sligo for all-ireland? - Comhaltas Archive

NA CEITHRE hAIRDECaoimhghin b Brolchain'Dtuigeann sibh' , much of our national 'eccentricity' can be put down to the factthat, from the beginning, we were orientated East - West, whereas the r~st of theworld aligned its thinking North-South with the Magnetic Poles. The ancIent Ga~lfaced the rising sun and said 'Front-rear-left side~right side' .. So ,~hen ~ou s~y ~Irish 'Taim ag duI 15 dheas' (I'm going south), you re really saymg I m gomg nght ,or again, '0 dheas lamh soir' (South-south-east)-noti~e the emphasis on which'hand' (lamh) is indicating the direction favoured. There IS many and m~ny another'wonderful' combination, the study of which would keep you occupIed for themorning when you should be giving the wife a hand washing the childer.All of this was borne in on me veryforcibly over Easter when I was asked toread a short paper on Flann O'Brien atthe 'International Symposium' atNewman House , Dublin .. .... . and I'm stillreeling at the enormous effrontery I hadto accept the invitation. Academicswere six deep at the bar and the chatwas rarified- for example 'Had FlannO'Brien predicted the invention of thelaser beam in the 'Third Policeman',when he told of the point of a needlewhich was so fine and acute that its realpoint was well in advance of its visiblepoint?'. There's a question to put to afella who spent much of his youthcutting turf on Monagore bog!Nice to have polite people coming upto you to say that they enjoyed yourpaper- bewildering when they said thatthey particularly relished this point orthat which in fact hadn't been in yourpaper at all but in a previous lecture!The world of Flann O'Brien wassuddenly very real. Even the ingeniousabstractions of De Selby were frequentlythrust upon you as endeavoured tobe, what is the phrase? - 'Ag baintsuimin as do phionta' (Taking a sip outof your pint). Several of the visitingprofessors (some from J apan- America­Australia- Germany ....) mentioned thatthey were certain that they had met DeSelby in some Dublin bar the previousevening.The great thing was that there was nononsense about 'Cupla Focal agam'­great gales of Irish were on all sides- andgreat gales spouting it. Then I foundmyself being transfixed by an earnest,quiet-talking fella who had a singlecentre to his existence- the TaraBrooch. Whilst I was alarmed by his intensityand the absolute futility of tryingto escape what he had to say was ofgreat interest and I gradually found thata glazed fixity of gaze with the 'gob aroscailt' was all that was required of mefor the evening. It was a very one-sidedconversation but this fella was the'Bradan an Eolais' and my thumb was inthe process of incineration. I didn't feela thing.The burthen of this tale was that hehad deduced that the Tara Brooch wasin fact , an ancient Irish 'DirectionFinder'. What you did was to pointyour brooch at the rising sun- exactly asthe Sean Gael had, he maintained, done.Round the rim of the brooch are studsor stones set into the metal. These areat equal spacings- roughly at 30 degreeintervals; and by taking lines throughthe centre from these markers youcould have a good indication of whichway you hav to point the chariot whenyou had an urgent appointment atArdMacha or An· Uaimh in the old days.A'coorse, the sun has a lower trajectoryduring the winter solstice than duringthe summer- this was the reason for thelower arc which also forms part of thebrooch. Examining his back-of-anenvelopediagram which gradually assumedthe configuration of the 'UnionJack', I rashly quipped that there wasclear inference here that the AncientBrits must have settled Ireland beforethe coming of the Celts. This suggestionseemed to enrage my companion as didmy follow-up that if there had beenmany summers like the last one in ancientIreland it might account for theprecipitate abandonment of Ard Macha,indeed Tara Hill itself as the centre forgovernment- no sun, no directionfinding! I perceived that I was exceedingmy function in this interchange ofscholarship . My part was to be therecipient of wisdom. I was not requiredto contribute beyond the oldd exclamationof wonderment.Now Professor b Hainle had mentioned,in passing, in his lecture thatBeckett had a character who idiosyncraticallymarked the passage of time by35having a pocketful of stones. Everyday, he transferred a pebble from onepocket to the other. Everyone in hisaudience thought this was good for alaugh - everyone except my earnest informant.What the hell they were laughingat mystified him! That, he said , wasexactly what the ancient Gael had, infact, done. They worked on an eightmonthyear of 354 days. By complicatedmathematics - again on the backof the overcrowded envelope it appearsthat they managed with 22 stones andevery now and then they missed a daybefore starting again - Oh! and severaltimes a year there were 'clicks' noticeableto this day by such 'communerswith nature as shepherds- when oneseason gave way to the next. It was allvery erudite stuff - unfortunately, myconcentration became somewhat erraticas time passed because I found thatI was getting through an unusualnumber of pints- again one-sidedly,since I wasn't expected to say a damnthing.Leaving the bar- eventually- I haddifficulty in deciding whether I was '0dheas' or coming 'aniar' and my recentingenious friend had disappeared takingthe only replica Tara Brooch that sideof the city with him- together with hisenvelope. The result was that I did notsucceed in visiting Ard Macha this tripindeedI had a rough time getting backto my digs.Somehow or other, I managed toreach my friend 's house where I wasbeing accommodated for the length ofthe Symposium. Up in my room Ifound myself blinking owlishly at a volumeof Silva Gaedelica without which Irarely set foot outside the door. Nowhere I came across reference to a oneleggedhorse which pulled a chariot inthe days of Cuchullain and it wascuriously yoked. Apparently, the shaftof the chariot 'transfixed' the animaljust under the tail and emerging fromthe horse's mouth was securely fastenedin place by a crosswise placed peg onwhich the beast chewed as it galloped ­doubtless towards Ard Macha- fruitlesslyif the day was cloudy. 'Nach iontachan peata an saoghal', as Peig mighthave said if she'd been to theSymposium.