Читать книгу The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions - Ruth Edwards Dudley - Страница 27

Different viewpoints*

THE BIG, BIG COLOURFUL, noisy day that was the Twelfth had a special magic in the grey, sober Belfast of earlier times. Rowel Friers, the cartoonist, remembered sticking his head out of the bedroom window full of excitement:

I peered out to the right and there they were – the flying banners, the glinting instruments of the bands, and the bowler-hatted, white-gloved, navy-serge-suited and brown-booted Orange-sashed gentlemen of the Order, no brother’s tailoring outdoing another, highly respectable, dignified and erect, they march to the rhythm of their bands. Occasionally, one of them might deign to give a regal nod of the head to an onlooker known to him, and no doubt already approved of by his brethren as an acceptable outsider.

The swordbearers and deacon pole-carriers stepped out with all the demeanour of generals, now and then taking a peep at their pride and joy – the banner. Most of these, I was to learn later, were painted by a Mr Bridgett, a craftsman specializing in that particular art form. This knowledge I gleaned from the son of the said gentleman, who I met at art college some years later. Many and varied they were: gold, silver, orange, purple, blue, all the colours and more than could have adorned Joseph’s coat. From portraits of William in battle, to Queen Victoria and her Bible (‘the secret of England’s greatness’), churches, angels, the Rock of Ages, memorial portraits to worshipful brothers who had passed on to that higher and grander lodge in the sky, it was a travelling art exhibition, before anyone dreamed of the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts or the Arts Council.

William Bingham, now a Presbyterian minister, reminisces about a much more recent period in County Armagh: ‘I first paraded with the institution in 1969 in Markethill, where I was brought up. I was about six years of age when my uncle took me and my brother and my cousin with him to hold the strings of the banner: my grandmother made little Orange collarettes for us.^*

‘When you were growing up, you played at being Orangemen. Weeks before the Twelfth, all the youngsters in the town got together and had a ceremony in the yard and formed their own Orange Lodge – you’re talking about six-, seven-, eight-year-olds. And we used to get tin boxes and make banners out of cloth and sticks and we paraded by people’s houses or up and down the yard and we had a really good time together. We were very democratic in electing a worshipful master. We voted on it and usually everyone got their turn at it.

‘We really looked forward to the Twelfth: you used to think that when that was over, your summer was over. The highlight of it was gone. For us it was a day where you met all your friends from school that you hadn’t seen for the weeks of the summer holidays: maybe some of their fathers were on parade or some of them were in the bands playing the cymbal or the triangles or a wee accordion or something. You all met in the field and you had tea and sandwiches and then you played around for a while and then you came home again. It was just a unique occasion. There was nothing like it the rest of the year.

‘I suppose the things that you were mesmerized by were the colour – the paintings on the banners, the crowds of people – and the music – the bands. I really loved the silver bands. My father played the tenor horn and went on parade. My mother would have been making sandwiches: she did the picnic. And my sister, she didn’t get parading, only the boys. She was left out of it a wee bit.

‘For my aunts and great-aunts – many of whom were married to farmers – it was literally the only day out they got in the year. The Twelfth of July came and they worked hard to get the harvest cleared up and the best suits cleaned and looked after their husbands. Rarely if ever would they have been out anywhere else except church. Certainly they’d have had no holidays. I had uncles that wouldn’t miss the Twelfth of July, but they wouldn’t go to their own sons’ or nephews’ weddings.’

Elaine McClure, Worshipful Mistress of a women’s lodge, does not feel part of the community in nationalist Newry.

I do feel very close to my friends in that town, my neighbours, but I feel that’s completely different from, if you like, as a person coming from the community I come from, trying to identify with the symbols of local government in that town.

As T. S. Eliot says: ‘I can connect nothing with nothing’ … But certainly within the company of people who share the same culture as I do, I can connect. I can connect with their outlook, with the music, with the symbols on the banner, with the ethos and the reason behind a social gathering.

I walk on the Twelfth – I don’t march … My blood family … introduced me to the Twelfth and now my Orange family take me along with them on the Twelfth of July. I walk in the road with the men of Sheepbridge.

I know those men. I know their ladies. I know their families, I know who they are and they’re good, they’re decent people. And I walk with them and in the front is the band and my cousin’s in the band and I’m walking in the road and I’m thinking how like my uncle Joe our William is because Uncle Joe was the one who took me first to the Twelfth of July. And I walk in the road with them hoping they’re not going too quick and I’ve got the right shoes on my feet and then we wait at the hall and then when all the lodges come we all walk off again and the drum beat’s given and the banners are hoisted and we start on our way.

And I remember thinking last Twelfth of July how lucky I am to be part of this – and that’s not to deride anyone else who comes from a different culture – but how lucky I am to be walking with such good, kind people and to have the colour and the music that I can listen to. To meet up with people that perhaps I haven’t seen for the last twelve months. All you have to do is just say: ‘Hello, how are you?’ and the connection is made and the friendship is there. And to go back to the hall at the end of the night and have a meal and to sit again in the company of the sisters and the brethren of Sheepbridge – it’s a wonderful warm feeling just of a family coming together. The Twelfth of July is our family occasion.

However, David Cook, Alliance politician and ex-chairman of the police authority, puts forward a view very common among middle-class Protestants whose liberalism doesn’t extend to trying to understand the ordinary Orangeman.

The first thought about the Twelfth each year is how can we get away. I have spent most Twelfths in Donegal (often infuriated by RTE’s [Radio Telefis Eireann] naive view of the Twelfth as no more than a folksy cultural festival). I have been lucky enough to be in Northern Ireland on only a handful of Twelfths in my life. One was a memorably hot day in the middle Seventies when I pushed our baby daughter in a pram from the Ormeau Road along the embankment all the way to Shaw’s Bridge where I saw the drunken crowds in full swing.

I have never actually set out to watch a Twelfth parade. I have never taken my children to watch one. I have never believed that Protestantism needs to be, or indeed, can be defended by the usual public manifestations of Orangeism. And I have never been taken in by the claims that there is no other purpose in them than the display of a much loved cultural tradition. I have always known that one of the historical purposes of those public manifestations, and this remains true today for some Orangemen some of the time, is to annoy and antagonize Catholics.

The claim that the Twelfth is the greatest cultural festival in Europe, with its bands, banners and music, may, I think, be true. But I do not believe the assertion that the Twelfth is no more than a good-natured cultural event and a large family picnic. That is the purest hypocrisy and the biggest lie. The problem which the Orange Order has to face is that very few people outside their community believe the lie.

Marietta Farrell, lecturer and SDLP activist, had never heard of the Twelfth until she went to Northern Ireland from the Republic as a student in the 1970s.

I found the whole thing quite colourful and quaint if somewhat threatening. I was bemused at the sight of so many men, in what was to me, City of London business dress, looking so intent and serious. I admired the skill and the colour of the bands but I found their swagger and the wording of their songs intimidating and offensive. I was also surprised at the lack of women in the ‘celebration’. From what I could see, women stood on the sidelines and cheered the men. I wondered why loyalist women were not more central in their important annual celebration. [Until Drumcree 1996] I neither thought nor learnt much more about the Twelfth. It seemed to have nothing to do with me.

To the best of my knowledge, I was never in the company of an Orangeman.

Decorations and associated festivities

Glen Barr, famous for his leadership of the Ulster Workers’ Strike in 1974 and now a community worker, grew up in Londonderry.

Through all the seasons of marbles, hoops, bows and arrows, cowboys and indians, Easter eggs, Christmas stockings and bin lids to sleigh with, we always knew when the big day was near.

The Craigavon Pipe Band which practised at the top of King Street at the back of Harry McLaughlin’s carpenter shop and which we all joined at ten or eleven years of age, was at it three nights a week instead of the customary Wednesday nights. The men and women of the street were making bows from the wood shavings from Harry McLaughlin’s and dyeing them red, white and blue in tin baths at the back of the band shed. The other emblems on the Arch were cleaned up and painted and all the light bulbs checked and renewed where necessary. Buntings were being rescued from old sacks and tied across the street from downpipe to downpipe.

Weeks before we headed off with hatchets and ropes to hack down branches and small trees in St Columb’s Park, making sure the ‘look-outs’ were well positioned to follow every move of the park warden, and run the gauntlet in the Limavady Road pulling the biggest load imaginable for our ‘Eleventh’ night bonfire. Doing your watch in the back lane to make sure the boys from Alfred Street, Florence Street, York Street and Bond Street didn’t raid the trees and rubber tyres for their fires.

The ‘Eleventh’ night in King Street was like a fairy tale with singing, dancing and spud roasting in the ashes. There was the usual crate of stout for the men and the navy men from the Sea Eagle Barracks next to King Street, could always be relied upon to bring out the rum and show off women from the area known as ‘Navy Dolls’ hanging onto their arms …

This was my ‘Twelfth’. Collecting for the bonfire, roasting the spuds, the dancing, the singing on the ‘Eleventh’ night in The Fountain. Getting up on the ‘Twelfth’ morning and putting on the kilt, shawl, those damned spats, and the rest of the Craigavon Pipe Band uniform knowing the girls from school would be following the band all day.

The flowers must not be forgotten. Orange lilies and sweet william for the adorning of banners and drums and hats and buttonholes are easily procured in the country, but harder in parts of the city short on gardens. George Chittick recalls: ‘For many many years our district always put Orange lilies on the top of the bannerette. Billy, the secretary of the district, says to me: “George, there’s a man coming down – he’s called Nolan – and he’ll give you a bunch of Orange lilies on the Eleventh night.” So this wee man come down and he said to me: “Is your name Chittick?” I said, “That’s right.” He says, “My name’s Nolan. Here’s a bunch of Orange lilies. Now, when you’re up the Lisburn Road tomorrow morning, you look out for me and I’ll wave at you.” So I went up the road with the lilies on the bannerette and there’s this wee man standing. He smiled at me and I nodded and he said, “Dead on.” So that was all right.

‘Billy says to me. “George, you know that wee man Nolan come down to see you.” I says, “Aye.” “He’s an RC.” “Is that right?” “I work with him and him and me were friends and he always said to me he had a huge set of Orange lilies in his back garden and he’d give some for the bannerette.” “Dead on.” So it went on for a number of years. Up to 1994, Mr Nolan come down every Eleventh night with these flowers and I took them off him and thanked him very much and put them on the bannerette. 1995: I was down that night and no Orange lilies arrived. I thought it was because of Drumcree. I said, “Maybe that’s it. Maybe he doesn’t want to.” But then about two months later on the Lisburn Road this lady comes to me and says, “Is your name Chittick? Are you from Sandy Orange Hall?” I said, “That’s correct.” She says, “Well, I’m Mr Nolan’s daughter and I’m sorry to tell you me father passed away last May.” “Oh, I says, I’m very sorry about that.” She says, “I made an awful blunder. Before he died he said to me: ‘Don’t you forget on the Eleventh night to take the Orange lilies down to Sandy Row’, and,” she says, “I forgot.” And I say, “It’s just one of those things. You can’t do nothing about it. Don’t worry about it.” “No,” she says, “but you’ll never get any more Orange lilies.” I says, “Why?” And she says, “It’s a big house and I had to sell it.” So I says, “I understand that, ma’am. I understand that.” But she says, “I have a wee present for you.” And she brought me out four bulbs. She says, “I rescued them.”

‘So they’re planted in my garden now and they will for ever and ever I hope be the lilies that will be carried on the bannerette.’

The clothes

‘What should I wear to go to an Orange parade?’ I asked my friend Janet, who knows about such things because she was brought up Presbyterian in Cookstown and had an Orange father.

‘Frock,’ she said firmly. ‘No rocks.’

For Orangemen, sartorial decisions are a matter for each lodge. Standards vary dramatically. At the most respectable end, particularly in rural areas, clothes are very important. There are Orangemen who would never have bought a suit if it weren’t for the Twelfth and whose brethren would be horrified if they arrived with a speck of dirt on the white gloves or a dent in their bowlers. And there will be strong views about whether flowers should decorate hats and jackets.

Why bowlers? Because they were a mark of respectability for Orangemen’s fathers and their fathers’ fathers, and in a deeply conservative culture there has to be a very good reason to make any break with tradition. That is tough on those who hate and loathe their bowler hats. There is the occasional middle-aged man who is enhanced by a bowler, but on the whole it is an unflattering article and on some people looks downright ridiculous.

At the other end of the spectrum – most likely to be the Belfast semi-paramilitary world – there are lodges where no one cares what you wear. To my eye, trained as I am in the ways of County Tyrone, T-shirts, tattooed arms and earrings don’t go well with collarettes, but then I would be wary of arguing the point with the kind of people who think they do.

Orangewomen have greater problems. For a start, they can parade only if invited formally by the relevant hosts and if the Women’s Grand Lodge agrees. Northern Irish society, especially in the rural areas, has both the virtues and defects of 1950s Britain. My experience of Orangemen is that in many respects they seem to be admirable husbands, but they mostly expect their wives to be admirable housekeepers at home preparing the sandwiches rather than going on parade.

Olive Whitten, councillor and deputy Grand Mistress of the Association of Loyal Orangewomen of Ireland, has no complaints:

I have no regrets at our members not being invited to take part in the parade. I enjoy standing on the sideline, watching the parade from beginning to end although my one desire always was to have been a playing member of a band.

There are some parading ladies’ lodges, however, who face trickier decisions about clothes than do their brethren. Some turn all the sisters out identically dressed in, for example, purple suits and white hats and shoes, but there are few outfits that suit all women, and the results are usually bad news for some. An alternative approach is to have an agreed colour but allow different styles. One lodge produced a enormous collection of different white hats. Others adopt a more laissez-faire approach, but still require suits and hats and gloves. And the most bohemian let their members wear what they like, secure in the knowledge that they will be properly turned-out in their best Sunday attire.

The regalia

When it comes to regalia, there are clear rules. Ordinary members of private lodges of Orange Degree only are entitled to wear an Orange sash or usually a collar (nowadays called a collarette, though many Orangemen still call it a sash) about four inches wide, with the lodge number displayed in front; a few lodges wear blue for historical reasons everyone seems to have forgotten. Having the Purple Degree requires the wearing of a sash or collarette about four and a half inches wide with a purple stripe. Members of the Royal Arch Purple have the colours reversed: purple with orange edging. Blackmen wear their Orange regalia when they parade on the Twelfth. On Royal Black Preceptory parades they wear black collarettes which may have several coloured stripes representing various of their ten degrees and presenting the symbolic connotations of a rainbow; they also wear masonic-style blue, fringed aprons and embroidered cuffs. The Apprentice Boys wear crimson sashes or collarettes to represent the blood spilt by the defenders during the Siege of Derry and the defiant flag flown from the cathedral tower.

The regalia that mean most to members of the loyal institutions, of course, are those handed down from father to son. ‘When I was eighteen, I joined my grandfather’s lodge,’ said one. ‘And my grandmother passed on his collarette, which had been his father’s collarette. I don’t wear his collarette now – it’s getting too old to wear. But it’s in a safe place and if my son wants to join I’ll pass it on to him.’

‘We treat our collarettes well, because they represent something important,’ said another, who has five from three different organizations. ‘It’s important to treat them with respect.’ (I saw a particularly graphic example of this at a parade where a group of Apprentice Boys could no longer contain themselves in the face of republican provocation. Before returning abuse and missiles, they took off their collarettes and put them in their pockets lest they dishonour them.)

District officers get to wear wider collars; county grand officers have silver fringes and Grand Lodge officers have gold fringes. Indications of office appear as, for instance, ‘WM’, ‘DM’, ‘S’, or ‘T’ (or even PWM for Past Worshipful Master) in front of the collarettes.

An Orangeman might wear no adornments on his collarette other than his lodge number and the insignia of his office, but many sport emblems and badges. (Apprentice Boys, being essentially secular, wear no emblems.) Emblems can be acquired rather on the charm-bracelet principle. The two most popular emblems are the self-explanatory CROWN and open BIBLE, which anyone can wear, as they can a representation of King William on his horse. Members of the Royal Arch Purple may also wear several others, including: an ANCHOR, symbolic of a safe arrival in the afterlife; the ARK OF THE COVENANT, ‘the visible evidence of God’s promise to be with and guide his people of Israel safely through life’; a COFFIN, as a reminder of mortality; an EYE, signifying God’s omniscience; a FIVE-POINTED STAR, a reminder of the five wounds of Christ; a LADDER, whose three steps represent Faith, Hope and Charity; NOAH’S ARK, the means by which God chose to save and regenerate life on earth, thus symbolizing ‘a better and purer life’; and a THREE-BRANCHED CANDLESTICK, symbolic of the light which is revealed by the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Royal Black Institution has many more again which relate to the institution and its degrees, and are biblical and have strong overtones of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Among them are a BURNING BUSH; a LAMB, as in the Lamb of God; a little MAN WITH A BACKPACK, who represents a pilgrim, Joseph in Egypt; a RED HAND, a reference to the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand; a ROD WITH AN ENTWINED SNAKE, which harks back to Moses, whose rod became a snake and then changed back again; a SKULL AND CROSSBONES, which is the institution’s crest, representing mourning for Joseph when he was sold into slavery in Egypt and was given up for dead. The key emblem, however, is the RED CROSS which, since it represents the final degree, shows that you have taken all the others. It is red because Christ shed his blood, it is surrounded by a crown, because he was a king, but as with all Protestant crosses, it is empty, because Christ was resurrected.

Then there are badges or medals, which often relate to notable parades attended by the wearer, such as the Orange tercentenary celebration in Belfast, a Scottish Twelfth, a New Zealand jamboree or Drumcree 1995. ‘Some people stick a lot of rubbish on their collarettes,’ observed a senior Orangeman. ‘I hate that.’ Yet though like most of them he hates show, being by nature a squirrel, he has the largest private collection of badges, emblems and other memorabilia of any Orangeman I know. Most prized of all are service medals, sometimes those of a father or grandfather.

The banners

District, county and Grand Lodge officers are called upon to preside at many services and ceremonies, including the opening-up and closing-down of Orange Halls and the unfurling of new banners.

Banners are a great cause of both pride and worry to lodges. To the ordinary Orangeman, a banner sums up the spirit of his lodge. Although there is a fair amount of duplication of subjects, each banner is unique. Much deliberation will have gone into not just the choice of subject and artist, but the manner in which the lodge’s name and number will be presented and what colour and style and motifs should be used for the borders. The lodge member will know who painted it, where and when.

The downside is that banners are very vulnerable: after maybe a few dozen outings, batterings from wind and rain take a heavy toll. (They take a heavy toll on the standard-bearers too: in bad weather there is a constant battle just to keep the buffeted banner aloft, especially when its silk is weighed down by rain.) A lodge might have to requisition the painting of a new banner every ten years at a cost of maybe a thousand pounds. This will not only impose a financial burden which is serious for poor lodges, but may bring about disagreement between those of the brethren who want a new version of their old banner and those who want radical change.

As that student of parades Neil Jarman points out, while banners go back to the beginning of the Orange tradition, they developed extensively towards the end of the nineteenth century as unionism felt its identity under threat from Irish nationalism. ‘The banners became more standardized, more professional. The painting became of a better quality and the range of images expanded, so you moved away from the old images of a King Billy and the crown and the Bible to include a much greater range of heroes of Ulster unionism like Colonel Saunderson, later Carson, Craig. The elaboration of events from the Williamite wars and the massacre at the Bann in 1641 all appeared at those times along with biblical images which drew an analogy from the position of the Ulster Protestants to the Israelites in the biblical times.’

There is an enormous range of these large, colourful banners and they show pictorially the cultural reference points of the Protestant people. A major grievance in recent years was the BBC’s decision early in the 1980s to scrap television coverage of the Belfast Twelfth because, Orangemen think, of nationalist sensibilities. Even though in recent years there has been truncated coverage, what has been lost is the informed commentary on banners and bands that put the parade and the Orange Order in its historical and cultural context. These days, the media are interested in parades only if they provoke violence.

An Ulster Society survey identified thirteen categories of Orange banner. Many Orange and virtually all Black banners are BIBLICAL, the majority being Old Testament. The BUILDINGS represented are usually of local significance; most often they are churches. A typical example of the secular is Derrymore House, Bessbrook, carried by the local lodge because the Act of Union was signed there in 1800. The HOME RULE category depicts Ulster Protestantism in its most ‘no-surrender’ mode, with paintings of, for instance, the formation of the Ulster Volunteers. The HISTORICAL category covers events relating to the foundation of the Orange Order and the INDUSTRIAL particularly to the proud Belfast industrial past. Both WORLD WARS are there, the most moving image being that of the 36th Ulster Division, so many of whom were slaughtered at the Somme.

You have to be dead to be on a banner: popular PERSONALITIES are Winston Churchill, Oliver Cromwell and Sir James Craig, the long-serving prime minister of Northern Ireland: brethren murdered by the IRA during the TROUBLES sometimes become the subject of their lodge’s banner. Martin Luther is the reformer most often seen on REFORMATION banners and probably Queen Victoria among the ROYALTY; a very evocative banner in the latter category is that of the Great Northern True Blues, a Sandy Row railway employees’ lodge, showing a train festooned with union flags carrying King Edward VII to Belfast.

The largest category, of course, relate to the WILLIAMITE period; for example, the Mountjoy charging the boom at Derry, William crossing the Boyne, or the battle of Aughrim. All Apprentice Boys’ banners are to do with the Siege of Derry. Remaining banners are scooped up under the categories of OLD FLAGS OR BANNERS and MISCELLANEOUS, which include a British bulldog and Britannia.

Banners are as carefully cherished as collarettes. David Jones, who until his teens lived in Carleton Street Orange Hall – home to many Orange lodges, including Portadown district lodge,

Royal Black preceptories and Apprentice Boys clubs – where his father was caretaker, recalled one of the procedures before the Twelfth:

One of his other tasks was to extract the lodge banners from their storage places where they had been carefully laid aside from the previous year. Following the last Twelfth each banner would have been rolled up and placed inside its own long wooden box. These boxes would be taken out of their storage places, by now covered with a liberal sprinkling of a year’s undisturbed dust. When opened the banner would be unrolled, hooked on to the banner poles and carefully rested against the wall in one of the largest rooms in the building. The brass or chromium fittings that sat atop the banner poles would be polished until they gleamed. The early hanging of the banners also allowed time for any creases that had formed during storage in the material to fall out. With mention of the banner poles, quite often one of the problems faced was finding them, depending on who had put them away or where they had been left.

One of my lasting impressions of that era is the banners. I can well remember as a small child looking up at them – somewhat in awe all assembled in the one place, and each with its own unique large oil-painted scene. This was my art gallery. Before me were displayed likenesses of King William III on horseback, or arriving at Carrickfergus. A painting of Queen Victoria being presented with a Bible by one of her colonial subjects, the banner bearing the legend ‘The Secret of England’s Greatness’. Numerous biblical scenes were evident, amongst them Noah portrayed on the Ark with a bird returning with a twig in its beak. Then there were the banners depicting the ‘Bible and Crown’ and past remembered Orangemen of the area with stern emotionless faces. Still and silent they towered above me. In a few days I knew this quiet moment would change as the banners would take on a life of their own when they would leave the hall on parade. Once outside the banners, held high, would float in the breeze and seen from a distance the tops of the banner poles would bob up and down as they were carried in the procession.

The music

John Moulden, a lifelong student of traditional songs, points out that Orange culture can only be understood in the context of a wide range of music, stretching back through the centuries and across much of Britain, Ireland and Europe, belonging to a genre of songs dealing with everyday matters and events. Even the most strongly expressed Protestant sentiments in local Orange songs have at one time or another been voiced in parts of English traditional music.

Orange songs are of different kinds. Some of them are openly objectionable. Some of them refer to elements of Catholic doctrine in an opprobrious way. Some of them refer to party fights and give very very one-sided and objectionable accounts. On the other hand, the accounts of those same fights given by the other side are equally offensive.

Certainly many of the songs have been based – almost parodied – upon nationalist songs. There are some songs that are, for instance, similar in form to ‘The Wearing of the Green’. ‘The Sash’ – although not based on a sectarian Irish song – is based on an Irish song of possibly music-hall origin called ‘The Hat My Father Wore’ … They often see themselves as David, up against the world – the English establishment, the rest of Ireland …

There are large numbers of songs which look at incidents in Irish history … where Protestants were injured, assaulted or killed. And there are large numbers of songs which say, ‘Watch out. If you are not on your guard, these things are going to happen again.’

One old Orangeman whom I had the honour to talk to in his last years about songs and Orange songs in general was a pillar of his local Orange lodge and in fact a pillar of the district. He was a lecturer on Orange traditions and history and when I went and asked him, he refused to sing Orange songs to me on the grounds that he as an Orangeman had taken an oath to give offence to no man.

Moulden picked out ‘The Ould Orange Flute’ – a ‘rather amusing, fun-poking look at the distinctiveness between two groups of people’ – as being one of those songs that Catholics enjoy. (Indeed he suspects it may well have originated among Catholics as a satirical pastiche of Orange songs.)

In the County Tyrone, near the town of Dungannon,

Where many a ruction myself had a hand in,

Bob Williamson lived – a weaver by trade,

And all of us thought him a stout Orange blade.

On the twelfth of July as it yearly did come,

Bob played on the flute to the sound of the drum,

You may talk of your harp, your piano, your lute,

But nothing could sound like the ould Orange flute.

But this treacherous scoundrel took us all in,

For he married a Papish called Bridgit McGinn,

And turned Papish himself, and forsook the ould cause,

That gave us our freedom, religion and laws.

Now the boys in the townland made some noise upon it,

And Bob had to fly to the province of Connaught;

He fled with his wife and his fixings to boot,

Along with the others the ould Orange flute.

At the chapel on Sundays to atone for past deeds,

He said Paters and Aves and counted his beads,

Till after some time at the Priest’s own desire,

He went with his ould flute to play in the choir;

He went with his ould flute to play in the Mass,

But the instrument shivered and sighed, ‘Oh, alas!’

And for all he could blow, though it made a great noise,

The ould flute would play only, ‘The Protestant Boys’.

Bob jumped and he started and got into a splutter,

And threw his ould flute in the blessed holy water;

For he thought that this charm would bring some other sound,

But when he blew it again it played ‘Croppies Lie Down’.

And for all he could whistle, and finger, and blow,

To play Papish music he found it no go,

‘Kick the Pope’, ‘The Boyne Water’, and such like it would sound, But one Papish squeak in it just couldn’t be found.

At a council of priests that was held the next day,

The decided to banish the ould flute away,

For they couldn’t knock heresy out of its head,

So they bought Bob another to play in its stead.

So the ould flute was doomed and its fate was pathetic,

it was branded and burned at the stake as heretic;

While the flames roared around it they heard a strange noise,

‘Twas the ould flute still whistling, ‘The Protestant Boys’.

‘When I worked in Wexford [in the Irish Republic] years ago,’ remembered George Chittick, ‘that was my star turn. They couldn’t get enough of “The Ould Orange Flute”: I used to go into the bar in the hotel where I was staying. And it was great and there was good old crack and a good old laugh. I don’t drink, but I used to go down to sit with them and they used to sing away there and then they’d be shouting, “Come on, come on, you have to sing the ‘The Ould Orange Flute’.” They used to cheer. And then, “Give us ‘The Sash’, give us ‘The Sash’.” This was before the Troubles, may I say.’

Bands decide what to play. Lodges choose the bands. ‘In my young days, the bands were all flute bands,’ recalled Worshipful Master Charlton from Mourne. ‘There were no uniforms. And I remember our band had old police caps. I remember going and getting a bag full of discarded police caps and the women making white tops and putting a bit of elastic in them to go over the top of the caps. And getting blue ribbon and the women putting blue ribbons on them. And I remember going to Belfast and getting badges. The blue ribbons were because our lodges are blue.

‘Now we’ve an Irish pipe band here. In Mourne there are accordion bands, pipe bands and harp bands. I was just talking to a wee girl there, her harp and flute band, they won the Ulster championship in the Ulster Hall on Saturday. And they’ve practised in our hall. There’s better music now, but by and large the Orange hasn’t changed much. Only just the standard of living.’

There are devotees of all kinds of bands, but the instruments most associated with Ulster are the flute (or fife, the small, shriller version) and the drum. Alvin Mullan wrote in 1997:

My background is rooted in [the flute band] tradition and can be traced to the late nineteeth century, when on the Twelfth 1890 my great-grandfather Alvin Mullan began playing the fife along with the drums for an Orange lodge from Tullyhogue in Co. Tyrone, as part of the demonstration. Continuing this tradition, my grandfather William Mullan, a gifted drummer, led the drum corps in Killymoon Flute Band, the local part-music flute band from Cookstown, Co. Tyrone. Due to ill health my grandfather’s mantle was inherited by my father William Alvin Mullan, who led the drum corps of the band until it folded up in the 1970s (this band has recently been reformed under the same name and maintains the part-music flute band tradition in that area).

This background caused me, from an early age, to view the Twelfth as an occasion to listen to bands, view the impressive display of musical culture and long for the day when I could participate. This finally materialized on the Twelfth 1981 when I played the flute with Tullyhogue Flute Band in Cookstown on the return parade from the main demonstration. Thus my band career was launched and still continues with Corcrain Flute Band from Portadown (which I joined in 1985).

As a bandsman I regard the Twelfth as the most important parade of the year; all other parades prior to this are preparatory and any following are extra. The occasion demands much preparation. One’s flute must be in top working order, the uniform clean with trousers well pressed, the shirt snow-white and ironed in case the weather demands the removal of the tunic, shoes must be gleaming, and the music holder well polished. When the band moves off on the morning of the Twelfth it is really a most enjoyable and thrilling experience. All the preparation and months of practice result in a fine display of musical talent as the band plays through its march repertoire: Galanthia, The Bulgars’ Entry, Le Tambour Major, Our Director, The Pacer, Peace and Plenty, The Gladiator’s Farewell, Corcrain, Coeur de Lion and others.

In addition to the musical aspect of playing in a flute band on the Twelfth, there is also the opportunity to meet other bandsmen and listen to their music. There exists amongst bandsmen a great sense of comradeship and unity of purpose. The Twelfth provides opportunity to develop this by renewing friendships, discussing problems, swapping ideas, and reflecting on past Twelfths. As a bandsman the Twelfth means everything; it is the heart of the flute band tradition, its soul and life. Remove the Twelfth and the tradition will die.

In the early nineteenth century, Ulster flute bands came into existence, modelled on those that formed part of military bands. Initially, they played military music and paraded in martial style. Their repertoire broadened as their range of instruments increased; from 1907 these sophisticated part flute bands, complemented by a drum corps, have engaged in music contests.

The part flute bands are for connoisseurs; the ‘blood and thunder’ or ‘kick-the-pope’ bands are populist. Dominic Bryan, an academic who with Neil Jarman has done much to explain what parades are all about, exactly expresses my own mixed feelings about them.

Blood-and-thunder bands can be threatening to an outsider like myself and it is easy to appreciate why so many in the Catholic community treat them with a mixture of fear and loathing. On the other hand they are also the most entertaining part of the Twelfth in Belfast. They help create a sense of carnival which is in some contrast to the officials at the front of the parade and the religious service given at the field.

He remarks about the uniforms: ‘On the one hand you have plenty of sombre dark respectable suits whilst some of the bands are in bright orange, blue and purple uniforms. And there is invariably a group of young girls dressed in the latest fashion (or the latest Rangers shirt) walking alongside their band: the Twelfth is also about teenage sexuality.’

While most bands include women of all ages, teenage sexuality is most evident among the fife-and-drum groupies or the mini-skirted standard-bearers who march in front of the most villainous-looking bands. These bands have vastly increased in number over the last thirty years as a reaction to the Troubles. Many Orangemen who hate the militarism of these bands argue that they are a vital safety-valve for young people who might otherwise become involved in paramilitary violence and that their contact with the Orange Order is crucial. ‘I was not long a member of a flute band when one of our drummers was murdered by the IRA,’ one now senior Orangeman told me. ‘Some of us kids were full of rage. It was only the influence of older Orangemen in our lodge that stopped us getting guns; some of us would have gone out to get revenge.’

The flute bands also have the merit of being cheap. It is extremely expensive to support, for instance, a silver or a pipe band: £2,000 is nothing for a trombone. And for those lodges which hire bands, the choice can be between paying £500 for a silver band or £100 for the fife-and-drum equivalent.

The famous Lambeg drums never appear in Belfast now, but drumming matches are still popular in rural areas. The Lambeg’s origins are disputed, but it is agreed that it is the ultimate tribal symbol in Ulster. It is no accident that Lambeg drumming is strongest in Armagh, where republicanism is at its most entrenched and dangerous. The staccato beat can be heard for miles, even in bandit country.

Food

There are, in my experience, two expressions so miserable as to strike pity into the hardest heart. One is that of an Indian shopkeeper who fails to make a sale; the other, of an Ulster Protestant who has discovered his dinner will be late.

Rural Protestants in particular are people with few vices; fidelity and temperance are the norm. But they do love food. I kept track one day of the eating activities of a group of Orangemen. I had arrived in Belfast at eight o’clock and was taken to a friend’s house. The woman of the house, her daughter and daughter-in-law were preparing for the arrival at ten o’clock of three or four guests, who were being lavishly catered for despite the fact that there was no doubt that they would have had an Ulster fry two hours previously.

By the time the dignitary – the local county Grand Master – and the others arrived, the table was covered with five different kinds of sandwiches, sausages and home-made sausage rolls, home-made cakes and pies. There was orange squash, there was tea and there was coffee. And throughout the meal, as throughout so many of the meals I’ve had in Ulster, people looked at me in a worried fashion because to them my appetite seemed so small as to run the risk of my expiring at their very table from malnutrition.

Having eaten solidly, the men drove off to join their lodges and parade from their halls to the gathering point at which the main parade would begin. Those who had not had a spread like ours had the opportunity to have sandwiches or burgers before they started walking.

When the parade was over, at around two o’clock, most participants fell on the food tents in the demonstration field where ladies were raising money for various churches by selling sandwiches, cakes and tea. This kept the Orangemen going until at around six they went to their own lodge for a tea of meat and vegetables and piles of potatoes washed down with orange squash, followed by something very sweet and then by coffee and biscuits.

At lunchtime the VIPs – officers and distinguished guests – would have had a dinner in the nearest Orange hall consisting of ham and chicken and lettuce and potato salad and coleslaw and tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs and salad cream and lots of bread and plenty of something sweet to follow. My abiding memory of such dinners and teas is of ladies rushing around anxiously with food or enormous kettles, terrified lest any of their charges might be suffering from hunger or thirst for even a moment.

After all that, the non-teetotal lodges might have a nip or two of whiskey or some beer, while the drinkers in teetotal lodges might head off for a few drinks in the local pub. The serious drinkers would stay there to get plastered and the majority would go home to tea and sandwiches or biscuits before bedtime.

The Orange tooth is so sweet as to conjure up memories of one’s own childhood. I sat with a radical, intellectually aggressive, zealously evangelical minister and watched him struggle with his conscience over the issue of a second piece of apple pie, for his wife had put him on a diet. Sitting with an Orangeman who has more gravitas than almost anyone I’ve ever met, I loved seeing his hand sneaking out almost guiltily to take a chocolate biscuit.

I have a very happy memory of a visit to London by a group of Orangemen over to talk to politicians and the press about parades. Brian Kennaway, Bobby Saulters and I went for a stroll by the Thames and the Grand Master spotted an ice-cream van. As I sat beside them on a bench in the sunshine, licking an ice-cream cornet and watching the delight my companions took in that small indulgence, I remembered what one of the few defenders of Northern Ireland Orangemen had said to me over and over again: ‘They want so little. So very, very little.’

Souvenirs

In the field where a big march congregates there will be some souvenir stalls with loyal flags and red-white-and-blue hats and batons and so on, as well as tapes and T-shirts and other paraphernalia. My collection includes tea-towels – William crossing the Boyne, ‘Ulster Says No’ and a representation of the Union Jack – an apron with a crown over a Red Hand, and Drumcree-related keyrings.

At a big gathering there will be a stall or two selling various accoutrements supporting loyalist paramilitaries. In 1997 the nastiest was a T-shirt inscribed: ‘YABBA DABBA DOO ANY FENIAN WILL DO’, inspired by the LVF, whose victims had included a Catholic taxi driver who had just graduated in English Literature from Queens and an eighteen-year-old girl shot in the head as she lay in bed beside her Protestant boyfriend.

For republican kitsch, the place to go is the Sinn Féin shop on the Falls Road, where I have bought keyrings featuring Patrick Pearse, and one with the IRA slogan ‘Tiochaidh ár lá’ (‘Our day will come’) on one side and a balaclavaed chap with an Armalite on the other, as well as a tea-towel featuring the Irish flag and another with pictures of the signatories of the 1916 proclamation of the Irish Republic. I drew the line at a statue of Gerry Adams.

My favourite is the mad bigots’ stall at Scarva, manned by courteous evangelists who with the help of wares like The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, The Convent Horror, Escape from a Catholic Convent, Horrible Lives of the Popes and The Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse take one on a journey back in time.

Going home

Perhaps the best moment for me [wrote Alister Minnis, a teacher who comes home from Scotland every year for the Twelfth], is to stand watching the parade reassemble. The colour is overwhelming, the sights and sounds heady enough to sustain me until next year (or at least until Scarva). Of course, somebody who likes the sound of his own voice and has the public speaking appeal of Douglas Hogg is on the platform delaying the proceedings, but that only gives me all the more time to remember exactly who and what I am. And then the evening. To have the fellowship of our meal, to listen to the story-tellers, the singers. And later, to sit with a cool beer with my friends and family and to talk about ‘days of yore’ or ‘What will become of us?’

Drink does for some participants before they ever make it home.

One supreme recollection [wrote Rowel Friers] is of a country lodge returning from another townland where the celebrations had been hosted. When they started out they were led by His Majesty King William on a dapple-grey. William, pointing his sword defiantly heavenward, led his men to battle with an assurance worthy of d’Artagnan. Though hardly historically accurate in every detail, his uniform was acceptable to all but purists. Perhaps one could admit to a certain amount of antipathy towards his work-a-day wellies without doubt a jarring note. Nevertheless, despite any flaw in his royal raiment, his mind was fixed in the period. Proudly he led his men to glory, and if ever a leader was born, this was he.

The return journey was one of obvious triumph. Flushed from a successful day at the Field, with fresh air, good fellowship and brews, they marched homeward with chins, where possible, held high. Some had their jackets hung nonchalantly over one shoulder. Here and there a tie hung crookedly from an open shirt collar, and an odd sash had changed position – no longer de rigueur. The battle had yet again been won and William’s conquering heroes were returning. A kaleidoscope of colour – the brilliant uniforms of the bands and the glory of silken banners dancing in zigzag rhythm to the rousing music – added firmness of purpose to the multitude of boots marching muddied from the damp field. In the midst of his warriors, William sat astride his trusty, but now bored, steed. He had dropped back from the lead he held on the outward journey and was showing obvious symptoms of bottle fatigue. His hat sat at a rakish angle on a wig, now worn peek-a-boo style, and with sword pointing earthwards Billy drooped forward, nose almost buried in the horse’s mane. A loyal brother on either side of the mount kept steadying hands on His Majesty, thus ensuring that he remained, if not upright, at least mounted. The Prince of Orange had revelled in the bottle, but now neither the papist James nor anything else troubled his happy mind. His Majesty’s immortal memory had deserted him, and 1690 to him could just as well have been a phone number.

The historian David Hume is attached to a more sober lodge: ‘And then, after the Field and the return parade, they will march back along that country road, wearier this time around, and the band will play a hymn and the National Anthem after they have all lined up outside the hall. And someone will look around at someone else and as sure as anything, say, “Well, that’s the Twelfth over for another year.” ‘

‘How did you get over the Twelfth?’ is what his sister asks a Belfast friend of mine every year. As Catholic children in largely loyalist East Belfast, in the 1950s and ‘60s they spent every Twelfth in a house with the blinds down, listening to aggressive drumming sounds and fearful of violence when loyalists got drunk. ‘I’ve no difficulty believing that most Orangemen are OK,’ observed the apolitical and non-sectarian Eamonn. ‘But when you’re being beaten up, it’s hard to care whether it’s by Orangemen, bandsmen or just thuggish hangers-on. It hurts just as much.’

It was around that time that the public servant Maurice Hayes, though Catholic a fan of the Twelfth,

began to sense from Catholics in other areas that they saw the marching as a threat, a means of putting them in their place, of letting them know who was boss and that they were in a minority in a society ruled by Protestants and they had better know it and behave themselves. There was annoyance too at the sheer number of marches which kept people in houses, blocked roads, business interfered with, and the further aggravation of party tunes and some ‘kick-the-pope’ bands which insisted on playing more loudly when passing churches or chapels and the menacing beat of the Lambeg drums.

I wondered to myself why people wanted to march at all, and why others who were annoyed could not just pull down the blinds and refuse to be annoyed?

Hayes’s hope for the future is that of all sane people in Northern Ireland: that Orangemen will make more effort to explain themselves to their neighbours and that Catholics will try to understand that Orangeism is a celebration of civil and religious liberty. ‘We should be able to hold on to and to encourage the exercise of a tradition which is not only important to many people, and therefore to the rest of us, but which could add to the colour and meaning of life for all.’

It will be necessary, too, for both sides to deal with the thugs that do awful things in their name.

^* With the exception of William Bingham, George Chittick and Worshipful Master Charlton, whom I interviewed, and Neil Jarman, Elaine McClure and John Moulden, who appeared on a radio programme, the quotes from everyone else named in this chapter come from their contributions to The Twelfth: What It Means to Me (ed. Gordon Lucy and Elaine McClure).

^* Giving children pretend collarettes or lending them proper ones is common. Although Orangemen take their regalia seriously, they do not give it mystical status. I was watching a parade one day when I was summoned into it by Chris McGimpsey, who removed his bowler, placed it on my head and said: ‘That’s a thank you for taking the trouble to find out about us.’ I wore it slightly uneasily, afraid of giving offence, but when I consulted the Worshipful Master of my unofficial lodge he explained that no one would mind. Further, he told me that if I wanted a collarette as a souvenir, he would provide me with one. He duly sent one to me along with a miniature of Bushmills to toast it with.