I sat within the valley green, I sat me with my true love
My sad heart strove the two between, the old love and the new love
The old for her, the new that made me think on Ireland dearly
While soft the wind blew down the glen and shook the golden barley
‘Twas hard the woeful words to frame to break the ties that bound us
But harder still to bear the shame of foreign chains around us
And so I said, “The mountain glen I’ll seek at morning early
And join the bold united men,” while soft winds shake the barley
While sad I kissed away her tears, my fond arms round her flinging
A yeoman’s shot burst on our ears from out the wildwood ringing
A bullet pierced my true love’s side in life’s young spring so early
And on my breast in blood she died while soft winds shook the barley
I bore her to some mountain stream, and many’s the summer blossom
I placed with branches soft and green about her gore-stained bosom
I wept and kissed her clay-cold corpse then rushed o’er vale and valley
My vengeance on the foe to wreak while soft wind shook the barley
But blood for blood without remorse I’ve taken at Oulart Hollow
And laid my true love’s clay cold corpse where I full soon may follow
As round her grave I wander drear, noon, night and morning early
With breaking heart when e’er I hear the wind that shakes the barley.
– The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Robert Dwyer Joyce
The artists have been fond of telling us human stories about war. War is the one scenario where the drama of life and death becomes commonplace rather than extraordinary. Somewhere in the mayhem is a lesson.
Today’s vision of war, the 2006 Palm d’Or winner at Cannes, “The Wind that Shakes the Barley,” for this writer, is a dark, nihilistic lesson, powerful in the ways of “Breaker Morant,” but more subtle and terrible.
“Civil war.” The term has always found its quisling way into troubling spaces in my mind. What a contradiction the term is. It doesn’t mean civil, as in polite, but civil as in civilian. Civil war, then, is not a war among soldiers, but a war among the people. War in any permutation is nothing but misery, but it sinks to even greater depths when the enemy is one’s own kind.
Today’s film studies the antecedents of what came to be known in Ireland as “The Troubles.” In the early 1920s, our story focuses on two County Cork brothers, Damien and Teddy (Cillian Murphy and Padraic Delaney), as local resistance to British imperialism foments into a guerilla war against the British “black and tans.”
It is the beginning of the Irish Republican Army, freedom fighters or terrorists depending on your point of view, and a certain bigotry exists between the Brits and the Irish. The British are certainly portrayed as the imperialist villains as we are shown many oppressive injustices. So we are drawn, like Damien, the learned young Irish doctor, into the fight.
We watch as the Irish arm themselves against the vastly superior British army and as they exact vengeance against traitors. We are with them as they set up their own courts and argue politics even while their own children starve in poverty. But we wonder when a treaty is signed that promises peace even while the Irish must swear fealty to the crown of England and to the partitioning of Northern Ireland.
Native Americans will tell you to be wary of the treaties you sign. And the treaty of 1920 serves to divide the Irish among themselves. On the one hand are those who wish to gain peace by working with the British. On the other hand are those who refute the British as occupiers. Thus the skirmish line is shifted from one between the British and Irish to one that sadly pits the Irish against themselves.
Director Ken Loach is wise to tackle such a large, mangled conflict in its early stages and by presenting it in rural terms. The larger powers in the conflict are but whispers in the countryside and the notorious places to complicate it are yet to come. The film is thus less ambiguous and we are presented with a tight spiral of a story where sides are easy to choose.
Moreover, the poetry and the sorrow of the Irish is plainly felt here, as in the 19th century song by Robert Dwyer Joyce (above) from whence the title of the film is borrowed, and through which we see that the roots of the Irish conflict run far deeper in history than our little photoplay.
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Many thanks to Bob, from Clearfield, for finally seeing into my greedy hands his old, musty copy of “Brimstone and Treacle.”
Notable television of late included a decent Sci-fi Channel three parter called “Tin Man,” which is a nice re-working of “The Wizard of Oz” franchise. We find that DG (Zooey Deschanel) actually belongs in The O.Z. (Outer Zone) where her wicked sister, Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson), has jailed the wizard (Richard Dreyfuss) and crashed their world into darkness. The “tin man” of the title refers to an old world law man who figures prominently. Also, it’s kind of fun watching flying moneys emanate from the evil sorceress’s ample bosom. Wicked!
We were completely floored by the recent PBS airing of “Anne of Green Gables.” Our highest rating goes to director Kevin Sullivan’s 1985 treatment starring Megan Follows as L.M. Montgomery’s plucky orphan girl, Anne Shirley, who is sent to live with an elderly spinster and her brother on Prince Edward Island. Vault does not just hand out perfect 10s, but we TiVoed each part of its 199 minute run time and it captivated our entire family for an entire afternoon. A truly magical family film. A perfect 10. If you’ve never had the pleasure, you cannot go wrong.