A couple of threads recently have referred to Irish music as having been 'banned' at some point in history. In a recent thread, for example, Saint gave this supposed oppression of ITM as a reason for the music currently being in such rude good health. Someone else made a similar claim a few weeks before I seem to recall.
I'm familiar with such claims but have never quite had the matter convincingly explained to me. Although I'm Irish, I have come to associate this assertion more with English lefties down the pub than with the work of an authoritative historian. Someone (llig? Harry B?) countered that any repression of ITM was more likely to have had domestic origins (ie the Catholic Church in Ireland) than to have been imposed by perfidious Albion. Personally, that sounds more convincing.
Phantom Button requested that somebody put the matter straight. I waited with baited breath...but nobody did. So now I'm repeating his call. Can anyone tell me when, where, how and by whom Irish Traditional Music has ever actually been banned? I'm sorry if I've misquoted or misrepresented the views of anyone in my attempt to round up recent contributions to this debate.
The use of the piob mor (Great Bagpipes) was definitely banned by the English in c16 and after, as they were an instrument of war; it has been said that they were last used thus by exiled Irish soldiers at the Battle of Fontenoy, round 1740 I think.
A harp or related website made claims that the English massacred harpers and burned as many harps as they could find; I don't know if there's any truth in this. Detailed accounts were not given. (It was that kind of site...)
Thank you for picking up the baton on this one, Paul. As a contributor to one of those earlier threads that you mentioned, I too would be very interested to see or hear of documentary evidence about this..
I too was puzzled by Saint's assertion that the popularity of music was due to it being 'banned'. The reality ofcourse that few people were interested at all during the lean years of the 40s and 50s.
There has been a ban, of sorts, during the 17th or early 18th century : I have seen reproductions of engravings depicting piper's hanged from trees for 'playing seditious tunes' but in reality there is very little , if any, evidence this sort of hangings took place on any significant scale.
Irish Traditional Music *should* be banned. Since it was England's oppression of the Irish that enabled traditional music to survive, anyone who plays traditional music is implicity supporting that oppression.
I wonder if the language would have (eventually) become more learned and spoken if it hadn't been made a compulsory school subject for lots of recalcitrant kids - any views on that one?
(I don't know if, or to what extent, the Irish language was banned; but if it ever was, I suppose that included a ban on singing in Gaelic.)
I think it's generally accepted in Ireland that making Irish compulsory at school and a precondition for entering teaching and the civil service has been a disastrous own goal. There is of course, also, plenty of credible evidence that before Ireland achieved, cough, statehood, Irish was denigrated and that school children were humiliated in learning English. This was a fairly uniform experience across the British Empire. The accounts of Irish speaking children being humiliated in the classroom, as given by so many Gaeltacht writers (and so neatly satirised by Flann O'Brien!) are almost identical to those from the likes of Ngugi Wa'Thiang O in Kenya. But there also appears to have been a lot of canny self interest at work, people seeing which way the wind was blowing, knowing Irish was doomed, knowing that economic advancement would come more quickly with English etc. But none of this is answering my question at the start of this post - was the music ever actually banned, or is that a nationalist myth?
According to Arthur Flynn's 'Irish Dance' (http://www.reagoso.com/irishdance.htm), the English banned playing of the harp in the 12th century. I've not seen that information confirmed elsewhere and I suspect that Henry II had rather more important fish to fry.
The Statutes of Kilkenny, passed in 1367, attempted (and miserably failed, thank heavens) to stop the spread of the Irish language amongst English settlers who were becoming 'more Irish than the Irish'.
Further attempts to quell the use of Irish were incorporated in various elements of the Penal Laws which were first enacted in 1695 and continued well into the 18th century - http://www.law.umn.edu/irishlaw/subjectlist.html. I cannot see any mention of music in said laws. However, I have not scrutinised all of them, so it's possible that some piece of legislation might be there.
Most of said Penal Laws were repealed during the 19th century. However, the 20th century brought the Public Dance Halls Act of 1935 (http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/ZZA2Y1935.html) which certainly did aim to control the performance of music in public places and had a deleterious effect upon 'crossroads' and 'house' dancing - though only in those parts of the country where priests were inordinately diligent. I think it was Junior Crehan who recalled that the 'house' dances went on well into the 1950s in Clare.
I'm not sure this helps your question, but it certainly puts bones upon flesh.
Nationalist myth like many others, Sarge, I would think. This country is a patchwork of many hues and melodies but it has suited certain groups seeking to exercise control to promote narrow forms of history and paint everything with a partic. shade of green. 'Spin' has been around for many centuries!
It was only around the 80's 90's and beyond that the "old mother England" was not as respected as it once was. Everywhere around the globe english as a spoken language was encouraged by draconian rule in the past, we were taught to respect and revere the monarchy and mother England without question. There is somewhat of a reversal of this entirely over society, a sympathy towards indigenous races, sometimes bordering on the uncomfortably bizarre for example the european white woman attempting to integrate herself into african tribal culture (as an example). Although this example seems far fetched its not that uncommon in every single country of the former british empire. As for other parts of the world, many immigrants leave their own country in search for something better but spend a lot of time wishing they were back home. The only thing I am grateful for is that the English annexed New Zealand before the French did, the alternative to the British Empire was and is somewhat more unpleasant.
Another possibility: I got this idea from one of the early seasons of the soap Ballykissangel, <sarcasm>so of course, it must be true.</sarcasm> One of the characters was trying to play up the town's traditionalism in order to sell real estate to foreigners, and he met with resistance when he tried to get the locals playing trad in the pub. ITM was associated with the bad old days of poverty and a (real or imaginary) backwater mentality in the minds of said locals, and he had no luck.
So I wonder whether it's not so much a matter of ITM being forbidden by law or frowned upon by the Church as having some negative associations for a large number of people.
Not a historian myself, but here are selected passages from the first chapter of "The Irish Song Tradition" (1976) by Sean O Boyle:
"When the Normans came to Ireland, in the twelfth century, their chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis found nothing in the native music dissimilar from the music he had heard all his days on the continent of Europe except, as he noted, that Irish harpers were incomparably more skilful than any he had heard." (p.9)
"Just at the time when music in Europe was feeling its way out of the modes, Irish music was outlawed because of the part taken by harpers, pipers and poets in the last upsurge of Gaelic Ireland against the English. The defeat of the Irish at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 was a catastrophe for a national aristocratic order of society which, until that time, had encouraged music by an intricate system of patronage. In 1603 a proclamation was issued by the Lord President of Munster for the extermination by martial law of "all manner of bards, harpers etc." and within ten days of it Queen Elizabeth herself order Lord Barrymore "to hang the harpers werever found." All through the seventeenth century they were proscribed and banned, hunted and persecuted." (p. 9-10)
"Under Cromwell, in 1654, all harpers, pipers and wandering musicians had to obtain letters from the magistrate of the district they hailed from before being allowed to travel through the country . . . . All musical instruments savouring of 'popery' were ruthlessly destroyed so that Archdeaon Lynch, a contemporary writer, was of the opinion that within a short time scarce a single harp would be left in Ireland." (p. 10)
"The musicians, however, continued to make their music in the only way known to htem -- that is in the modes, which sounded 'quaint' 'barbaric' and 'very ancient' to the cultivated ears of their eighteenth century overlords. For Europe meanwhile, had moved far away from the modes." (p. 10-11)
"At the end of the eighteenth century, and all through the ninetheenth, the culture of the native Irish seemed to be doomed. Good men who loved the music and the language of the people could think only in terms of preservation of 'remains'" (p. 12)
"All during the nineteenth century, while these men were editing and collating manuscripts and often noting them in an unorganized and unskilful manner, the Irish country people were still singing and fiddling and piping away. The tradition was being held intact. But collectors never took down Gaelic words and music *together* in the field and English language texts, when used at all, were censored or bowdlerized or completely changed. The English of the 'peasants' was 'corrupt' and their Irish was a 'dead' language. Neither was likely to appeal to the 'cultivated' tastes of polite society." (p. 13)
"A proper appreciation of Irish music is impossible iwhtout a knowledge of the language. But it was not until 1893 when the Gaelic League was formed that this truth seemed to dawn on serious collectors of Irish music. . . . The word Gaeltacht came into the English language. Strange songs were heard i nthe Galltacht, songs with Irish words an dno accompaniments. At last the Gaelic music was being heard without the distraction of unsympathetic accompaniements." (p. 16-17)
"But neither Hardebeck nor Hughes could hvae foreseen the inevitalbe result of the broadcasting of actual performances by traditional practitioners. They had not foreseen the impact of the record player in nearly every home in the country. Irish music, in the early fifties was given to the whole people, not now in book form nor in concert-hall arrangements intended for the educated elite, but in all its pristine nakedness as it had been kept by the people of the countryside for centuries." (p. 18)
I once heard a rumour that when the war pipes were banned, pipers developed the uilleann pipes. The advantage to these was that they were played sitting, and could be hidden under a table if British soldiers came by. Also, they were quieter than the war pipes. Now this was just a story I heard, mind you. I'm not sure of the validity of it.
I'm reminded abit of the people who are trying to deny that the holocaust ever happened. Of course it happened!
The oppression of the Irish culture & music has been well known and documented... especially concerning Cromwell.
It’s been happening all over the planet, the conquering peoples' attempts to wipe out all evidence of those conquered.
We’re lucky to have any Native Americans left at all in this country (USA). Unfortunately we cannot underestimate the extent of human cruelty.
I wish I could believe differently.
I think a contributing factor in the decline of the Irish language may have been emigration- children were discouraged from speaking it in school since their best shot at employment when they emigrated to Britain or the US (and most were bound to do so) was fluency in English. Unfortunately this image of the language as "backward" persists to this day in much of Ireland.
Also, many people who were forced to learn by the Christian Brothers in school, whose teaching methods often included a lot of corporal punishment, have blocked all memory of the language.
Thanks to everyone for their helpful comments so far, and especially to Geoff W for putting flesh on bones and to Jams O'Donnell (Sor!) for the O'Boyle material.
Morning Star, I don't think anybody is denying that Irish culture has been attacked or denigrated systematically. I certainly am not. Of course it is the same old story for subjugated people around the world enjoying the colonial experience to be taught to loathe their own culture. Eduardo Galleano describes it best, I think, as being trained to 'spit in the mirror'..." to despise what is your own, to live according to what comes from above and from outside, spurning what comes from below and from within..." When I was at secondary school and becoming interested in traditional music it attracted much mockery, especially from the NME reading bridage (who later had no problem embracing the Pogues when London called upon them to do so). What I am asking for though, is specific pieces of legislation outlawing traditional music.
Francis O'Neill's "Irish Minstrels And Musicians" is online, giving names and brief details of many early pipers and harpers and what they did / what happened to them.
Yes, the O'Neill text is interesting, isn't it? There he describes how the *law* banned Irish harpers, but the actual people who had gone over and occupied the place actively encouraged them, and paid their own retained harpers!
O'Neill goes on to say that the Irish harp tradition simply faded away and is now dead.
It all seems rather confused. For instance, O'Neill goes on to say that it was Queen Elizabeth who proclaimed that Irish harpers should be hanged, but it was her also who actively encouraged a tradition of Irish harping in her own court - because she loved the dancing - and kept her own harper, Cormac MacDermott. Weird ...
It may have something to do with the Irish involvement in the 1744/45 Jacobite rebellion. Before the genocide in the Scottish highlands that followed, bagpipes and fiddles were not just banned but made illegal. Not only that but also tartan and the lion rampant flag ( the royal Stewart flag - yellow with red lion.) Funnily enough, I believe these laws were never repealed and these items are still technically illegal in Scotland and probably Ireland too. A lot of the Gaelic oral tradition comes from trying to keep old tunes alive while the in struments were banned. Pipes and tartan got a reprieve when the English realized they may have a part to play in empire building. The English probably felt that Ireland had to be repressed at the same time as Scottish warlords could simply have relocated to Ireland where they had many allies.
My apologies, Sergeant Fox. This is a good discussion.
I believe that it's so important that we learn history in order to help keep things like this from happening again. The problem is that history does keep repeating itself.
I think we're still waiting for chapter and verse that the music was specifically banned, rather than the received opinion that this was what happened.
Morning star, you are lacking in history for one claiming to know his own - perhaps a little on your personal details might let us know where you are coming from, more precisely then just the US. By all means embroider, obscurate, or falsify, amuse us if you will.
As to local cultures being put down, when children from my own homeland of the Channel Islands were transported to England for their own safety just before the German Occuoation in 1940, they were forbidden to speak their native tongue, the Norman-French patois, in their temporary homes. Nowadays there would be more respect for ones own heritage.
I dont know about banning War Pipes but when I hear them I still want to run inside and grab my sword before they steal all the cattle. It must be a genetic thing
Did those Channel Island kids all go to the same place? I'd have thought if they were farmed out to families like a lot of evacuees it would be up to each householder to make the rules.
I haven't found anything yet on the net about Irish involvement of any kind in the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745, except that there were Irish Catholics with the French army, which had a habit of not turning up. The death toll in Ireland around the Battles of The Boyne and Aughrim (1690-1) and in a famine of 1740-1, plus the eradication of independent Catholic leadership and severe repression, may have combined to rule it out.
As far as I'm aware the bagpipes were banned by the English parliament after the 1745/6 Jacobite uprising, but this ban only applied to Scotland. I don't think there's any evidence that the pipes (in whatever form) were ever actually banned in Ireland. Whatever the case, the ban in Scotland was lifted around 1793.
Might I just raise one point in relation to Nicholas's last posting?
One of the biggest myths regarding European history up until the middle of the 19th century is that battles were waged between huge armies. There's plenty of evidence which suggests that this was not the case at all.
Indeed, it's very likely, for instance, that the combatants in all the major English Civil War battles totted up to no more than a thousand per side (and that was only for the major battles).
As far as I've been able to sift through the evidence, the battles during 1690-91 involved far fewer than a thousand on each side and the bulk of the troopers involved were (in each case) from England or Scotland. In other words, these events had little impact upon the native Irish.
There's no doubt, however, that the the famine of 1740-41 had a severe effect upon those living in the west of Ireland.
O'Neill mentions several individual pipers who were pardoned, in c16-17; that implies piping was a criminal offence in the first place - though I don't think he quotes an actual law against it.
(The c14 Statutes of Kilkenny forbad Irish pipers etc. from coming into the Pale, though the English couldn't control the areas outside. This was to prevent espionage among other things.)
G. Pete - it's no secret that I'm of the feminine persuasion, live in the North West, and am kind of p*ssed off at humanity right now after having just read The History of the Jews. Now there's a tale of woe that has lasted some 4,000 years and counting!
I'm Scots/Irish/English/Norweigan/Swiss/German/French/Native American and my husband is Russian Jewish........ typical American household, you see.
i think possibly that sometimes references to "the music being banned" are really alluding to the Dance Hall Act of 1935, which indeed ushered in a dark era for traditional music. gearoid o'hallmhorrain lectured eloquently on the impact of this in county clare last summer during irish arts week in the catskills. here is junior crehan on the subject, plus link to the complete article:
The Public Dance Halls Act was enacted by the Irish Government in 1935. Almost from the date of its introduction it has been believed to have been a significant factor in the decline in the practice of traditional music in rural Ireland, particularly the decline in the house dances and crossroads dances. It was believed that the Act prohibited these activities, and that it was enacted specifically to discourage them.
Writing in Dal gCais in 1977, Junior Crehan said:
[But in 1934 both Church and Government dealt a severe blow to country life. For a long time the Church had been against the country-house dance. They put forward many reasons for their attitude. They claimed that the house dances were places of mis-conduct, that there were no proper sanitary conditions and they seemed to be fearing greatly for our morals. .......
In 1934 [sic] the Dance Hall Act was passed. The Act banned the house dances and anybody holding such a dance after this was brought to Court and fined. The clergy started to build the parochial halls to which all were expected to go and the Government collected 25% of the ticket-tax. In these halls modern dance bands played a different type of music for a different style of dancing - Foxtrot, One-Step and Shimmy-shake. But country people found it hard to adjust and to them the dance halls were not natural places of enjoyment; they were not places for traditional music, story-telling and dancing; they were unsuitable for passing on traditional arts. The Dance Hall Act had closed our schools of tradition and left us a poorer people. In addition to this, in the 40's, the rate of emigration increased rapidly. The youth saw nothing in their own country but poverty, and Government and Church collected their Dance-Hall dues from a falling population. The countryside was once more going through that terrible silence which it had suffered after the Famine, the silence of a departing people and a dying of music and song. These were indeed the black Forties.
The Dance Hall Act had put an end to the customs of the country house and its traditions were being forgotten. In addition to all this there was a widespread lack of interest in Irish music/.......All in all it was a lonely time for anyone interested in the music and all that it meant. There was a silence everywhere and Markham's Cross of a Sunday was a deserted place with only memories of the music and dancing that had at one time filled it. It was this loneliness that I felt most of all; there was no one to swap tunes with, very few to talk about music, and the flag floors were silent. In corners, in attics, and on shelves, fiddles and flutes lay gathering spiders and cobwebs. There was no heart to play and I remember finding it a struggle to take down the fiddle and play a few tunes to oblige a neighbour. There seemed to be no point in it; the music was slipping away in spite of us.]
this fascinating article cites other factors in this dark period for the music, but a feeling of "the music being banned" is indeed associated with the Dance Halls Act....
Morning star, Irish music survived because many Irish were poor during the 1800s and early 1900s. Jigs and reels were considered as music for the poor in North America; I am not sure if this is the case in the British Empire.
Each socio-economic class had their own clubs to attend for entertainment. Many of the Irish were repressed and poor, so their music came to be associated with being inappropriate for the middle and upper-classes. If you notice, during the periods where Irish music became popular -- socialist, liberal and trade union ideas became popular as well.
I don't think the strength of ITM came from the ban on music, since a lot of the tunes can be traced to the supposed post-ban era. The strength of ITM come from the working class and it still is associated with the working class.
Just remember, even outside of Ireland, Irish music survived in Canada, United States, Australia and various other countries. To say that it is popular because of oppression in the British Empire is just wrong. There are lot more to the issues than just that.
I never said that the ban strenghtened the music...I was just saying that cruel methods of banning the music did indeed happen.
As you say, BI, it's a very complex issue.
The music survived because it is good strong dance music. I have a number of books that contain music used in dances in the US, such as contradances, and a LOT of Irish tunes are found there. Attempts to suppress music and dance always fail in the long run.
Although that Morris dancing stuff, I am sure there would be some that would entertain the thought of banning it!!!
Not to forget that as the traditional music, dance, song and ritual were originally part of the pagan religion that existed prior to the introduction of Catholicism. So when it was introduced in order to stamp out the old religion all of the elememts were degraded and effectively banned by linking them to hereticism.
Erm, The Bloody Irish, traditional music has existed prior to any kind of modern class system and the modern concepts of political ideology. Your argument is inaccurate anyway, during the miners strike (1984 - 1985), which was one of the most important pieces of industrial action in UK history, there was no folk revival.
Im not here to educate ye. But check out the Gaelic League and what it stands for and then check out how the british felt about the Gealic League. Have a look at some of Stricklands and Percivals orders. Geoffw The Legislation is probably right next to the legislation that made it ok to burn Cork and The Legislation that made it ok to raid homes and torture men in front of thier families.Anything linked with Irishness was putting your life at risk and this included the music.
Andy Newcastle -
Giraldus Cambrensis, a churchman of c12-13, wrote: "It is only in the
case of musical instruments that I find any commendable diligence in the Irish people..." - and goes on to say that they were more skilled in playing music than any other people he'd seen. As is often the case in ancient texts, the Latin is prolix and at the same time doesn't tell you what you actually want to know - e.g., what the instruments were, or where they were played and by whom. But the gist is, players could play fast involved melodies keeping perfect time and resolving passing discords into harmony, and that sometimes "several instruments" were played together.
So at that time, some centuries after the Catholic Church was established in Ireland, it wasn't cramping the style of at least some of the country's musicians.
Nicholas, I didn't mean to suggest that the Catholic church banned music (I can't imagine why I used "all" in my second sentance). Merely that the importance of many of these traditional things were actively discouraged (and some relating to "pagan" worship did land some people in hot water) and as such many of the other traditional activities fell by the wayside.
ITM 'Banned'?
ITM 'Banned'?
A couple of threads recently have referred to Irish music as having been 'banned' at some point in history. In a recent thread, for example, Saint gave this supposed oppression of ITM as a reason for the music currently being in such rude good health. Someone else made a similar claim a few weeks before I seem to recall.
I'm familiar with such claims but have never quite had the matter convincingly explained to me. Although I'm Irish, I have come to associate this assertion more with English lefties down the pub than with the work of an authoritative historian. Someone (llig? Harry B?) countered that any repression of ITM was more likely to have had domestic origins (ie the Catholic Church in Ireland) than to have been imposed by perfidious Albion. Personally, that sounds more convincing.
Phantom Button requested that somebody put the matter straight. I waited with baited breath...but nobody did. So now I'm repeating his call. Can anyone tell me when, where, how and by whom Irish Traditional Music has ever actually been banned? I'm sorry if I've misquoted or misrepresented the views of anyone in my attempt to round up recent contributions to this debate.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
The use of the piob mor (Great Bagpipes) was definitely banned by the English in c16 and after, as they were an instrument of war; it has been said that they were last used thus by exiled Irish soldiers at the Battle of Fontenoy, round 1740 I think.
A harp or related website made claims that the English massacred harpers and burned as many harps as they could find; I don't know if there's any truth in this. Detailed accounts were not given. (It was that kind of site...)
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by nicholas
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I think it was true that harping was banned, and that many harps were put out of service, but that bit about massacring harpists sounds very made up.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by tnoumarap
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Thank you for picking up the baton on this one, Paul. As a contributor to one of those earlier threads that you mentioned, I too would be very interested to see or hear of documentary evidence about this..
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by murfbox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I too was puzzled by Saint's assertion that the popularity of music was due to it being 'banned'. The reality ofcourse that few people were interested at all during the lean years of the 40s and 50s.
There has been a ban, of sorts, during the 17th or early 18th century : I have seen reproductions of engravings depicting piper's hanged from trees for 'playing seditious tunes' but in reality there is very little , if any, evidence this sort of hangings took place on any significant scale.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by kilfarboy
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
If you look carefully at the enscriptions on the engravings, they read "tune it or die."
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by jwvansteenwyk
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Irish Traditional Music *should* be banned. Since it was England's oppression of the Irish that enabled traditional music to survive, anyone who plays traditional music is implicity supporting that oppression.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by ragaman
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Hmmm...I have to wonder why this oppression didn't have such a restorative effect on the Irish language.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I wonder if the language would have (eventually) become more learned and spoken if it hadn't been made a compulsory school subject for lots of recalcitrant kids - any views on that one?
(I don't know if, or to what extent, the Irish language was banned; but if it ever was, I suppose that included a ban on singing in Gaelic.)
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by nicholas
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I think it's generally accepted in Ireland that making Irish compulsory at school and a precondition for entering teaching and the civil service has been a disastrous own goal. There is of course, also, plenty of credible evidence that before Ireland achieved, cough, statehood, Irish was denigrated and that school children were humiliated in learning English. This was a fairly uniform experience across the British Empire. The accounts of Irish speaking children being humiliated in the classroom, as given by so many Gaeltacht writers (and so neatly satirised by Flann O'Brien!) are almost identical to those from the likes of Ngugi Wa'Thiang O in Kenya. But there also appears to have been a lot of canny self interest at work, people seeing which way the wind was blowing, knowing Irish was doomed, knowing that economic advancement would come more quickly with English etc. But none of this is answering my question at the start of this post - was the music ever actually banned, or is that a nationalist myth?
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Sorry that should have read, 'humiliated into learning English'...
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
According to Arthur Flynn's 'Irish Dance' (http://www.reagoso.com/irishdance.htm), the English banned playing of the harp in the 12th century. I've not seen that information confirmed elsewhere and I suspect that Henry II had rather more important fish to fry.
The Statutes of Kilkenny, passed in 1367, attempted (and miserably failed, thank heavens) to stop the spread of the Irish language amongst English settlers who were becoming 'more Irish than the Irish'.
Further attempts to quell the use of Irish were incorporated in various elements of the Penal Laws which were first enacted in 1695 and continued well into the 18th century - http://www.law.umn.edu/irishlaw/subjectlist.html. I cannot see any mention of music in said laws. However, I have not scrutinised all of them, so it's possible that some piece of legislation might be there.
Most of said Penal Laws were repealed during the 19th century. However, the 20th century brought the Public Dance Halls Act of 1935 (http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/ZZA2Y1935.html) which certainly did aim to control the performance of music in public places and had a deleterious effect upon 'crossroads' and 'house' dancing - though only in those parts of the country where priests were inordinately diligent. I think it was Junior Crehan who recalled that the 'house' dances went on well into the 1950s in Clare.
I'm not sure this helps your question, but it certainly puts bones upon flesh.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by Floss the Tethers
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Thankfully, today there are a number of Catholic priests actively involved in traditional music.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Nationalist myth like many others, Sarge, I would think. This country is a patchwork of many hues and melodies but it has suited certain groups seeking to exercise control to promote narrow forms of history and paint everything with a partic. shade of green. 'Spin' has been around for many centuries!
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by the wounded hussar
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
It was only around the 80's 90's and beyond that the "old mother England" was not as respected as it once was. Everywhere around the globe english as a spoken language was encouraged by draconian rule in the past, we were taught to respect and revere the monarchy and mother England without question. There is somewhat of a reversal of this entirely over society, a sympathy towards indigenous races, sometimes bordering on the uncomfortably bizarre for example the european white woman attempting to integrate herself into african tribal culture (as an example). Although this example seems far fetched its not that uncommon in every single country of the former british empire. As for other parts of the world, many immigrants leave their own country in search for something better but spend a lot of time wishing they were back home. The only thing I am grateful for is that the English annexed New Zealand before the French did, the alternative to the British Empire was and is somewhat more unpleasant.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by Joze
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
ok what I am trying to say is that Ireland was not the only victim of the british empire.
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by Joze
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
So Joze, are you saying you're glad to be a victim? (or is that glid to be e vuctum?)
# Posted on April 8th 2007 by bc_box_player
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Another possibility: I got this idea from one of the early seasons of the soap Ballykissangel, <sarcasm>so of course, it must be true.</sarcasm> One of the characters was trying to play up the town's traditionalism in order to sell real estate to foreigners, and he met with resistance when he tried to get the locals playing trad in the pub. ITM was associated with the bad old days of poverty and a (real or imaginary) backwater mentality in the minds of said locals, and he had no luck.
So I wonder whether it's not so much a matter of ITM being forbidden by law or frowned upon by the Church as having some negative associations for a large number of people.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by cathrynb
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Not a historian myself, but here are selected passages from the first chapter of "The Irish Song Tradition" (1976) by Sean O Boyle:
"When the Normans came to Ireland, in the twelfth century, their chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis found nothing in the native music dissimilar from the music he had heard all his days on the continent of Europe except, as he noted, that Irish harpers were incomparably more skilful than any he had heard." (p.9)
"Just at the time when music in Europe was feeling its way out of the modes, Irish music was outlawed because of the part taken by harpers, pipers and poets in the last upsurge of Gaelic Ireland against the English. The defeat of the Irish at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 was a catastrophe for a national aristocratic order of society which, until that time, had encouraged music by an intricate system of patronage. In 1603 a proclamation was issued by the Lord President of Munster for the extermination by martial law of "all manner of bards, harpers etc." and within ten days of it Queen Elizabeth herself order Lord Barrymore "to hang the harpers werever found." All through the seventeenth century they were proscribed and banned, hunted and persecuted." (p. 9-10)
"Under Cromwell, in 1654, all harpers, pipers and wandering musicians had to obtain letters from the magistrate of the district they hailed from before being allowed to travel through the country . . . . All musical instruments savouring of 'popery' were ruthlessly destroyed so that Archdeaon Lynch, a contemporary writer, was of the opinion that within a short time scarce a single harp would be left in Ireland." (p. 10)
"The musicians, however, continued to make their music in the only way known to htem -- that is in the modes, which sounded 'quaint' 'barbaric' and 'very ancient' to the cultivated ears of their eighteenth century overlords. For Europe meanwhile, had moved far away from the modes." (p. 10-11)
"At the end of the eighteenth century, and all through the ninetheenth, the culture of the native Irish seemed to be doomed. Good men who loved the music and the language of the people could think only in terms of preservation of 'remains'" (p. 12)
"All during the nineteenth century, while these men were editing and collating manuscripts and often noting them in an unorganized and unskilful manner, the Irish country people were still singing and fiddling and piping away. The tradition was being held intact. But collectors never took down Gaelic words and music *together* in the field and English language texts, when used at all, were censored or bowdlerized or completely changed. The English of the 'peasants' was 'corrupt' and their Irish was a 'dead' language. Neither was likely to appeal to the 'cultivated' tastes of polite society." (p. 13)
"A proper appreciation of Irish music is impossible iwhtout a knowledge of the language. But it was not until 1893 when the Gaelic League was formed that this truth seemed to dawn on serious collectors of Irish music. . . . The word Gaeltacht came into the English language. Strange songs were heard i nthe Galltacht, songs with Irish words an dno accompaniments. At last the Gaelic music was being heard without the distraction of unsympathetic accompaniements." (p. 16-17)
"But neither Hardebeck nor Hughes could hvae foreseen the inevitalbe result of the broadcasting of actual performances by traditional practitioners. They had not foreseen the impact of the record player in nearly every home in the country. Irish music, in the early fifties was given to the whole people, not now in book form nor in concert-hall arrangements intended for the educated elite, but in all its pristine nakedness as it had been kept by the people of the countryside for centuries." (p. 18)
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by Jams O'Donnell
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I once heard a rumour that when the war pipes were banned, pipers developed the uilleann pipes. The advantage to these was that they were played sitting, and could be hidden under a table if British soldiers came by. Also, they were quieter than the war pipes. Now this was just a story I heard, mind you. I'm not sure of the validity of it.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by rob_handel
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I'm reminded abit of the people who are trying to deny that the holocaust ever happened. Of course it happened!
The oppression of the Irish culture & music has been well known and documented... especially concerning Cromwell.
It’s been happening all over the planet, the conquering peoples' attempts to wipe out all evidence of those conquered.
We’re lucky to have any Native Americans left at all in this country (USA). Unfortunately we cannot underestimate the extent of human cruelty.
I wish I could believe differently.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by morning star
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I think a contributing factor in the decline of the Irish language may have been emigration- children were discouraged from speaking it in school since their best shot at employment when they emigrated to Britain or the US (and most were bound to do so) was fluency in English. Unfortunately this image of the language as "backward" persists to this day in much of Ireland.
Also, many people who were forced to learn by the Christian Brothers in school, whose teaching methods often included a lot of corporal punishment, have blocked all memory of the language.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by Murph
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Thanks to everyone for their helpful comments so far, and especially to Geoff W for putting flesh on bones and to Jams O'Donnell (Sor!) for the O'Boyle material.
Morning Star, I don't think anybody is denying that Irish culture has been attacked or denigrated systematically. I certainly am not. Of course it is the same old story for subjugated people around the world enjoying the colonial experience to be taught to loathe their own culture. Eduardo Galleano describes it best, I think, as being trained to 'spit in the mirror'..." to despise what is your own, to live according to what comes from above and from outside, spurning what comes from below and from within..." When I was at secondary school and becoming interested in traditional music it attracted much mockery, especially from the NME reading bridage (who later had no problem embracing the Pogues when London called upon them to do so). What I am asking for though, is specific pieces of legislation outlawing traditional music.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Francis O'Neill's "Irish Minstrels And Musicians" is online, giving names and brief details of many early pipers and harpers and what they did / what happened to them.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by nicholas
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Yes, the O'Neill text is interesting, isn't it? There he describes how the *law* banned Irish harpers, but the actual people who had gone over and occupied the place actively encouraged them, and paid their own retained harpers!
O'Neill goes on to say that the Irish harp tradition simply faded away and is now dead.
It all seems rather confused. For instance, O'Neill goes on to say that it was Queen Elizabeth who proclaimed that Irish harpers should be hanged, but it was her also who actively encouraged a tradition of Irish harping in her own court - because she loved the dancing - and kept her own harper, Cormac MacDermott. Weird ...
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
It may have something to do with the Irish involvement in the 1744/45 Jacobite rebellion. Before the genocide in the Scottish highlands that followed, bagpipes and fiddles were not just banned but made illegal. Not only that but also tartan and the lion rampant flag ( the royal Stewart flag - yellow with red lion.) Funnily enough, I believe these laws were never repealed and these items are still technically illegal in Scotland and probably Ireland too. A lot of the Gaelic oral tradition comes from trying to keep old tunes alive while the in struments were banned. Pipes and tartan got a reprieve when the English realized they may have a part to play in empire building. The English probably felt that Ireland had to be repressed at the same time as Scottish warlords could simply have relocated to Ireland where they had many allies.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by Hamish TC
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
My apologies, Sergeant Fox. This is a good discussion.
I believe that it's so important that we learn history in order to help keep things like this from happening again. The problem is that history does keep repeating itself.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by morning star
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I think we're still waiting for chapter and verse that the music was specifically banned, rather than the received opinion that this was what happened.
Morning star, you are lacking in history for one claiming to know his own - perhaps a little on your personal details might let us know where you are coming from, more precisely then just the US. By all means embroider, obscurate, or falsify, amuse us if you will.
As to local cultures being put down, when children from my own homeland of the Channel Islands were transported to England for their own safety just before the German Occuoation in 1940, they were forbidden to speak their native tongue, the Norman-French patois, in their temporary homes. Nowadays there would be more respect for ones own heritage.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by Guernsey Pete
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I dont know about banning War Pipes but when I hear them I still want to run inside and grab my sword before they steal all the cattle. It must be a genetic thing
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by bazouki dave
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Did those Channel Island kids all go to the same place? I'd have thought if they were farmed out to families like a lot of evacuees it would be up to each householder to make the rules.
I haven't found anything yet on the net about Irish involvement of any kind in the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745, except that there were Irish Catholics with the French army, which had a habit of not turning up. The death toll in Ireland around the Battles of The Boyne and Aughrim (1690-1) and in a famine of 1740-1, plus the eradication of independent Catholic leadership and severe repression, may have combined to rule it out.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by nicholas
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
As far as I'm aware the bagpipes were banned by the English parliament after the 1745/6 Jacobite uprising, but this ban only applied to Scotland. I don't think there's any evidence that the pipes (in whatever form) were ever actually banned in Ireland. Whatever the case, the ban in Scotland was lifted around 1793.
Might I just raise one point in relation to Nicholas's last posting?
One of the biggest myths regarding European history up until the middle of the 19th century is that battles were waged between huge armies. There's plenty of evidence which suggests that this was not the case at all.
Indeed, it's very likely, for instance, that the combatants in all the major English Civil War battles totted up to no more than a thousand per side (and that was only for the major battles).
As far as I've been able to sift through the evidence, the battles during 1690-91 involved far fewer than a thousand on each side and the bulk of the troopers involved were (in each case) from England or Scotland. In other words, these events had little impact upon the native Irish.
There's no doubt, however, that the the famine of 1740-41 had a severe effect upon those living in the west of Ireland.
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by Floss the Tethers
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
O'Neill mentions several individual pipers who were pardoned, in c16-17; that implies piping was a criminal offence in the first place - though I don't think he quotes an actual law against it.
(The c14 Statutes of Kilkenny forbad Irish pipers etc. from coming into the Pale, though the English couldn't control the areas outside. This was to prevent espionage among other things.)
# Posted on April 9th 2007 by nicholas
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
G. Pete - it's no secret that I'm of the feminine persuasion, live in the North West, and am kind of p*ssed off at humanity right now after having just read The History of the Jews. Now there's a tale of woe that has lasted some 4,000 years and counting!
I'm Scots/Irish/English/Norweigan/Swiss/German/French/Native American and my husband is Russian Jewish........ typical American household, you see.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by morning star
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
i think possibly that sometimes references to "the music being banned" are really alluding to the Dance Hall Act of 1935, which indeed ushered in a dark era for traditional music. gearoid o'hallmhorrain lectured eloquently on the impact of this in county clare last summer during irish arts week in the catskills. here is junior crehan on the subject, plus link to the complete article:
http://www.setdance.com/pdha/pdha.html
The Public Dance Halls Act was enacted by the Irish Government in 1935. Almost from the date of its introduction it has been believed to have been a significant factor in the decline in the practice of traditional music in rural Ireland, particularly the decline in the house dances and crossroads dances. It was believed that the Act prohibited these activities, and that it was enacted specifically to discourage them.
Writing in Dal gCais in 1977, Junior Crehan said:
[But in 1934 both Church and Government dealt a severe blow to country life. For a long time the Church had been against the country-house dance. They put forward many reasons for their attitude. They claimed that the house dances were places of mis-conduct, that there were no proper sanitary conditions and they seemed to be fearing greatly for our morals. .......
In 1934 [sic] the Dance Hall Act was passed. The Act banned the house dances and anybody holding such a dance after this was brought to Court and fined. The clergy started to build the parochial halls to which all were expected to go and the Government collected 25% of the ticket-tax. In these halls modern dance bands played a different type of music for a different style of dancing - Foxtrot, One-Step and Shimmy-shake. But country people found it hard to adjust and to them the dance halls were not natural places of enjoyment; they were not places for traditional music, story-telling and dancing; they were unsuitable for passing on traditional arts. The Dance Hall Act had closed our schools of tradition and left us a poorer people. In addition to this, in the 40's, the rate of emigration increased rapidly. The youth saw nothing in their own country but poverty, and Government and Church collected their Dance-Hall dues from a falling population. The countryside was once more going through that terrible silence which it had suffered after the Famine, the silence of a departing people and a dying of music and song. These were indeed the black Forties.
The Dance Hall Act had put an end to the customs of the country house and its traditions were being forgotten. In addition to all this there was a widespread lack of interest in Irish music/.......All in all it was a lonely time for anyone interested in the music and all that it meant. There was a silence everywhere and Markham's Cross of a Sunday was a deserted place with only memories of the music and dancing that had at one time filled it. It was this loneliness that I felt most of all; there was no one to swap tunes with, very few to talk about music, and the flag floors were silent. In corners, in attics, and on shelves, fiddles and flutes lay gathering spiders and cobwebs. There was no heart to play and I remember finding it a struggle to take down the fiddle and play a few tunes to oblige a neighbour. There seemed to be no point in it; the music was slipping away in spite of us.]
this fascinating article cites other factors in this dark period for the music, but a feeling of "the music being banned" is indeed associated with the Dance Halls Act....
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by ceemonster
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
you guys, i'm sorry that excerpt paste was so long...i was aiming at a short graph and screwed up the edit...
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by ceemonster
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Morning star, Irish music survived because many Irish were poor during the 1800s and early 1900s. Jigs and reels were considered as music for the poor in North America; I am not sure if this is the case in the British Empire.
Each socio-economic class had their own clubs to attend for entertainment. Many of the Irish were repressed and poor, so their music came to be associated with being inappropriate for the middle and upper-classes. If you notice, during the periods where Irish music became popular -- socialist, liberal and trade union ideas became popular as well.
I don't think the strength of ITM came from the ban on music, since a lot of the tunes can be traced to the supposed post-ban era. The strength of ITM come from the working class and it still is associated with the working class.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by TheBloodyIrish
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I forgot to include this:
Just remember, even outside of Ireland, Irish music survived in Canada, United States, Australia and various other countries. To say that it is popular because of oppression in the British Empire is just wrong. There are lot more to the issues than just that.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by TheBloodyIrish
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
I never said that the ban strenghtened the music...I was just saying that cruel methods of banning the music did indeed happen.
As you say, BI, it's a very complex issue.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by morning star
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
The music survived because it is good strong dance music. I have a number of books that contain music used in dances in the US, such as contradances, and a LOT of Irish tunes are found there. Attempts to suppress music and dance always fail in the long run.
Although that Morris dancing stuff, I am sure there would be some that would entertain the thought of banning it!!!
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by AlBrown
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Anything related to Irishness was banned especially gatherings of any sort E.G. gaelic games,masses etc.This happened less than 90 years ago .
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by Saint
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
What absolute twaddle saint.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Indeed, saint - clearly you're someone from another dimension.
If not, please do inform us of the actual pieces of legislation which incorporated these 'bans'.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by Floss the Tethers
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
It has to be a wind up Geoff! Makes you wonder about his other posts.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Not to forget that as the traditional music, dance, song and ritual were originally part of the pagan religion that existed prior to the introduction of Catholicism. So when it was introduced in order to stamp out the old religion all of the elememts were degraded and effectively banned by linking them to hereticism.
Erm, The Bloody Irish, traditional music has existed prior to any kind of modern class system and the modern concepts of political ideology. Your argument is inaccurate anyway, during the miners strike (1984 - 1985), which was one of the most important pieces of industrial action in UK history, there was no folk revival.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by Andy V
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Im not here to educate ye. But check out the Gaelic League and what it stands for and then check out how the british felt about the Gealic League. Have a look at some of Stricklands and Percivals orders. Geoffw The Legislation is probably right next to the legislation that made it ok to burn Cork and The Legislation that made it ok to raid homes and torture men in front of thier families.Anything linked with Irishness was putting your life at risk and this included the music.
# Posted on April 10th 2007 by Saint
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
More twaddle.
# Posted on April 11th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Andy Newcastle -
Giraldus Cambrensis, a churchman of c12-13, wrote: "It is only in the
case of musical instruments that I find any commendable diligence in the Irish people..." - and goes on to say that they were more skilled in playing music than any other people he'd seen. As is often the case in ancient texts, the Latin is prolix and at the same time doesn't tell you what you actually want to know - e.g., what the instruments were, or where they were played and by whom. But the gist is, players could play fast involved melodies keeping perfect time and resolving passing discords into harmony, and that sometimes "several instruments" were played together.
So at that time, some centuries after the Catholic Church was established in Ireland, it wasn't cramping the style of at least some of the country's musicians.
# Posted on April 11th 2007 by nicholas
Re: ITM 'Banned'?
Nicholas, I didn't mean to suggest that the Catholic church banned music (I can't imagine why I used "all" in my second sentance). Merely that the importance of many of these traditional things were actively discouraged (and some relating to "pagan" worship did land some people in hot water) and as such many of the other traditional activities fell by the wayside.
# Posted on April 11th 2007 by Andy V