The decline and rebirth of "folk memory": remembering "the year of the French" in the late twentieth century

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Fall-Winter, 2003 by Guy Beiner

The highbrow character of the Humbert Summer School contrasted with what the organizers perceived as a local outlook of anti-intellectualism. Cooney's iconoclastic approach intentionally confronted popular beliefs with academic scholarship and consciously marginalized folk history, which he considered untrustworthy and overly romanticized. Other organizers were more appreciative of the value of oral traditions. The summer school's chairman, Tony McGarry, is the principal of the local high school (St. Patrick's College in Lacken Cross); he is also a community activist who was instrumental in bringing RTE to film in Killala. Since his father had been a national schoolteacher in Erris at the time of the 1937-38 Schools Scheme for the collection of oral traditions, McGarry is well acquainted with elderly people in the locality who could recount stories of Bliain na bhFrancach. (90) Another key figure, the schoolteacher and traditional musician Paddy Lavin, whose brother Sean is an authority on oral traditions of the parish of Kilcummin, has also acknowledged the importance of local folklore. (91)

Yet overall, the summer school flaunted a dismissive attitude toward folk history. This caused an unpleasant incident in 1989, at a talk given in Ballina by the local historian Tony Donohue of Creevy (near Lahardane), Co. Mayo, who was a long-time member of the Ballina Historical Society and a distinguished collector of oral traditions. (92) Donohue (born in 1918) based his lecture on traditions that he had collected from John McNeeley of Lahardane, who had been interviewed by Hayes in 1935. (93) Having criticized the Humbert Summer School for glamorizing the French invasion by downplaying the devastating repercussions on the local population that were recalled in folklore, Donohue's presentation incurred disapproval from the director of the school, who rebuked the speaker for uncritically reproducing the "Hayes tradition." (94) The confrontation left a lasting impression, and several participants in the 1989 summer school could vividly recall details of this event when interviewed over a decade later.

In exceptional cases local commemorative initiatives that were grounded in folklore traditions were accommodated within the framework of the summer school. In 1986 a group from the area of Lacken (near Kilcummin) decided to mark a site known locally as "Garrai Francach" (French Garden), believed to be the location of a French soldier's grave. A sculpture, which misleadingly depicts a French officer assisting a wounded Irish pikeman, was erected with a trilingual plaque that paid homage to the apocryphal "le premier soldat de cette expedition a mourir sur le soi Irlandais" (the first soldier of that expedition to die on Irish soil). (95) Though the monument was unveiled in August of that year by the French Ambassador Monsieur Guitton in conjunction with the Humbert Summer School, this act of public commemoration did not stop the farmer who owned the field from demolishing the original heap of stones that in the past had marked the grave as a vernacular memorial. (96) In general, the summer school pursued its own commemorative agenda, which was distinct from folk memory, and was responsible for setting up several memorials in Killala. Busts (made by Carmen Gallagher) of General Humbert and his adjutant General Sarrazin were put on permanent display in 1988 and 1989. A plaque was also placed on the remains of the outer wall of Bishop Stock's "palace" to commemorate Humbert's stay there in 1798. (97)