In Readings Packet: Hawks, “Rain, Mud, and a Jack Russell” [supplementary to this: the material in Kearns’s Dublin Pub Life and Lore]; also McLaughlin, “Land of High Spirits.”
I include the Hawks primarily because it’s an amusing portrait of the kinds of social interactions that can happen in and out of pubs in the west of Ireland. As a joke, Tony Hawks bet that he could hitch-hike all the way around Ireland with a small refrigerator—and succeeded. But this also gets at something important in Irish culture: the degree to which odd events can serve as the catalyst for rich social interactions.
As you read, think about Nat Cooper’s stories, or Tom McGovern’s recollections of growing up in Cashel. In any of these cases, is the point really to “get to the end of the story”, or something more indirect?
Hawks’s story is about hitch-hiking, and reminds us of Carson’s great stories of learning to hitch-hike in “Hurry the Jug.” Inferential question: in what way is poitin like hitch-hiking? What do both enable?
McLaughlin’s short article is also about the lore of poitin. In what ways do the language and the overall literary construction he employs play into this lore?
Glassie, 20 “Butter” (527-51)
This is a relatively short but very rich analysis of what kind of “material culture”. In rural Ireland, butter was one of the few ways that women, mostly staying very close to home, could generate extra income (selling surplus eggs was another). But Glassie finds more complex insights as well:
What sorts of connections does Glassie make between butter, “wealth,” beliefs about food, the lore of magic, God and the saints, etc? What do these close and immediate connections tell us about how the rural Irish connected the physical and the spiritual?
“Butter” also gets at issues of ownership: in Ballymenone, who “owns” different cures, skills, and talents? How do individuals assemble this ownership? What is the obligation of those who own these things to others who do not?
Glassie, 13 “Home” (327-424)
This is long; take your time on it. In this long chapter, Glassie moves into a central, essential, and deeply personal space: the home which is at the heart of family, women’s experience, and traditional culture (and of course centered around the hearth-fire). It’s clear that, in this chapter, Glassie is working material that he feels is particularly important and very personal to his own perspectives. As you read, think about the following:
What is the significance of the extensive drawings and photography of houses? What is the chronological transformation he describes, as houses change over time in response to social changes?
What is the significance and/or definition of “sacred space” in this culture? What spaces are sacred and what makes them sacred?
What types of human experience take palce in what parts of the home: kitchen, parlor, or bedroom? How does the “emplacement” of these different activities in different parts of the home reflect rural Irish conceptions of “private,” “family,” and “public” space?
Finally, how do the diagrams reflect the rural (and transplanted) Irish’s strategies for adapting to new environments and “indigenizing” them? (that is, for taking unfamiliar environments and making them feel more familiar and “traditional”?)
RP: Carolan “Irish Music to 1600 AD”; Glassie “Preface” (Irish Folk Tales); O’Brien “Chapter One: Why I Speak”
Carolan’s article is essentially a good, short summary of the musical component of the Irish history we have so far discussed. What general conclusions can Carolan, and we, draw from how and why musical change has occurred in the Irish tradition? (This is a hot topic of debate in the 21st century, as many new innovations have been brought to the music, not always supported by musicians)
Glassie’s short “Preface” is a particularly beautiful evocation of all those who contributed to the perpetuation of Irish folk history (the topic of one of our mid-term essays). Who and what sorts of people does he place within this “lineage of historians”—not only himself, and many scholars, but who else? And, who are the “Four Masters”, and why are they important?
Flann O’Brien was the pseudonym of the 20th century author and journalist Brian O’Nolan 1911-66), also known as Myles na gCopaleen. Flann/Brian/Myles specialized, in each of his incarnations, in various forms of comical writing, often satirizing various Irish “sacred cows”. In this excerpt (translated from the original Irish text An Béal Bocht or “The Poor Mouth”), he is making fun of the 1930s vogue on the part of nationalists to publish heart-wrenching memoirs of peasant life in the Irish language. Instructions: read this excerpt aloud (by yourself if necessary) and think about ways in which a prose stylist might try to capture the sound of spoken verbal art.
