Issue No.12 Spring 2003

Observing the Sons of Levi

John Nixon interviews Darach McDonald well known author and editor of ‘The Fermanagh Herald’ & ‘The Ulster Herald’

Darach MacDonald is a native of Clones in County Monaghan. He is editor of the Ulster Herald and author of two recently published books The Sons of Levi and The Chosen Fews which have a particular focus on communities in the border area. The former is about Orangemen in County Monaghan whose culture and experience in post-partition Ireland was the subject of a study by Darach while doing his Masters degree in history. The latter book focuses on the nationalist community of south Armagh and their experience after partition. John Nixon interviewed Darach for The Other View.

Is there a distinct protestant cultural identity in the southern border counties?

There certainly is a distinct identity that spills across the border. The background or historical experience of Protestants living in the border counties has been shared with people in neighbouring counties on the northern side of the border. But if there's something that is distinct about links between Protestants in Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal as opposed to those in Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh and Armagh then its something that is recent and maybe emanates from a sense of loss of being deprived of their 'Ulster' identity. That is the historical consequence of partition. Not only were nationalists in the north removed from the cultural centre of their identity but Protestants in three Ulster counties were cast aside as superfluous to needs.
That has inculcated a sense that they have lost something that is very precious and that something is their cultural identity.

But there are differences between border Protestants and those who live further down south?

R V McDowell in Decline and Fall wrote what is regarded as the definitive account of post-partition Protestantism within the 26 counties and it’s quite remarkable actually that people who were regarded as Ulstermen, Ulster Unionists and Ulster Protestants at the time of partition all of a sudden were cast with Protestants in Bandon in Cork or Kerry, that is, people with whom they had no cultural affinity and from whom they felt very distinct. Indeed, apart from McDowell’s account they never saw themselves as southerners and certainly didn’t become so. They kept their own council and they maintained their own identity.

Partition has created a lot of anomalies for Protestants in terms of political identity as well.

I think that is a difficult one because, for example, northern nationalists could always comfort themselves with the fact that they were wanted by their compatriots on the southern side and that the ultimate aim of nationalism was unification. However, those Ulster Unionists who found themselves on the wrong side of the border when the Free State was set up didn't have any such comfort. They believed that they were never going to be united, so for them the whole issue of unionism was superfluous from there on. Certainly in some contexts they retained their own political identity in counties Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan for years after partition. There were TDs elected who were very clearly representing Ulster Protestants. But many of the leaders of unionism, the Farnhams and the Saundersons in Cavan, for example, went to England. In Donegal some political leaders remained but in Monaghan they became a very strong political force within the county concentrating on local issues. Many were county councillors. They had no aspirations for national take over. That is, they weren't disloyal. But that political culture, so to say, remained very vibrant certainly right through the 70's and 80's. TD's in the Dáil today such as Cavan/Monaghan Fine Gael TD Seymour Crawford would have much support from the Protestant community, indeed, right across the community. He is very much involved in local issues, particularly rural or farming issues. Seymour and others would be involved in a national dimension. Obviously they are TD's and they are not there trying to undermine the state. They are certainly not disloyal.

What of your own experience living with and growing up with Protestants in a border town?

I suppose my centre of the universe when I was growing up was Clones and may well still be. I wasn’t conscious of the fact that there were differences. It's only in retrospect, in looking back that I now realise that I grew up in what is very much an Ulster town. Clones had a sizeable protestant population. An overwhelming number of the businesses in the town were protestant businesses. It was a very mixed society. It was over the years when that changed that you began to feel that sense of loss. There was this other element in the community that all of a sudden was going and I think that my experience of growing up in a catholic nationalist environment was that some part of my identity was being taken away. Everything mirrors something else; we reflect something onto each other and that reflection becomes part of us too. You can't conceive of that huge change in the community in which you live. But also you were aware that while for people from a catholic or nationalist background there was a sense of place that revolved around the townland or the parish, for protestant neighbours their sense of community revolved very much around the congregation because of the nature of their churches. There was no parish system you see. Certainly Presbyterians didn’t have a parish and a lot of Presbyterian communities where I came from, for example Stonebridge, Ballyhoe Bridge and Clones were all border communities where you had Presbyterian congregations from Fermanagh as well as from the southern side. So, in essence, there was never a clear partition in that side of the community in which I grew up. Many of the congregation who remained became part of the Orange Order, therefore the Orange Order was part of the congregation and so of the community.

What about expressions of Orangeism?

Orange parades were never a feature of life south of the border in my lifetime. I know the parade in Rossnowlagh gets great celebration now but down through the years Rossnowlagh was a very small affair until the media started paying attention to it. But what people who are not part of that side of the community don't see is that these things are going on all the time. They didn’t call them parades, they were called picnics. So you would have Orange picnics all over Monaghan as well as parts of Cavan and Donegal when lodges would get together. You see, this is not Drumcree. This is a community celebrating its culture. That's how I would have always looked on it; not as a supremacist sectarian thing but as part of a tradition that should have been cherished for the fact that it was surviving and I think that it would have been my feeling although I wasn't part of that overall tradition. It is something that should have been preserved and cherished as an expression of cultural identity.

Opinions have changed a lot especially since the start of the Troubles. What about the Ulster-Scots identity and traditions?

Well yes, I think there are things that emanate from an Ulster-Scots identity. There is a perception that part of the population derive from Scottish settlement here. But it's not something that’s peculiar to one side. I know of one person who can speak 'Ulster Scots and all he had to do is speak as his grandfather did. It's a dialect but some argue it’s a language.

Is it not a dialect in much the same way as the language is spoken in the Cotswolds or Cockney for that matter? Few can speak Ulster Scots.

Yes, I know people in Derry and Raphoe Action who are very vibrant concerning the Ulster-Scots identity. Given my own name MacDonald I suppose I would qualify for Ulster-Scots. The Nixons come from what's called 'The debatable land' on the Scottish English border, Liddlesdale. They're Ulster Scots. But where it spills into southern border counties then what it does bring home to Protestants north of the border is that there's not this huge chasm along the border. That all of a sudden you don't pass from one cultural entity into another. This is often a revelation particularly to people far removed from those border areas. When lodges from Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal would gather for Twelfth parades in fields across the border they were often regarded in a condescending way by their northern counterparts who would talk about the southern Orangemen arriving at parades, not in bowler hats but in cloth caps. It was these attitudes that showed a huge split and it discouraged many Protestants from those southern Ulster counties celebrating the good aspects of their culture. They were made to feel ashamed of it, I suppose, on both sides of the border – neither fish nor fowl. But that is changing too. I visited an exhibition of Orangeism in Cavan museum some years back where they had lots of Orange emblems and paraphernalia and I suggested they should do an exhibition of Orange banners from County Monaghan only to be told "Sure they're still using them"!

What prompted you to write The Sons of Levi?

While doing my M.A. I studied partition and how it affected communities along the border. The one element of the whole thing is that the people who were most traumatised by partition were Ulster Unionists in the southern border counties, seventy five thousand in all and not because of the machinations of Lloyd George or Michael Collins or whomever. It was their own that did for them.
It was this voice that was missing from the historical documents while I was doing my research. The book deals with the personal and cultural consequences of partition and people’s sense of place and identity because a people’s sense of themselves is derived from their sense of place, where they come from. These were the people who remained quiet about their own story.
The title of the book, which is a work of fiction, is taken from a song called The Sons of Levi. It was this song that provided the inspiration for the narrative.

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