BACKSTORY

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I am often told that I compress stuff too much, so much so that it becomes unintelligible to everyone bar myself. I am also told that I indulge in unnecessary and longwinded explanations, and when the addressee is female I end up being accused of mansplaining.

So just to be on the safe [?] side, I thought I'd better give some background to two images I tweeted today. The first relies on a perception of irony and the second on some local geographical knowledge along with no little scepticism regarding the achievements of our current Repulblic.

So to picture No.1 (above). I was reading Miriam Lord's account of yesterday's press scramble in the Oval Office when I came across her remark that, during the attempted ejection of the press corps, one journalist, Senan Molony, went for broke and uttered the R word. The President apparently then asked the Taoiseach in a whisper "Is he one of yours?".

It was a Carole Coleman moment which no doubt will have Senan join her in the list of White House martyrs.

I'm sure Senan will get due exposure in the Mail for his brave act. At least on this occasion the object of the remark was alive and in the room and could have answered the challenge. Unlike Albert Folens who had gone to meet his maker by the time Senan succeeded in broadcasting his flimsily supported and damaging Nazi accusation on the national media.

This is the resultant tweet. So go figure.

And so to picture No.2. We are a priceless country when it comes to street name signage. This is usually at its most acute where the Irish language is involved and I have referred to this on many previous occasions. On this occasion I'll leave the Irish alone, there's nothing wrong with it. Today I have a wider agenda.

In the course of my reading of our national history I have been very taken by how the English were blamed for virtually all of our ills, from the famine to the profusion of prostitutes in the area of Dublin then known as Monto.

Now there was probably some justification for those two observations. The English administration could certainly have responded better to the threat and fact of famine, but it clearly didn't suit their agenda or ideology at the time. That there should have been a profusion of prostitutes in a town boasting a number of barracks with a large military presence would not be unusual.

What really got me about all this though was the prevailing nationalist wisdom that once we got rid of the English the latent purity of the Irish race would blossom and we'd live happily ever after. Well we don't. We're no more moral than the next crowd and we have sections of our dearly loved people starving or homeless or both.

The street nameplates here encapsulate all of this for me. We sent the English back home so the Queen Square West plate was redundant. We replaced it with glorious bilingualism honouring one of the foremost heroes of the Rising. But it was a cheap plate, and the paint peeled, and that's how it looks today.

I posted the tweet with the text "No comment. Go figure.

SKIN THE GOAT

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This is Davy's pub in Leeson Street, Dublin, to where the perpetrators of the Phoenix Park Murders retired after their dreadful deed on 6 May 1882.

That's where I went this evening, on Bloomsday in this year of Our Lord 2016.

Was I sitting on one of the same stools as the perpetrators? I doubt it, as this is now the Leeson Lounge and the decor is changed utterly.

I was there to hear Senan Molony talk about the murders, particularly as they were retailed in one of the chapters of Joyce's Ulysses.

Truly Divine with Eamonn Moran on guitar

In the run up to Senan's act, we were treated to some songs which appeared in Joyce's works and even one actually set to music by the great man himself.

The songs were sung by a Dutch lady whose stage name is Truly Divine. And truly divine they were. This lady is a self taught jazz singer with professional theatrical training and she is a wow. A beautiful voice with a great variety of tonality and great delivery.

It was well worth coming in for this alone.

I'd have liked to hear her sing Piaf and asked her about that. Yes, she does, a little, but more Marlene Dietrich and Doris Day. But her Joyce songs, interspersed with commentary were great. I'd have listened all night.

Senan Molony

But that's not what I was there for. I went to see and hear Senan Molony on the Murders. Readers will know that I have a bone to pick with him, but this turned out not to be the night.

His session got of to a sombre start when he was obliged to refer to the murder of Yorkshire Labour MP Jo Cox who had been shot and stabbed and had died on this very day. This was a tricky one as Senan's talk was about a Yorkshire MP who had been stabbed to death on 6 May 1882 in the Phoenix Park, Lord Cavendish.

In any event tonight's show would go on, but the day's events would add a poignancy to this retelling of an older story.

Senan's talk was quite interesting and he spiced it with some over the top impersonations of Joyce's characters.

His main chapter concerned some newspapermen discussing the murders sixteen years later on 16 June 1904 (Bloomsday) and he explained how Joyce's text was taking potshots at newspaper men in general.

You really had to take Joyce's text apart to understand how he was getting it up for the newspaper guys and Senan gave us a good exegesis of the text.

In passing, he was critical of the English newspapers at the time of the murders when they had tried to implicate Parnell in the dreadful deed although he had nothing to do with it.

He told that one with such a straight face that I'm sure his own earlier linking of Albert Folens with Nazis and war criminals was the last thing on his mind.

Anyway, if he gives the talk again somewhere it would be worth going along.

It might just tempt you to read Ulysses or it might put you off entirely.

BLOOMSDAY 2016

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Bloomsday as a public occasion didn't start to take off until 1954 when a number of Dublin literati made a pilgrimage out to Joyce's Tower in Sandycove. It has slowly caught on and with performers like David Norris coming on the scene it really took off in more recent times.

Bloomsday 110th Anniversary @ Martello No.7 (2014)
(l-r) Niall O'Donoghue, David Hedegan (RIP) and Felix Larkin

Not being a literary type, and prepared to admit that I have never read Ulysses, the day never made much of an impression on me until, very much into later life, I started taking an interest in Martello Towers, mine being principally in No.7 Killiney Bay.

The day then took on a more personal commemorative interest when I realised that it was on that day in 1946 that Gordon Brewster, artist and cartoonist, died in my mother's shop in Howth, and it was on that day in 1948 that my grand-aunt Margaret died in Portrane Asylum, having been there for thirty years.

SKIN-THE-GOAT by Senan Molony
Leeson Lounge, Bloomsday 2016 @ 9pm - all welcome

Despite the emotional loading of the occasion I have no plans to attend any event in particular though I did skim the programme out of pure curiosity. In the course of this I came on the above event where Senan Molony, currently political editor of the Irish Daily Mail, will be recounting the story of "Skin the Goat" (James FitzHarris) who was the driver for the assassins at the Phoenix Park Murders in 1882.

The connection with Bloomsday is apparently Joyce's reference to Myles Crawford recounting the journalist Gallagher's scoop on the Murders. Not being a Joyce exegesist myself I'll leave you to disentangle the affair in this Chapter of Ulysses or you could always go along and hear Senan's version.

Unfortunately, Joyce didn't mention Albert Folens because, as he might have said himself, time didn't permit. Otherwise Senan might have thrown in, as a bonus, his own "scoop" on how Albert Folens was a Nazi, that is until the matter, as intended to be relayed by RTÉ in 2007, went to court and the claim was then reluctantly accompanied by some qualification. Nevertheless, Folens's reputation was truly assassinated and the reverberations are round to this day.

PRO PATRIA

Roger Casement
Photo: NLI Ref.: link
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So this year, as part of the ongoing centenary commemorations, we will be commemorating Roger Casement.

And what did Roger Casement do in 1916?

When Ireland, as part of the UK, was at war with Germany, he conspired with the Germans to overthrow British rule in Ireland.

In other words, he enlisted German help to "free Ireland".

Casement's funeral passing the GPO in 1965

So, in 1965, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of 1916, he got an Irish State Funeral.

1916 Casement Commemorative Stamp 2016

And in 2016 he gets his own 1916 postage stamp.

The late Albert Folens

This is Albert Folens.

And what did he do?

During WWII he collaborated with the Germans to "free Flanders", his native country, from the brutal cultural, linguistic and administrative oppression of the Belgian state.

And what was his reward?

Senan Molony

He was labelled a war criminal and included in a 2007 RTÉ TV programme entitled "Hidden Nazis".

The programme, insofar as Folens was involved, was a collaboration between Senan Molony and Cathal O'Shannon. The former I had never heard of and the latter I had some respect for up to that point.

The late Cathal O'Shannon

Both men should have been ashamed of themselves for making such a serious accusation on such flimsy evidence.

They both owe an apology to Folens's widow and family for the hurt and damage caused.

Unfortunately Mrs. Folens is now dead, as is Cathal O'Shannon.

So all that can now reasonably be done is for Senan Molony to apologise to the Folens family. Whether they might accept such an apology or not is entirely a matter for them.

And, incidentally, I didn't see any of our stout citizens, who are now consumed with patriotic fervour commemorating Casement, coming out at the time in defence of Albert Folens.

I think I was a lone voice crying out in the wilderness.

You can get a blow by blow account of the whole disgraceful episode here.

Do you remember Froggy?

I am now 50 years out of Coláiste Mhuire this year. At a commemorative lunch the other day, one of my classmates asked "Do you remember Froggy?"

Do I remember Froggy? Of course I do. He was my first French teacher, and a very good one. Not exactly a compliment to a militant Fleming, but there you are. You can't have it all.

I did a post on this blog in his defence this month 6 years ago. I was incensed at the time at how Cathal O'Shannon (now RIP, but a journalist whom I once admired) and Senan Moloney (who had an agreement with Froggy in 1987, which he presumably considered expired on Froggy's death, heedless of the man's reputation, or the feelings or economic fortunes of his widow) both went for the man in an RTÉ series on Hidden Nazis.

Fortunately, his widow, who was made of stern stuff, took the matter to court and secured limited implementation of the 1987 agreement. Meanwhile, RTÉ cut from the transmitted programme a reconstruction of a Nazi interrogation in which Folens was portrayed in the part of interpreter.

If you are curious you can read my original post, but for now I just want to recall him as a teacher.

He taught French by the direct method (mainly). This may have been because he was in an Irish language school and didn't have much, if any, Irish. I suspect he would have used this method even in an English speaking school.

He operated an incentive system. Laxity or indiscipline in class earned you an X. Three Xs and you were sent down to the Head. An exceptionally good performance in class earned you a circle. This allowed you to skip homework on a night of your choice.

There was a period of weeks when less than half the class turned up in school. I think there was some flu epidemic or suchlike sweeping the land at the time. Folens put the curriculum on pause and regaled us with stories, tonguetwisters and songs, all in French. I thought this very enlightened at the time. Those who were absent through no fault of their own did not miss out on the course and those of us who were lucky enough to turn up got a bonus. Il était un petit navire. Le riz tenta le rat, le rat tenté tâta le riz tentant.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, his "cog notes" could be seen as first class, depending on your view of the objectives of the education system. I certainly found them great. They were Roneod and were the germ that subsequently grew into a first class publishing company. They were followed by modest volumes on the newer subjects, like civics, for which no textbooks were available, and, eventually, by the full range of high quality textbooks.

Anyway, I thought he deserved a mention, more than 50 years on.