The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions. Ruth Edwards Dudley. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Ruth Edwards Dudley
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Историческая литература
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isbn: 9780007464159
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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).

       4

       The Family Abroad

      A loyal band of Orangemen from Ulster’s lovely land,

      They could not march upon the Twelfth – processions were all banned,

      So they flew off to the Middle East this dreadful law to dodge

      And they founded in Jerusalem the Arab Orange Lodge.

      

      Big Ali Bey who charmed the snakes he was the first recruit

      John James McKeag from Portglenone taught him to play the flute

      And as the oul’ Pied Piper was once followed by the rats

      There followed Ali from the lodge ten snakes in bowler hats.

      

      They made a martial picture as they marched along the shore

      It stirred the blood when Ali played “The Fez my Father Wore’.

      And Yussef Ben Mohammad hit the ‘Lambeg’ such a bash

      He scared the living daylights from a camel in a sash.

      

      Now the movement spread both far and wide – there were lodges by the score

      The ‘Jerusalem Purple Heroes’ was the first of many more

      The ‘Loyal Sons of Djeddah’ and ‘The Mecca Shining Star’

      And the ‘Rising Sons of Jericho’ who came by motor car.

      

      The banners too were wonderful and some would make you smile

      King Billy on his camel as he splashed across the Nile

      But the Tyre and Sidon Temperance had the best one of them all

      For they had a lovely picture of Damascus Orange Hall.

      

      The Apprentice boys of Amman marched beneath the blazing sun

      The Royal Black Preceptory were Negroes every one

      And lodges came from Egypt, from the Abu Simbel Falls

      And they shouted ‘No Surrender’ and ‘We’ll guard old Cairo’s walls’.

      

      But when the ban was lifted and the lodges marched at last

      The Arabs all decided to march right through Belfast

      And they caused a lot of trouble before they got afloat

      For they could not get their camels on the bloody Heysham boat.

      

      Now camels choked up Liverpool and camels blocked Stranraer

      And the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi came in a bloody great big car

      But the ‘Easter Magic’ LOL they worked a crafty move

      They used their magic carpets and flew in to Aldergrove.

      

      When they came to Castle Junction where once stood the wee Kiosk

      They dug up Royal Avenue to build a giant mosque

      And Devlin says to Gerry Fitt,* ‘I think we’d better go,

      There’s half a million camels coming down from Sandy Row.’

      

      The speeches at the ‘field’ that day were really something new

      For some were made in Arabic and some were in Hebrew

      But just as Colonel Gaddafi got up to sing ‘The Queen’

      I woke up in my bed at home and found it was a dream.

      ‘The Arab Orange Lodge’ (Sung to the air: ‘The Wearing of the Green’)

      ‘THERE’S A BOND THAT ties us together – something that folk have never fully understood,’ said Martin Smyth, who in his time as Imperial Grand Master and Imperial Grand President has travelled to all parts of Orangedom. ‘One could go to any part of the world and find a relationship immediately. Oh, yes, like any other family, they’ll be cantankerous; there’ll be folk you might love, but you couldn’t like. But it’s a family of nations and it’s fascinating.’

      In 1997, the Irish Grand Lodge invited me to the social functions of the Triennial Imperial Council of the World which, luckily for me, was that year meeting in Northern Ireland. Established in 1867, the Council has met thirty-nine times at various locations in the strongest Orange countries: Ireland, Scotland, England, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. In 1997 it was attended by representatives from those countries as well as from Ghana. There was sadness that because of the illness of Emenyo Mawule K. Aboki Essien, the dominating figure in Togo Orangeism as well as Imperial Grand President, there would be no delegates from his country, for it is there the custom that you do not leave someone who might die in your absence. Essien was well-known to many delegates, having visited almost every Orange jurisdiction in his time.

      ‘He is a remarkable character,’ observed Martin Smyth to me later, ‘with a remarkable fluency in French, which would have been the language of his area, as well as his native language and English. He and his people have an outward approach that I would like to see more of among our Orange people in Northern Ireland.

      ‘Where we tend to be fatalistic, the Togo Orangemen [who have only a thousand or so members] say: “There are many hundreds of thousands out there who qualify for membership. We’ve got to reach them.” So they’re going out to actually work