Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

I have just come back from a visit to Fermanagh County Museum in Enniskillen. This truly is a great place with wonderful staff and exhilarating exhibitions. I was particularly interested in the exhibitions of Japanese antiques. The incense burners, vases, netsuke were awe-inspiring. There were also19th-century watercolour prints from the century when the influence of artists like Hokusai was still strong but Japan sat on the brink of calamitous changes, as she was forcefully opened up to western influences in the 1850s and 81860s and the traditional nature of Japanese society was altered.

Among the items from this traditional society on display in Enniskillen are traditional samurai armour. Even more poignant are the samurai swords carried by the samurai, as a mark of their membership of the elite class, but also a constant reminder of the fate that they must embrace were they to encounter shame, such as defeat in battle or personal impropriety. The Japanese practice of seppuku, (known in the west as hara-kiri), literally meant stomach opening.  These samurai swords look so beautiful and yet could be so deadly.

The various exhibits are accompanied by clearly-written and helpful text panels.

A recent edition of BBC’s Countryfile featured the Geopark centred on western Fermanagh and West Cavan. There was an interview with a researche3r from the museum who explained the horrors visited upon this region during the Great Famine. One aspect which she didn’t mention (or which was maybe edited out of the interview) which is fascinating and worthy of note was that not all of the West Fermanagh / West Cavan area was visited by the ravages of the potato blight and the attendant diseases like typhoid or cholera. Towns like Blacklion or Belcoo suffered horrendously, but an upland area like Glangevlin, only a few miles’ away, escaped virtually unscathed. Local folklore repeats that not ma people died here during the Famine, and records how “food refugees” from as far away as Galway came to Glangevlin in search of sustenance.

We stopped off for lunch in the Hungry Hound where we had a delicious meal. Rosie had cod in batter. The batter was crispy and the cod fresh, while I opted for my old favourite of Chicken curry, which was wonderfully hot.

My visit to Enniskillen restored my faith in museums. It is a place that the whole of Co. Fermanagh and its people can be truly proud of, unlike the bloated, conceited white elephant labouring under the title of Cavan County Museum, nestling in its little hide-away in Ballyjamesduff, and staffed by people with ludicrous semi-military titles ending in “officer”.

I saw a reference while at Fermanagh’s county museum to the work of a group called “The Friends of Fermanagh County Museum.” Does such as organisation exist for Co. Cavan? Maybe it does with complimentary membership for those belonging to the Knights of St Columbines, Opus Dei, the Real or Continuity IRA, Nonce’s International, the Irish chapter of the Ku Klux Klan or the Belturbet branch of Fine Gael.