The Savage Eye once brilliantly skewered the othering of northerners in Ireland in a sketch where a panel of serious-seeming and concerned politicians solemnly explain how the accent of people from the six counties was “out of control”.
“The Northern Ireland accent is… scary to the people of the south,” declares David McSavage’s ‘Minister Paddy Noonan’, before John Colleary’s Minister Seánín Beag lists off a series of meaningless phrases and sounds.
It lasts less than a minute, yet encapsulates so much of the absurdity and ever-prevailing ignorance regarding the north that exists across sections of southern society.
The sketch came to mind again this week when I read about the negative experience of a Belfast writer in north Kerry while he was working as the curator of Listowel Writers’ Week – one of the oldest literature festivals in Ireland.
Stephen Connolly took on the job as curator of the literary festival after an acrimonious restructure which saw the disbandment of a local committee and the resignation of festival president, award-winning novelist Colm Tóibín.
“I knew that I was likely to come in for some criticism in the town but hadn’t expected the form that a great deal of the criticism would take,” Connolly wrote in a column reflecting on his brief stint in Listowel.
“On a wet Tuesday night in January I was introduced to a group of regulars in a pub a little bit outside the town: ‘this is Stephen Connolly, he’s here from Belfast and he’s the new curator.’ There was a silence before one of the old guys said, loudly and to nobody in particular, ‘could they not have got anyone Irish to do it?'”
While the crux of the Writers’ Week matter may not necessarily have been where he was from, Connolly said there were “plenty more jibes” about the fact he was from Belfast. He later shared more insight on Twitter, showing an email which expressed concern about the perception of “volunteers bussed in from the North with northern accents”. Those scary northern accents again.
Perhaps if Connolly was from Dublin or Cork he would still have been subjected to jibes about where he was from. Maybe it didn’t matter what his accent sounded like, only that he was, like William Dee or ‘The Yank’, an outsider. We can’t be sure.
However, in being treated with suspicion and told by an old fool in a Kerry pub that he is not really Irish, Connolly’s experiences are reminders of the weird phobia that lingers among partitionists in the south.
The mistreatment of Connolly prompted anger and exasperation from fellow northerners on social media. Derry Girls creator Lisa Magee decried those who would deny the Irishness of northerners as “the worst”, while Seamus O’Hara, who starred in the Oscar-winning An Irish Goodbye revealed his own experience of partitionist othering.
“I’ve had the most interesting year being described as anything other than Irish by the Irish, which as an Irishman is pretty upsetting,” Antrim native O’Hara wrote on Twitter. “I attended Listowel and it was a beautiful meeting of artists, however the ‘you’re not the right kind Irish, please leave’ was strong.”
It’s frustrating, maddening and upsetting, yes, but it’s not surprising. We just need to keep calling it out where we see it.
THE BEAR – LET IT RIP
I just finished season two of The Bear and, if you are currently pondering which TV show you should watch next, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Get comfortable, grab the popcorn and strap in. Do it. Do it now.
A story of family, friendship, loss, grief and hope, it unfolds in a series of compellingly tight episodes, making it ideal for binge-watching.
The frailties of a soul grappling with grief on the one hand and trying to get on with life on the other are embodied so well by Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy, while Richie’s (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) road to redemption is deeply affecting.
It’s intelligent and it’s engrossing, with subtle cinematic flourishes peppered on each episode, not to mention a soundtrack that mixes REM with Refused (the soundtrack alone is brilliant). Are you sold yet?
What are you waiting for? Let it rip.
Nothing is written 