Writers

Cover of book containing entries from the finalists
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As this will be my 500th blog post on this blog I am glad to have something positive to report.

The other evening (15/12/2014) I attended the final event in the Battle of Clontarf Millennium Celebrations. This was a book launch and the presentation of prizes in the millennium's creative writing competition for local primary schools.

Every finalist, and there were lots of them in the different class categories, got exactly the same prize. A copy of the book and a selection box. But what a book. The entries from the finalists themselves had been brought together in a book entitled "We Are Writers", published by the Clontarf Historical Society and the Raheny Heritage Society. So the creativity here extended beyond that of the competitors alone.

In addition the overall category winners also received vouchers for Easons - up to €600 worth of vouchers were presented.

Barbara Tarrant & Collette Gill

MC for the evening was the ubiquitous organiser of everything, Collette Gill, Chairperson of the Clontarf 2014 Committee. You can see her here with her clipboard as she invites one of the judges, Barbara Tarrant, to address the audience of parents and children packed into the Indigo Lounge of the Clontarf Castle Hotel.

Daragh Moran & Barbara Tarrant

Before going any further, I have to declare an interest here. The photo shows Barbara presenting his book to Daragh Moran, who happens to be a first cousin twice removed. The removal bit just means he's way younger than I am. Given that I was concentrating on trying to photograph every winner in this fast moving pageant, I hadn't noticed Daragh until I saw his mother there at the end of the evening (and yes, she's only once removed).

Daragh's entry consisted of a brief account of the battle, in (almost) rhyming couplets.

Kay Lonergan & Robyn Gill

The youngest judge is Robyn Gill, a transition year student, who has already had two short stories published in the Irish Times. She is seen here accepting a presentation from Kay Lonergan, Chairperson of the Clontarf Historical Society.

Of the entries published in the book just over 40% are from girls. Not a huge imbalance and it may not have any particular significance. I suppose these bloody battles may be more appealing to boys, though one of the entries was actually from a female warrior. Indeed, if you look at the 2014 re-enactment of the battle, you'll see there was no shortage of female warriors taking part.

Morgan O'Reilly

The third of the four judges, Morgan O'Reilly, said he was very encouraged by the sense of community permeating the range of celebrations and was particularly happy with the standard of entries in this competition.

The range of styles, inventiveness and imagination in the entries was spectacular.

There was a lot of time travel, much magic, family correspondence, live tv reporting, and, as Collette remarked, even the rewriting of history - the licence of youth, no doubt. There was a variety of styles from prose (purple and otherwise) to poetry (including acrostics).

You have to remember that the children's ages were from 7 to 12 years, and you wouldn't always know from the entries alone which end of the spectrum you were dealing with. Some of the younger entries were really excellent.

Douglas Appleyard (on right)

The fourth judge, Louise Melinn, could not be present due to exams, so Douglas Appleyard, Chairperson of the Raheny Heritage Society, stood in and presented the final batch of books.

And as we're on the subject of competition, this photographer (me) had serious competition all evening from parents taking advantage of the miracles of modern technology to immortalise the achievements of their children .

I'll leave you with an enhanced glimpse of the picture on the cover of the book. This was the work of Aoife Tynan, from St. Brigid's Girls National School, Killester, who won first place in the third and fourth class category in the Battle of Clontarf Art Competition, held earlier in the year in this same venue.

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If you are interested in some of the other events during the year's celebrations you can see a report on the 1014 Retrospective event, along with links to those individual events which I managed to attend, here.

Rose Festival 2014

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So I set off for the Rose Festival in St. Anne's Park and, as you can see, not a rose in sight. Now, I have been to the Rose Festival before and know that it is not just roses, roses all the way. It is a much wider based family outing with all sorts of entertainment for young and old. So, what's with the picture?

Well, I had a two hour window to check out the festival, but as parking would be a major hassle I decided to go on foot. And, not surprisingly I got distracted along the way. This to the point that I had barely a half an hour on the premises.

The first distraction was Dublin's two iconic ESB chimneys, which were unsuccessfully trying to hide behind a bush. While there is a lobby campaigning for their retention, and I gather the Council has now listed them, there is a vociferous lobby out there that wants them pulled down. So they are effectively an endangered species and entitled to some protection in the nature reserve in the photo above.

The next distraction was a pair of ducks making hay in the pond, or lake, or whatever Lord Ardilaun called it in his day.

And then there was this Greek folly. A mini Ozymandias close to home.

And if all that wasn't enough, what did I come across but my family tree with a profusion of roots to keep me busy up to next Christmas.

So it was with a half an hour or less to go that I finally hit the festival. My first priority was the Heritage Tent, and in this year of Brian Boru, I made for the Clontarf stand. Collette Gill was busy discussing Brian Boru's well with a client. I have dealt with the well's gate on Castle Avenue elsewhere. Collette has done trojan work during the year, and in the run up to it, bringing loads of threads together for the 1014 celebrations locally.

Just one of these projects has been the Battle of Clontarf Heritage Trail along the shoreline walkway at Clontarf (example of one of the panels above). I have reported elsewhere on the very high quality lecture series organised by the Clontarf and Raheny Historicals, and on other aspects of local commemorations, including the reconstruction of the Battle itself.

Madeleine and Brian

Next came the Raheny Heritage Society stand. The society has been working over the years researching and presenting the history of Raheny to the public and they have amassed a wonderful set of thematic displays.

The work is ongoing and their latest project is The Howth Road, exploring all sorts of aspects of the road from Fairview to Blackbanks. These include famous residents, house styles, historic sites and so on. It is the sort of project that just swallows you up if you don't call a halt at some stage. They have been reporting progress along the way in some of these displays and I hope to see a definitive book in the near future.

Before my half hour runs out, I want to come back to the Clontarf Historical Society display. It is an open question who won the Battle of Clontarf. I learned in school that Brian Boru was the decisive victor but nobody bothered to point out to me that Sitric was still King of Dublin twenty years later. Come to think of it, a lot of things were glossed over in my schooldays, like, for example, Gormlaith's romps between the sheets with at least three kings. No doubt the teaching of history has improved significantly since my day. As it happens, I'm a late comer to this sort of exciting stuff.

If the Isle of Man's 1014 exuberance is anything to go by the Vikings won by a mile. They have issued a beautiful series of stamps commemorating The Battle of Clontarf and the original artwork (on loan), along with many other aspects of the issue, were on display at the stand.

These are just two of the set of six stamps, a general battle scene and Brian with his sword and cross (yes, he had Vikings fighting on his side too and they were Christians, as were many of the opposing Vikings).

This cover for the set gives an idea of the quality of the artwork, really beautiful stuff.

And the back of the cover even has the Irish Battle of Clontarf logo on the sets at the festival, done by the IOM postal authorities. Pity An Post didn't rise to the specific occasion of the Battle's millennium celebration in this sort of style.

And what did I spot, just as my phone alarm went off to tell me to go home, but a real live version of Collette's Twitter avatar.

Enjoy.

Material from 2011 & 2013 Rose Festivals

Typocast

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I can't claim the high moral ground when it comes to proofreading. I'm still finding typos in stuff I wrote many years ago and had proofread more than once since.

Today, with so much stuff just online, you can correct your typos as though they never existed. Hardcopy is another matter. And another matter still is when they are cast in stone, or just plain cast.

The picture above is from the 1964 film "A Home of Your Own" and it shows Bernard Cribbins sculpting an inscription on a monument in a new housing estate to be opened by the mayor the following morning. The unveiling of the monument brings gasps from the crowd as the finished inscription is suddently revealed as "The money for this erection was raised by pubic subscription". Your worst nightmare. I've never forgotten it.

And when you end up doing legislation, where whole new legistlation is required to be passed to correct any typos you've missed, I can tell you that sharpens up your proofreading skills.

Still, no one is perfect, not even in 1850, when this gate for Brian Boru's well at Castle Avenue Clontarf was cast. You'd need to be wide awake to spot it: the H should follow the M in Brian's name. The cló rómhánach here denies us the luxury of the floating buailte (see below)

An author, who is an authority on matters relating to Clontarf, attempted to persuade me that this was a legitimate variation in the name, but when I looked up his own book on the matter I found he had actually corrected it himself in his text.

And in case you think I'm having a go at Dublin and its suburbs, I'll take you as far west as my granny's birthplace in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo, where BOHOLA has dropped an O in the casting. [Update - 11/2/2015: Carol Maddock has just pointed out that I missed the apostrophe in "area's" and I've now spotted another one in "1950's". Clearly proofreading is a never ending task.]

[Update - 5/4/2016: "Bohola" has now been corrected but it looks as if the other two typos have been reproduced in this new plaque.]

Or to my father's birthplace, Ballyhaunis, in the same county, where the MILLENNIUM has dropped an N in the same process.

Not so nice when your typos are cast and would require a complete recast to remedy them.

There are some fine cast signs which currently suffer from typos but where the typo is not in the casting but in the subsequent tarting up. These are easily remedied. But, of course, you have to spot them first.

The above sign, from the Cornmarket in Wexford town, is perfectly cast. However when it came to tarting it up subsequently there was a problem. Tarting up meant painting the whole thing gray and then painting the surround and the script white. And they did a lovely job. But nobody told them that those little irregularites over the d and the b were in fact part of the script - Irish buailtes or séimhiús which mutate the consonants concerned.

I remember floating buailtes from school. Quite often, given the complexity of Irish grammar, you were not sure whether to apply one or not. So we always made sure there were a few floating ones above each line of script to be pressed into service as required.

And don't get me started on street name signs in Irish where the follies are a compound of typos and plain pig ignorance. My web page on this comes with a health warning - keep the blood pressure pills handy. Enjoy.

1014 Round the Field

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In my previous 1014 post, I turned up at the battlefield on the eve of the battle. There was a certain amount to be seen and I could check out the lay of the land.

But everything was quite different when it came to the day of the battle (re-enactment) itself.

For one thing, there was an enormous crowd and it was much slower getting round the area. Then you had to decide how to play the day. Long before the battle commenced the crowds were 4-5 deep all the way around the battlefield. As I was hoping to take photos I needed to be in the front row somewhere, preferably with the sun a bit behind me. So, having missed out the first re-enactment I decided to do the tour around the field and see what was happening. Then I would go to the battlefield an hour before the next battle was due to start, and book myself a standing place in the front row. This post, then, is the tour around the field and the next one will deal with the battle itself.

This is the other end of the ship in the previous post. Really scary stuff. They did stick up in the air, though, and were a help in navigating your way around the perimeter of the field where you could easily lose your bearings in the crowd.

A good place to start is an introduction to the history of the battle: who's who, where's where, and how it all came about. This is a brief introduction with the aid of a map of the battlefield and the deployment of forces.

This man from the Montague Heritage Centre is a coin maker. One hard belt of his hammer on the die and you have a coin.

This local Viking, who, you might remember, almost killed me in a previous post, is selling replica coins and other Viking memorabilia.

There's even a Viking way of chopping wood. Mind you, it looks like the way we do it ourselves but there is no point in disillusioning this enthusiastic chopper.

The Vikings also made nails and you could buy a load of the genuine articles to build a longboat or crucify an opponent.

This young lady is from the Viking centre in York, and she was in charge of a model of a Viking tent which consisted of a sitting room, where she is standing and an actual bedroom with a wooden bed out of picture to the left. On the right are some local youths who have taken over the stable and are making her a little nervous.

With a bit of luck, you might learn to play Brian Boru's harp before the battle, though I gather you'd want to have let your fingernails grow for a few months beforehand.

Then there was the falconry area with some beautiful birds. Trevor Roche, who runs Dublin Falconry, says it is an ancient art, and to prove it he gave us some very impressive demonstrations on the battlefield in the hour before the troops arrived on the scene.

In the course of the demonstration he brought a young spectator onto the field and trained him to accept the bird on his arm.

He also had the young lad run along pulling a dummy mouse on a piece of string and the bird swooped down and got its claws firmly stuck in. So firmly, in fact, that Trevor could then pull the mouse, with the bird in tow, right around the perimeter of the battlefield.

Then we stumbled on these Vikings' camp. They are clearly not yet ready to take to the field.

These Vikings are clearly not ready for battle either. They are just keeping the passage clear for their fellow warriors to access the battlefield when the time comes. Meanwhile the guy on the left, who is actually a Swede, is bantering with the crowd, and in particular with the little girl in white, whom you can see on the right behind the shield.

He first tried to persuade her that Vikings have actual horns on their head and their helmets have two holes to let them protrude. She wasn't buying that as she was the proud possessor herself of a viking helmet, horns and all, which he is temporarily sporting in this picture. You can tell from the bad fit that it's not his own.

Finally, before we move on to the battle in the next post, the old man on the right is the storyteller who will be recounting the battle over the PA as it takes place. His presentation is authoritative and amusing and he is seen here collecting last minute gossip from some Viking civilians.


Link to other 1014 related posts.

1014 Eve of Battle

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In real life, you don't necessarily get to rehearse a battle. There you're only as good as your last one. But the re-enactment of the Battle of Clontarf is different.

Brian Boru had an army made up of Irish armies and some Viking ones, and by the time they got to Clontarf they had the measure of each other and could fight as a unit, hopefully.

The re-enactment, however, has a wider cast: Irish, English, Scottish, Germans, Russians, New Zealanders and, of course, Vikings. This was a re-enactment, not a fight to the death, so nobody was supposed to get really hurt. Nevertheless, the weapons in use were potentially lethal. Hence the need for a full scale rehearsal so that the different elements could take stock of each other. In this case, rather than to improve their efficiency as a killing machine, the aim was to simulate a real fight but without hurting each other.

So in the run up to the rehearsal, instead of the usual pre-battle tension, there was a great buzz and spirit of comraderie as the troops assembled on the field.

This Englishman has been involved in these re-enactments for over 20 years. His area is the Vikings and the War of the Roses. And he loves it as its a change from his 5 day a week sit down office job.

He met someone in the beer tent last night whom he hadn't seen for years. And that is happening all over the place this weekend, as a vast array of re-enactors, virtually from all over the world, are assembled for the weekend's event.

The event is organised by the Fingal Living History Society and it has been 5 years in preparation. This man is from Swords and is one of the organisers. He told me they had travelled all over in preparation for this, attending events at which they publicised this one and from which they learned new skills.

This pair are from Orlando, USA. He does the leatherwork and she does the pottery. They will be selling the genuine articles here this weekend and then they take off for the International Viking Market in Ribe, Denmark, at the end of the month. This market brings together re-enactors and craftspeople in a fantastic week long festival.

As well as being a dab hand at the pottering she also showed some considerable skill in international relations and grabbed this passing Russian warrior for a photo. So, this is her contribution and mine to US-Russian relations for the weekend that's in it.

We mustn't forget this fellow, the diabolical prow on a Viking longship. Not a sight to come upon at sea on a dark night.

And here's the full monty. There were loads of these ships in the bay on that day in 1014. Brodir had brought his people from the Isle of Man and there were troops from the Orkneys and elsewhere.

Now it's down to business, well, the rehearsal, as the stragglers take to the field.

It's not long before the skirmishing starts with the mixed gender troops showing great faith in each others' skills with most of them not bothering to wear their helmets.

The tide of battle ebbs and flows and you really get an idea of what this very close up stuff was like. Frazer's picture may not be so strange and confusing after all.

But there's still a little space on the field for some individual combat, posing the questio: which is mightier the axe or the sword (well two axes actually)?

This lady member of the cast, who is clearly not participating in the battle itself, is making sure that the record will be much more accurate than Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, the Brian Boru family PR piece on which we base most of our knowledge of the battle.

And, finally, having rehearsed his men (and women) we leave Brian to go to his tent, don his crown and recite his Altú roimh Chogadh hoping that he keeps his head for another wee while at least.

The re-enactment is on at 1pm and 4pm this Saturday and Sunday (19-20/4/14) in St. Anne's Park, Raheny.

Link to other 1014 related posts.