Continuing the unexpurgated extracts from the Ballina diaries of the late 1960s.
Monday, October 13th, 1966
'Mayo itinerants are not Balubas" - Mayo County Council. Am I reading this headline correctly in the Western People? I am. According to one of our esteemed councillors, the itinerants are not Balubas out from the Bush: "They are human beings and a lot more important than many of the so-called gentlemen in our midst."
No doubt this is fine as far as it goes, but the clear implication is that the Balubas ("out from the Bush") are not human beings at all, and of no importance.
This cannot be right. I am aware of course that the Balubas have a bad name in this country, members of them having killed our brave soldiers in the Congo.
Yet it is hardly fair to tar the whole tribe for the wrongdoing of a small handful of its members. They may well be a people of great dignity and tradition, with high moral standards, art skills, a sense of parental responsibility, and an ambition to better themselves.
I may try to find out more about the Baluba people in the library. That is what the library is for, after all.
Tuesday, October 14th
John Healy's book about Charlestown, The Death of an Irish Town, is still stirring things up in Mayo and even further afield. I haven't read it myself, but to my mind, Ballina would have been just as good a choice of town. Existence here is a kind of walking death. It is a slow agony of paralysis.
On this far periphery of so-called civilisation, we are the living dead of the Western world, zombies unaware of our own condition, blind to the outer universe and entirely disregarded by it. Television only emphasises our pariah status. We are the West's Untouchables.
I may try to develop this concept for the Western People, or possibly the Irish Independent. The latter would presumably pay more. The article (series?) would serve as a long-overdue contrast to the "amusing" essays written in the Independent every Saturday by my father's favourite columnist, John D Sheridan.
This man takes attention away from our real condition, emphasising the so-called comedy of life until we end up laughing at ourselves: surely the saddest of all fates.
There is no use trying to explain this to Father, who cuts out and keeps all the man's articles.
Anyway, Walter was telling me the other night that some American reviewer of Healy's book was asking what "perversion of moral sensibility" has taken place that we don't get angry any more, and going on about the epic Tain Bo Cuailgne, detailing the sickness that renders the men of Uladh helpless before their enemies.
I do not remember all that much about the Tain Bo Cuailgne (though Paddy Glavin did his level best to teach us something about it in Rehins NS), but the American reviewer may well be right.
All this was playing on my mind for some time until I was foolish enough to bring up the subject in our house at teatime.
Quite typically, no one paid any notice, but when I mentioned the perversion of moral sensibility, Mother told me not to be "going on with that sort of talk" in front of young children, ie Frankie.
I refused to be silenced, and reminded her of the sickness that rendered the men of Uladh helpless.
"Never mind the men of Uladh" was Mother's response: "This family is the healthiest in all Ireland and no one can say different." For emphasis she then put two more Castlebar sausages on Frankie's already over-laden plate. Mother equates health with food; the more food, the better health.
Father's only contribution was to remark that "that fellow Healy says more than his prayers". He is right there.
The man takes up an entire page in the Western People, full of all sorts of innuendo, little of which makes any sense to me. I believe he also has friends and facilitators in the Dublin media.
This is what happens in our household when an attempt is made to open an intellectual debate. Is it any wonder that ideas wither and die in this town before they even bud, never mind bloom?
Yet life, of a sort, goes on. It is all very depressing.
I wonder what Harriet is doing at this moment. She at least exudes true vitality in the graveyard of the walking dead that is Ballina.
I might wander up town this evening.
Wednesday, October 15th
Harriet was not to be seen around town last night, but I bumped into Walter in Jordan's.
When I mentioned my interest in finding out more about the Baluba tribe, he told me of a conversation he overheard between two of his elderly female neighbours in Bohernasup, on the day after the Congo atrocity.
One of them related the news of the murder of our noble soldiers, saying they had been "strung up by the Balubas"; to which her horrified companion responded, according to Walter, that "Th-there was n-no need to be that c-cruel - could they n-not just have h-hanged them n-normally?" It is quite impossible to know when, if ever, Walter is being facetious.
(To be continued).
bglacken@irish-times.ie