Among School Children

Mairtin O' Direain

I walked the length of the Study Hall. The Pre Leaving Irish was on. Most of the boys were writing, or reading the examination paper. It was early February and as I looked through the long sash windows I thought of the lines from Yeats' poem: Among School Children:

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way - the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

A hand is raised and I move towards the expectant face. More paper.

The well worn parquet floor catches my eye, as it always does and I am reminded of the many feet that have trodden these ancient boards.

My gaze falls on the blue examination paper. The words: An tEarrach Thiar, gradually come into focus. I stoop to read further. I turn to the boy,

"I did that poem myself when I was at school" I say to him, quietly.

"Any hints sir ?" he asks, with a smile on his face.

"Is it by, O' Direain?" I enquire.

"Haven't a clue, sir." he adds.

I move away. An t Earrach Thiar....

.....Fear ag glanadh cre ,

De ghimsean spaide,

Sa  gciunas sheimh

I mbrothall lae.....

...... A man cleaning clay
From the back of a spade
In the gentle quiet
Of a sultry day:
Sweet is the sound
In the Western spring.....(the Irish language version is truly lost in the translation.)

Classrooms above a chapel. We were in our Third Year.  Fr. Peadar Lavin for Irish....An Tarbh (The Bull)..we called him, secretly.....deciphering An tEarrach Thiar. The images conveyed by the language seeped into the depths of my memory and have lain there dormant until reawakened that morning, so unexpectantly. Clarity, vibrancy of colour, light, silence broken by turned clay, water splashing, womens voices. The world washed clean by the Atlantic seas and the bright sunshine.

Another raised hand, "More paper, Sir".

And My great school friends, Eddie and Jarlath(Chuck).....do they recall reading....

 

Fear ag caitheadh
Cliabh dha dhroim
Is an fheamainn dhearg
Ag lonrú
I dtaitneamh gréine
Ar dhuirling bháin.
Niamhrach an radharc
San Earrach thiar.

.... A man tossing down
A creel from his back
And the red seaweed
Gleams in the sun
On the white shingle
Glorious the sight
In the Western spring.

We, had all the adventures of young men, earnestly discussed  important things, lived football and loved music and girls........argued....

Mná i locháin
In íochtar diaidh-thrá,
A gcótaí craptha,
Scáilí thíos fúthu:
Támh-radharc síothach
San Earrach thiar.

....Women stand in the little pools
At low ebb tide
With skirts tucked up
Casting long shadows
On the peaceful scene
In the Western Spring.

.......and the school bell rings. My replacement arrives. I transfer my sheafs of writing paper to her, say something and I walk away towards the pale green door.

The corridor is quiet. Fr. Lavin's reading of the final stanza comes flooding back.

Toll-bhuillí fanna
Ag maidí rámha
Currach lan d’éisc
Ag teacht chun cladaigh
Ar ór-mhuir mhall
I ndeireadh lae
San Earrach thiar.

......Gentle lapping of oars
As a currach full of fish
Comes towards the shore
On a calm golden sea
At eventide
In the Western Spring.

Chuck has the ball under his arm....Eddie is calling me...."C'mon or we won't get a back alley.

Heroes and Villains

One of my earliest memories is standing at the bottom of my parents bed on Christmas morning, very excited and dressed in a cowboy suit, complete with hat and rifle. I can still see their heads raised above the blankets looking, sleepily down towards the end of the bed where I stood in the semi darkness.

We all wanted to be cowboys.
The cowboys were our heroes and the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers were our, scratchy black and white television, heroes.
My other hero was the bugler in the U.S. cavalry. His bugling, in the distance always heralded the saving of some poor group of settlers, at the very last moment, from a tribe of savage Indians. Just when they were down to their last few rounds of ammunition, the  villains, would be seen off  by the virtuous, white, anglo-saxon, army in their blue uniforms with the gold trim.

 

This depiction of Indians as savage and uncivilized, was repeated in all the early Western films  I saw in the Gaeity and Savoy cinemas on wet Saturday afternoons in Sligo. It crystallized in me, the image of Indians as a race with little, if anything to recommend them.

I, gradually, came to realise that for thousands of years their culture was rich and diverse, that the cowboys were not heroes, that the cavalry could not be regarded as chivalrous. Quite often the soldiers were most likely notorious. Four years after the massacre at Sand Creek Chief Black Kettle and his wife removed the Cheyenne survivors to a new reservation beside the Washita River in Indian territory.At dawn on November 22, 1868 when the people of the village were sleeping, the 7th U.S. cavalry regiment led by George A. Custer charged the peaceful village.

 

The regiment sustained 21 losses, while more that 150 deaths were inflicted on the Cheyenne encampment composed largely of elderly men, as well as women and children.

   

In the 1830s the Choctaw  Nation were forced to cecede their territory to the U.S. government to allow for the expansion of the new European Americans into the west. A Choctaw chief was quoted that the removal to the lands west of the Mississippi was a "trail of tears and death." Of the15,000 who set out about 2,500 died, of starvation and disease.

Midway through the The Great Irish Famine (1845-1849) a group of Choctaw  made a collection and sent it to help starving Irish men, women and children.

"It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and they had faced starvation ... It was an amazing gesture. By today's standards, it might be a million dollars" according to Judy Allen, editor of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's newspaper: Bishinik.

To mark the 150th anniversary, eight Irish people retraced the Trail of Tears. In the late 20th century, Irish President Mary Robinson extolled the donation in a public commemoration.

"My coming here today goes back to an event of almost 150 years ago. I am here to thank the Choctaw Nation for their extraordinary generosity and thoughtfulness when they learned in 1847 about the plight of poor Irish famine victims, thousands of miles away, and in no way linked to the Choctaw Nation until then, the only link being a common humanity, a common sense of another people suffering as the Choctaw Nation had suffered when being removed from their tribal land."

President Robinson continued, "At an assembly (in 1847) $710 was raised and sent to Memphis to be used for the relief of Irish famine victims. I am glad, as President of that same Irish Nation, to come here and thank the Choctaw people and also to learn from your act of generosity."

 

Twenty five years ago or thereabouts there was a supplement in a Sunday newspaper. It had pictures of American chieftains.I formed the photographs into a collage of one person.I still like it today.

 

                                      

Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767. His parents were colonists, Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson, who had emigrated from Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim Ireland, two years earlier. Andrew later became the 7th. President of the United States.

 

The most controversial aspect of Jackson's presidency was his policy regarding Native Americans which involved the ethnic cleansing of several Indian tribes. Jackson was a leading advocate of a policy known as Indian removal. Jackson had been negotiating treaties and removal policies with Indian leaders for years before his election as president.
In conflict,one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Heroes and villains ?