Bard Mythologies

TRIBES AT WAR

// April 2nd, 2010 // General, General Blog

Having watched Pat Kenny’s “The Front Line” last Monday night, it seems that it might be fair to conclude that the “Tribes are at War”. Well, a verbal war, but a war nonetheless.

It is a war where each side has a particular verbal ‘weaponry’.

One, the public tribe, draws on quite specific, personal story as its means of engagement. The stories are invariably tragic, “my dead mother/father” and the storyteller very understandably emotional. As communication, it largely works. There is no response to these stories but sympathy. The other tribe, the management, draw on an abstracted generalised form of discourse, to do with performance, the system, and well, management. Response here is difficult, especially without access or inclination to the facts and figures. As communication, in that forum, it largely doesn’t work.

Anger, hurt, (even) hatred and rage at war with fact, system, figure and process. The weapons are thrown. Most seem to miss the target. Neither side can use the means of discourse of the other. And so it goes on and on and on. It is easy to feel sorry for the sufferers. It is less easy to feel sorry for the management. But they look like really pleasant honest folk!

There was once a time in the ancient past where the poets and bards were able to craft a cultural unity in spite of political diversity between the tribes. There was once an idea of the fifth province, cuige, which might again be a place in which new images, new thoughts and new myths might again offer something other than what was on view on Monday night.

In terms of the Kingship/Leadership Themes we are exploring, what is in evidence in “The FrontLine”.   Who is the King? Here are some thoughts:

-Is Pat Kenny King like? Is Mary Harney King/Queen Like?

Are any of the people King/Queen like?

• Surely a King/Queen stand above the Tribal disputes and offer judgement and fairness? Not sure     anyone played this role in the show?
• Pat’s role seems far more about orchestrating a good show and encouraging the fight. It makes for good viewing?  Why doesn’t he bring on a Bard, a Poet, a Comic to start the healing process?
• Mary H has a Queen-like presence, but has she not broken a ‘geasa’ (like Conaire Mor by using her position to advantage with that hair do and other extravagances!?) and so destroyed that sacred bond of sovereign and people? Mary as a ‘dying’ (not literally) queen.

But as we learn from Irish Kingship Mythology, it is the twice born King/Queen that is the great king. So, here is to that old maxim, “the King is dead, long live the King”.