Come Here To Me!

While a certain Myles na Gopaleen joked of ‘no God and two Saint Patrick’s’, the brother once heard otherwise:

“The brother met an oul fella below in Wikela town and yer man said straight out of that there was no Saint Patrick and that the whole yarn was invented be Strongbow or somebody. The brother asked him, if that was true, how come there was no snakes in Ireland? Know what th’oul fella done? Laughed in the brother’s face.”

We take any chance to post Myles here of course.

Anyway, here is a video of the latest History Ireland Hedge School, at the National Library on Kildare Street. I didn’t make this one with work commitments, but I was at the prior Hedge School which dealt with ‘1916 and all that’ and what the decade of centenaries ahead of us means. The National Library is a great venue for discussions like the Hedge School’s.

The panel for this one were: Elva Johnston (UCD), Canon Adrian Empey (Church of Ireland Theological College), Mike Cronin (Boston College) and Eamon Delaney (Sunday Independent). Some of you would have caught Delaney at the Hedge School we were involved with in Phibsborough, which examined the punk and new wave scene of 1970’s and 80’s Dublin. Tommy Graham, editor of the magazine, oversaw the discussion.

From a discussion on neutrality in a Laois tent to the more comfortable National Library, the Hedge Schools are a great attempt to bring historical debate into more popular and common settings than is the norm.