“If
you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin
Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your
efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you
through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through
the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in
this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our
martyrs.”
-James
Connolly
“Play Danny Boy,
play Danny Boy!” the crowd yelled.
“No! We don’t know play that one,” Kevin
retorted.
“Play it!” The judging eyes were upon us.
“No! That song was written by an Englishman
anyways!”
Holy Mary Mother
of God, we were about to die just from the paralyzing stares. The room was silent as death. Luckily for us, the dozens of people were
well past their prime and their canes a little too short to reach us, because
we had just committed two capital crimes of Irish music. The gall we had to refuse such a beautiful
song, and then to speak of the great evil England at the same time was
appalling. We were heretics.
To tell the
truth, that song blows and it was in fact written by an Englishman. It is one of the many Irish-American
standards that we refused to play, along with other ear-splitting atrocities
such as “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and “If you’re Irish, Come into the
Parlor.” My Dad still laughs at our
stalwart defiance of cheesy crowd-pleasers.
Just play the damn song! But it wasn’t that easy: those songs are
awful substitutes for true folk music.
They are the songs you find on compilation discs around St. Patrick’s
Day, with someone singing in a fake accent backed by the quintessential Irish
instrument, the MIDI file. For us to
play that was like a wine connoisseur opting for a bag of Franzia. We were too proud to stoop down to the level
of the shamrock-and-corned-beef-McWhatevers that prowl the streets on
March 17th.
We were never that
good, which makes our pride slightly hypocritical, but nonetheless it was an
amazing year and a half for me. They
were formative years and introduced me to what is now some of my favorite
music. From our first show at grungy,
metal-head Peabody’s in Cleveland to my last at the Irish cultural center of
Avon, we played at many different pubs and festivals around Northeast Ohio. But above all, it showed me the truth in the maxim
concerning Irish Alzheimer’s: you forget everything except the grudges.
•
“Megan, I’ve
got your back. I’m also a McMahon.”
“Mrs. Waltz,
what about me, I’m a fellow Gael. Where’s
the love?” I quipped.
“Cormack? That sounds like a Scotch-Irish name. You probably came over and took our
land!” she jokingly retorted.
“No, actually my
family’s from Banff. We were fishermen.”
“Sure…”
“Mrs. Waltz, don’t
you think your bitterness is a little too pervasive?” Jesus, why did I just say that? This was about to be worse than the Danny Boy
incident.
While she was half-joking
at the start, she became genuinely incensed at my question and the veil of
humor was noticeably thin. She yelled
back at me.
“Are you making
light of 800-years of oppression by the English?”
Think Tristan,
think… diffuse the bomb. Which wire do I
cut? Oh man, the red one, right?
“No, not at
all! I’m completely aware of the
situation; I just think it’s ridiculous to let the grudge make you hate all
English.”
The rest of the
argument amounted to her half-yelling at me, half-laughing at my audacity. There we were, my history teacher and me
verbally battling in the school library.
As more heads turned and the class began to laugh at our situation, the
bell rang and I was able to slink into the crowd and our yells blended into the
chorus of shuffling feet and conversation.
•
At the first
annual tribute show to Cleveland Irish musician Sean Moore, we were among the
several acts chosen to play. We knew
many of the other musicians performing that day at the Westside Irish American
Club in Olmsted and were both flattered and excited to be part of the
event. The crowd loved us, mainly for
the fact that we were six strapping young lads playing music for a Gaelic geriatric
ward that knew all the words. Talent was
marginal and pandering cardinal. But
even that has its limits, and the line is drawn at Danny Boy. It can be an emotional song, especially
within the Irish-American community.
Played often at funerals, it brings tears to the eyes of friends and
relatives. Knocking it may seem harsh
and insensitive; however, I offer a defense.
As with any song, it is emotional because of the memories inexorably
tied with it. If a person has fond
memories of their loved one that are associated with a particular song, they
could cry just as easily at Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” as at Danny Boy. I still will hate both songs without
remorse. And we can even the playing
field more: I promise you I won’t be spinning in my grave when you write about
how much you hate The Pogues’ “Transmetropolitan.”
After we
finished our set, Pat and I went to the table that my grand-parents were
sitting at and started conversing with the old women who had sat down with
them. They had hit it off well with my
grand-parents and had my grandma rocking in her seat with laughter at
times. When Pat asked the accented woman
where she was from, she replied cheekily “Oh, Ireland’s a little island off the
coast of us.” Pat took this to mean she
was from England (understandably so: there is a huge ethnic Irish population in
England so the accents can carry over).
When he replied “Oh, you’re English?” she gave him a petrifying death
glare which immediately killed the jovial mood.
It turns out she was from one of the Aran islands, a set of three tiny
islands in Galway Bay in the west of Ireland.
•
The next day, being
the first person in the classroom, I felt compelled to smooth over our
feud. “Mrs. Waltz, I want to apologize
for any misunderstanding that we had yesterday.
I know more of the history of Ireland than you’d expect. I was in an Irish folk band for quite a while
and I feel like I know the culture pretty well.” Evidently, she was unimpressed. She must’ve heard about our “Danny Boy”
incident. She walked out of the room
into the hallway to talk to Mr. Pierce, my former history teacher. Amidst the noise of the rest of the class
filing through the doorway, I could catch snippets of their conversation:
“You know Tristan
Cormack?”
“Yeah.”
“He tried telling
me that the English oppression in Ireland wasn’t a big deal.”
At the sound of
this I rushed out of the room to defend myself.
I quickly interjected.
“No, that’s not
what I said at all Mr. Pierce. Please
don’t listen to her.”
Once again she
yelled back at me in that half-laughing, half-serious voice. As we talked back and forth, Mr. Pierce
looked increasingly confused, his eyes darting back between me and Mrs. Waltz
with every flip of the pulpit. The
conversation culminated with these two lines:
“Mrs. Waltz, all
I am saying is that I think retaining bitterness is a terrible way to
celebrate your heritage.”
“HAVE YOU EVER MET
A JEWISH PERSON IN YOUR LIFE?”
After her attempt
at a joke which came out as an awful blurted generalization I was dumbfounded
and sulked back into the room. Snickering,
other students told me how much I fucked up and I didn’t know what I was
talking about. I ignored them because I did
know what I was talking about, and Mrs. Waltz fucked up. They found the situation hilarious, which it
was, but it was illuminating as well.
She was not the first of her kind that I had encountered, 3rd-generation
Americans who had this bullshit romanticization of the conflict and loved the
IRA.
In my passion I am painting perhaps an overly critical portrait of
Mrs. Waltz. She is extremely
knowledgeable of the history, more so than I, which makes her bitterness all
the more mystifying when she still clings to some strange hand-me-down
nationalism.
•
James Connolly
was born in Edinburgh in an Irish neighborhood and served in the British Army
before deserting because of the Irish and Indian occupations. He became possibly the most prominent
activist and theorist of his day in Scotland and Ireland with a stint in
American politics. He spoke with a
noticeable Scottish accent his whole life.
Ewan MacColl, possibly the most prolific folk-song writer in history was
born and raised in England to Scottish parents.
Many of his songs have been absorbed into the “Irish” folk tradition to
the point where listeners assume they are in fact Irish songs. Andy Irvine, one of the pillars of Irish
music for the past fifty years was raised in London and became interested in
music through Woody Guthrie records. He
has spent years as a vagabond and his interpretations of folk songs from the
British Isles are as much informed by Balkan music as they are by tradition and
he plays them on a retrofitted Greek bouzouki.
All of three of these men are socialist.
•
I am not
dismissing the Irish Question; on the contrary, I am attempting to answer
it. But I don’t answer with admiration
of the violence. I fully support a
united Ireland. Fuck the British and
their domineering imperialism, but also fuck the bitter Irish who rested on
their laurels after their independence and let their revolution be hijacked by
conservatives and religious nutjobs. More specifically, the Irish-Americans who
view themselves as continuing some kind of legacy in America. How?
Because you’re Catholic? Because
you dress up in green on St. Patrick’s Day?
Because you drink Guiness and yell “Up the ‘RA!” at your
Irish-American clubs? You don’t do
anything to solve the problem in Ireland.
You are defined by a unanimous hatred of the British. The revolution wasn’t just about independence;
it was about equality and the march of progress. The fallen of 1916 were led by
Communists. The dispossessed in England
faced the same problem that they were fighting for. The dispossessed in India, South Africa and
every other nation painted red on the map faced the same problem. Sharecroppers in the American South faced it
too. It was as much economics as it was
nationalism.
After the civil
war, Ireland was a marionette strung along by the Catholic Church and marched
back to a reactionary culture. One where
it was illegal to get a divorce until 1995.
Where you could be banned from professional athletics if you were seen
playing an English sport. Where it is
still effectively impossible to get an abortion for any reason. Where families could imprison their “slutty”
daughters into hellish Magdalene laundries. Where the Catholic Church covered
up sexual abuse of thousands of children.
No, I’d rather not join your ranks.
I’ll stick with Connolly.
•
My heritage is
a mélange, much like the heritage of Cleveland.
It may come as a surprise, especially in an essay drenched with Irish
politics that I am also a policy-holding member of the First Catholic Slovak
Ladies Association. Guess which of the
three demographics I am. I am as much of
a Slav as I am a Gael. My off-the-boat
Slovak great-grandmother berated those in our family with darker complexions,
like my grandmother and aunt, because, you know, fucking gypsies... My mother’s good Serbian friend growing up
wasn’t allowed to hang out with her best friend because she was Croatian. I went to school with dozens of first
generation Bosnian- and Croatian-Americans who hold an acerbic hatred for
Serbians. Last year my grandpa began
doing genealogical research on his family.
He found out we are also German.
We had gone our whole lives without knowing this. We are all ratty mutts pretending to be show
dogs. Remember though, even poodles
would rather be sniffing ass than flaunting their pedigree. Your heritage becomes meaningless. Éamon de Valera, the dominant executive in
Ireland for half a century was born in New York and is half Cuban. There are black people in Ireland. They are Irish. There are O’Reilly’s and Murphy’s in
America. They are not Irish. And so they sit in their Irish-American clubs
and vote Republican, whilst singing praise of the fallen of 1916.
•
The characters
I encounter in old folk songs are strong individuals. They are gruff mountain-men, sailors
separated from their home by the sea, desperate highwaymen with no choice but
to steal, displaced tenant farmers, widows of soldiers, victims of abuse and
trickery: people downtrodden by the upper echelons of society. Their tales are those of adventure,
vengeance, forgiveness, murder, love, drinking, war, nature, politics and
peace. This is not music about or from
the gentry; this is by and for the salt-of-the-earth. When I listen to
traditional songs, it breaks down the prejudice we have developed for those in
the past. People have always had their
moments of doubt about religion, opposed war, and even partied. Hard.
The amount of songs about men coercing women into sleeping with them is
staggering. These girls lose their
virginity and are promptly abandoned, pregnant.
This really puts the impact of birth control into perspective. These people would have killed for access to
it (if the Catholic Church would just take a cue from this music…). I love it because of the glimpse it gives me
into the lives of these people. I love
it because it is honest. I love it
because it is often cheeky. I love it
because it is both indicative of the culture and thematically cosmopolitan at
the same time. I love it because of the
romance: I’m inspired to sit with my arm around a girl and softly call her a
ghrá mo chroí.
•
“Cormack? Oh, Irish!”
“Christ no! Scottish.”
Agus
fágfaimid siúd mar atá sé.
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