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Ireland in 1969

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    Ireland in 1969

    I was searching in vain for Niall toibin's tour of Irish accents on YouTube when I came across this amazing film. It's a Gael linn film from 1969 shot by the brilliant Louis Marcus, one of cork's influential but tiny Jewish community.

    It's narrated in beautiful Irish by breandain o h-eithir, (a distant relation of mine, well a relation by my mother's broad definition of the word, rather than mine) andhelpfully subtitled and it captures a way of life of the cusp of change. It's far from being a complete recording of life at the time, but it's only half an hour long, so what can you do.

    It starts out in the street market on Moore st, one block over from o'connell st, where I used to buy vegetables and meat when I lived in the north inner city. It goes via a country fair, to the annual pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick, behind Westport (our Taoiseach does this every year) to the Aran Islands and deals with the practicalities of cattle rearing on the island that you see at the start of father ted, and gives some insight into why Aran islanders are the hardest bastards in Ireland. And ends with a bunch of fat lads from Tipperary giving a bunch of fat lads from Wexford a sound thrashing at Croke park.

    An interesting side note to the pilgrimage section is that the last Sunday in July when the pilgrimage is called domhmach chrom dubh, or black crom's sunday, after the chief pagan gods. At my uncle's funeral I was sharing a table with an archaeologist who excavated the Neolithic temple at the top, a little bit above the church, and essentially the people of Mayo and North Galway have been climbing that mountain on that day for 5000 years, and god willing, they'll be doing it for another 5000.

    The soundtrack is provided by the professor of music in cork, and a friend of my dad's The late Sean o'riada. The group is ceoltoiri chuallain, a gathering of musicians who went on to become the chieftains after o'riada's death in the early seventies. O'riada'a daughter was just elected Sinn Fein MEP for Munster, and I'm unsure that her father would have been delighted about that.

    Anyway, it's well worth half an hour of anyone's time and I hope you enjoy it.

    #2
    Ireland in 1969

    BBC NI did a rather poignant documentary recently about the Belfast Jewish community. I'd always assumed that their small size is largely explained by a mass Exodus to Manchester when the Troublings kicked off, but actually the problem is more fundamental. The Synagogue is hardcore, particularly on mixed marriage and the like: so young men in a community of about 100 adults have a choice of marrying their cousin or catching that plane. At which point their parents tend to follow.

    Dal Riada or whatever her name is can't possibly be as bad as my numbskulled local MEP, here posing with his equally charming wife.

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      #3
      Ireland in 1969

      Cheers, C, great dig-out.

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        #4
        Ireland in 1969

        Dunga Garrincha de Ipanema wrote: BBC NI did a rather poignant documentary recently about the Belfast Jewish community. I'd always assumed that their small size is largely explained by a mass Exodus to Manchester when the Troublings kicked off, but actually the problem is more fundamental. The Synagogue is hardcore, particularly on mixed marriage and the like: so young men in a community of about 100 adults have a choice of marrying their cousin or catching that plane. At which point their parents tend to follow.

        Dal Riada or whatever her name is can't possibly be as bad as my numbskulled local MEP, here posing with his equally charming wife.
        The odious Littlejohn rallying against racist trolls? That's some improvement...

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