Origins: Sean South of Garryowen (Sean Costelloe)

Subject: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 04 Dec 02 - 07:33 PM

This just occured to me, but there's a citation of SEAN SOUTH in DT, and a few threads on it in the Discussion, but I don't think anyone ever mentions +this+.

Apparently Sean South was homosexual.

I had this drummed into me when I was working on a building-site with a particularly hard Glasgow Irish Catholic gang in the sixties, most of whose grand-daddies prolly got wasted alongside Sean South.

I dunno even how true this was ...

Robin.

Context:

THE DEAR GREEN PLACE

That building site ...

It was 1966, the summer between my first and second years as a student at Glasgow University, and I was working on the building site to make a bit of money. People there divided sharply between the over-forties, and kids my own age, and never the twain did meet. The kids were Catholic Glasgow Irish, which was pretty obvious from the start. What I only gradually came to realise was that they weren't just illiterate Glasgow Catholic bog-Irish (they'd all left school at sixteen), but that they were the core of a very hard Catholic gang (these were the years of Tongs and Cumbie -- they weren't Cumbie, but a smaller and tougher version thereof.) And there was me, privileged middle class Protestant university student who'd been to a grammar school (Hutchesons) and was working there for a bit to earn some pocket money while they were there for life.

What would you expect?

Closest I can come to describing their attitude towards me was protective -- "Hey, Robin, fuck off that wan, it's tae heavy fur ye, we're trained tae it."

[SNIP]

Only time I had anything remotely resembling trouble wasn't really my fault. I was (as one does, sometimes) humming "Sean South of Garryone" and they landed on me like a ton of bricks -- "Jeez, Robin, fur Christ sake stop that. Don't ye know he was a flaming poofter?"

(Well, +I+ thought he was a martyred hero of the Uprising. Most of their granddaddies had probably been wasted alongside him by the Black and Tans. Long memories in Glasgow.)

They forgave me for it -- as an Ignorant Protestant, how would I be expected to know something like that?

[SNIP]

One of the only two times in my life I ever felt completely at home.

{Actually, that particular [SNIP] cuts into what little sense this post is trying to make.}

[SNIP]

So that's the story of The Dear Green Place.

R2.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: PeteBoom
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 08:25 AM

Well, hmmm, for one thing, Sean South was killed in the '50's, not during the Anglo-Irish (Black & Tan) war. Depending on the age of your "Glasgow Irish Catholic" (not Ranger supporters, I'd wager) they could have been contemporaries...

Silly song, never particularly liked it. Part of the "another martyr for Ireland" genre. Ah well, just my not so humble opinion.

Cheers -

Pete

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: InOBU
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 08:33 AM

Pete, you beat me to it... I knew an Englishman living in Ireland who was in the Ballybrooke barracks during the raid that killed South... in point of fact, many heros of many wars, as well as many heros who resisted war, and many cowards and many who stood on the side lines, and many who did what they could or little at all, had blond hair, brown hair, were tall - short, gay or straight, so what?
Cheers
Larry

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 11:13 AM

There's a book in Irish about "Seán Sabhat".I haven't read it so I can't say whether it says anything about South's sexuality. I believe Dominic Behan's song The Patriot Game features South's paramilitary partner O'Hanlon.
previous Seán South thread
Dungannon

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 11:21 AM

Pete,

They were much of an age with me, which would have them born in the late forties. So maybe their fathers ...

They surely didn't support Rangers. But then neither did I -- I had a lingering sentimental affection for Queens Park, but the team had already drifted into history by then so Glasgow football was totally polarised between Rangers and Celtic.

Thanks for pulling me up on the Black and Tans -- teach me to be sloppy. Now I have to work out how to change that in the full version of THE DEAR GREEN PLACE.

Larry --

I'd agree on the irrelevance of blond or brunette, gay or straight. Just something that's puzzled me for years as to the truth or otherwise of the matter. It seemed to matter to the kids though, judging by the way they jumped on me over it.

Somehow, it suddenly struck me last night, in my cups, that someone on Mudcat might know.

As it is, I've already learned something.

Thanks both.

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 11:56 AM

Sean South was planning to announce his engagement to a Limerick girl, a teacher, but was killed on 1 January 1957 before he could do so.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 11:58 AM

lots of gay people get married, so we are still none the wiser
if it really matters

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 12:07 PM

The book is "Maraíodh Seán Sabhat aréir". I think it was written by Cathal O Sandair. I read it about 1965-66, and I might read it differently now with hindsight, but there was no such claim in the book.

He is preented as a person of great integrity who was very committed to restoration of the Irish language as well as to the 32-county republic. He served in the FCA (~=National Guard/TAVR) and rose to the rank of 2nd Lieut. He apparently saw this as a way of learning military skills which he would put into practice in the IRA, and he resigned and joined the IRA, as not to have resigned would in his view have been to break his oath of allegiance sworn when commissioned.

The way he is portrayed in the book is in some senses as a successor to Pádraic Pearse, whom it became fashionable in subsequent decades to denigrate as a "mad queer" (in fact the resemblance even included a shared romantic military incompetence). There may well have been repressed homsexuality in either or both case, but the people making the claim about Seán South were probably just jumping on the revisionist bandwagon.

The Irish teacher who lent the book to various members of my class was careful to emphasise that he was not encouraging us to join the IRA, which surprised me at the time, when we were pretty much all "sneaking regarders". I believe that South was the sort of honest but naive "true believer" who wanted to wage a strictly military war on the British "occupying forces" and that he would have been appalled by the way things turned out in the 1970s and subsequently.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 12:19 PM

Gay, straight - who cares? However I do think the Sean South thing was a wind-up.

The book that Phillipa referred to is "Maraiodh Sean Sabhat Areir" ("Sean South Was Killed Last Night") by Seoighe Mainchin (Mannix Joyce). It was published in '64, now out of print, but don't worry folks BT has preserved a copy, even if he can't read it! Phillipa,would you be willing to translate it!?

The song was written by Sean Costello of Limerick and first published in the "Irish Catholic" on 10 January 1957, just nine days after SS died. Although I am very anti political violence I think it's a great song. Sean Costello died in 1991.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 12:20 PM

Correction, I see from Robin's first post that he's reminiscing about 1966, which was before the major wave of revisionism. But I first heard the "mad queer" remark from a colleague whose father served in the British Army's Irish Guards Regiment, and that view of Pearse may have been current among Irish working-class Catholics in Glasgow who had family connections in the British Army.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 12:34 PM

Pearse never showed any interest in sex at all, as far as we know. A neighbour of mine is like that, now age 70. Does that make him, and Pearse, a repressed homosexual? And, can you be a homosexual if you have never had sex? Is asexuality possible? Come in Freud, or failing that, Ruth Dudley Edwards!

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 12:50 PM

Big Tim writes:

"The song was written by Sean Costello of Limerick and first published in the "Irish Catholic" on 10 January 1957, just nine days after SS died."

In DT, there's no notice of Sean Costello's authorship of the lyric.

Could this be added? Prolly more important than Sean South's sexuality.

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: boglion
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 01:37 PM

It's a good rousing tune especially when sung by Limerick folk. They did, of course, borrow the tune from the much earlier Roddy McClory.

Who cares about his sexuality - we're all asexual in the grave.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 01:41 PM

Robin there is a Mudcat permathread for DT author attribution which anyone can add to... the organisers may refer to it next time they update the DT

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: boglion
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 01:56 PM

Two things I've always wondered about with Sean South were

1) How did he get such a diverse band of men together? The song suggests there were men from every second county in Ireland! In my experience the Irish tend to be more parochial than this. A Kerryman for example would not trust a Corkman further than he could tip him with a hurley.

2) Was there really someone from Tyrone or was he invented to neatly rhyme with Garryowen?

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 04:30 PM

Not sure about Tyrone. I've got the names and geog. origins of all 12 of the "lorry load of volunteers" and will check. I do though know that the "Patrick Pearse Flying Column" was, definitely, comprised of men from all 4 Provinces: so much for local rivalry.

Anybody know where Feargal O'Hanlon was from, within Co. Monaghan?

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Brakn
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 04:36 PM

Ballybay?

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 04:42 PM

Good question!

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 05:57 AM

Fergal O`Hanlon buried in Lathlurcan Cemetery, Co Monaghan, 1-1-1957. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 06:20 AM

Milwall, I can assure you that the song is correct in the location of the men`s counties.
Cork v Kerry or any other county rivalries never applied. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 06:57 AM

According to "Saoirse", the organ of Republican Sinn Fein, none of the men were from Tyrone. Armagh, Cork, Dublin,Fermanagh, Galway, Limerick,Monaghan and Wexford are listed.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 09:44 AM

Milwall, As you can see from Big Tims statistics, county rivalries didn`t apply. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Jimmy C
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 10:10 AM

Robin,

What makes you think your workmates were illerate?. just because they left school at 16 ?.

The education in Ireland and in most parts of England, Scotland and Wales at that time was very high. I left school 6 months before my 16th birthday and I guarantee I am better educated than a lot of high school and even university students.

Sean South may have been deemed to be gay, I doubt it, but so what.
He was bespeckled and had the studious nerdy look about him but that does not make him gay or even a sissy. For right or for wrong he did his part and unfortunately lost his life because iof it, like so many others, both gay and straight.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 10:14 AM

The song does contain one major innacuracy when it says "the leader was a Limerick man, Sean South of Garryowen". According to IRA histories the group was led by Sean Garland of Dublin, second in command was David O'Connell of Cork.                              

Garland was badly wounded and wanted to stay in the barn with South and O'Hanlon and shoot it out with the RUC to allow his men more time to get over the Border. However he was talked out of this and helped away. Earlier IRA histories say that about half the men were wounded but in the new book on Joe Cahill it says "another member of the Brokeborough raiding party revealed that all the volunteers on the operation had been wounded".

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 11:35 AM

Jimmy C writes:

"
Robin,

What makes you think your workmates were illerate?. just because they left school at 16 ?.
"

That was a bit of a deliberate exaggeration -- the persona of (most of)the piece is meant to be a slightly smug and naive young middle-class Protestant. Which, alas, I was age eighteen.

It concludes (in a bit I didn't originally include as I was simply selecting the bits relevant to Sean South):

++
Then I left ...

One of the only two times in my life I ever felt completely at home.

The other thing that stuck with me was that two of the kids were brighter than me. Wasn't anything I could do about it at the time, but that was always in the back of my mind later when I looked over the apparently no-hopers whom I was interviewing for a university place. So I tended to make more than my quota of offers to underqualified applicants. Who more often than the norm ended up with good two ones or better.

So that's the story of The Dear Green Place.
++

But Glasgow split (still does?) three ways -- class/area/region. And you could stir in education, varieties thereof, the division between The Four Grammar Schools and the rest, which was money as much as anything else so in a way simply reflected class. Being (by the time I reached the site) middle-class Protestant West side [though I had earlier spent seven years living on the second floor of a Denniston tenement] all three divisions applied. Which made it all the odder we all got on so well.

"
The education in Ireland and in most parts of England, Scotland and Wales at that time was very high. I left school 6 months before my 16th birthday and I guarantee I am better educated than a lot of high school and even university students.
"

That's a factor, and I wouldn't go a bundle on the merits of "conventional" education. But that's maybe another story.

"
Sean South may have been deemed to be gay, I doubt it, but so what.
He was bespeckled and had the studious nerdy look about him but that does not make him gay or even a sissy. For right or for wrong he did his part and unfortunately lost his life because iof it, like so many others, both gay and straight.
"

I'm beginning to think that mibee the kids +were+ winding me up, as someone suggested. But I think more likely they were influenced by British black propaganda, a la Roger Casement. Dunno -- can't go back in time and ask.

Dunno if anyone would be interested in my posting the whole of The Dear Green Place? As it stands, I might try blaming the Black&Tan mistake on the ignorance of the eighteen-year old speaker [g].

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 02:26 PM

Robin, what's all this about the Dear Green Place? Is this a reference to Archie Hind's 1966 novel of that name? If so, it's worth pointing out that "Glasgow" translates as "dear green place".

Ard: do you know where Lathlurcan is? I can't find it on any map.

Of course Casement WAS gay and a victim of the prejudice of the times (1916). The propaganda thing works both ways: I've heard some of the green contingent brand William of Orange as being homosexual!

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 03:14 PM

Big Tim:

"
Robin, what's all this about the Dear Green Place? Is this a reference to Archie Hind's 1966 novel of that name? If so, it's worth pointing out that "Glasgow" translates as "dear green place".
"

Bit like -- I think I might have picked up on it initially from AH.

-- no, I think it's independent -- wasn't the Archie Hind novel Burns? So were're prolly independently ripping Glasgow's bird-that-never swam [etc.]

[There's many a true word spoken incest -- is this an Archie Hinds joke?]

But it goes drifty -- Tirn na Voig and the Arran Isles and Hy Brazil.

The Dear Green Place is not so much Paradise as a personal paradise --where you feel utterly at home.

Somewhere you're allowed for a time, but not allowed back.

It makes sense to me.

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 03:47 PM

Oddly enough, the DT doesn't seem to have a text for a lyric of The Dear Green Place. Try this:

The Dear Green Place

It was a clear mornin' down near Bann
Where it meets and runs with the river Clyde
And they tell the tale of the holy one
Who was fishing down by the riverside
The holy man, from Fife he came
His name they say was Kentirgen
And by the spot where the fish was caught
The Dear Green Place was born

Though the salmon run through the river stream
And they salted them by the banks of Clyde
And their faces glow'd as the silver flow'd
And the place that rose by the riverside
There was cloth and dye and horse to buy
The traders came from all around
And they raised a glass to the Dear Green Place
The place that was a town

CHORUS: There is a town that once was green
And the river flowed to the sea
The river flows forever on
But the Dear Green Place is gone

When the furnaces came to fire the iron
And folk were thrown from foreign land
And the Irishman and the Heilan' man
And the hungry man came with willin' hands
They wanted work, a place to live
Their empty bellies needed filled
And the farmyard was another world
From the dirty overcrowded mill

Now you may have heard of the foreign trade
And fortunes made by tobacco lords
But the workin' man slaved his life away
And an early grave was his sole reward
A dreary room, a crowded slum
Disease and hunger everywhere
And the price to pay was another day
And fight the anger and despair

CHORUS:

A thousand years have been here and gone
Since Kentirgen saw the banks of Clyde
But how many dreams and how many tears
In the thousand years of a city's life
A city hard, a city proud
No mean city it has been
Perhaps tomorrow it yet may be
The Dear Green Place again. . . .

:-(

{vomit}

Robin

(Off to drown myself down the side of a bottle of Bells -- tomorrow, the VP an the cider.

R2.)

[Right, so I was wrong -- the Archie Hind novel doesn't mention Burns. So I was wrong. So sue me.

[g]

CP3O ]

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 04:35 PM

Robin, I reckon you and I are just about contemporaneous, and I relate 100% to the attitude that you portray. What must be remembered however, is that myth/memory is selective and tales vary according to both geographical location, and in this case, politico/religious leanings. I am a 1942 vintage Glaswegian, and have for all my life been amazed, and repulsed by the songs, beliefs, and myths of both sides of the west of Scotland sectarian divide. The hatred and prejudice of my native heath, is the main reason that I left it many, many years ago.
Ceud mile failte.....Giok

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 04:43 PM

Tim,the whereabouts of Lathlurcan I have been told is near Ballybay,I will find out and let you know. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 05:53 PM

Ard: thanks. I've got a detailed map of Monaghan (inch to mile) but don't see it.

Robin, you've lost me. Try plain English! Like your attitude though.

Giok: what area of the dear green place, anywhere near Firhill?

An obit of SS says "shy, gentle-natured, even-tempered, a man above the ordinary, possessing fine qualities of mind and character".

He is still commemorated every year at the cemetery in Limerick where he is buried.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 06:03 PM

Attitude? Attitude!!

Split this thread, and we've got two horses running.

Was Sean South gay (and I agree, this is fairly nonsense), and Glasgow Sixties gang-handed [or not].

Eeep!!!!

[g]

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 08:13 PM

An annecdote ....

I'd finally come through the sausage-machine and I was on a maybee three-year contract at Loughborough and they let me interview ...

So I was interviewing Mike Anderson.

Mike was a total fucking dead-head. He was a plumber, left school at fifteen, and was a con-man. We spent the interview batting around Dostoevesky.

Well ... par for the course.

Then, next day, we started horse-trading. I wasn't paying much attention, but in the backgound there was this running joke, "Who'd give HIM an offer?"

Amazingly enough, and this really does take +some+ doing, Mike had managed to insult absolutely bloody EVERYONE.

So after the laughter died down, they said: "Well, Robin you're first choice for an offer."

Ho, hum ... "Michael Anderson".

Well, to cut a story (and I'd been trained in Glasgow Student Politics) I got Mike a place at Loughborough.

Paid at the gate on that, and given i was on the bloody edge of tenture, the last thing i wanted to do was stir waves.

So (the trade-off was)"If you want him here, you teach him."

So I got lumbered with Mike.

First bloody thing he said to me was, "Robin, that was the most piss-awful lecture I've ever heard."

Well ...

It wouldn't have been that difficult to cut Mike down to size.

Thing was, he really didn't know how fucking offensive he could be.

Easy would be to chop him down.

I bloody TRAINED Mike, so when he was offensive, he was offensive deliberate, rather than accidental

[Ho boy, Mike on a bad day ...]

There were a lot of things, but Mike exited with a good 2:1 (surprise, surprise).

The one thing they'd never let me do was interview Head Girls of a Public School.

Well, I suppose this made sense, given that by the time I had mild tenure ...

The only applicants I liked were the ones who had this killer-reference: "This student is a Disruptive Influence." I had this odd assumption that any student who could manage to piss off their teachers enough ...

The only reason I got away with this was that the students, either mad public school or illiterate, who I picked, Did Well.

Wish I could work out how I did it ...

But there was this thing -- mostly, I couldn't give a flying fuck at the moon where they were coming from, all I cared about was where they were going to.

NOT how to get ahead in acedeme.

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 07 Dec 02 - 12:40 AM

Big Tim said:

"Robin, you've lost me. Try plain English!"

Dunno what I'm sposed to explain.

There's the Glasgow bird/bush/bell:

"This is the bird that never sang,
This is the bell that never rang,
This is the fish that never swam"

The fish crops up in the lyric of "The Dear Green Place" I quoted earlier, but that's a literal salmon you could guddle for in the Clyde. As +if+. Try guddling for a salmon in the Clyde, and your hands would freeze off your wrists before you caught your supper.

... as to what the hell it means, +I+ could never work it out, but if you've a mind for puzzles and dirt ...

[g]

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 07 Dec 02 - 12:51 AM

... stunningly irrelevant.

I was thinking around the ambiguities of the word "gang", either weaponed-up or simply the ones with the shovels -- the black gang.

But the heid yin was cawed the ganger.

"Ganger" doesn't seem to make it into _Survey of English Dialects_.

Odd that, but.

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 07 Dec 02 - 05:14 PM

Robin, I'd love to know how your workmates divined you were humming 'Sean South' rather than 'Roddy McCorley', which is its usual tune.

The Dear Green Place, which you post above, was written by Alan Reid of the Battlefield Band, and the lyrics can do with a little correcting in the first part. It probably has been posted elsewhere on Mudcat, but I'll put the corrections alongside this:

Line 1: It was by the clear Molendinar burn
Line 6: His name they say was Kentigern

Line 9: Now the salmon ran through the river stream
Line 13: There was cloth to dye and hose to buy

Line 18: And folk were thrown from the farmland

The Molendinar, IIRR, is the burn running through the oldest part of Glasgow, by the cathedral, and now mainly underground. Kentigern is St. Mungo, the legendary founder of the city. 'No mean city' in the last verse refers to another book, of this title, published by Alexander McArthur in 1935, which fixed Glasgow's image as a city of organised crime and hard men for a long time.

The song may be somewhat sentimental, but I don't think it's as bad as you make it! :-)

Apologies for not having anything to add on Sean South.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 07 Dec 02 - 06:48 PM

"
Robin, I'd love to know how your workmates divined you were humming 'Sean South' rather than 'Roddy McCorley', which is its usual tune.
"

Dunno to be honest, Susanne.

"
Line 1: It was by the clear Molendinar burn
"

Ah, that makes +much+ more sense ...

"
The song may be somewhat sentimental, but I don't think it's as bad as you make it! :-)
"

Yeah -- I was probably a bit too snappy about it. ;-)

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: The Pooka
Date: 08 Dec 02 - 04:36 PM

Robin, *please* don't devolve yourself back down to the boring old "plain English"; yer much morebetter the other way. / An' speaking of the Other way as so we were: yeah, who cares? I canna' commentate upon "Glasgow Sixties gang-handed [or not]", never having had the pleasure (?) ("Eeep!!!", indeed); but Nun the less: Spot on, millwall: "Who cares about his sexuality - we're all asexual in the grave." Right Arm, man. Bold Sir Roger (Sodom & Begorrah) fought for freedom; what matter what else he did, or didn't? / 'In the Army Air Corps, my wingman was gay. I didn't give a damn. I didn't care whether he +was+ straight, as long as he could +shoot+ straight.' -- conservative Republican US Senator Barry Goldwater; RIP.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 08 Dec 02 - 06:44 PM

"
Robin, *please* don't devolve yourself back down to the boring old "plain English"; yer much morebetter the other way.
"

Don't encourage me, Pooka. (That an allusion tae Flann Whatsit?)

"
"Glasgow Sixties gang-handed [or not]", never having had the pleasure (?) ("Eeep!!!", indeed);
"

Wasn't that bad in the late sixties. Tongs and Cumbie, sure, but relatively civilised. When it blew apart to buggery was the early seventies, when the kids growing-up on the high-rise housing estates ('It looks like a jile, and it stinks') reached sixteen, with the nearest pub ten miles away. +Then+ it got bad, for a bit.

But (honest) I never was gang-handed -- Denniston was so deprived, it didn't even reach to a gang-structure. That was why the hard men came aw the wae frae Brigton tae try tae cop a lumber at the Denny Palais. Safer tae dae yir winchin at the Denny Palais than in the Gorbals.

Mind you, late on a Saturday night outside the Palais could be ... interesting. Studded belts were one thing, belts with the studs punched inwards and sharpened, something else. Nothing showed, but it took only seconds to get it out. Open razors in the sixties were well passe (Sillitoe had kicked them all down a stank long ago, and No Mean City was long in the past) but there were approximations. Amazing what you could create with five old pennies and a pencil ...

+Don't+ start me on this ...

But I was a mere wean when I lived in Denniston, so the only souvenier I have is a triangular scar on my left knee-cap (have I said this before?)

O tempora, o mores ...

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 09 Dec 02 - 05:39 AM

My brother was stabbed by a gang of those morons while standing minding his own business outside the Halt Bar in Great Western Road (in the dear green place) in '66. He response wasn't sociological or literary. Don't let's romanticise mindless violence.

Hey Pook, whereyabeen!

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Jimmy C
Date: 09 Dec 02 - 10:06 AM

Robin, hope you like this little ditty on the Denistion Palais and it's patrons.?.

"Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice"



From out of the east there came a hard man
Ho, HO, Ho, all the way from Brigton
Ha, Ha, Ha Glory Hallelulah,
Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice.


He went into a pub and came out paralyetic
Ho, HO, Ho, Bells and Johnny Walker
Ha, Ha, Ha Glory Hallelulah,
Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice.


Does this bus go to the Deniston Palais ?
Ho, HO, Ho, I'm looking for a lumber
Ha, Ha, Ha Glory Hallelulah,
Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice.


He went into the dance and he met Hairy Mary
Ho, HO, Ho, The flue of the Gorbals
Ha, Ha, Ha Glory Hallelulah,
Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice.


He said Hi Mary, are you dancin?
Oh, No, No, it's just the way I'm standin
Ha, Ha, Ha Glory Hallelulah,
Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice.


They went down through the back close and into the dungy
Ho, HO, Ho, It wasnae for the first time
Ha, Ha, Ha Glory Hallelulah,
Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice.



Now Hairy Mary has had a little baby
Ho, HO, Ho, it's father's in the army
Ha, Ha, Ha Who do you think your kiddin
Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice.


Now Hairy Mary's brothers are lookin for the hard man
Ho, HO, Ho, He Joined the foreign legion
Ha, Ha, Ha Sahara under a camel, Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: weerover
Date: 09 Dec 02 - 02:29 PM

If Big Tim can't place Feargal O'Hanlon then I don't have much chance of doing so, but I have definitely seen Ballybay given in some printed form.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 09 Dec 02 - 07:26 PM

Jimmy C:

"
Ho, HO, Ho, Bells and Johnny Walker
"

Of all the stunnning misreadings of this line, this bloody has to take the frelking biscuit ...

There are two echt-readings:

... the VP an the cider

or:

... the Lanliq and the cider.

Both readings turn on Fortified South African Wine.

There was a thing you could do with this, but ...

Both Bells and Johnny Walker were blended scotch whiskies -- NOT where the hardman frae Brigton wid be coming from.

Geeuz a break ...

The song was written by Carl McDougall (Hamish Imlach sang it but he didn't write it -- Carl McDougal did.)



Robin

{I once tried to chase-down all the versions of this.)

But NEVER in all my born days have I +ever+ encountered a version that switches from cheap sherry to blended scotch.

:-(

Robin

(Somewhere, I prolly have The Original, that might negociate between VP and Lanliq. As if.

R2.)

Oh ...

"
Ha Sahara under a camel
"

... it was "Sahara an ra camels"

I'm not sure whether anyone has ever pointed this out, but The Sunday Post in the early sixties was running a series of "I Was Tripped into the French Foreign Legion" stories.

So "Sahara an ra camels" is a DOUBLE fucking joke -- My da sneezed for furty eight hours fur the Post.

{double sigh}

Robin

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 10 Dec 02 - 07:19 AM

Anyone got the rest of this?

It was on one beery New Year's Day
As the fifteenth pint went down,
A volunteer approached the bar
To buy another round.
But what he heard the landlord say,
It filled his heart with fear-
For the words that formed upon his lips
Were "The pub's run out of beer!"

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Big Tim
Date: 10 Dec 02 - 07:21 AM

Other slight corrections: should be,

"the flooer [flower] of the Gorbals",

"into the dunny" {the usually dark and deserted back stairs area of the tenement close).

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha.
Date: 10 Dec 02 - 02:11 PM

Talk about side-tracking,between discussing poofters, and Glasgow razor gangs, Robin why don`t you fly off to the nearest Christmas Card. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Jimmy C
Date: 10 Dec 02 - 08:18 PM

Robin. I just posted the words as I remember hearing them in Toronto, being sung by a Scottish Duo. Not being Scottish I probably didn't get the correct wording, but it is only a song after all, so don't have a seizure over it ?.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: ard mhacha
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 11:41 AM

No problem Jimmy, only codding. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Robin
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 07:31 PM

Jimmy:

Sorry to be so bad-tempered over this.

There's a bottom-line on "Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice."

It was written by Carl McDougal, it was sung by Hamish Imlach.

Sorry I went so snitty frit over "Bells and Johnny Walkers" -- if you too were looking down the wrong side of a bottle of Bells ...

I think I may have somewhere the echt-original.

I'll try and pull the stuff together -- crunch is you can easily gloss +any+ line in the pome +except+ "Cod liver oil and the orange juice."

This hoicks intae 1950s+ pregant Glasgow wimmen fed CLO&OJ in post-rationing fifties ...

Odd that, but ...

Manjana.

[Jeez, am I +so+ off the waw? that I get ma chops slapped over "irrelevancies"?

:-(

Robin

(off tae commit Unspeakable Acts on his Xmas 3.

3P3O.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Sean South of Garryowen
From: Jimmy C
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 09:19 PM

Robin, Don't worry about it. I remember a part of another verse, (probably the 6th verse)

Come on now Mary, can I run ye Hame,
ho Ho Ho, I've got a pair of sand shoes ?
Ha Ha Ha, You're hell of a funny
CLO and the OJ.