"...stories birling through my mind..."
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Photograph by Billy McWilliams
 How did did our ancestors, the young and old of nineteenth century Ulster, foot it to the dance floor? The answer, if you're partial to Victorian literature, can be found in a recently republished novel called Orange Lily. May Crommelin’s novel, set in County Down in the 1870s, is well worth a read, but what caught my attention, as I made the last touches to my book on the history of Irish dancing, was the description of dancing, and in particular, the reference to Soldier's Joy, my 6 year-old daughter's favourite team dance. No slithery-slathery walzes!
‘Soldier’s Joy' is a popular team (country) dance in the festival tradition of Irish dancing, and the dance is a charming spectacle to behold as the children knock, knock, knock, clap clap clap and rolly polly polly to the music. However, in Orange Lily, the dance is a little more rustic. ‘Big Gilhourn,’ an affable farmer, who has taken a fancy to Orange Lily despite her unerring love for Tom, takes to the earthen floor of the barn like Michael Flatley, rejecting any notion of lilting to a modern dance: “None of your new slithery-slathery walzes for me. What I like best is to see a man get up and take the middle of the floor - and foot it there for a good hour!’ ‘The Soldier’s Joy’ for me, if I may make so bold as to ask that request.”
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A few weeks ago, I embarked an eight-week course in the Irish language and I can now say, “Tá athas orm.” Happiness is on me. I've always been captivated by languages. At the age of four, I heard the resonant words, “L’Irlande, douze points, “La Royaume Uni, nul point,” and I was intrigued. Decoding the Eurovision Song contest scoring system soon became an annual quest. Two years later, listening to a pretty German lady singing ‘Ein bisschen Frieden’ (A little peace) marked the turning point in my linguistic aspirations. “A cannae get over it! Thon’s a quare an guid song,” said my daddy, who only spoke English. I guess everyone in Northern Ireland wanted ein bisschen Frieden in April 1982. I became a dedicated language enthusiast, reading and translating the foreign words on the Vosene bottle in the bath and giving ‘Frère Jacques’ slightly more ding ding dong than my contemporaries. By the time I was 16, I came to understand that languages were my ticket out of Northern Ireland, its trouble and its rain. Ein bisschen Wärme, das wünsch ich mir. The dalliance with German ended after GCSE, but French was a life-long love affair that would ultimately lead to a Masters and the fictional French exchange in my first published novel, Snugville Street. The EU was said to be the key that would open doors for all of us working class children in Larne in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was true to a point: languages and an EU passport allowed me to live abroad and to compete for jobs that were inaccessible to my parents' generation.  The Braid Water Recreation Club Irish Dancing Team, late 1940s (Source: Mid Antrim Museum and Arts Centre at the Braid.) Miss Agnes McConnell, later Mrs Close, was born in 1901 at 1 Railway Street, Ballymena. It is not clear who taught Agnes McConnell to dance in the Irish style promoted by the Gaelic League, but it is likely that she learned from another family member. Agnes would have been accustomed to the style particular to her area before conforming to the Munster style at the festivals after 1928: much of the adjudicator commentary of the early festivals centred around the taming of arms and Scottish influences among the Larne and Ballymena dancers.
Ballymena was certainly a hub of traditional dancing in Agnes’ formative years: the Protestant Hall in the 1910s and 1920s regularly accommodated Irish night festivities. When Madame McConnell, a Ballymena singer from a separate McConnell line, invited Miss Louise Agnese from Cork to the Protestant Hall in 1911 for an evening of theatrical and musical entertainment that included Irish jigs and reels, hundreds of people had to be turned away. Likewise, local teachers, the Misses Millar, who taught Madame McConnell’s children, included Irish jigs and reels in their fancy dance displays. Miss Agnes McConnell ran what the family called the “original and only dancing club in Ulster” in Railway Street from at least the late 1920s, if not earlier. Most of the McConnell siblings were involved in dancing, including Sam, who was born in 1911; Fred, who was born in 1915 and Pearl who was born in 1920. The children grew up in Harryville, a working class area of town that provided manpower for the local linen mill. Most of Miss Agnes McConnell’s aunts and uncles worked at the mill: her mother, Margaret was a spinner and her father, David, a fitter. The McConnell family, who belonged to the Church of Ireland, would not have been part of the Gaelic League’s new dawn of saffron and green. Those Protestants involved in the Gaelic League revival of the early 1900s tended to be from middle class or aristocratic stock. Harryville was a unionist, working class and Protestant heartland where the voices were ‘broad Scotch’ and a Twelfth of July arch was decked out in in red, white and blue. The McConnells appear at the 1929 Ballymena festival as ‘The Shamrock team,’ featuring Miss Pearl McConnell, younger sister of Agnes. Their performance was noted by adjudicator, Mr Denis Cuffe, as the finest he’d seen in a life-time. In subsequent years, the McConnell dancers were entered into competitions under the name of ‘Miss McConnell’s school.’ Miss Sally McCarley, who later taught her cousin, Mrs Sadie Bell (née Kernohan) to dance, was instructed by Miss Agnes McConnell in the early 1930s. Although Sadie went on  This book is page turner and a wonderful unintended excursion. It is ironic that I got lost in a glen on the way to Jo Zebedee’s book launch for Waters and the Wild, and I certainly gave my friends a wee titter on facebook when I described that journey from Larne to Carickfergus. How can anyone from Larne get lost on the back road to Carrickfergus?
At first I blamed the majesty of Glenoe, but maybe, just maybe, there were wee winged creatures in the undergrowth guiding my destination! I recently stumbled across the Ordnance surveys of the 1830s and discovered that apart from drinking copious amounts of whiskey and dancing their socks off, Presbyterians and Catholics of County Antrim in Victorian times were united in an unerring belief in the fairies! The Glens of Antrim surround the town in which I live and they have claimed a great big part of my heart: Sunday drives to buy ice-cream in Carnlough; childhood beach trips to Waterfoot; practice hikes and expeditions through marshy mountains on Duke of Edinburgh awards; romantic flights of fancy in a white Fiat Uno with my boyfriend in 1994; guiding tourists (without getting lost) around the waterfalls at Glenoe and Glenariff; leafy walks with my children around Glenarm forest and the music and laughter of the annual Dalriada festival. In short; enough to inspire my own literary endeavours. “It’s set in the Glens!” she said, and that’s all it took for me to be compelled to read Jo Zebedee’s Waters and the Wild. The decommissioning of arms
Mr Sean O’Togda complained in 1924 of the ignorance of youth as a result of the decline of the old dance masters. Mr O’Togda had a teacher of the traditional style who taught dancing to women in the following way: “To add grace and variety to the dance, he showed them how to dance with arms akimbo and to place the hands gracefully on the hips…He also showed the girls how to hold their skirts lightly at the side with thumb and index finger of both hands, and slightly and gracefully keep them out from the sides” (Weekly Freeman’s Journal.) In a 1904 photograph of an Irish dancer, “Cassie” in Victorian attire at the Feis na Gleann, the dancer has both hands on her hips. Miss Patricia Mulholland, a Belfast dance mistress, who began teaching in the 1930s, was also an exponent of the use of arms. “As far as I was concerned, arms poker-rigid beneath an expressionless face had little attraction. I wanted to inject more feeling, and, in the process, let Irish dancing come into contact with the widest possible audience.” (MacCafferty) Arms were, however, discouraged by some dance teachers in the nineteenth century. Mr Trench, a dance master operating in the south of Ireland in the early 1800s instructed that arms should hang gracefully to the side. He actively discouraged the flinging of these limbs about, or flourishing them on the level with the head; an indication that the dancers either had a tendency to naturally liberate their limbs in ethereal motion, or that in some previous time, the arms had moved freely. Another reflection on pre-dance master times is this: “During the rapid exercise, Nancy occasionally clapped one hand on her well-developed hip.” (Irish dancing sixty years ago.) The white collar scholars of the Gaelic League and the country dancers went head to head in a great national and nationalistic debate about what exactly Irish dancing was, and the Gaelic League turned to the south-west for inspiration, applying the Munster style found in areas of counties Kerry, Cork and Limerick to step dancing in the rest of the country. Foley observes that the dances were to be “controlled, disciplined, skilled and asexual;” hip slapping and flings thereby excluded.  A dress from Leslie Baird's costume exhibition This week the sun was shining in Larne and the Orange Hall steps were ornate with dancers in emerald green, black, burgundy, royal blue, scarlet, navy blue and cerise. The festival was a positive experience made special by the charm of the dancers, the spirit of the musicians, the enthusiasm of the adjudicator, the generosity of visitors from across the province, the support from local people and the dedication of wee fairies who made it happen. There was also a strong sense of history: the lady at the door danced competitively in the same hall as far back as the 1930s; the pianist had danced as a toddler in a variety concert in Ballymena during the second world war, and the wee fairies on the stage and in the kitchen included grandmothers, mothers and daughters who have been dancing their whole lives. Few people realise is that Irish folk dancing, now primarily known as ‘festival dancing’ comprises Catholics and Protestants, almost in equal numbers. Even during the upheaval of ‘The Troubles,’ Catholics and Protestants continued to hold hands, literally and metaphorically, in towns like Belfast, Larne, Portadown, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Portstewart, Ballyclare and Bangor. Irish folk dancing, in fact, blossomed against the timbre of bullets and bombs. In 1975, one of the worst years for deaths during the conflict, the Larne May Day festival attracted 1,500 dancers. Catholics and Protestants in the Irish folk dancing tradition have been dancing together for for ninety years, but further back in time, the harvest homes, lintings, punch dances and Mayday festivities also provided opportunities for Catholics and Protestants to come together. Traditional Ulster social dances like ‘A Soldier’s Joy,’ ‘The Sweets of May’ and ‘The Three Tunes’ were danced by Protestants and Catholics before the term “Irish dancing” was invented. Libraries NI and Women Aloud NI are both at the fore of an effort to amplify female voices in fiction in Northern Ireland. I have spent a year reading works from Northern Ireland authors, both male and female. The quality of literature in this country is high, yet local authors, particularly women, struggle to get their work published. The feedback from mainland Britain is often that the books are too Irish. The feedback from the Republic of Ireland is often that the books are too northern. Once published, accessing shelf space among bestselling authors in bookshops is also problematic. Libraries NI has gone the extra mile to ensure that local books can be seen by the public. Why not pop into your local library this weekend and ask for something local. The three books that were selected for the Emerging authors events are available in Newtonbreda, Banbridge and Larne libraries. They can also be ordered from any other library in Northern Ireland. Here's a little bit more about each of the books for those who missed the Emerging author events.  I sit up and look out my bedroom window. Coloured bikes coast along the kerbs as children play. I catch a smile and a large shadow in the reflection. I’m nearly fourteen, it’s summer, and my perm is awake before nine. I rap at the door of the bathroom, a hollow wood door marked by the fist prints of four children thumping. ‘Hurry on! I need in!’ ‘Make me!’ comes a boy’s voice. Another thump and a twist of the handle. ‘Get away you big pig!’ says the boy. ‘Hurry up you wee dope,’ I say. ‘I’m gonna be late for summer scheme.’ My plastic rake moves through the bramble bush facing the mirror on the landing. It tugs and toils and emerges all peach and unscathed from the undergrowth as my hair fluffs into round drupelets. A large foamy dollop of white, foamy mousse. A scrunch with sticky hands. A mass of beautifully ripe curls. Gorgeous, I think as I pat my perm, settle down the cow’s lick on the right side and hurl my voice through the hollow wood door one more time. A wee story to warm the cockles of your heart:)  Photographer: Gavin Ferguson  Photographer: Anne Montgomery I was sick, sore and tired of the games that Harry and Gary played on the street. I was sick, sore and tired of BMXing, I was sick, sore and tired of A Teaming, I was sick, sore and tired of band sticking and I was sick, sore and tired of footballing. ‘I’m bored.’ I said to my mum. ‘How could you be bored? It’s summer. You’re off school. The street’s full of weans. Away out and play like the rest of them.’ ‘They only want to play on bikes and all. I’m bored of bikes and all.’ ‘Jenny’s on her own over there. Away and play with Jenny.’ My mum’s eyebrows were curved like question marks and she had a semicolon smile. She knew that I was not sick, sore and tired of Harry’s sister, Jenny. Jenny goes to the Andrew’s school of dancing at the Town Hall. Each Saturday, I’m there alone on the boy’s side of the hall. Jenny is there on the other side surrounded by thirty girls. It’s wile hard to be alone at dancing without stories birling through my mind. I do the three-hand reel with the girls. There’s a jellyfish of a girl on my left with arms and legs that wriggle in all the wrong directions. There’s a swan of a girl on my right with strong arms and graceful legs. The swan girl is Jenny A Belfast Tale, a soulful tale of troubles, love and friendship set between Northern Ireland and America, was published today. While I await its appearance in the Amazon store, I am all set to address the smudgy windows and the dusty skirting boards after a year and a half of relative neglect. (Yes, Jean Adams would take a turn in her eye!) Before I commence the post-novel-writing spring-clean and tidy all the books away, here are some of the many books that built A Belfast Tale.
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ProseScene from Snugville Street
82 Waterloo Road Ballysnod The Teacher Voice The Last Day of Summer Scheme Uniquely Girls' Brigade The Children of Latharna The Band Stick The Bully up the Brae God Created Butlins History & folkloreLanguage Blog I
Language Blog II Language Blog III Language Blog IV Fiddles and Melodeons Martha Taylor's diary Jean McCullagh at 104 Ballymena & the McConnells Arms in Irish Dancing Catholics & Protestants in Irish dancing EssaysIrish Times:
Irish Dancing: The Festival Story The Protestant in Irish Fiction. The Protestant in Irish fiction II Ulster-Scots in Irish Fiction An author in Wonderland Belfast Telegraph: Irish Dancing Miscellaneous Dancing in Victorian Ulster Learning the Irish Language. John Hewitt Summer School Thirteen Reasons for Peace Book reviewsSo Young then (Andrea Corr & me)
Jo Zebedee Lesley Allen & Helen Nicholl Orla McAlinden Du Maurier Anne Doughty Archives
November 2019
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