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Full Description
In the time of the Troubles, when bombs blew through the night and soldiers prowled down the roads, Henry Glassie came to the Irish borderland to learn how country people endure through history. He settled into the farming community of Ballymenone, beside Lough Erne in the County Fermanagh, and listened to the old people. For a decade he heard and recorded the stories and songs in which they outlined their culture, recounted their history, and pictured their world. In their view, their world was one of love, defeat, and uncertainty, demanding the virtues of endurance: faith, bravery, and wit.
Glassie's task in this book is to set the scene, to sketch the backdrop and clear the stage, so that Hugh Nolan and Michael Boyle, Peter Flanagan, Ellen Cutler, and their neighbors can tell their own tale, which explains their conditions and converts them into a tragedy of conflict and a comedy of the absurd. It gathers the saints and warriors, and celebrates the stars whose wit enabled endurance in days of violence and deprivation.
With patience and respect, Glassie describes life in a time and a place exactly like no other, and yet Ballymenone is like a thousand other places where people work on the land during the day and tell their own tales at night, forgotten, while the men of power fill the newspapers and history books by sending poor boys out to be killed.
The Stars of Ballymenone is an integrated analysis of the complete repertory of verbal art from a rural community where storytelling and singing of quality remained a part of daily life.
Contents
1. Remains 1
Our District of the Country 9
2. Ballymenone 15
3. Fermanagh 33
4. Northern Ireland 45
5. Carrying On 53
6. Stars in the Dark 67
7. Michael Boyle 115
8. Hugh Nolan 125
9. Peter Flanagan 155
10. Dwelling in Time 189
An Epic of Common Life 225
11. The Fireside 227
12. The Ceili 251
13. Saints 257
14. Saint Columcille 269
15. Battles 275
16. Black Francis 283
17. Experiences 289
18. Fairy Tales 301
19. Ghost Stories 319
20. Exploits 335
21. The Gift of Wit 345
22. Tales in the Ceili 375
23. Public Performance 381
24. The Twelfth in the Town 387
25. A Night at Swad 395
Afterword 419
Acknowledgments 435
Notes to the Book 437
Notes to the Compact Disc 517
Bibliography 558
Index 584
