The community enjoyed bringing its own history to life. Local folk joined in the spirit of the play by dressing in costume and bringing out old artifacts, including a magnificent horse carriage and even wearing top hats. This added greatly to the authentic atmosphere of the street pageant.
Con Marnane of Bansha House brought this resplendent horse carriage onto Bansha's Main Street to add a historical note to the play.
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Margi Maxwell, a professional singer from The Glen of Aherlow sang the opening song, with words by Peter Dignam. The lyrics were especially written by Peter in the style of Darby Ryan's poems. Margi and her band are well known for their musical performances in Ireland and abroad. Champion accordion player Ailbe Grace of Rossadrehid in The Glen of Aherlow played Margi's accompaniment. |
Father Tom Fanning of Bansha Parish donned old-time costume and became an "extra". Ned Harris of Bansha also provided an image from yesteryear, in top hat and with his donkey "Neddy" pulling an old 'cripple cart' loaned for the occasion. Here, before the play started, the pair talked about "the auld times" - and Neddy listened too!
Today, we have forgotten the vital role animals played in transport until quite recent times. The play reminded the audience of this.
TYPECASTING ?… Liam Bergin, local schoolteacher, played the part of Darby Ryan's college tutor Professor Kennedy. He read a poem written by the Professor about Darby in 1829, to the audience assembled in Bansha Graveyard. Darby Ryan was buried in this very churchyard in 1855 close to the lime trees, which still surround it.
Permission to stage part of the play in the Old Bansha Protestant Church and Graveyard was kindly granted by The Reverend. Philip Knowles, Dean of Cashel, County Tipperary.
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Singing solo for the first time in public, and only for the second time in his life seated upon a horse, brave actor Tommy O'Brien re-enacted 'in situ' the scene of 1830 - when Darby Ryan on horseback first sang his world-famous satirical ballad "The Peeler and the Goat" outside the same gates of Bansha's Old Church on a Sunday after Service. On the Sunday of the 1996 Play, the Mass was specially said in Irish in Bansha's new Parish Church nearby. |
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Local actor Jerry O'Dwyer played an officer of The Royal Irish Constabulary, attired in the uniform style of 1830. Darby Ryan's notorious ballad "The Peeler and the Goat" was written to ridicule over-officious R.I.C. Officers - nicknamed "Peelers" - who in 1830 had "arrested" a goat for roistering in Bansha Main Street and butting an officer. This song became renowned as far away as America and Australia, and is still sung today - especially in Bansha Pubs! |
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Paddy Crowe provided a steady mount - a gentle bay pony named "Dolly" - for the intrepid actor playing ballad-writer "Darby Ryan", plus a white Saanen goat to give a genuine touch to the action. A play about the story of Darby Ryan's life would not have been complete without a goat! |
Volunteer actors from the Tipperary & District Historical Society, some of whom did the vital and accurate historical research upon which the play was based, joined enthusiastically in the play as costumed extras. There was much amusement over Darby Ryan's comic song about the goat's arrest …..
Mary Alice, Frances & Margaret O'Connor, of Thomastown, Golden; with Donie Wills of Kilshane in the background with his pony.
The action of the play took place right in the middle of the audience, bringing history vividly to life. |
…… and "The Polis" were ridiculed. Patricia Keane and Robbie O'Brien as 'two village biddies', in the spirit of the times, taunted 'Peeler' Jerry O'Dwyer - recreating Nineteenth Century Bansha village's sarcastic hilarity over the involvement of the 'Polis' in the 1830 arrest of a goat. Members of the audience close by, enjoyed the amusing dialogue. Some even joined in the heckling! |
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Actor Liam Bergin,
after a quick costume change, told the Twentieth-century
folk tale of the purchase of Darby Ryan's stone monument
in 1907. With words taken directly from an interview with
Aherlow resident Billy Morrisey Senior, Liam's
performance was an accurate portrayal of local speech and
mannerisms from the Glen of Aherlow. The recording of dialect in local Munster speech is another aim of The Tipperary Living History Project©. |
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Johnny Murphy of Bansha, brother of the play's producer Nancy Leahy, played a Nineteenth Century villager and is pictured here listening to the folksong "In the Glen of Aherlow", sung by local balladeer Mick "Fitz" Fitzgerald. Including indigenous folk songs from the local repertoire added to a renewed "sense of place" in the community from which the action of the play sprang. |
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Local resident Maureen Walsh joined in the play with a non-speaking part as a schoolmistress. Here, she shows her "school ma'am's" disapproval of the Nineteenth Century villagers' taunting of the authorities over the arrest of the goat. Actions speak louder than words! |
Eddie Moroney and Sean O'Donnell grinned as they listened to Storyteller Liam Bergin recount the tale of the 1907 "Fetching of the Gravestone".
Eddie Moroney playing a Bansha villager
taunted Peelers Jerry O'Dwyer and Colin Hayes in Bansha Main
Street over the 1830 arrest of the goat. Amused onlookers in the
audience enjoyed the action taking place in their midst.
The 'Boyos' find
transport…
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Donie Wills of Kilshane, Bansha provided the grey pony and pony-cart in which the actors playing the intrepid "Boyos" of 1907 set off with money (raised by public subscription in Bansha) to buy a fitting stone memorial to be erected over Darby Ryan's grave. Their quest led them to Wexford. Town . . . . . . . |
…From Nellie's Bar in Bansha (Dwyer's Pub in the 1800's and the original home of "Dwyers Ale"), actors Eddie Moroney and Sean O'Donnell progressed by pony-trap to Heaney's Pub in Bansha, which in the play represented Wexford Town. In front of this pub, Eddie and Sean gave a hilarious rendering of Darby Ryan's poem about Dwyer's Ale which was set to music and turned into a roistering song for the play!
Outside Heaney's, (representing Wexford Town) they haggled with a Stonemason, played by Joe Walsh, to buy a tombstone for Darby Ryan's grave with the money raised in Bansha. The local folk-tale is that they saved money by getting a very unusual bargain!
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Crossing the road from Heaney's to the Old Bansha Graveyard the mood of the play changed as the audience were led by two pipers playing a slow air. At the old iron graveyard gates , the tall figure of Death suddenly appeared, played by John Hayes, to claim Darby Ryan. Shane Donovan of Kilshane played two priests in the play. First, he took the part of 1855 Bansha Curate Oliver Langley - who presided over Darby Ryan's funeral in Bansha Graveyard; then went on to portray Father William Frederic Johnstone M.A. - who in 1907 organised the erecting of the distinctive stone memorial there to Bansha's noted patriot and poet. |
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John Whyte as Narrator throughout the play gave historical details of Darby Ryan's life, and solemnly intoned in Munster Irish the Bard's most famous poem "Aréir Cois Taoibhe na hAtharlaigh" ("Last Night by the Aherlow Riverside") over the poet's grave, in the same Bansha Graveyard where Darby Ryan was actually buried in 1855. |
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Pipers Willy and Dinny Morrisey, plus Court Usher Peter Lawlor of Aherlow and the play's audience, viewed the re-enactment of Darby Ryan's burial in view of the peak of Galtymor; after which Dinny and Willy played an appropriate pipe lament called "Beneath the Mountain" |
Margi Maxwell and Nick McCarthy, famous present-day musicians from The Glen of Aherlow, performed Nick's song, "A Celebration of Darby Ryan", based on the historical research and especially written by Nick for the play.
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Three amateur videos were made of the play, and parts of it were also transmitted live by the local radio station TIPPERARY MID-WEST RADIO. Many photographs were taken of the play's action. The above slide show was compiled by photos taken by the play's author, Jill Mabbott. When funding allows, it is hoped to compile a single edited version of the play from the videos, unless any technicians in Ireland could offer free assistance?
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