Ah, Bonfire night! Where we culchies are concerned June 23rd, or St John’s Eve, is bonfire night, particularly for those of us who grew up in the West.
Many believe it is part of our pagan inheritance and that, originally, it was a celebration of mid-summer. This was made “respectable” by Christianity as lead-in to the feast day of St John the Baptist.
June 23rd was when comely maidens and athletic youths gathered at the crossroads of Ireland, lit a fire, played music, sang, drank, and danced the short night away. That was the way in civilised, rural Ireland.
Not in Ballaghaderreen. We had street gangs which began collecting tyres at New Year’s for the June bonfire. Each street was determined to be the best and raids were regular on each other’s secret stash of tyres.
The rivalry was intense and frequently violent. Occasionally the level of savagery made The Lord of the Flies read like Bambi.
All of us attended the local boys De La Salle Brothers’ school where, despite a particularly “firm” regime, fights between rival gangs broke out often.
Generally these ended when the Brothers intervened and culprits were subject to a level of violence that put the worst clashes between the town gangs in the half-penny place.
One of the most shocking inter-gang episodes involved our Barrack St gang and a member of the Pound St gang who we captured high in a tree where he had been spying on our store of tyres.
We brought him to a nearby Barrack St garden, tied him to a stake and began gliding nettles along his bare legs – he was in short trousers – trying to find out where the Pound Street’s kept their tyres. He wouldn’t say.
We decided to up the ante and piled dry loose brambles around his shoes and told him we would light them if he didn’t tell us. He wouldn’t. We were then faced with a grim choice, burn him at the stake or let him go.
After some considerable debate it was decided to let him go with a warning that any more spying on us and he would not get off as lightly next time.
That was the year the Pound Streets invaded our bonfire, took it over, and forced us to flee. Such ignominy!
Gang from Old Norse gangr, German gang, 'a group of men, a set'
inaword@irishtimes.com
