Phone Tapping

I was directed to Matt Blaze's blog by Ockham's Razor's posting of Security Bingo, which is a hoot in itself.

There is a lot of unsecured stuff out there and people can be very naive. The web is a jungle and it is full of hostile creatures. You should not venture out without your sun protection and your beekeepers netting and all the relevant anti-viral injections.

But it was not Matt's general material on security that caught my eye but his recent involvement in evaluating California's electronic voting machines. He effectively found a load of incompetent rubbish that needed to be reinvented from scratch. Apparently the code was so riddled with holes that you didn't even need someone with malicious intent to subvert the process; it was already compromised. And add to that the whole distributed hardware system and you're into serious primeval chaos.

It remains to be seen how successful California (and the rest of the USA) will be in bringing this renegade system to heel. In this context it was very disturbing to see our own Taoiseach ashamed of the pencil and paper method which has served us so well in the past, and which has, at least, some semblance of transparency and traceability so sadly lacking in the sophisto e-versions.

I'm all in favour of using computers where they take the drudgery out of repetitive tasks, or enhance our lives generally, but I would stop far short of endorsing something as being superior to the old methods just because it was electronic.

But what provoked me do this post was this reference of Matt's:

"I was at a conference recently where everyone was asked to recall their first moment of thinking "I rule!" over some technology. It's a surprisingly revealing question; experience the exhilaration of hacker empowerment at a sufficiently impressionable age and you're hooked forever. A disproportionately large fraction of the answers seemed to involve telephony. (Mine was when I discovered you could dial a phone by flashing the hookswitch. I think I was too young to have anyone to call, though)."

Forget your crack cocaine and your heroin. This was the sort of high you got when I was young and it was all positive. Part of the learning process!

He refers to "flashing the hookswitch" - for us is was simply "tapping the phone". Don't forget this was in the days of pulse and not tone dialing. And you really needed some concentration to tap the zeros - ten fast uninterrupted evenly spaced taps, or you had to start the whole process all over again. And you could make international calls. And if you pressed button B you might even get the previous idiot's uncollected refund.

If this sort of stuff turns you on check out this page.
 
 

Heddwch, Eisteddwch

I have been involved with the Welsh National Eisteddfod since the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969. "Eisteddfod yr Arwisgiad" if I remember correctly.

The Prince had been invested in Caernarfon Castle and had discovered his "Welshness" for the occasion. He had undergone a Welsh cultural immersion course, prepared and serviced by the best in the Principality, which culminated in his making a speech in Welsh at the Investiture. Despite this promising start precious few words of Welsh have passed his lips since. Of 20 other speeches in Wales, only one has been fully in Welsh. The rest were in English, although of these 9 have a Welsh formulaic opening/closing.

Meanwhile, in 1969, the Free Wales Army were blowing things up, claiming a direct line of violent lineage from Saunders Lewis's example of the firing of Yr Ysgol Fomio in 1936.

The Welsh Language Society (Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg) were painting out monolingual road signs, chaining themselves to TV masts, and, to all intents and purposes, "refusing to recognise the court" which was attempting to conduct its business in the Welsh heartland through the medium of English.

What is the Eisteddfod?
But back to the 1969 Eisteddfod. It was like an amalgam of the Oireachtas, a Fleadh Ceoil and the Spring Show all rolled into one. And all through the medium of Welsh. The buzz was enormous and the lines of the conflicts emerging within Wales were all reflected there: traditional welsh nationalists versus community/political activists; native welsh versus holiday-home tourists; linguistic purists versus a looser learner-embracing culture. Palpable excitement.

The Eisteddfod is a fantastic festival. It is a concentrated outpouring of Welshness over one week in August. It is the pinnacle of a vast range of cultural activity which goes on throughout the preceding year. You can get a flavour in my report of the Denbigh 2001 Eisteddfod on my site. This also references a number of partial updates to 2005.

Welsh Labour Party Funks it
It is ironic that the Welsh Labour Party decided not to have a stand at this years Eisteddfod. It was they who were first onto the field, and this long before political parties were allowed. Labour was then in Government and the Welsh Office (ie the then "local" branch of the UK administration) had an official stand on the field entitled "Llafur yng Nghymru". This was subtly translated in small print as "Manpower in Wales" but it was well understood by all to be the Labour Party in Wales.

Eisteddfod Website
The Eisteddfod itself has a website, which, despite a makeover this year, is still a bit chaotic and lacking in structure. While the webcams are very welcome - they allow those who can't quite make it there to see the show - the text-based aspects of the site seem to have deteriorated, and you have to go chasing BBC or Google news to see what is going on during the week. Attendance has been falling over the last few years and there is a strong case to be made for the festival making much greater use of technology to further the cause. The aim of the festival is to support Welsh culture and language and both physical attendance and virtual attendance on the web can contribute here.

Dillwyn's death
Dillwyn Miles has had a long and productive association with the Eisteddfod. He was for many years the Herald Bard, in a costume of his own design, and he has written what is effectively the public history of the Gorsedd of Bards (in English) and a series of personal reminiscences (in Welsh). He died this year, aged 91, just before Eisteddfod week.

Still only one female chair
The highlight of the 2001 Eisteddfod was the winning of the chair by Mererid Hopwood, the first woman ever to do so. Well, six years later she retains this distinction.

There are three competitions, the winners of which qualify to be candidates for Archdruid. These are the Chair and Crown, both for poetry, and the Prose Medal. The Crown has been won in the past by women, but only rarely, and this year's Prose Medal winner was a woman. But the number of women in the candidate pool is still very small and the prospect of a female Archdruid in the near future looks slim.

New Archdruid
A new Archdruid starts a three year term next year and has already been chosen. He is Dic Jones (Dic Yr Hendre) who won the chair as far back as 1966.

He also won the chair in 1976 but was disqualified over a technical conflict of interest. As a member of one of the local Eisteddfod committees, Dic did not qualify to enter the competition, but, as entries are adjudicated under pen names, this was not picked up until the last minute. The ensuing panic was a wonder to behold. But it all got sorted out in the end. Nevertheless Dic was held in bad odour for some time afterwards.

It is good to see him making Archdruid at this stage.


Results
The three principal literary competition results this year were as follows.

The Chair was won by T James Jones, who had won the Crown in 1986 and 1988. His brother Aled Gwyn won the Crown in 1995, while his other brother John Gwilym Jones won the chair in 1981.

His nephew Tudur Dylan Jones won the Crown this year, having won the Chair on two previous occasions. Clearly a unique family in the history of the Eisteddfod.

The Prose Medal was won by Mary Annes Payne who will now enter the pool of candidates for Archdruid.

None of this should give the impression that prizes are awarded lightly. One of the things that has impressed me about the Eisteddfod is that standards are maintained and where entries are not up to scratch no prize is awarded. Crowns and Chairs have been withheld over the years, much to the disappointment of attendees, not to mention the competitors. This year the Gold Medal for craftwork was withheld.

Further Links
Further Welsh material on my site.

The Dublin Welsh Male Voice Choir (PDF 450KB) which I joined in 1970.

Welsh typo to lift up your heart. Enjoy.
 
 

Lock up your rubbish

There was a time when we lived in a safe society. We didn't need to lock our front or back doors. Nor did we need to lock the car, and set the alarm, while just slipping into the local shop to buy a box of matches.

Well, maybe there was never such a time, and if there was, then there was also a local community to notice any suspicious activity near the front door. And we didn't have cars in those days, well, maybe just one.

Anyway without getting too nostalgic about the times that may never have been, there is no doubt that today is worse. Stabbings, muggings, breaking and entry with GBH are now commonplace. And nobody seems to care. Not enough anyway, unless it is happening to them at the moment.

These thoughts were provoked by a recent visit to the Carmelite church in Berkley Road, in Dublin's north inner city. I was killing time and decided to walk around the block, in a part of the city I had not examined in any detail before, in spite of having gone to school a few hundred yards down the road.

It is an imposing church and has many long remembered trappings of old - the Infant de Prague, St. Theresa of Lisieux and more - associated with the Carmelite Order.

Then I came to the offering box. This used generally to be a wooden box with a slot in it hanging on the wall. Not this time, in this place.

A full blown safe set into the floor with an elaborate slot mechanism. Amazing.

There used to be the very odd occasion, in the old days, when the offering box was burgled by some ne'er do well, who was assumed to have automatically excommunicated himself on the spot, and had an immediate reservation activated in the eternal fires. But the safe suggested that the force of the old deterrent had waned, and we were now into the final showdown where even Baby Jesus would need his manger secured for fear of abduction.

What a wonderful world!

And just in case there are any southsiders out there gloating and wondering what else would you expect on the northside, I should recount a subsequent southside experience to level the pitch.

I was walking along Upper Leeson St., the other day, when what did I see. Wheelies out for the binman (I haven't seen any binwomen yet!).

Nothing passremarkable in that, you might say. But as I passed them by, something caught my eye. Unbelievable - they were all locked. Yes, the rubbish bins were locked. That really got me wondering what people got up to on the southside.

Were the locks to keep the content in, or to stop some tipper piggybacking on his neighbour's load? Were they to stop identity theft? Could those who had identities worth stealing not afford a shredder, or perhaps the time to shred? Were the locks to keep indigent northsiders from sleeping in these luxury southside bins?

Or had these particular southsiders just been watching too much Beckett?

I feel a thesis coming on!

UPDATE

I am sorry to have to report that the Northside has taken this matter one stage further. This photo of a tethered rubbish bin was taken on Raheny DART southbound platform (on 18/11/2008).

Perhaps the local population has figured that these jazzy bins are a better class of object than the ones they put out for the binman at present. Or, given that this bin was on the southbound platform, perhaps the tether is a response to a Northside fear of Southside entrepreneurship in these troubled times.

Irish Solutions - Confucius, him say

I got to thinking recently about some Irish solutions to Irish problems over the years and thought I should share the fruits of our native inventiveness with a wider audience, so here goes.

Traffic lit roundabouts
I always thought roundabouts and traffic lights were alternative solutions to a traffic flow problem.

If, for example, you are trying to sort out traffic coming from four directions you can use a roundabout.

This has the following benefits:

• it is eco-friendly - no electricity used - static signage
  
• it does not delay traffic when there is no one on the roundabout
  

But it can have one big disadvantage. If the traffic flow on one axis predominates, such as with a main highway versus a minor crossing road, the low priority road may never get a look in.

In this case you need to use traffic lights, even if the timing needs to be varied depending on time of day or observed traffic flows.

Ireland has combined these two methods to give us the roundabout with traffic lights. The lights are just at the entry, and exit, points of the roundabout, and the chaos is appaling.

The site of one, at least, of these monstrosities, is at Ireland's first official roundabout in Artane on the northside of Dublin. Since writing this I have been through the roundabout at Dublin Airport which reminded me that this must be the mother of all trafficlit roundabouts. A webcam at this roundabout would provide weeks, if not months, of uninterrupted entertainment to rival anything Big Brother has to offer.

Oddly even numbers
I have seen street numbered in many different ways.

• Numbers can go up on one side and come back down on the other.
  
• numbers can progress along a street with odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other, but both ascending in the same direction. These can sometimes get out of phase depending on the incidence of number interrupters, like other streets, on either side, but it is usually manageable.
  
• you can have the odd effect in a cul de sac of numbers starting at the far end on one side, rising as they come towards you at the entrance, jumping across the entrance, and going on up the other side. You then see two adjacent numbers at the entrance and it can be difficult to know whether it is worth entering the cul de sac in pursuit of a particular number.

But I really came across a gem recently when trying to match up numbers before and after a number of separately numbered terraces were inegrated into a unified numbering system for the road.

The odd numbers start at one end of the road and go along one side, while the even numbers start at the other end and go in the opposite direction on the other side.

Mindboggling, but, perversely in my case, very welcome as for some reason, the terrace I was interested in started from 1 and had only odd numbers, which it fortuitously kept under the new system. So No. 31 was still No.31 after the changeover. My thanks to the mad hoor who thought that one up. [The terrace was Park View Terrace, and the road Brookfield Road, in the Old Kilmainham quarter of Dublin city.]

Bona fide contraception
In the first half of the last century the environment in Ireland was very repressive. There was strict censorship (sex not violence) and contraception was not available, unless you opted for abstention, coitus interruptus (also known as Vatican Roulette), or oral or anal sex, and the last two of these were considered immoral and abhorrent.

A woman could get the pill, supposedly to regularise periods, but this not only put the onus on the woman, it also left her open to the long term side effects of the medication.

Then Charlie Haughey thought up an Irish solution to an Irish problem. Contraceptives (ie condoms) would be made available on prescription to married couples who were practicing bona fide contraception.

In other words only those who were entitled to have babies were allowed to avoid having them. QED.


The empty oath
One of the things that kept Fianna Fáil out of the Dáil (Irish parliament) in the latter half of the 1920s was the requirement for deputies to to take an oath of allegiance to the Free State and of fidelity to the British King in his role as a symbol of the Commonwealth.

De Valera realised that to get into power he would have to take the oath, so he announced in advance that he considered it an empty formula and abolished it once he came to power.

Túsáite
There are two official languages in Ireland. The first one (Irish/Gaeilge) and the other one (English/Sacsbhéarla).

For the most part, or virtually entirely, the country lives its life through the medium of English and has done so for the last 200 years. As a result, its laws are conceived in English, drafted in English, debated in English, adopted in English and ultimately implemented in English.

There is a constitutional requirement that versions should also be available in the Irish language and these are invariably produced as translations from the English and published with a lag, which can be up to a fair number of years.

But here's the rub. In the event of a dispute over the meaning of a piece of legislation, the Irish language version takes precedence.

---

Believe it or not.

In defence of Froggy

In more recent times (2023) information has surfaced which gives increased depth to this story and effectively turns Folens from a simple collaborator, albeit justifying his collaboration as motivated by the prospect of independence for Flanders, into a fully fledged patriotic Flemish hero. Instead of being incarcerated he should have been given a medal.

For the full update on this new evidence and on the new book written by his daughter Leentje and just published, see this blog post.

The book itself reveals that far from simply collaborating with the Germans in Brussels, Folens was working undercover for the Flemish Resistance. It also shows that his participation in the Flemish Legion was not by choice but by accident.

These new developments make a certain amount of the material below, and that referenced in some other of my blog posts on Folens obsolete. So if you are reading this blog post or any of the others, please remember that he has emerged in an even more favourable light than originally portrayed.

Also I have set up a totally new blog specifically linked to the book where individual posts expand on aspects of the story including for the post 1958 period which is not covered in the book: https://albertandjuliette.blogspot.com/
-o0o-

As of June 2007, I am republishing this post with some additions, as follows:

• the first section is the original post unamended;
• the second section is my own follow up comment posted after the transmission of the programme; and
• the third section contains some new comments on subsequent material relating to the programme appearing in the periodical History Ireland

---

The Original Post posted 12 January 2007, before the broadcast There is a report in the Irish Times (12/1/2007) which says that Albert Folens's widow secured a temporary (ex parte) High Court injunction preventing RTÉ from using a 1987 interview with her husband in a TV programme titled Ireland's Nazis, scheduled to be aired next week as part of the Hidden Ireland series.

Mr. Senan Molony, who was then working for the Sunday Tribune had taped the interview with Mr. Folens. Mr Rogers, counsel for Mrs. Folens, said that a representative of the newspaper, Mr Molony and Mr Folens had signed an agreement allowing Mr Folens to see any article before it was published and also giving him the right of reply.

His client was seeking the injunction restraining the defendants from using, broadcasting and publishing the subject matter of that interview, otherwise than in accordance with the terms of the agreement in 1987. Report was also carried in Irish Independent.

---

Albert was my French teacher in school. He was a very good teacher. He taught French through French. He was supposed to be teaching it through Irish but he didn't have the Irish.

He published a series of textbooks for learning French through Irish which we used in class. Donncha Ó Céileachair did the Irish end of these. Folens also started publishing cog notes for exams which were first class, even if they were totally subversive of the supposed aims of the education system. This activity progressed to publishing actual text books, particularly on new subjects like civics, and the business eventually expanded into a high class, and very worthy, publishing empire.

We called him Froggy, which must have been the ultimate irony for a militant Fleming. We didn't know his background then but it was fairly wide knowledge in Dublin that he had fled Belgium because of support for the Germans during WWII. It would have been understood here, though, that any such support was bound up with the struggle for Flemish independence. The Germans had promised both the Flemish and Bretons greater independence under Germany than they then enjoyed under Belgium and France respectively. A number of Bretons also got sanctuary in Ireland after WWII and some became actively involved in the Irish language movement.

Albert wrote a book which set out his position quite clearly. He published it himself in 1958. It is called "Aiséirí Flóndrais" (Flanders Rising). It was published in Irish, translated from the English by Donncha Ó Céileachair. It shows that he was a true Flemish nationalist and abhorred the extremes perpetrated by the Nazis, some of which extremes, he says, were also mirrored by the then Belgian authorities. Along with tens of thousands of Flemings he supported the Germans as a means of achieving some measure of rights and ultimate independence for Flanders. Most of these were ultimately disillusioned by the later stages of the war by which time they were faced with Hobson's choice.

It would be strange indeed for the Irish, of all people, to be critical of his good faith in this venture when Ireland herself sought the help of the French (na Francaigh ag teacht thar sáile!) and the Germans (Banna Strand!) in her own fight against national, cultural, economic, linguistic and religious oppression. Our Head of Government even signed the book of condolences for Hitler after his atrocities were known. The Flemings were a long oppressed race, none the less so by their own cobbled-together and vindictive Belgian state.

I spent time in Flanders in 1967/68 at the height of the "linguistic wars" and I must say my sympathy was entirely with the Flemish. They had been derided, exploited, used for cannon fodder, denied office and forced to bend the knee to a francophile coterie which, thankfully by then, was beginning to resemble the fading remnants of a post colonial ascendancy.

I don't know if RTÉ made any effort to consult with his widow regarding the content of the programme or to give the family a chance to put Albert's view across. It doesn't look like it from the tone of the report in today's Irish Times and Mrs. Folens's statement.

There is a class of supposed exposé journalism, and it is not new, which seems very reluctant to afford the subject of criticism the right of simultaneous reply.

This, after all, is only natural justice and to be all the more expected in a flourishing democracy like ours. It is, unfortunately, usually safe enough to take the lazy way out when the subject is dead! Fortunately there may be a prospect of some legal redress in this particular case. We'll see.

I don't know if Albert's book was ever re-published after 1958 or if the original manuscript in English ever saw the light of day. But, in this age of universal access to the internet, it would be worth publishing both, if only online.

There are even lessons to be learned from it on the linguistic front which might still be relevant to both the Welsh and Irish efforts at language development.

If RTÉ want to exhume Albert let them resurrect the whole man and pay some attention to what he actually has to say rather than setting him up as an easy aunt sally.

---

My comment posted following the broadcast

I wondered why the original taped interview had not been used at the time (1987) as the basis for a story, or flogged to RTE as was done recently. It is interesting to see the reasons given at the time by the then editor of the Sunday Tribune, Vincent Browne, for not using the material: " ... we have decided not to publish anything concerning your involvement in the Second World War, at present. This decision was taken on the following basis: that, given the absence of harder information concerning any impropriety it would be wrong to expose you to the turmoil that would inevitably ensue if we published the information which we presently have in our possession." Source The only additional information available since then is the entry in the US/UK Crowcass manual listing Folens as an "interpreter" rather than a "translator" at the Sicherheitspolizei premises in Brussels. However Folens himself said that the part he worked in was "lectorale" which involved translation rather than interpretation. The dropping of a "reconstruction"/fabrication of an interrogation sequence from the transmitted programme speaks volumes in this regard.

---

Further Comments posted 2 June 2007

The programme was reviewed in the March/April issue of History Ireland by Eamon O'Flaherty who lectures in history in UCD. He mentions Cathal O'Shannon's annoyance at Irish neutrality and at not being allowed to wear his British uniform when home on leave in Dublin from the RAF during the war.

I can understand why O'Shannon might have resented the welcome given to collaborators after the war when, at the same time, the contribution of Irish people who enlisted in the Allied cause was swept under the carpet. Some of my own family experienced this after WWI.

Regarding the actual programme, O'Flaherty does suggest, however, that in O'Shannon's case "perhaps the journalist's desire to tell a good story won out over the maintenance of proportion in the latter stages of the film". I certainly think that was the case. O'Flaherty himself, however, also asserts that "the controversial nature of the revelations even at this remove was shown by the efforts of the widow of Albert Folens, one of the subjects of the film, to prevent it from being broadcast". I understood that Mrs. Folens's action was an attempt to ensure a right of reply and fairness of treatment in the case of her husband. Her counsel was seeking to have the broadcast of the tape stopped except in accordance with the existing agreement which guaranteed advance knowledge and a right of reply - hardly new concepts in the area of justice.

A further piece in the May/June issue of History Ireland, by Daniel Leach, a scholar and PhD candidate at the School of Historical Studies in the University of Melbourne, takes a broader look at the factors influencing the behaviour of the Irish State during WWII, and, in particular, our covert pro-Allied neutrality. Leach underlines the importance of symbols of sovereignty to a small newly emerging state, particularly where the former colonial master and its major ally do not appear to take such sovereignty seriously.

The piece also refers to the practice of some of the victorious Allies of tarring all collaborators with the war-criminal label as a tactic for suppressing separatist movements. Obvious examples here were France and Belgium.

There are many lessons to be learned from this unfortunate episode, and they need to be learned sooner rather than later in a world that is increasingly making light of the very human rights for which people fought and died in two "World Wars" and many other struggles between and since.

---

Some more recent posts

Turkish Delight 17/1/2012

Do you remember Froggy 23//2013

Pro Patria 8/2/2016

Was Roger Casement a Nazi 2/4/2016

Bloomsday 2016 12/6/2016

New Blog

I have set up a totally new blog specifically linked to the book where individual posts expand on aspects of the story including for the post 1958 period which is not covered in the book: https://albertandjuliette.blogspot.com/

A Terrible Beauty

My son recently drew my attention to the insanity of the current pre-election poster campaign where candidates are frantically vying with each other for the attention of the passer by.

Unfortunately some of these passers by are driving motor cars, and to make matters worse there seems to be no rule against the candidates vying with the vital traffic signals either.

This unbelievable example is in Pearse Street, Dublin, at the junction of Sandwith Street.

Mind you, a perusal of the entrails would make you wonder if the traffic signals were trying to tell Bertie something - settle for the Park, or, no left turn, for example.

But it really isn't funny and shows an absolute contempt for one of the causes all the political parties are pledged to, namely, reducing road deaths. Oh yeah?

There are many other issues in this campaign, not least of which is how far Bertie might be prepared to go to recruit a partner to keep him in government.

The entrails below, in Kildare Street, Dublin, just beside the Irish Parliament building, suggest the possibility of an unholy alliance in the next Dáil, appropriately underscored by the the former Free State Senator whose poem A Terrible Beauty is Born says it all.

Enjoy the campaign and don't blame me for the result.

Street Sculpture

At this stage people have become very familiar with what is referred to as street sculpture. These are not statues on pedestals. Rather are they life size figures, usually in bronze, depicting historical or symbolic persons, and designed to fit into the context of the street where they appear.

In Dublin, for example, we have James Joyce outside the Kylemore Bakery/Café in Tablbot Street, Molly Malone with her barrow at the bottom of Grafton Street, or Patrick Kavanagh resting on a bench along the banks of his beloved canal.

There are some interesting examples ouside the capital, however, and I thought you might like to see a few of these which I came across in recent times.

Click on the images for larger versions.

---

Galway

Although they never actually met, Oscar and Eduard Wilde are depicted relaxing and conversing in Galway's Shop Street.

Eduard was an Estonian writer who was a contemporary of Wilde's. He lived 1865-1933, while Oscar lived 1854-1900.


These sculptures are more stylised than lifelike.

---

Ballyhaunis

Much more lifelike are these characters from the Square in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo.

I took some shots from close up and almost found myself apologising to the guy in the cap for being in his face.

This group, and particularly the man with the cap, had a real presence.

It is entitled Lá an Aonaigh or Market Day. The sculptor is Rory Breslin and the project is connected with the Mayo Millennium Sculpture Initiative.

---

Kiltimagh

The West of Ireland has been decimated by emigration from the famine times onwards. It was particularly heavy during the 1950s. While the rest of Europe was basking in a post-war resurgence, Ireland was experiencing a prolonged depressing recession.

Emigration during this time, and in previous decades, had been so heavy that a significant income inflow in the national accounts came under the heading "Emigrants' Remittances".

This very striking sculpture, entiltled "I'll Send You The Fare" is in Kiltimagh's main street and is dedicated to the young men and women who emigrated from Kiltimagh, Bohola, and the surrounding areas during the 1950s.

The sculptor is Sally McKenna.

---

Kiltimagh has a strong literary tradition and it is very hard to escape the presence of Raftery the Poet in the town. From the Raftery Rooms, now sadly closed, to Raftery Square, the town resonates to the poet's words.

This street sculpture of a man reading his newspaper testifies to the town's literacy.

Unfortunately it is somewhat contradicted by the grammatical mistakes in the cast dedication plaque for the emigrant street sculpture and by the sign over Sparky's Variety Store in the main street.

---

Some more street sculpture here and here.

The end of the line

I recently visited Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo, where my father was born and where I spent many holidays in my youth (1950s to you). I had come back to chase up some leads in my current pursuit of my family history.

On my way back from the graveyard the road passed under a railway bridge. As I approached the bridge, I looked up towards the railway line and, to my amazement, there were the old semaphore signals still by the side of the track. They certainly didn't look abandoned; one was set to open and the other to closed.

They brought back memories of when my father, who worked for the national railway company, used to bring me to the station and get me into the signal box where I spent many an hour in the company of the signalman. Of course there were more trains then. There are now only three passenger trains a day and the odd timber goods train.

Anyway, I wondered what might have remained of the old signalbox and all its solid victorian mechanical and electro-mechanical machinery. So I trekked up the slope to the station and went to the ticket office. Fortunately this was manned (literally) as there was a train due for Dublin.

I asked the man if he would mind me going onto the platform to take a few photos for old times sake.

"You're welcome."

"Is the old signal box still around? I used to spend time in it in the 1950s when I was down here with my father."

"It is."

"I saw the old signals down the track. I suppose they're not in use any longer."

"They are, but only for the next week. After that we will be going over to lights signalling controlled from Athlone"

"You mean the old levers which controlled the points and the signals, and that I was allowed to operate in the 1950s, have been in use all this time?"

"They have, indeed."

"And the old staff system?"

"Definitely"

Well I must confess I was absolutely flabbergasted. The control system, installed when the railway first came, was still in use, and apparently functioning satisfactorily.

Unfortunately, there was nobody around to let me into the signal box which would not be open until much later in the day, but I was welcome to take what photos I liked including of the interior of the signal box, but only through the window.

What he told me confirmed that the line was still single track which doubled at the station to serve as a passing point.

I should explain what the staff system was. It was an ingenious way of locking a single track section so that it could be occupied by only one train at a time. Don't forget that with a single track you could, otherwise, have two trains approaching each other, at speed, from opposite directions.

The system operated through two interconnected devices at either end of the single track section. Each device had a bank of staffs, which were like small metal batons, and only one staff could be out out of the combined bank of staffs at any one time. When you took a staff out of one device, the system locked until the staff was returned to the device at the other end of the section. A driver could not enter a section unless he had a staff in his possession. A perfect system, with a built in failsafe factor (eg should the electricity go down), provided, of course, you left out the human factor.

In the old days this staff system operated all over the country, everywhere there was a single track line. As an aside, the man explained to me that the Ballyhaunis station (terminal to you) was one of only two in the country that could be switched in and out of the system. This depended on whether more than one train at a time was scheduled to occupy the track between Claremorris and Castlerea. If they were, Ballyhaunis was switched in and provided a passing point for what the system recognised as two separate single tracksections (Claremorris-Ballyhaunis and Ballyhaunis-Castlerea). Otherwise, it operated as a single section between Claremorris and Castlerea.

And all this elegant control system would be obsolete in a week's time. It was very sad. The passing of an era. From electro-mechanical to electronic, and from local to regional control.

You can see a more sophisticated explanation of the "old" system here.

I hope that someone will see to it that the relics of the old system are preserved somewhere, if this is not already the case. It would be a shame if future generations were denied the opportunity to view this elegant and robust security system in all its glory.

Tarting up or tarting down

I was always taken with the image of the sailor with the sextant, from one of the big sailing ships, below the sign for the Combridge Galleries and above the one for the opticians Murray McGrath, on the corner of Grafton Street and Duke Street, in Dublin city centre.

I took a slide of this in the 1960s which I included in my Ireland show. I showed the slide of the sailor in isolation from his surroundings and asked the audience to guess where it was. Often as not they hadn't a clue.

We don't always look around us as we go down the street and we look up even less.

But if you did have the leisure to cast your eyes upwards - there he was. Still navigating off the wall.

He looked dignified, calm and competent. He knew where he was, where he had come from and where he was going. He conveyed a sense of stability and continuity, not to mention vision - 20/20 that is, and him perched above the opticians and within a brush length or two of some fine visual art.

That's how I remembered him.

--oo00oo--

I was in town the other day. The area around Grafton Street was buzzing. Open air cafés, street traders and buskers all added to the bustling atmosphere.

I passed the way and looked up.

My eyes went up and my heart went down.

Instead of my remembered sailor there was a mere gaudy shadow. My real sailor had been replaced by a modern piece of tack.

His coat was pink and peeling. He was looking at the sextant in his hands as if he didn't know whether to play it, eat it, or poke somebody's eye out with it. He was reduced in stature and had clearly put on a bit of weight - puppy fat maybe. He had lost his bearing as well as his bearings. He knew not whence he came or where the hell he was going. And it didn't really seem to matter. Nothing was expected of him.

Sad to see such tack in a country whose income per head has shot to the stars.

Per ardua ad astra, was the motto of my alma mater.

That was getting there.

But the return journey - a bit more flaky methinks.

Gaeilge: Fíor, Breac, agus eile

Ós rud é go bfhuilmíd anois i lár Seachtain (Coicís) na Gaeilge mheas mé sraith nasc a thabhairt le chéile do na leathanaigh nó na míreanna agam féin atá as Gaeilge nó a bhfuil baint acu leis an nGaeilge. Seo thíos iad.

As we're in the middle of Irish Language Week (fortnight) I thought I'd draw together links to some of the material on my site/blog in, or related to, the Irish language. Check out below.

These are actually in Irish
Na Duibhirigh
Na hUaisle
Ainmnmú Shráideanna Bhaile Átha Cliath
or bilingual
Rang 1963

These relate to the use or misuse of the language
Gaeilge ón mBroinn
Doicheall
Drochghaeilge Oifigiúil
Deis ar Fáil
Easpa fada contúirteach

These are by way of comment on, or just related to, the language.
Bóithrín na Smaointe
Mar a scríotar bítear
Easpa Shacs-Béarla
Béal doras
Géibheann
Buailte
Iarsmaoineamh
Frithród

Kicking Teacher

It seems to have become fashionable to have gone to Belgrove National School despite its being located on the northside of Dublin.

John McGahern taught there and was sacked from there for having written a dirty book. Neil Jordan is a past pupil and I recollect seeing a load of other names quoted recently of well known people whose education started in this school.

I think I was there before before most, if not all, of them. That would have been around 1949 when I was living in Dollymount Park.

People are always writing nowadays about how they went across the fields to school, or to the shops, or to anywhere. Crossing the field has almost attained the status of a literary conceit.

Well, I went across the field to school and I'll bet there are very few people who have had as big a monument erected on their field as I have had on mine. A spanking new church, no less, named after the angel who brought the good news to Mary.

There was nothing wrong with Belgrove, I just hated school and availed of any opportunity not to go.

One day, I set out for school across the field and by the time I got to the other side I realised I had left my schoolbag behind. I turned around and set out for home. By the time I got home, about two minutes later, I had convinced myself that I was now so late that there was no point in going to school at all that day. My mother thought otherwise. But I dug in and refused to go to school. She grabbed me by the ear, or somewhere, and literally dragged me all the way to school.

She knocked on the class door, which class was now well underway. Teacher opened the door. My mother said "This fellow says he's not going to school today". "We'll see about that" said the teacher, making to grab me as my Mother handed me over.

By this time I was beyond all reason and kicked the teacher sharply in the shin. "Get him out of here" shouted the teacher.

My Mother reluctantly led me home, across the field, of course.

QED.

The teacher's name is being withheld at the request of the family. Not her family, my family, in case her estate decides to sue even at this late hour.

Anthony Glavin R.I.P.

Tony Glavin was an O'Connell's boy, from a good northside school like myself.

I met him in first year English in UCD where he, in common with myself, took a remarkably practical approach to the lectures. Some of these lectures were good, some bad, and some awful.

It didn't help when one of the most awful was a series of six lectures on Shakespeare's Coriolanus from the soon-to-be President of the College.

The lectures consisted of the lecturer reading the play and spicing it with asides. It was a dreadful bore.

Tony and I evolved a sophisticated and effective study plan. During the first four lectures we played battleships and during the last two we read the play ourselves from cover to cover.

And it worked. Tony went on to dedicate himself to his music and wordcraft and here I am writing this appreciation in the Queen's English (well almost).

May he rest in peace.

You can read a proper appreciation here if you have an Irish Times subscription.

Dublin in the rare oul times

I recently came across an exhibition celebrating the life and death of Dublin's Theatre Royal which closed after 141 years on 30th June 1962. I enjoyed many pantos and films in the Royal, which was the largest theatre in Ireland.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was a first cousin, once removed, and by marriage, to one of the Royalettes - the resident troupe of dancing girls.

The demise of this iconic premises was seen by many as the beginning of the end of "the rare oul times". This magnificent living and breathing theatre was replaced by a plastic-and-glass box full of civil servants.

It got me thinking about the nature of change and development.

Sure, you can't keep everything the same forever, but things can often change for the worse. The picture above is typical of many of the city centre façades today, as dereliction reigns while developers assemble propeties to build yet more anonymous glass edifices.

Dirty old town

I felt an affinity with the older Dublin.

I went to school in Parnell Square, walking up every day from Tara St. station, through O'Connell St. with its monuments, or Moore St. with its street sellers, and coming back through Liffey St., for a dalliance in Hector Grey's "emporium of all a young boy ever wanted", even if the most of it was cheap imitative manufacture from Japan. I bought my first guitar there for £3, or was it 30/- ?

The Pillar, dead centre of the city, site of the old tram terminus, meeting point for city dwellers and visiting country folk alike, is now gone. Replaced by a shining needle without a haystack. A modern version of Jack's beanstalk.

Real estate

Since I started delving into my family history I have been taking a greater personal interest in various parts of Dublin and the fate which has befallen some of its lesser known buildings.

The premises in which my great grandfather worked as a shoemaker in the 1860s is now the site of vast new Civic Offices. Yes, you guessed it: Wood Quay. At that time 15 of the Quay's 22 premises housed shoemakers.

When the area was being controversially redeveloped in the 1960s I had no idea of any family links with the site.

This may, however, have been a better fate than befell the premises in which he first opened his own business, in 1873, at 122 James's St. just in front of St. James's (Protestant) church.

It fell into ruin around 1884; was demolished around 1900; and finally finished up as a parking space in the church grounds. As a further twist, the church closed for business in 1963 and the addresses of the former Nos. 121 and 122 have been appropriated by the lighting emporium which now trades from the old church premises.

Parnell St. has changed radically. The premises in which my great grandmother was in domestic service, in the household of Sir John Barrington, sometime Lord Mayor of Dublin, is now part of the Parnell Centre: the precise part which was, recently, and briefly, the site of Peter Stringfellow's unsuccessful foray into Dublin's "nightclub" scene. A different sort of domestic service entirely from that provided by great grandmother Sarah Rankin.



Meanwhile, still in Parnell St., but just on the other side of O'Connell St., another great grandmother worked in Ellen Berry's milliner and dressmaking establishment. Mary Anne Connely, as she then was, surely had no idea that, some forty years later, she would be related by marriage to Sarah Rankin from the other end of the street, when her son, Patrick Mortimer, married Sarah Rankin's daughter, Sarah Burgess. Ellen Berry's shop is now a coffee bar.

Both these great grandmothers had the distinction of being married in the Pro Cathedral, not due to their exalted status but because it was their local parish church.

Little did I know when I was in school in Parnell Square, that I was only a stone's throw from where two of my great grandmothers lived and worked.

The other side

There were some aspects of the rare oul times that could have done with being a little rarer.

This is Eden Quay on the north side of Dublin's River Liffey. It was here that my grandfather was found drowned in 1918.

From my reading of the newspapers of the day, along with a clatter of Coroner's reports, it seems that drownings were two-a-penny in those days. While that may have been less subversive of society than today's murder-a-day, it is still a dark side which should temper our often unquestioning nostalgia for things past.


This is great grandfather Joseph the Carpenter's unmarked grave in Glasnevin.

Joseph and Mary Anne (see above) were married in 1861, presumably with some expectations of being happy ever after.

Before the end of that year they had lost a newborn baby, and by the time Joseph died some 14 years later, they had lost two more children, each just over a year old, due to infant cholera and teething inflammation.

A living city

So now, when I walk the streets of Dublin, they come alive with the ghosts of my ancestors and their families. The more I delve, the more streets come alive.

It doesn't really change the present and it can give rise to a spurious sentimentality, but it is nice to know a little of what was going on before you came along and it can help keep your feet on the ground.

No man is an island, but beware the Tsunami !

Central Model School

Having raised the subject of the Central Model School in Dublin's city centre in a post on George Bernard Shaw, I was invited by a commenter to expand on my association with this venerable institution, so, here goes.

I had just got my primary degree and had no particular plans for the summer when a fellow student asked me if I would do him a favour. He had a friend who had secured a job as a teacher in the Central Model School, but the friend still had some practical exams to do and would not be available until ten days after the start of term. Would I stand in for him for those ten days?

Whatever about initiative, I still had a sense of adventure in those far gone days and I rose to the challenge.

When I arrived on my first day everything looked normal and under control. I was given a class; I think it was fifth class which would have meant about 11 year olds.

I was full of great ideas about getting and holding the pupils' interest and presenting the subjects in the most interesting way possible.

My first instruction from the head teacher was to give a child a shilling and send him down to Capel Street to buy a bamboo cane. This was to be my symbol of authority and the instrument of retribution on any pupil who chose not to obey instructions, who was lazy, or who did not adequately focus his mind on the learning process. I must say this was not quite what I had in mind, but I forked out the shilling and got the cane.

My second surprise was the range of ability in the class. This ranged from very intelligent children who were anxious and willing to learn to those whom I felt should have been in a special school which would cater directly for their learning disabilities, or a reformatory which might remedy their insolence or sheer disobedience.

There were two brothers in the class, one at either end of the scale. The less well endowed one used to take off at lunchtime to Woolworths department store, nick a load of little plastic boats, and spend the afternoon loudly pulling them apart at the bottom of the class. When I suggested he lay off the noise, his brother, who turned out to be his minder, threatened to get his bigger brother to sort me out. Given the flats in which the family lived, this was a consummation devoutly to be avoided.

Another little fellow came up to me a half hour before the official lunchtime with a request. "Please sir, can I go early. Me mammy's sick an' I have to do the messages before lunch". "OK" said I and saw him out the door. About ten minutes later there was a knock on the class door and a procession entered: in the lead, the headmaster, followed by the lollipop man who was dragging my little fellow by the ear. "This (unmentionable) says you said he could go home early" said the head, fully expecting that I would contradict this outlandish story. The little fellow had been caught shinning down the rear spiked gate by the lollipop man who was coming on duty for the lunch break. Imagine the head's incredulity and frustration when I confirmed the little fellow's story.

I eventually gave up trying to teach anything and contented myself with simply holding their attention with stories and demonstrations of primary scientific phenomena. My successor could concentrate on improving their lot - after all that is what he was trained to do.

Meanwhile, I woke up each morning in a cold sweat at the thought of battling through another day in this bootcamp.

I did learn one thing from this "teaching" experience. Insofar as I had any competence as a teacher it was purely to teach the "willing to learn". Perhaps, it wasn't quite as bad as that. I subsequently found out that the particular class I had been allocated had borne the brunt of teacher changes in the immediately preceding years and this, no doubt, contributed to their, and my, difficulty.


There is an unexpected postscript to this adventure. I was in the habit of eating in Gaj's restaurant at teatime on those evenings I stayed in town after work. Gaj's was not only the most socialist restaurant in town, it was also the most sociable. It was a hotbed of constitutional revolution and civil disobedience in the cause of advancing the lot of the working class. Anti-establishment activists, such as Máirín de Búrca, of the Dublin Housing Action Committee, frequented the place. You went in and sat at any table and struck up with the most unlikely bedfellows. I once met a man there who was ashamed to have come from Mayo. God Help Us!

Anyway, the point of my dragging Gaj's into this post is that, one evening, I was coming out of the place, and on the pavement by the doorway was a young fellow playing the tin whistle. Nothing strange in that, you might think. But this guy had his manager/impressario at his side, and who was it? Yes, the guy who broke up the boats in class.

So I also learned that performance and behaviour in class is a poor predictor of success in the commercial end of the arts at any rate.