User:Cyclop45/Straw boys

The Straw Boys in Ireland travel from house to house in the countryside at night performing their Christmas play, and attending weddings to serenade the bride. They dress up, overcoats on back to front, tabards, ribbons and most notably tall conical straw masks. Since the Irish version of the play is so similar to the English and Scottish versions, it is clear that the play was imported into Ireland by the Planters. Only the “Wren Boys” may really be Irish. In England the play was largely brought to an end by the Magistrates who considered it to be no better than “demanding money with menaces”, certainly the performers were only seeking money at that festive season for drink. In Scotland the players were known as the “Hogmanay Boys”. We have no record of how often the play was rewritten to keep it up to date in its land of origin, but in Ireland it was regularly updated. Saint George killing the Turk, became Prince George killing Saint Patrick, and in other places became King Billy (William of Orange of the battle of the Boyne fame) killing King James. As it comes down to us the play is ragged and fragmentary. Some of the most traditional characters have no function other than to say who they are and then introduce the next character in their turn. In Ireland the play ceased to be performed within living memory. Depending on whom you talk to it was due to dances, television and motor cars giving young men something better to do with their time; but since it survived longer in the border areas, it was the “troubles” which made it dangerous and impractical for groups of masked men to wander from farmhouse to farmhouse on dark winters nights. Most sources fail to give them any early history.

HISTORY The early Church in Britain was in the Gnostic tradition, or as the Catholics would have put it, in the “Gnostic heresy”. The main differences between the two were that the Gnostics believed Jesus was a man. They had a married priesthood, where with no seminaries, priests were apprenticed, usually to their fathers making the priesthood hereditary. They originally venerated the Chi-Rho rather than the Cross and celebrated Easter on a slightly different day. Their priests shaved the front of their heads in the same tonsor that had been used by the Druids, rather than shaving the back of the crown. Saint Patrick set out to Ireland in 428 AD to convert the Irish. Long before Pope Gregory sent St Agustine and the Benedictines to convert the British to "proper Catholisism" in 597, a process that took nearly 300 years. Patricus was priested in the Gnostic tradition, travelled widely, and was elevated to Bishop in the Gnostic See in Northern France, where he married the French Bishop's daughter Cecilia (whose name was later corrupted in gaelic to Sheilagh). Patricus succeeded in Ireland where the Pope's earlier envoy Platinus had failed. Platinus never got further than the little port of Dublin, had a tiny congregation and died. Patricus converted the kings, and Ireland became Christian by their decree. It was Rev Ian Paisley who said (and you have to get the accent right) “St Patrick was a Protestant”. Certainly he wasn't a Catholic. Christianity in Ireland remained in the Gnostic tradition undisturbed for hundreds of years. Ireland's ancient tradition of Goddess worship was conflated with and absorbed into veneration of the Virgin Mary and of St Brigit. And the people were persuaded to accept the Christian form of marriage before having sex, though never accepting marriage or “hand fasting” as a life time commitment. Hand fasting meant different things in different places, in Scotland it lasted a year, and if a couple remained together longer they had to renew their vows. In Ireland it appears that hand fasting lasted merely until the couple chose to separate. Only when faced with armed Norman force, did the old Gaelic Church bow its knee to Rome, conform with Catholic doctrine, had all its cranky old saints accepted onto the official calender with the exception of St Sheilagh, and Patricus was, very reluctantly, acknowledged as Ireland's patron saint. However, Ireland did not have a seminary, and was always short of priests, having monasteries didn't make up for it. And with the eventual dissolution of the monasteries, the plantation, and later the penal laws, there were hardly any priests at all. The peasants had no one to turn to except the old hereditary priesthood for their much needed blessings, baptisms, weddings and wakes. Indeed, the peasants had never really abandoned them. Outside of the influence of Catholic priests, and the Protestant churches, the Irish peasants remained stubbornly “un-catholic”. In the late Eighteenth century the Government of Ireland, in between dealing with the revolting puritans and the black-mouthed Presbyterians, chose to recruit the Catholic hierarchy as an ally in pursuit of their goal of “civilising the peasants”. The government footed the bill to build the Catholic seminary at Maynooth. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, instead of being tarred and feathered, was invited to dinner in Dublin Castle. The Catholic church from its new position of official power successfully did away with traditional worship at wells and stones and groves. Removed Shellagh-na-gigs from the churches, and abolished other charms and talismans for pain free childbirth. They stamped out “wake games” or “wake orgies” (where people got married at wakes), but failed to stamp out the wakes. They even invented “Irish dancing” to counter the popular drunken jigs and reels that they feared could only lead to inappropriate sexual relationships. The old priesthood were in full retreat. This ancient arm of the Apostolic Succession suffered the indignity of being referred to as “Mock Priests” or “Straw Priests” (since they wore a stole of plaited oat straw). When they appeared in public on market days, to minister to their flock, they had to take to wearing conical straw masks to conceal their real identity and avoid persecution. Only the most insulting and condescending records remain of their ministry. Only one line is recorded of their marriage rite. They were shown as buffoons, and it was rumoured that after a few drinks they would happily marry the village floozy to half a dozen men in succession on the one night, blessing all her unions. Finally they survived only as a shadow, the Straw Boys, performing a Christmas play, largely imported from Britain by the planters, seeking money for drink. In the latter half of the Twentieth Century even this declined, with better entertainment for bitter cold winter nights, and the inadvisability of having groups of masked men trooping around the country roads in the dark, particularly in the border areas, during the troubles. The play has had a small resurgence, being preformed competitively by primary school children, and by more formal groups in mini-buses travelling around pubs and collecting for recognised causes.