Polyester Poppies

As Poppy Day again approaches I find my blood rising at the sight of everyone on all of the UK TV channels wearing the poppy, some even from mid-October. This polyester patriotism is nauseating. Others have written better about it than I could.

It is enough to say that in my youth I would never wear a poppy.

In the first place it was British and on the wrong side of the fight for Irish freedom. I later realised how it had been hijacked by the Northern Ireland Unionists to be flaunted in the face of the Nationalists on Remembrance Day. Once, at a checkpoint on Lifford Bridge on the Border, I was faced with a British soldier, rifle in one hand and poppy can in the other. Perhaps he noticed the car registration, but he never approached me on that score.

Later, in following up my family history, I found that my uncle John had died on the Somme in 1916. So, in order to honour him and, in part, to reclaim the poppy from the Unionists, I took to wearing one for a few years. I have recounted this elsewhere.

Then the sheer sick political correctness and exploitation behind the push to wear the poppy got to me. Wearing it has become obligatory in the UK as a sign of patriotism, including support for more recent illegal invasions of other countries and the slaughtering of their civilians with weapons of unspeakable horror, which weapons are banned by international conventions signed up to by the invading states.

So, having done my bit for my uncle, I will no longer wear the poppy.

Instead, today, I will remember the deaths in WWI of two very different men.

Rifleman John P Dwyer
1893 - 1916

John Dwyer was born in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo, in 1893. He seems to have had some Irish language or nationalist leanings, having won a book prize at the 1903 Mayo Feis. By 1914 he was working in the Civil Service in London and by 1916 he was serving with the Civil Service Rifles on the Somme. He died that year in the offensive on High Wood, a victim of the arrogance of the British High Command.

He still lies where he died. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial and in the Mayo Remembrance Park in Castlebar.

Further details on my website

Lieutenant Richard Gardiner Brewster
1892 - 1918

Richard was born in D'Olier St., Dublin, in 1892. He was the son of William Theodore Brewster, then an accountant, but subsequently to become manager of the Irish Independent. Richard was renowned as a fine horseman and in 1912, after a period as a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture, he joined the South Irish Horse Regiment. He had two stints at the front in WWI and it was during the second of these that he died, in March 1918.

He still lies where he died. He is commemorated on the memorial in Pozières and on his family's gravestone in Kilbarrack Cemetery, Co. Dublin.

Further details on my website
Today these two men lie beneath French soil, separated by a just a few kilometres.

John Dwyer was my uncle.

And my connection with Richard Brewster?

Well, in 1946, Richard's brother, Gordon, died in my mother's shop in Howth, Co. Dublin. As a result, I was conscious of Gordon Brewster from an early age. You can read about that on the excellent blog of the National Library of Ireland. When I started rooting out my own family history in recent years I decided to check out Gordon's as well. And that is how I came across Richard.

How sad that these two young soldiers died in vain.

Today, let us at least honour their memory.

VBVM

Knock Shrine c.1885
from Schofield/Sexton

This is a useful time to look at Knock, Co. Mayo, where the Blessed Virgin Mary is reputed to have appeared on 21 August 1879, so we are fast approaching the 134th anniversary of the apparition.

I have a particular interest in Knock, having been on many pilgrimages there in my youth. My father was born in Ballyhaunis, just down the road (7 miles) and visits to the old homestead, then still inhabited by my Granny and Aunt Mollie, always included a trip to the church at Knock.

This was not the Knock of today. There was no basilica only a church with a gable end. Mind you it was a very important and controversial gable end, but a gable end no less.

There was no church of reconciliation with as many confessionals as there are weeks in the year.

And the holy water was freely available in unlimited quantities from a common tap in the corner.

Then there were the huxters stalls along the street, selling all sorts of religious artefacts and holy sounvenirs.

A decade of the rosary, a trimming or two, some momentos, and that was it. Private and no fuss.

So the picture above, is nearer to what I experienced than is the one below. It is a very interesting picture, taken within a few years of the apparition, and it testifies to a huge well of faith among those who visited in those early years. The crutches on the wall represent cures of one sort or another. Whether through divine intervention, the power of faith, or sheer mind over matter, an amazing number of cripples appear to have walked away.

For that reason, it is a very powerful picture. All the more powerful when you know the background of the times.

Irish faith was local and built around the monasteries, parishes and old practices.

There were patterns (mini-pilgrimages/visits), holy wells and other pisreogaí (superstitions). Rome, with the active connivance of Cardinal Cullen, was attempting to stamp out all this stuff and impose Rome rule (homogeneous and done by the book). Bishop McHale was the people's champion but he lost out in the long run.

In parallel with this conflict the land war was hotting up in this very area. Evictions were rife as was land agitation, and the church was divided, some priests opting for the old and others going with the new. This was the part of the country that gave us the boycott the following year. And, of course, 1879 was the year of the Gorta Beag (mini famine).

So it is not stretching it too much to say that Knock had a collective nervous breakdown around the time of the apparition. Eugene Hynes is great reading on all of this.

The narrative of the apparition, as it hit the wider public consciousness, was filtered by the church to ensure theological orthodoxy and the result has a bit of the camel about it.

The picture below of the gable as it is today, shows the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist and the Lamb of God. As motley crew as ever there was. That's what I mean about the camel - a compromise creature designed by a Committee (for which read church).

The modern decor, and holy complex, was instituted by that great dancehall promoter from Toureen, Monsignor Horan. A holy entrepreneur extraordinary. He ran rings around Charlie Haughey (Taoiseach/Prime Minister) by challenging him to validate his Mayo credentials and support the construction of a nearby airport. He even got Pope John Paul II to visit the shrine on the 100th anniversary of the apparition. Some operator.

Anyway, I just thought I'd give the BVM a mention seeing as how she is tending to slip from view in this modern materialistic world.

The Gable End today

An American Wake

It's amazing, when you start following up your family history, how many world events which you might have learned about in your school history suddenly become personal.

The First World War is a typical one of these. Almost everybody in Ireland who starts out tracing their family history, from rabid Republicans to West Brits, will find some relation somewhere who went to war. Some families will come up with a clatter of them. WWI had an insatiable hunger for cannon fodder.

Another event, whose 100th anniversary is coming up, is the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. You can see the impact of this event on a sample local community, the Mayo village of Lahardane, on that community's commemorative website.


These were times of large families and high emigration, much of it to America (USA and Canada). Emigrants tended to cluster. That is to say, those from a particular parish would emigrate together as a group. When tragedy occurred it then had a disproportionate effect on certain communities. A good example in the case of the Titanic was the village of Lahardane in the parish of Addergoole, from where a group of 14 went on the Titanic; only 3 survived.

While none of those who left might ever have come back anyway, hence the "American Wake", the emigrant was never completely lost to the local community. There were always letters from America, which would be passed around all those mentioned in them. There were food and clothes parcels, which kept many a family going in times of hardship. And, of course, the remittances: money sent home when the emigrants got established in their new country. In Ireland's case there was even a special line in the national accounts for emigrants' remittances, and it was a significant line even in macro economic terms.


When it came to crossing the Atlantic, my family was more fortunate than some of those in Addergoole. My aunt Jane sailed from Cobh in 1908 on the White Star Line's then flagship the Baltic. At the time, this was the largest ship afloat, just as the Titanic was to be 4 years later.

Unlike the Titanic, the Baltic made it, and was one of the ships which radioed the Titanic an ice warning on the day the latter sank.

Jane was accompanied by a group from Ballyhaunis, her home town, and not a thousand miles from Lahardane. She settled in New York and had family, some of whom did come back to Ireland and visit. She was one of the lucky ones.

The King of Castlebar

I have been a long time observer of the antics of one Pee Flynn. He of the difficulty of maintaining three houses when the country was on its knees. The imperious air, the swagger, the almost God-like confidence, the apparition on the Late Late Show, the cult of fanatic followers, and so on.

I just happened to be perusing a book of photos by Doisneau, the brilliant observer of Parisien life over many decades, when I came across a shot he took of de Gaulle's victorious entry into Paris on 26 August 1944. And who do I see at the right hand of the Almighty?

Nuff said.