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 filming took place from late June to mid-November 1981 in over forty locations. In addition to the presence of some five hundred extras from the locality (including native Irish-speakers specifically recruited from Gaeltacht areas in Mayo) and the participation of the English Sealed Knots military re-enactment group, large numbers of Irish reserve troops from the Western Command of An Foras Cosanta Aitiuil (FCA) played French and British soldiers. For practical reasons most scenes were not filmed in their original historical locations: The "Races of Castlebar" and the Battle of Ballinamuck were shot in the vicinity of Ballina; the engagement in Collooney was recreated in the valley of Glenree (9 kilometers west of Bunnyconnellan, Co. Mayo); executions by lottery of rebels captured at Ballinamuck were filmed in Moyne Abbey (3 kilometers southeast of Killala); and Humbert's headquarters in Castlebar were reconstructed in Multyfarnham in County Westmeath (12 kilometers north of Mullingar, near the 1798 local uprising site at Wilson's Hospital). (54) Significantly, the RTE crew did not visit the area of Ballinamuck.

By taking the initiative, the Killala Community Council made it possible for the longest period of on-site production to be accommodated in Mayo (August-September 1981. Local efforts were endorsed by national and provincial authorities, as when the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, the Electricity Supply Board, and the Mayo County Council worked together on concealing the technological infrastructure in the Killala landscape. Environmental improvements were introduced to an area that would otherwise not have been given priority for such development, and a writer who traveled through Killala five years later was surprised by the striking absence of overground electricity wires and masts. (55) Shop fronts in Killala were repainted and plastic imitation-stone walling was stapled to the front of houses in order to create antique facades, while turf was deposited daily on the streets to conceal the asphalt and produce a muddy effect, (56) After arriving in the area, the RTE team did not take notice of oral traditions about Ninety-Eight and, subsequently, local folklore was certainly not given pride of place in the film. (57) On the one hand, this oversight is another indication of the apparent "lapse of social memory," but it also reflects the ineptitude of a Dublin film crew in tapping into less public reservoirs of folk history. Nonetheless, fragments of folklore were used unwittingly. For example,

a scene showing a slater working on a rooftop and announcing the arrival of the French ships, which the producer Niall McCarthy insisted was historically authentic, (58) reflected a local tradition that had been documented over forty years earlier, (59)

The commotion clearly impacted the locality, and an enthusiastic participant went so far as to claim that "the filming of the event is having a greater effect than the original happening." (60) In anticipation of the filming, a music-and-dance "Year of the French Festival" was held in Killala (28 July-12 August). (61) With the influx of day-trippers, sightseers, and casual onlookers, Killala became a bustling tourist center, and the recreation of battle scenes aroused particular fascination. Residents of Killala formed a committee to "advise on whether the area should look two hundred years old permanently," (62) but this initiative was ultimately unsuccessful. The filming received extensive coverage in Mayo newspapers (63) and, in the words of a local historian, "re-awakened local interest in the events of 1798 and in the society of the time." (64) A new-found popular fascination with folk history was manifested in such trivial acts as that of Canon (later Monsignor) James Horan from Knock giving an eighteenth-century cross, believed to be from the era of the Penal Laws, as a prop to the local actor Mick Lally from Toormakeady in County Mayo, who played a Catholic rebel priest. (65)