Wexford pike on a bike

If there are such individuals as Pike Anoraks, Pike People is the programme for them. For the 200th anniversary of 1798, several thousand pikes were made for use in commemorative marches around the country. The most emotive and historical marches took place in the south-east, to commemorate the events of Vinegar Hill.

The pike-making and the subsequent marches brought out the community spirit and local history gene all over the south-east. Now it's 2000 and what do you do with thousands of redundant pikes?

For Wexford-born Angela Ryan, this was the inspiration for her short documentary, Pike People, which she produced and directed. "The pike is a symbol for a lot of people," she says. "In the south-east, in 1998, I saw how many people were so aware of their local history. They have a very intimate knowledge of a local area. A lot of them would be descendants of the original pike men. Every parish, no matter how small, seemed to bring out their own book or pamphlet about 1798. People really have a bond with the past in that area."

Ryan was fascinated with the community spirit which the pike-making and marching engendered in the Wexford area, and set out to capture this on camera last summer. "The marches and meetings were still going on, really until about the end of last year," she comments.

"It was an unusual kind of phenomena which gripped the country. People were doing madcap kind of things, like making cannons. And everyone drives everywhere these days, so it can be hard to know who your neighbours are, even in the country. The marches - actually walking together - brought people together. It was a way of communities getting to know each other."

The documentary intersperses footage of marches with short interviews from local pikemen and local historian, Richard Roche - although subtitles explaining just who these people are, and where they live, would be useful to viewers who won't have the advantage of knowing them as neighbours.

Joe Hickey shows off a Carlow pike which he found on his land. We learn that many of the pikes that were made for 1998 were made from plywood painted silver, between eight and 12 feet long. "The guards were a bit interested to know what we were using them for."

Jim Somers, seen strapping a load of pikes onto the back of his van for transport to a march, tells us: "Some smart people call this a Pike Mobile."

There are pike women too (although much fewer in number than the men). Patricia Murphy travelled to marches on her Honda 50 with her pike, as you do: after all, we grew up used to seeing farmers cycling the country roads with shovels and pitchforks. Murphy was once caught short at a march in the midlands, and tried to give her pike to a guard while she was en route to a Ladies. "I never knew security guards could run so fast," she marvels. "He could see me coming and that I was going to ask him to hold the pike, and he just ran!"

One enterprising farmer made home movies of battle scenes, capitalising on the impromptu casts of interested people dressing up and marching. Ah, the marching. Pike ingenues might think you just put one foot in front of the other and step it out, but the really well-known pikeman has a march as distinctive as the particular inflection of a voice. Ryan's, ahem, footage of the pikemen of Monageer bears this out.

Angela Ryan doesn't have a pike herself, but after this documentary is shown, she'll probably be presented with one, the next time she makes it down to Wexford town.

Pike People is on RTE 1 at 8 p.m. on Friday (St Patrick's Day).