TRANSPLANTED IRISH INSTITUTIONS - University of Canterbury

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such as these were part of the antagonism between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants.
There did not seem to be such overt antagonisms in New Zealand as Orange parades
generally involved bands playing without lyrics.
A common newspaper report on an
Orange parade would read- "the Newton Band, under Bandmaster West, marched at the head
of the procession, playing appropriate airs."20 These "appropriate airs" would be Irish airs
that would probably be more known to the marchers than to the spectators. Still, this did
not mean that such songs were never sung as the soiree of banquet gave ample opportunity
for 'party tunes'. This feature of fife and drum music in the march meant that spectators
would be drawn to the sounds of the band even if they could not see the marchers. To be a
success, any parade had to rely on sight and sound so that bystanders would be drawn in to
the parade.
An integral part of any parade was the route followed by the marching
participants. The parades involved marching through a specified route on a regular basis.
In a sense these marches may symbolize the reclaiming of public space. William S. Sax has
raised this issue of when a particular group
establishes its physical unity within a specific territory by circumambulating or traversing it.
Now the people who live in that territory may not always affirm the unity that is asserted by the
ritual movement; in fact, they may actively oppose it, as in the case of a military procession
through each other's neighbourhcxxis that are so popular among Hindus and Muslims in India 2 I .
The physical presence of a group of marchers who are unified can be declared to the local
community in a visible way through a ritual parade. In the case of an Orange parade this
meant that Catholics would be forced to recognize the symbolic claims of Orangeism
without necessarily agreeing with them.
These 'symbolic victories' through ritual parades have in two notable instances led
to conflict in New Zealand. Sean Brosnahan has ably reconstructed the events surrounding
the first public march of Orangemen in Canterbury, which resulted in riots in Timaru and
Christchurch in 1879. In Timaru, 40 Orangemen joined with the Foresters and Oddfellows
to march in an annual procession for benefit societies.
A group of 150 Hibernians
2~ewZealandHera1d, 13 July 1891.
21 William S. Sax, Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage, New York and
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 202.