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Newspapers and Magazines written for include: The Observer |
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The following article appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine. Re-enacting historic battles is fun, but it has a deadly serious side too. A burly redcoat shouts at his comrades to follow. Rifles cocked, they make their way stealthily to a clearing by a small wood. Suddenly, knife-wielding Sioux warriors emerge from the trees, throwing themselves upon the redcoats as the rifles crack. Minutes later, as the gunsmoke clears, bodies lie sprawled on the grass. It's all unnervingly real. Or rather, it might be were it not for the giveaway German accents of the Sioux braves and the location, Omagh's Ulster American Folk Park. This is a re-enactment, in which enthusiasts re-live key moments and battles from virtually every historic period from the ice-age to the second world war. There was a time when the past was, as LP Hartley famously observed, a different country. No longer. Today, the past is zig-zagging all around us, its every nuance examined and analysed and, most of all, re-lived. The heritage industry increasingly uses re-enactments as an enticement for visitors and, in film and television, the rise of the period piece has been accompanied by a bull market in re-enactment. At Omagh, the Redcoats were not just locals. Some had travelled from England, where re-enactment kicked off some twenty five years ago and where today there are literally hundreds of societies representing everyone from Vikings, Normans, Napoleonic and civil war armies (British and American) to 17th century regiments long forgotten outside the realms of military history. And while the German Sioux, who live their normal lives as closely to their spiritual forbears as possible, represent a significant new age element, their English counterparts, now thought to number nearly 30,000, are just as likely to be solicitors, bank managers or doctors. Re-enactment is big business in the US and has many aficionados in Europe but Ireland has been slower to get off the mark. Though it has been used as a backdrop for countless period films since Laurence Olivier exhorted his English troops forward to Agincourt, deep in the Wicklow countryside, it wasn't until six years ago that Ireland saw it's first re-enactment. Over 60 intrepid warriors, some just curious, others who had tasted the scene in England, made their way to Ferns in Co Wexford, to storm, or defend, the stronghold of Dermot MacMurrough, whose invitation to the Anglo Norman Strongbow to come to Ireland was to have such dramatic repercussions for Irish history. Since that day, the 60 have grown to 500 plus and the numbers are rapidly increasing. Dúchas, the Irish heritage service, has seen the light too, encouraging more and more 'living history' demonstrations at its heritage sites around the country. There you can see blacksmiths and pipers, falconers and mediaeval butchers, all actively demonstrating their particular skills. And that seems to be the key to our modern fascination. No longer content to absorb history through dry academic tomes, we want to experience it through all our senses, and we want it to be real. "We provide the taste, the smell, the look of the past," says Lynne Williams, who with partner Boyd Rankin, has turned a hobby into an historical reproduction business. Williams, from Co Cork and Rankin, from Bangor in Co Down, first met at the Battle of Ferns, found a mutual fascination in the re-enactment world ("a lot more fun than real life", says Williams) and never looked back, or rather, did precisely that. More laid back and less structured than their English counterparts, Irish re-enactors are nevertheless increasingly scrupulous about authenticity, much more so in the South than in the North. While the 'stick and blanket' brigade, termed because they would turn up armed with stick and dressed in blanket to represent any historic era, are still in evidence, the trend is towards as real an evocation of the period as possible. Since Rankin (archery, firearms, weaponry) and Williams (horses, costume and shoe-making) first pooled their collective skills, the demand for accurate period clothing and artefacts has risen steeply. In the early days, re-enactors in the south were often young, male and unemployed, though often resourceful, Rankin, for instance, recalls a friend who made, "an excellent suit of armour from an old washing machine." Williams has great admiration for a large group of young men in Ballymun. "They developed their skills and were very proud of what they achieved. When they put on their clothing, they became Irish warriors and people had respect for them. It took them out of themselves and into another world." Groups, often representing Gaelic clans, came together and fell apart with equal rapidity. As with the general trend, Rankin and Williams now get their 'buzz' from authenticity. Though they still supply re-enactors, they no longer take part in re-enactments and the bulk of the work taken on by their Co Cavan-based Irish Arms Historical Reproduction company, comes from heritage centres, museums and, increasingly film and TV companies. There is a strong demand for Irish artefacts from overseas too. "Our strangest clients," Williams says, "are a group of Russians who re-enact 10c Irish life. They march every year in the St Patrick's Day Parade in Russia, shouting rude things at the British embassy." The French, for some reason, have taken a particular fancy to the 15c Irish shoes Williams and Rankin make, along with most other periods. As the historical revival grows, so does our desire to capture the most obscure secrets of the past. And, as in other fields, it is the amateurs who are leading the academics, with a burgeoning amount of information, not all strictly accurate, now being shared on the internet. Many re-enactors have become experts in their chosen period and while Irish Arms may have grown out of a hobby, their research is as exhaustive, and specialised, as any history professor's. Williams, for instance, has become a leading authority on 14c underwear (difficult to research, as thankfully, there is none left) and her mediaeval cooking demonstrations involve only the appropriate ingredients, cooked using precisely the right methods. "I found that Norman food was amazingly spicy, with such strange combinations - a spiced wine with ginger, cinnamon, marjoram, black pepper, nutmeg and mace." Not to mention a root spice, only available now from SE Asia. Such arcane detail - "I can tell you what Vikings used as toilet paper or to clean their teeth" (moss or old rags and a frayed twig plus mint to freshen their breath, the old softies) is central to the enjoyment of this historical trawling. Archeological surveys, even illustrations of old woodcuts are common research tools at Irish Arms. But there is another side. A sense of loss, of disenchantment with our standardised, mechanised world, and a fear of what is being lost, is a pull for many. "Part of this," Williams says, "is saying, 'hang on, let's preserve these ancient skills before it's too late." Rankin a longtime aficionado of the ancient longbow, uses only the traditional methods of making them to ensure the skills are kept alive. Children, too, are much more likely to gain a sense of history from those who can actually recreate the skills of the past. Williams and Rankin say there is now a wide network throughout Ireland of such specialists they can draw on. Recreating those skills can have a real impact on a child, Williams says. "I do spinning demonstrations for kids. I say, 'how long would it take you to make your t-shirt, if you had to catch the sheep, shear the sheep, carry the wool, spin the wool, dye and sew it?' It makes them think." Living history really is the essence of the appeal. Williams and Rankin were originally employed on the Channel Four 'Neanderthal' series just for the first day but were retained for the six week shoot to provide the practical know-how the historical advisor couldn't, whether it was making up a recently-thawed deer carcass to look freshly-killed, skinning rabbits with a flint knife they made themselves, or showing just how to hunt a wild boar. Again, in RTE's Battle of Kinsale documentary (which airs tomorrow), there was an arcane but vital area of expertise that Williams, a horse trainer for 20 years, was able to advise on. She and Rankin had been asked to provide everything from 11 costumes of precise authenticity to firearms and candelabra. But more important to the outcome of the 400 year old battle, a key one in Irish history, was the different sizes, equipment and armour of the Irish and English horses. "The English horses were much larger, better armoured and used to charging in formation," says Williams, who researched precisely how both sets of horses would be dressed, 'They just mowed the Irish down." Clearly, there is a strong element of escapism in this growing obsession with the past and there is something a little depressing in the overly martial nature of much re-enactment. But history you can smell, feel and taste gives us a perspective no book could ever match. Living in the past looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. |
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