No More Heroes
The more I think about it I have begun to see the men of the
Travelling Community as Homeric warriors in a world long abandoned by the gods.
Like Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax, Hector and the rest Traveller men fight, insult
one another, race chariots (sulkies), and, in the end, they die premature
deaths.
However, when Achilles and Hector went head to head on the
plains of Ilium they did so licensed and aided by Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athene
and Poseidon. Their actions were the actions of the great. These were men of a
privileged, warrior caste. Their prowess with a spear, at the reins of a
chariot or in flinging insults at one another were what made and maintained
them as leaders. A man who could not fight, ride and taunt was not worthy of
being a ruler.
By contrast, the acts of the warriors of the Travelling
Community are marginal at best and usually illegal: bare knuckle fist fighting;
videoed call outs uploaded to YouTube; sulky racing. These are not the
celebrated epoch-defining acts of great heroes.
The exploits of traveller men are not celebrated; they are condemned.
The escalation of private insult into full scale, clan on
clan butchery is precisely what Homer immortalised as the acts of heroes in the
Iliad and precisely what is condemned in the tabloid press whenever Travellers start
chopping lumps out of one another in public. The Greeks were allowed to take
the law into their own hands; in fact that was the law. Travellers’ violence is
proscribed; not demanded by law.
When Bernie Joyce went on the internet to insult the Nevins
in the infamous ‘Shite in a Bucket’ video his words were are stinging and
eloquent as any of the great rhetorical sallies of the Trojan War.
Bernie Joyce is the prince of epithets – Homer would love
him. ‘Jelly Belly Mick’ and ‘Bluebottle
Martin’ ‘Joby with the Penguin’s feet’ are as immortal as ‘Agamemnon shepherd
of the people’ ‘Hector of the flashing helmet’ ‘Odysseus sacker of cities’.
The taunting and threats are the stuff of Homer, too:
Bernie Joyce tells his adversary: “Do you ever remember the bating I gave your uncle Paddy in
Longford...I gave him two thumps…your uncle Paddy was dragged from that place,
there had to be a bucket of water thrun on top of him when there should have
been a bucket a shite thrown on top of that dirty looking yoke”
Similarly, In Book 20 of the Iliad, Achilles, finally renouncing his anger comes to face Aeneas:
“I seem to recollect that once before you ran from my spear. Or have you
forgotten that time I caught you alone, cut you off from your cattle and sent
you scuttling at speed down the slopes of Mount Ida? ”
Highly inventive and hilarious they may be, but the call out
videos made by travellers are more likely to feature in criminal investigations
than to echo down the centuries as the high flown words of immortals.
There are no gods left. If Achilles or Hector were to come
to life today they’d find it impossible to live as heroes. Even simple things
like getting around would be difficult.
Somehow I can’t see them racing a sulky up and down the M50.
The powers that be in Ireland 2015 are not the gods of
Olympus. They would have no toleration, no comprehension of the heroes of Troy.
As any traveller could tell you this is no country for fighting in the street,
insulting and threatening people with violence, racing horses on the public
highway.
No comments:
Post a Comment