The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions. Ruth Edwards Dudley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to develop this by renewing friendships, discussing problems, swapping ideas, and reflecting on past Twelfths. As a bandsman the Twelfth means everything; it is the heart of the flute band tradition, its soul and life. Remove the Twelfth and the tradition will die.

      In the early nineteenth century, Ulster flute bands came into existence, modelled on those that formed part of military bands. Initially, they played military music and paraded in martial style. Their repertoire broadened as their range of instruments increased; from 1907 these sophisticated part flute bands, complemented by a drum corps, have engaged in music contests.

      The part flute bands are for connoisseurs; the ‘blood and thunder’ or ‘kick-the-pope’ bands are populist. Dominic Bryan, an academic who with Neil Jarman has done much to explain what parades are all about, exactly expresses my own mixed feelings about them.

      Blood-and-thunder bands can be threatening to an outsider like myself and it is easy to appreciate why so many in the Catholic community treat them with a mixture of fear and loathing. On the other hand they are also the most entertaining part of the Twelfth in Belfast. They help create a sense of carnival which is in some contrast to the officials at the front of the parade and the religious service given at the field.

      He remarks about the uniforms: ‘On the one hand you have plenty of sombre dark respectable suits whilst some of the bands are in bright orange, blue and purple uniforms. And there is invariably a group of young girls dressed in the latest fashion (or the latest Rangers shirt) walking alongside their band: the Twelfth is also about teenage sexuality.’

      While most bands include women of all ages, teenage sexuality is most evident among the fife-and-drum groupies or the mini-skirted standard-bearers who march in front of the most villainous-looking bands. These bands have vastly increased in number over the last thirty years as a reaction to the Troubles. Many Orangemen who hate the militarism of these bands argue that they are a vital safety-valve for young people who might otherwise become involved in paramilitary violence and that their contact with the Orange Order is crucial. ‘I was not long a member of a flute band when one of our drummers was murdered by the IRA,’ one now senior Orangeman told me. ‘Some of us kids were full of rage. It was only the influence of older Orangemen in our lodge that stopped us getting guns; some of us would have gone out to get revenge.’

      The flute bands also have the merit of being cheap. It is extremely expensive to support, for instance, a silver or a pipe band: £2,000 is nothing for a trombone. And for those lodges which hire bands, the choice can be between paying £500 for a silver band or £100 for the fife-and-drum equivalent.

      The famous Lambeg drums never appear in Belfast now, but drumming matches are still popular in rural areas. The Lambeg’s origins are disputed, but it is agreed that it is the ultimate tribal symbol in Ulster. It is no accident that Lambeg drumming is strongest in Armagh, where republicanism is at its most entrenched and dangerous. The staccato beat can be heard for miles, even in bandit country.

       Food

      There are, in my experience, two expressions so miserable as to strike pity into the hardest heart. One is that of an Indian shopkeeper who fails to make a sale; the other, of an Ulster Protestant who has discovered his dinner will be late.

      Rural Protestants in particular are people with few vices; fidelity and temperance are the norm. But they do love food. I kept track one day of the eating activities of a group of Orangemen. I had arrived in Belfast at eight o’clock and was taken to a friend’s house. The woman of the house, her daughter and daughter-in-law were preparing for the arrival at ten o’clock of three or four guests, who were being lavishly catered for despite the fact that there was no doubt that they would have had an Ulster fry two hours previously.

      By the time the dignitary – the local county Grand Master – and the others arrived, the table was covered with five different kinds of sandwiches, sausages and home-made sausage rolls, home-made cakes and pies. There was orange squash, there was tea and there was coffee. And throughout the meal, as throughout so many of the meals I’ve had in Ulster, people looked at me in a worried fashion because to them my appetite seemed so small as to run the risk of my expiring at their very table from malnutrition.

      Having eaten solidly, the men drove off to join their lodges and parade from their halls to the gathering point at which the main parade would begin. Those who had not had a spread like ours had the opportunity to have sandwiches or burgers before they started walking.

      When the parade was over, at around two o’clock, most participants fell on the food tents in the demonstration field where ladies were raising money for various churches by selling sandwiches, cakes and tea. This kept the Orangemen going until at around six they went to their own lodge for a tea of meat and vegetables and piles of potatoes washed down with orange squash, followed by something very sweet and then by coffee and biscuits.

      At lunchtime the VIPs – officers and distinguished guests – would have had a dinner in the nearest Orange hall consisting of ham and chicken and lettuce and potato salad and coleslaw and tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs and salad cream and lots of bread and plenty of something sweet to follow. My abiding memory of such dinners and teas is of ladies rushing around anxiously with food or enormous kettles, terrified lest any of their charges might be suffering from hunger or thirst for even a moment.

      After all that, the non-teetotal lodges might have a nip or two of whiskey or some beer, while the drinkers in teetotal lodges might head off for a few drinks in the local pub. The serious drinkers would stay there to get plastered and the majority would go home to tea and sandwiches or biscuits before bedtime.

      The Orange tooth is so sweet as to conjure up memories of one’s own childhood. I sat with a radical, intellectually aggressive, zealously evangelical minister and watched him struggle with his conscience over the issue of a second piece of apple pie, for his wife had put him on a diet. Sitting with an Orangeman who has more gravitas than almost anyone I’ve ever met, I loved seeing his hand sneaking out almost guiltily to take a chocolate biscuit.

      I have a very happy memory of a visit to London by a group of Orangemen over to talk to politicians and the press about parades. Brian Kennaway, Bobby Saulters and I went for a stroll by the Thames and the Grand Master spotted an ice-cream van. As I sat beside them on a bench in the sunshine, licking an ice-cream cornet and watching the delight my companions took in that small indulgence, I remembered what one of the few defenders of Northern Ireland Orangemen had said to me over and over again: ‘They want so little. So very, very little.’

       Souvenirs

      In the field where a big march congregates there will be some souvenir stalls with loyal flags and red-white-and-blue hats and batons and so on, as well as tapes and T-shirts and other paraphernalia. My collection includes tea-towels – William crossing the Boyne, ‘Ulster Says No’ and a representation of the Union Jack – an apron with a crown over a Red Hand, and Drumcree-related keyrings.

      At a big gathering there will be a stall or two selling various accoutrements supporting loyalist paramilitaries. In 1997 the nastiest was a T-shirt inscribed: ‘YABBA DABBA DOO ANY FENIAN WILL DO’, inspired by the LVF, whose victims had included a Catholic taxi driver who had just graduated in English Literature from Queens and an eighteen-year-old girl shot in the head as she lay in bed beside her Protestant boyfriend.

      For republican kitsch, the place to go is the Sinn Féin shop on the Falls Road, where I have bought keyrings featuring Patrick Pearse, and one with the IRA slogan ‘Tiochaidh ár lá’ (‘Our day will come’) on one side and a balaclavaed chap with an Armalite on the other, as well as a tea-towel featuring the Irish flag and another with pictures of the signatories of the 1916 proclamation of the Irish Republic. I drew the line at a statue of Gerry Adams.

СКАЧАТЬ