Séamas O'Reilly: How the Irish have come to rule pop culture — and push for progress
Cillian Murphy mural, based on the film Small Things Like These, painted in New Ross on the entrance to the town from the Wexford side. Photo; Mary Browne
I’ve had a few days filled with those small coincidences you file under “small world”, and especially the sub-category of that folder that’s specifically about the Irish abroad.
I spent most of last weekend with my mother-in-law, Marian.
She’s a huge reader, and had accompanied my wife to see me at the Irish Writer’s Weekend at the British Library.
I was booked for two panels, one on Writing Comedy, with Dara Ó Briain and Caroline O’Donoghue, and another on Writing About Family, with Elaine Canning, Claire Kilroy and Caoilinn Hughes.
Many of the packed crowds in attendance were Irish themselves, of course, as revealed when I signed a dozen or so books for a gang of older Irish women, all long-term London residents who still had their feet firmly planted in the culture of the old country.
But many more were English and international readers, evidently delighted to see so many of their favourite writers — who just so happened to be Irish — all in one place.
A recurring topic at several panels was the ‘moment’ that Ireland is having right now.
Last week, I was even asked by magazine to answer the question “How Did The Irish Come To Rule Pop Culture?”.
The idea, for example, that a convention entirely made up of Irish writers could sell out in one of London’s most auspicious venues; or that , a quiet, delicate film about the Magdalene Laundries, could be finding a huge audience, with its lead actor a Corkman, fresh from winning an Oscar for Best Actor.
Tied with this was the recurring theme of progress, of a modern Ireland that looks so different from the times depicted in Cillian Murphy’s quietly searing drama, then beset by ubiquitous poverty, and ruled by the church as personified in Emily Watson’s politely chilling Mother Superior, Sister Mary.
“We flagellate ourselves too much in Ireland” said Donal Ryan at one of the talks, when the subject of the mother and baby homes came up. “But we congratulate ourselves a lot too” replied Caoilinn Hughes, to a consensus of laughter.
It struck me that this paradox, the open-hearted awareness of progress, and the capacity for conscious, even shameful, reflection, might typify this moment more than any other feeling.
Both of my events went well, and I renewed acquaintances with a few authors I’d previously met, and the slightly larger number of writers with whom I’d become tentative pen-pals online.
The bookseller in the main hall turned out to be an old college friend, and several other attendees were that kind of long-lost acquaintance which cause you to blink and shake your head and hesitantly say their name to confirm that they are the self-same pal you last saw a decade ago.
Marian, too, was in her element, not least when we took a break for a mid-afternoon pint and she perused the next day’s programme.
To her shock, she saw an event led by British Library researcher, Helena Byrne.
“I called her the other day!” she said, startling all of us at the table — not least an English pal who, after a full day of such occurrences, must now have believed there were only 14 people in Ireland, all of whom know each other.
She’d heard Byrne on the radio some weeks ago — discussing her research into the history of women’s soccer in Ireland — and thought she could offer the academic a few insights.
This is because, in the late seventies, Marian had been the secretary of the Women’s Football Association of Ireland.
Such a coincidence demanded we go along, and the talk itself was wonderful; taking in Byrne’s research on the early days of women’s soccer in Ireland, and Hayley Kilgallon’s deep and fascinating research on the history of Ladies Gaelic Football.
Several times, the speakers gestured to Marian in the audience, and she was on hand to confirm that, yes, she was once dispatched to a shop on match day so that the women’s national team would have green socks, as the FAI had not given them money for kits; or that, yes, she’d been tasked with playing the French national anthem during an international game but, having no orchestra at her disposal, simply held a boombox above her head in the manner of John Cusack in .
We heard about the privations placed on women’s sport — and women, more generally — at that time, but also the slow — and not always linear — march toward parity which continues, unfinished, to this day.
By the time Hayley Kilgallon signed Marian’s copy of , her excellent history of the LGFA, it was barely even surprising when the pair of them realised her mother had worked with Marian for decades.
Thankfully, no English people were present to witness the last small world moment from a weekend packed with them.
Or, almost the last. We left feeling culturally enriched, and buzzing from all these odd connections.
On the tube home, we saw an ad footed with the familiar harp of the Irish Government.
At first glance, I wondered if it was about the festival we’d just attended, but it read: “The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme is now open for applications” and listed a website offering “financial payments and health supports to people who spent time in Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions in Ireland”.
I wondered how many people venturing into the British Library would have seen it.
How many of the lovely women whose books I’d signed might have a deeper, more personal, resonance with its message.
I thought about how much of what we call the past is, to paraphrase Faulkner, not dead, nor even really past.
And how much of what we call progress is really just the active will to push forward, with a clear-eyed awareness of what’s gone before.
