The relevant revolution
1798 - 200 years of Resonance
Edited by Mary Cullen
Published by Irish Reporter Publications
Price: £7.95
This is a collection of eighteen essays exploring the threads
which made the tapestry of the Republican revolution in Ireland
two centuries ago.
The topics covered include the origins of the Defenders, who
joined with the United Irish in the Revolution, the Orange Order,
the role of women in `98, the establishment of the short lived
Wexford Republic and Marxism's debt to the ideals of the United
Irishmen.
Most of the articles are written by academics and journalists who
are suffiently professional to explode many of the myths peddled
by their peers and contemporaries over the last two hundred
years.
Three essays deserve special mention, but for very different
reasons.
``United in our common interest'' by Jim McVeigh, who is a Sinn
Fein member in the H Blocks, explains how the social deprivation
and discrimination of18th century Ireland are still with us in
the1990s. And he warns that the ``comfortable classes'' of Wolfe
Tone's day, who refused to support the Revolution, are also still
here, within the business community, Church, trade unions and
political parties only paying ``lip service'' to the injustices in
Ireland today.
Sean O'Bradaigh, a Republican Sinn Fein member, gives an
interesting potted history of the `98 revolution as well as all
the major Republican developments since in his essay ``The Rising
of1798''. However he cannot resist a bit of party politics near
the end by taking an oblique swipe at Sinn Fein, and including a
long quote from Patrick Pearse which emphasised the need for
``continuity''!
``The significance of the 1798 Commemoration'' is by Martin
Mansergh, a `special advisor' to 26 county Taoiseach Bertie
Ahern.
Hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy seem to be his forte. Mansergh
sings the praises of the United Irishmen whilst similtaneously
berating their modern day Republican successors. He, quite
rightly, mourns the failure of the `98 revolution but adds that a
``successful revolution'' took place ``120 years'' later. Presumably
he is refering to 1920 when his intellectual contemporaries
gained a measure of freedom by selling the liberty of their
countrymen in the North. He concludes by asserting that the
sectarianism in the Six Counties is perpetuated solely by the
people who live here; apparently occupation and partition have
had nothing to do with it.
Despite Mansergh's contribution the rest of this collection is
enlightening and insightful. This volume is definitely one to
return to again and again.
By Sean O Tuama
Yeats for toddlers
Myths and Magic of the Yeats Country
By Eily Kilgannon
Published by Mercier Press
Price £4.99
I don't know about you, but I don't know many five-year olds who
read Yeats. So I am at a loss to understand why someone would
want to write a book which may just have well have been
subtitled, Yeats's use of Irish Mythology for Dimwitted Infants
and the Terminally Feeble-Minded.
The book is a short explanation, in big writing and small words,
of the folktales and myths from which Yeats gained inspiration
for his poetry. Who on earth it is meant to appeal to I simply
cannot work out; even if it is aimed at slightly older children
and teenagers any self-respecting child bright enough to read the
man who, in The Second Coming, produced arguably one of the
greatest poems of the 20th century, will be properly repelled by
the infantile language of this essentially pointless effort.
By Fern Lane
Oh baby
Plain Tales from the Labour Ward
by Rose Driscol
Published by Minerva Press
Price £7.99
Oh God, the agony, the torture, the endless hours of excrutiating
pain unrelieved even by the excessive use of intravenously
administered drugs, the crazed ramblings about why you ever got
into this situation in the first place, of not knowing when it
will end and the overwhelming ,joyous relief when it does.
Yes, having to listen to another long and unnecessarily detailed
account of someone else's 95-hour nightmare labour is only
marginally less traumatic and horrible than going through it
yourself, particularly when said account is accompanied by a
dewy-eyed new father eager to tell you what innovative new forms
of verbal abuse he endured from his loved one, how much it really
did hurt when she pulled his hair and just how far back she bent
his fingers.
With this in mind I approached this book with trepidation; even
the title evokes distressing memories of being backed into a
corner at some social gathering, wine glass clutched with ever
whitening knuckles and getting warmer by the minute, rictus smile
in place and head nodding in a reflex motion to indicate interest
as the above scenario slowly, terrifyingly, unfolds.
What transpired was an intriguing and often moving collection of
stories from individual women of all ages, told in their own
words, about the circumstances in which they gave birth. The
section called The Irish Women reveals some of the intense
social and ecomonic pressures which many Irish women, married and
unmarried, have had to overcome when giving birth in the recent
past.
Then there is the tale of the woman who gave birth to a daughter
just outside Mauthausen concentration camp after the Nazis had
sent her from Auchwitz as a fit person able to work - Mengele
called her a fine specimen. Her baby, Eva, weighed 3lbs, she
weighed four stone, with a shaved head and dressed in the striped
clothes we have all come to recognise as the uniform forced on us
by the Nazis. Powerful and inspirational stuff and well worth the
read. I take it all back.
By Fern Lane
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