking at where to make cuts.

Social welfare is the most likely, according to leaks from a secret report commissioned by the government. However, as the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty will be happening in October, the government dare not let the cat out of the bag re cuts, in case it impacts again on the outcome of the referendum. So the Taoiseach, Irish PM, is saying that no decisions on cuts will be made until the autumn. The Greens in the government are showing no signs of major disagreement with the senior political partner. Everywhere I went there were negative comments about the government and it seems that their days are numbered. However, they do not legally need to call an election for 3 years so they might be hoping for some major change by then.

Saturday saw Dublin's Gay Pride march - the largest yet. There were calls for marriage rights and not just civil partnerships based on the UK model. The Bill to allow civil partnerships has just been published and will become law by the end of the year. The Green Party in Ireland supports equal marriage rights but again will go along with the Fianna Fail bill as a first step. This has led to some reaction by LGBT activists and one or two told me that they would not support the Greens again over this issue. There was visible anger about this at some of the Pride speeches and several LGBT activists threatened to fight the bill. There was an array of LGBT performers and the music of Michael Jackson and Madonna featured in some of the acts.

I had not been to Drogheda since the 60s when I went there as a child. The town is much livelier now and is an excellent base for exploring the Boyne Valley - one of Ireland's most historic areas.

Ten years ago the Irish state bought the battlefield of the Battle of the Boyne (1690) and a large country house, Oldbridge House, which they have transformed into a visitor's centre about the largest battle ever to take place in Britain or Ireland. The battle has passed down into both Catholic and Protestant legend in Ireland. It was effectively the beginning of Protestant hegemony which did not end in the Republic until independence in 1921 and continued in Northern Ireland until relatively recently. However, it was also a British battle and a European one. A British one in that it determined that William of Orange and Parliament would prevail over James II and the Stuarts and its outcome decided that parliamentary democracy rather than monarchical decision would prevail in Britain. But it was also a European battle in that it was essentially a part of the grand designs of Louis XIV for France to dominate Europe with the Irish Catholics as allies of the French, together with some English Royalists. Ranged against them was William as leader of anti-French coalition which included Protestant and Catholic states. William's army included Dutch, English, Danes and French Hugenots, as well as Irish Protestants. By the river Boyne the fate of Ireland, Britain and Europe were all decided at the one battle. I visited the site on the same day as William of Orange's forces arrived there (June 29th) which for me as a historian added a certain frisson. Up to today the Orange Order in Northern Ireland continues to stage parades on the anniversary of the battle (July 12th) which they declare to be 'the glorious twelfth'. However, it is one of the inconveniences of history and would no doubt upset them to learn that the Pope celebrated a Te Deum in Rome for William's victory as he was opposed to Louis XIV and hence also to James, the last of the Stuart kings.

In the nearby village of Slane - one of the prettiest in Ireland - I visited the home of the farm labourer poet Francis Ledwidge. Ledwidge was killed in 1917 on the Western Front but is one of the least known war poets. He was a Republican but, like many Irishmen in 1914, he joined the British Army to fight for the rights of small nations and because he believed the promise of the UK government of the time that after the war, Ireland would be given autonomy. The small farm cottage where Ledwidge lived is a museum and there has been a lot of renewed interest in his work. A play was written about his life by the Irish playwright, Dermot Bolger and I saw a poem there by Seamus Heaney in memory of him. Some people call him 'the Irish Burns' but I think that he is much closer in temperament to John Clare, that sensitive poet of the countryside, who was also a farm worker.

Ledwidge loved nature and had a very strong sense of place about the Boyne valley and his village, Slane. He once worked in Dublin but gave up and walked all the way back to Slane as he said that he could not live with "the brick horizons." Much of his poetry is about the village and the area with great detail about the wildlife and local way of life. I think of him as very Green in fact. Here is one of his poems about a young man who used to drive the local cows home past his cottage and who died of tuberculosis, a common scourge in his day.

A Little Boy in the Morning
He will not come, and still I wait.

He whistles at another gate

Where angels listen.

Ah I know He will not come, yet if I go

How shall I know he did not pass barefooted in the flowery grass?

The moon leans on one silver horn

Above the silhouettes of morn,

And from their nest-sills finches whistle

Or stooping pluck the downy thistle.

How is the morn so gay and fair Without his whistling in its air?

The world is calling, I must go.

How shall I know he did not pass

Barefooted in the shining grass?

Ledwidge died aged 29 another victim of the war to end all wars. His poetry is well worth discovering. He was the Irish war poet of World War I.