Author: Alex French

Frederick Douglass visited Belfast in 1845 and was both impressed by the lack of racial prejudice he was met with during his stay and felt connected to the struggles of the peasantry that he observed, though it is important to note that his experiences with race, “undoubtedly stemmed in large part from the fact that he was moving in the genteel, middle class Protestant milieu from whence Irish support for abolition stemmed” (Rolston, 446).

This mural was painted by Danny Devenney in 2006 and reads: “Inspired by two Irishmen to escape from slavery Frederick Douglass came to Ireland during the famine. Henceforth he championed the abolition of slavery, women’s rights and Irish Freedom. ‘Perhaps no class has carried prejudice against colour to a point more dangerous than have the Irish and yet no people have been more relentlessly oppressed on account of race and religion’- Frederick Douglass.”

Many groups that have fought imperialism looked to and were inspired by Ireland’s struggle, but particularly early on in the Irish republican movement (before the 1960’s) this support was not always reciprocated. Thus, while there were some abolitionists in Ireland, there were also many who rejected any attempts at fostering a brotherhood between the two causes: creating tension between, “the revolutionary whose emancipatory ideals are confined to his own nation, and […]  the internationalist who recognizes the plight of others in that of his own nation” (Rolston, 452).

However, this mural was painted well after this period, and was created in the tradition of murals with an international focus—thus abolition, women’s rights, and Irish freedom can be placed right next to each other without any pushback and Douglass’s visit to Ireland can be interpreted through a far more singular lens.

This mural expresses support for the Basque nationalists, and is one of a few murals in this vein. It, and murals of a similar tradition, read almost like political cartoons and are sorts of calls to action rather than agents of interpolation into a way of viewing the conflict in Northern Ireland within history. There are other murals like this addressing political issues in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Palestine.

Gerry Adams visited Basque in 1998 and though this mural was created in 2008, “The appearance of [earlier murals about Basque] coincided with efforts on the part of Irish republicans to support the Basque struggle for independence and subsequently to help broker a peace process” (Rolston, 459).

This particular image is focused on the sovereignty of the three regions of Basque and is direct in commanding, “Not Spain not France self-determination for Basque country.” The word ‘Askatasuna’ is the Basque word for freedom and in other murals was joined with the Gaelic word for freedom as well (Rolston, 459).

“A Tribute to John Hume” was painted by the Bogside Artists in 2008 in an effort to depict Hume, “not as a politician or even as a popular leader but as a man of peace”

(The People’s Gallery). John Hume was a key player in the formation of the Good Friday Agreement, a leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Civil Rights movement, and a member of the Northern Ireland, British, and European Parliaments.

Hume is placed in the company of Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, and Nelson Mandela, all winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. This clearly positions him as a peace maker—as the Bogside Artists wanted. Each of these figures also had some involvement in Northern Ireland. Mother Theresa was educated in Dublin (The People’s Gallery), Nelson Mandela met with Gerry Adams in 1995, one of many, “Community activists and ex-combatants [who] traveled in both directions, observing developments and sharing views” as South Africa and Ireland developed through sometimes parallel struggles (Rolston, 463), and Hume cited Martin Luther King Jr. as his biggest influence, following in the tradition of, “Irish civil rights activists in the late 1960s [who] consciously modeled elements of their campaign on what Black Americans were doing contemporaneously” (Rolston, 464).

The other major element of this mural is the bridge which was modeled off the Brooklyn Bridge because of the, “belief held by many during its construction that it would collapse because of its span” and because according to the Bogside Artists: “Peace in Northern Ireland is to politics what the Brooklyn Bridge is to engineering, an almost miraculous achievement!” (The People’s Gallery).

As discussed today in class, the basic interpretation of “The Song of Wandering Aengus” is straightforward. The narrator, Aengus, represents nationalists seeking to return to an idealized Ireland, as symbolized by the “glimmering girl,” (13). Like traditional Ireland, the girl may or may not exist and, because of this, the narrator will never reach her. However, the embedded mythology complicates this simple cultural nationalist reading. The poem immediately alludes to Celtic folklore when the narrator declares he “went out to the hazel wood” (1) as the hazel tree traditionally represents wisdom. In Irish myth, the concentration of the wisdom and knowledge was believed to reside in the hazelnut. The wisdom could be transferred into a salmon if it ate the hazelnut and a human could then imbibe the wisdom by cooking and eating the salmon. Yeats’ poem alludes to hazel trees, not only by setting the poem in the hazel wood, but also when Aengus fishes with a “hazel wand” (3) and uses what is presumably a hazel berry as bait. Despite these similarities to Celtic myth, Aengus uses a berry, not a hazelnut, when fishing, and ultimately catches “a little silver trout” (8), not a salmon. The poem suggests that Aengus is attempting to emulate the myth, yet his misinformation in regards to Irish tradition prevents him from doing so. In fact, instead of manifesting itself as wisdom, the trout becomes a beautiful girl, or an object of desire. In this way, the discrepancies from the myth result in a sort of antithesis of wisdom in that Aengus becomes consumed with the unknown rather than becoming more knowledgeable. Just as Aengus becomes consumed with the mystical and desirable “glimmering girl,” cultural nationalists became enamored with a romanticized version of traditional Ireland. Aengus’ misinformation concerning Celtic mythology becomes his undoing, just as an image of traditional Ireland, romanticized beyond reality, becomes a symbol that cannot be reached.