Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

People in Cavan are blissfully unaware that events swirling around their heads interest far more than themselves but are actually the subject of comment far, far away. It has recently been learned that happenings here have been mentioned in the North Korean media. Items to have made their way onto the nation’s news broadcasts have included the recent Hen night festival, the rumoured closure of the Cavan County Headshop in Ballyjamesduff while mention has also been made of the forthcoming fleadh. Check it out.

There are persistent rumours that the secretive Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is planning a rare foreign ttrip to Cavan later in the year to inaugurate a link between Cavan’s Johnston Central Library and the Kim Il-Sung Central Library in Pyongyang. This will include a public lecture in the library on “The Diocese of Kilmore and Korea in the Later Middle Ages”, given by the library’s preferred little darling of a historian, Dr Brendan Scott.

Rosie, my sister Gill and myself have received an invitation to an event to be held in the Irish Wheelchair Association headquarters at Corlurgan, on May 28^th. This is a play about disabled people and starring disabled people from Co. Cavan. It is a most worthy project and I wish it the greatest success to those taking part.

 There are a number of aspects that trouble me however. First, as far as I can discern, the play has not been written by disabled people, but by an able-bodied dramatist, maybe commissioned by Cavan County Council’s Arts Office. There seems to be the implication here that disabled people’s thoughts are too raw and coarse to be consumed by the general, able-bodied public, and have to be interpreted by someone else. Is it about disabled people’s journeys but in the words of the able-bodied? Apart from those unfortunate enough to suffer from aphasia or any other condition that causes loss of speech, all the disabled people I know (including myself) can speak very well and clearly.

 Bound up with this may be the assumption that disabled people wouldn’t be able to formulate their thoughts intelligently, let alone write a play.

 As I have a prior engagement I won’t be able to attend. This should not be seen as a snub by me towards those taking part in the play, who have my boundless respect and admiration. Unfortunately I feel I know what is going to happen. The event will be turned into a photo opportunity. My good friend Brian Mulligan will be on hand to take the pictures of the disabled who will be lined up for the shot. They will thus appear as nice, well-behaved and non-threatening cripples. This will then appear in the pages of the Anglo-Celt as exhibits in the ego-trips of those able-bodied people who want to appear caring. It might be said that the disabled are therefore being cynically used.  Bridget Boyle will be there of course, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t have her friend Whacko Jacko Keys there. Bridget enjoys the privileged position of being the only disabled person he deigns to communicate with.  Another sure show will be the chairman of the County Council, Winston Bennett, who will play the role of the self-important courthouse jester by wearing a silly chain round his neck. (Now men who wear jewellery are often ridiculed and called names like “trannies”. What’s more the only people I know who are called Winston are from the West Indies.)

 The drama has been assisted by Cavan County Council’s Arts Office. I used to enjoy very close relations with the office’s staff but I seem to have dropped out of their orbit. I cannot understand why the Arts Officer, my dear (or at least I though dear) friend Catriona O’Reilly never told me about this project. No doubt it would have been inappropriate for her to have contacts with me. How could she own up to being the friend of someone who has said such dreadful things about poor Brendan Snott and his neurotic predecessor in the Ballyjamesduff County vomitarium? She could have contacted me by ‘phone while out walking were she afraid that contact me through her office would be overheard.

 I cannot second-guess the play’s contents, but I do hope that it is realistic and not a dire panegyric singing the praises of the Irish Wheelchair Association or telling of Cavan’s disabled community’s gratitude to Cavan County Council for putting them on the housing waiting list – and keeping them there – where they know that any criticism of the council’s policies will earn them backward movement on the said list. Funny thing is that I don’t think there are that many houses being built, but no doubt the council will restart their construction once they get some of the 25 million euro they’re owed by developers.)

 Now I am confined to a wheelchair, although thankfully I can walk for about half a mile each day. The play is called Our Journey, but I don’t feel it’s my journey, as nobody ever contacted me for my input. This is not prompted by churlish resentment. I do believe that my story, which is not superior to anyone else’s, might be of interest. It is certainly of no lesser value, but it seems that some of those behind this project just don’t want to hear it. They may think that it would be too embarrassing and too likely to offend “certain people”. Yet my disabled journey is a joyful story. I see my disabilities as gifts from God; they are challenges which have been given to me and which I see myself as having a duty to overcome as best I can. I know that there would be many who would bristle with discomfort were I to say the unutterable, that I am actually proud of my disabilities and how I continue to deal with them on a daily basis.

 But it seems as if there are some in Cavan who want to ignore me. The great lie is spread that I am angry.  I am portrayed as someone who has never accepted my position as a cripple, one of God’s accursed. My outlook is heretical, because I do not humbly accept my disabilities as the actions of a wrathful God, (and it goes without saying that the people who think this know God well). What is more I refuse to come to terms with the “fact” that no mater how many books I write or languages I learn I can nevcr, never be as good as the laziest and most incompetent able-bodied person.

 I am therefore not worthy of charity, (not that I want it), or kindness. The nun who used to wipe clean the blackboard when she would see me attempting to discern what she had written, and who forbade any of my classmates to give me their notes, was thus justified because I had stood up to her tyranny. I haven’t changed. In the past I have offended the petty local establishment and thumbed my nose at organisations like the knights of St Columbanus. Did I not go to a Protestant school and refuse to kiss Bishop McKiernan’s ring? I must therefore be punished by being airbrushed out of Cavan’s reality like someone who doesn’t exist, never has and never will.

 Let me repeat that I wish the event all the very best luck. At least I was invited. In the past Tess Kennedy of the Irish MS Society, which has close links to the IWA, has invited me to give talks on local history and other subjects to members in St Christopher’s, and I hope that those who attended enjoyed themselves and found the experience as instructive and rewarding as I did. This action stands in marked contrast to that of the National Council for the Blind in Cavan. Now both Tess and Bridget Boyle knew of my skills and abilities, and both of them were well aware of my contributions to the sadly defunct Cavan Echo. They have never been afraid to count me as a friend and indeed an equal.

 No doubt Dr Snott, so long employed by Cavan County Council and taken to their collective heart, thought that he was a real clever boy when he accepted the invitation to speak from the NCBI on a topic that I had worked on for over two decades. The apposite adjective for him is, I believe unprintable even on my blog.

Patrick Lyons was the bishop of Kilnmo9re at the time of the immolation suffered by the girls in the Poor Clares’ Convent of February 1943.

 He was not a Cavanman, but a native of colon, Co. Louth. He was ordained for the archdiocese of |Armagh. He was appointed bishop of Kilmore in August 1937 after the death earlier that year of Bishop Finnegan.

 His response represented the chilling heartlessness o9f the time, when he spoke of ““… the terrible ordeal it has been for the good nuns to have the fierce glare of publicity turned on their quiet sheltered lives.” While barely mumbling an type of commiserations to the families of the unfortunate victims.

 In Cavan of course he was a true prince bishop. In fact, like many prelates of the time God was a mere junior colleague who lived and worked somewhere else. He had a chauffeur-driven car which was always supplied with petrol even at the height of war time shortages.

 He had access to other items beyond the purchase of most of his flock. These included oranges, which he doled out as presents to altar boys at Confirmation ceremonies throughout the diocese. There was another fire, far less serious, which affected Bishop Lyons’ Episcopal residence. In 1944 soldiers were asked to put out a fire at Cullies House. Among the items they rescued was a large crate of whiskey. Sensing that its disappearance could be blamed on the flames they consumed its contents, leading to some drunken antics observed by a then resident of the nearby St Patrick’s College Cavan.. Thus deprived of his tipple poor Bishop Lyons was unable to drown his sorrows at the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 and the death of Adolf Hitler.

 At the first public performance of the Cavan International Drama Festival in 1946 Bishop Lyons took the opportunity to express his admiration for the play “The Righteous are Bold”. What’s more he felt that it was in such plays that the “true nature of the Irish” was expressed, and not in the scribblings of disaffected degenerates (he didn’t use the term) like Joyce, Beckett et al, whom he and his cronies made sure were banned anyway.

 He died in April 1949.

Our efforts to commemorate the victims of the convent fire of February 1943 are going from strength to strength. A panel containing the names of those who lost their lives is to be unveiled shortly near the entrance to the convent complex from Cavan’s main street. An ecumenical service is also to be held next month at the convent.  Carina Charles of Shannonside Northern Sound Radio is preparing a documentary about the tragedy, which will feature interviews with residents of Cavan town at the time, as well as contributions from Sean Galligan and yours truly.

 The aspect which h is most pleasing is the strength that the members have been able to muster internally from the group by acting as a team. It is always edifying to know that ordinary people with a purpose and a focus can get results.

This Friday evening, May 28^th, sees the launch of a history of the church and community of Cloverhill Co. Cavan, written by my good friend Dr Jonathan Cherry.

 St John’s Church Cloverhill was built by local landed proprietor Mary Ann Sanderson. in the 1850s. It is like an old friend to me as I have passed it on innumerable occasions. The compilation of a history of the church and community since 1725 is long overdue. Thankfully this has now been remedied.

 Jonathan is a local man, from just down the road at Drumellis. We have a certain amount in common. We both went to the same school, the venerable Royal School in Cavan. What’s more we have both been “doctored”! He currently lectures in St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra.

 It promises to be a marvellous event and there can be no better time for a book launch than the wonderfully light-suffused evenings of May.

Lately I’ve received lots of emails asking me what’s wrong. Why are so many of my posts taken up with gardening and herbs, to the exclusion of commentary about things in Cavan. The truth is I’ve wanted to devote my energies to pleasant things, to the exclusion of the pea brained bastards of Cavan who leave the pleasant Cavan landscape, at its most beautiful at this time of year, covered with the rodent-like casts of their intellectual banality.

 But unfortunately the foul stench of Cavan’s petty filth invades my nostrils. I learned through a friend of a friend that the Cumann Seannchais Breifne was holding a meeting where the speaker was Micheal Mac Craith OFM from Galway. Now as one of Co. Cavan’s most qualified and experienced historians (this sticks in their craw) I might have expected to have received notification of this event, rather than learning of it third hand. But sadly one of the top honchos in that organisation is an insecure and envious little jerk-off pipsqueak. This meeting was no doubt held in the Ballyjamesduff bomitarium.

 The talk, which I know was excellent, was on the Franciscans, a worthy topic. But it seems too redolent of the days when the C.S.B. was the plaything of the former Bishop of Kilmore, Francis “Frankie goes to Hollywood” McKiernan, when the society’s talks were dominated by discussion of priests and primary teachers. Given that the status of the priesthood has been so badly damaged by the actions of the priesthood’s aberrant members, I am confident that to the general public, the continuing obsession with the clergy must seem inappropriate.

 Rumours abound that the talented Dr Snott is engaged in writing two books. Is one of them a Festchrift (a book of commemorative essays) to the memory of Dr McKiernan? I doubt very much if I will be invited to contribute (my article in Jim Lydon’s Festchrift is one of the most significant of my papers).  Were I to be asked I would have to decline on the grounds that I was barred from so doing by a confidentiality clause aka gagging order imposed upon me in the 1970s. I can’t no how Dr Snott finds the time, with his hectic schedule which includes giving public lectures to the blind and partially-sighted.

The oriental leaves we sowed a few weeks ago are producing a great crop of edible leaves. Over the weekend I spent most of my time taking advantage of the good weather, munching away on handfuls of oriental mustard, washed down with copious draughts of Polish lager, while listening to M&M.

 The oriental mustard, also known as mustard greens, is in fact distantly related to the cabbage. Its botanical name is Brassica Juncea. It is beloved of Chinese cookery. It is also adored by the Meo or Hmong people of Vietnam. These Montagnards converted in large numbers to Christianity during the colonial period. They  also earned a reputation, perhaps undeserved, of collaborating too closely with the Americans.

 Oriental mustard is distinct from the mustard we grow in mustard and cress collections. This has the botanical name of Sinapis alba, and its seeds are one of the essential ingredients in the condiment mustard.

I am delirah an’ exitah to be able to relate that the courgette seeds I sowed a while back are all now germinating very healthily. This possibly has something to do with the pleasant turn in the weather, providing both heat and sunshine. I can now look forward to a bumper crop. What’s more I discovered another packet of a variety of courgette called Romanesco, again from Franchi’s Seeds of Italy. This is a strasighter, light-green and ribbed courgette.

  I think my current success owes much to the guidance of my horticultural consultant partner, who told me how to properly sow the seed. Apparently in the past I was pushing it in too deep, but I just have to say in my defence that I’ve always been a guy who like a real deep penetration – well there is something phallic about courgettes.

Viewers of Alys Fowler’s BBC series The Edible Garden will recall the glee with which she dug up some of her Jerusalem artichokes. These tubers are amongst my favourite vegetables, but everyone knows that they contain a substance called inulin, which is non-digestible. In fact, this leads to almost uncontrollable flatulence. You just can’t stop farting, and the more you try to keep it in the more you resemble a turnip that’s just about to burst. It’s just the thing if you’re due to meet a bishop or monsignor. Alys  mentioned a plant to alleviate the baleful effects of Jerusalem artichoke – chewing the leaves of winter savory (Satureja Montana). I must admit I’d never heard of that remedy.

 I knew of course about winter savory’s better-known cousin the summer savory (Satureja Hortensis). Both belong to the mint family. This has been known since classical times and Virgil recommended it as a honey herb to be planted near beehives. It was known in medieval England as satturey but somehow it adopted a “v” instead of a “t”. It has long been used in association with legumes, especially beans and lentils, and it most certainly adds to their occasionally monotonous taste. In Germany it has long been known as the bean herb or Bohnenkraut. The association with beans isn’t just culinary though, as summer savory has been proven to be an effective companion plant, which when grown beside beans deters black fly.  Gernot Katzer mentions that it can be used as a very poor substitute for black pepper. Its peppery quality has led to another German name Pfefferkraut. According to the Larousse Gastronmique, its affinity to pepper has led the plant t be known in some parts of Provence as poivre d’ane or Donkey Pepper. I don’t believe this was ever meant as a compliment. 

The savories were so well known in mid seventeenth century England that Culpeper didn’t think it necessary to give a description. He preferred the summer savory. It had quite wide medicinal uses, including the suppression of wind and flatulence, so Alys is on to something. A decoction made with ther leaves and oil of roses and applied as ear drops could ameliorate tinitis, while a poultice of savory leaves and wheat flour was effective against sciatica. 

 Winter savory shares all the qualities of the summer variety, but is reckoned to be spicier. I cannot wait for ours to grow before tucking into some Jerusalem artichokes. Rosie has promised to make me some of that old Victorian favourite Palestine Soup, after which I would recommend those with delicate nostrils to stand well back.

Sweet Cicely

Recently the love of my life Rosie acquired some plants of Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odarata). This is a love plant, with light green lace-like leaves. Its odour is remarkably pungent, being similar to fennel and anise. It belongs to the same family as parsley (Apiaceae) and is distantly related to plants such as caraway and chervil.

 Its resemblance to chervil has led to a crisis of identity in continental Europe. In france3 it is called Cerfeuil d’Espagne, in German Spanischer Kerbel, in Italian Cerfoglio di Spagna, while the Hungarians know is as Spanyol turbolya. These can be translated as Spanish chervil, a name which may owe something to the belief that it originated in Spain. But the confusion is more extensive. A Dutch name is Roomse kervel or Roman Chervil, while the Finns calls is Saksankirveli or German Chervil.

 It was known to the first-century Greek physician Dioscorides and has long been used to add flavour to food and drinks. Allan Davison in his Oxford Companion to Food describes how it has long been an ingredient of chartreuse. What’s more it is also used in Scandinavia to flavour akvavit. Richard Mabey in Food For Free describes one use in French cuisine, where the leaves are coated in a light batter and fried, as well as an old utilisation of the leaves in Cumbria to clean furniture and doors made of oak. Cicely leaves when added to dishes containing very sharp-tasting ingredients like rhubarb, has the ability to cut through the acerbity. There is thus less need for added sugar and indeed the herb can be used in bitter-tasting dishes as a sugar substitute, making it attractive to some diabetics.

Its use as a medicinal plant was never great; Culpeper didn’t mention it. However, the Encyclopedia of Hefbs and Herbalism, edited by M. Stuart, refers to its one-time application to wounds to stop haemorrhaging.

 Check out Gernot Katzer’s excellent Spice pages.