The wind is shifting, and unrepentant and unapologetic nationalism feels able to raise its head, before a gun is surrendered or a body uncovered. Prisoners are released to triumphant cheers while their victims moulder underground or stump around rehabilitation wards, trying to work out how to live without arms or eyes or bowels.
I know, I know, that is the deal, the people have voted on it and we must live with all its terms; but I truly detest it.
If I thought that was the end of it all - that the McAdams policy of removing not just the violence, but the causes of violence, was going to bring about a decent and harmonious society - I would force back the bile that rises to my throat as killers walk free. But one of the main causes of violence in Ireland has been a vigorous cultural acceptance of the morality of political violence. And those who have the power over that cause of violence cannot remove it, because the music and the culture of violence is part of their identity. If they denounce that part of their identity, they renounce the power which would enable them to remove a "cause of violence."
Bloodthirsty ballads
The most common form of this vigorous cultural expression has been the ballad, with its historical simplifications and its simultaneous sanitisation of and exultation in bloodshed. History lessons were learnt at the knees of balladeers and that history was bogus, forming wildly inaccurate perceptions of the past. But in recent years, most people found bloodthirsty balladeering too distasteful, and outside IRA pubs and clubs one heard few of the anthems to patriotic homicide which were once a standard part of the evening out.
History is already being rewritten about the recent troubles. A "good" IRA is emerging in myth; a fictional "reasonable" and "democratic" IRA which merely wanted justice for all. In the hearths of ordinary nationalism old embers are beginning to glow - and facts cannot quench that glow, as we have repeatedly seen in the past. So I was not really surprised to see that The Boys of Kilmichael, with new words, is on Jimmy Crowley's new CD, Uncorked.
There has been much controversy about the truth of what happened at Kilmichael since Peter Hart's brilliant account of the war in Cork 1916-23, The IRA and its Enemies. It is not necessary to go over the controversial ground again. Let us agree on the shared and undisputed fact: that most of the RIC Auxiliaries killed in the ambush there were shot or bayonetted after they surrendered.
One man was left for dead, paralysed for life and permanently brain-damaged. Another wounded RIC Auxiliary managed to get away, but was found, held for two days, shot and secretly buried.
Killing prisoners
For the purposes of argument, I will concede that there is a certain understandable logical reason why guerillas will not take prisoners. Guerillas are not alone in such ruthlessness. During the Normandy landings, for example, both British and US soldiers with inconvenient prisoners of war sometimes killed them. But it is neither civilised nor decent to then make up celebratory songs about the affair. Turning what might have been a pragmatic and ruthless necessity into something singably laudable is deeply wrong, no matter if the victims of the killings had been concentration guards or SS.
Jimmy Crowley - whom I have greatly admired for his self-mockery and his brilliant evocations of Cork and its dialects - writes on the CD sleeve: "Songs from the War of Independence have become so frowned upon in post-modern Ireland that young people are being denied any recourse to national pride, landscape [sic: I presume he means landscape] legends or any form of heroism, all very necessary components of the Irish psyche." He has added a verse saying "history's new scribes in derision/ The pages of valour deny." I wonder who he means. And he concludes his rendition with a rousing "Up the Republic". Why? Only a saloon-bar wetbrain - and he is not one - would think there was something especially brave in making such a declaration.
Physical bravery
I don't know what Jimmy Crowley - or come to that, anyone - means by "post-modern," but I do know that a "national pride" which would wish to glorify the butchery of a dozen or so unarmed men is disturbed; and a psyche which would find reassurance in such musical celebration is perverse and disturbing. For such tribal triumphalism is not only deeply unhealthy, but is also laying the moral seedbed for another generation of war.
Only a fool would deny the bravery of Tom Barry and his men, but physical bravery is one of mankind's more dubious qualities, and we should rejoice in expressions of it at our peril. The bravest soldiers this century have been the Waffen SS, the Soviet Army, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Irishness draws on greater and richer virtues; yet, though we can look with pride at our absurdly rich treasury of culture, it would be a sad day if some of the great and unashamedly martial ballads of Ireland, such as Men of the West, Follow me up to Carlow and The West's Awake were to be lost to a new and anti-republican form of political correctness.
But over the grievous murders of Kilmichael, we should draw a discreet veil of musical silence.