Sir, - I agree with Canon MacCarthy of the Church of Ireland that a dramatisation of Brian Merriman's Culg is not an appropriate production for Good Friday. Cait "Bab" Feirtear, the Dun Chaoin storyteller, told me once that traditionally Good Friday was treated as a very solemn day (an-iogair).
The UCC Irish language scholar, Liam P. O Murchu, would group Canon MacCart by with "the more obscurantist members of the Catholic clergy of former times", attempting "to raise up again the tattered standard of narrow minded censoriousness."
O Murchu commends the attitude of the C of I's Coslett Canon Quin (RIP) whose translation of the Cuirt was published in 1982, the same year An Clochomhar published O Murchu's edition of the original.
O Murchu asserts that there is nothing in Merriman's poem that warrants it being characterised as un Christian. Is this not rather angelistic? Since when has nurtured rage and animosity been acceptable Christian behaviour?
Frank O'Connor's composition, The Midnight Court, has cultivated the impression that the original is nothing but a bawdy poem. Two thirds of the original are not bawdy enough to merit comment. The last third of the poem mixes bawdiness with humour, hatred, and a dash of sadism. The last third is in parts materially pornographic, if not intentionally so. The whole poem goes beyond traditional sexual satire. It mixes the private life with the public inchoate acceptance of democracy among those who suffered for their aristocratic Jacobitism. It vents hatred for the title usurper, and the exploiters of women. Yet it is politically incorrect. It purports to give a deep insight into the sexuality of approaching middle age, especially female sexuality. Merriman betraying an understandable lack of self awareness, attempts to "understand" the compulsive sexual drives, and apparent promiscuity, of certain women in that age group. He also lauds fertility and fecundity.
Ordinarily students first encounter the Cuirt when doing Irish at the university. Very few young students can have much understanding of, or empathy with, the sexuality of approaching middle age. Angelism was often the adjunct of the obscurantist and narrow minded censoriousness which O Murchu criticises. It would appear that angelism survived in the 1960s and 1970s by bitching its wagon to Pelagianism. This in turn has set the stage for neopagan self projection. - Yours, etc.,
Rathfarnham Village,
Dublin 14.