"Some say the divil is dead..."
In one of those unexplainable coincidences that life sometimes dishes out, just after returning from Ireland I picked up a library hold, Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath.
One of the ditties I'd learned over there -- humorous but bitter -- gave alternate theories of the present location of the devil (Irish pronunciation: divil). The Wolfe Tones sing thus:
"Some say the devil is dead, (repeat twice more), and buried in Killarney.
More say he rose again (repeat twice more), and joined the British Army."
Humour is sharp, I thought, singing along and laughing with my Irish hosts. I'd sung lots of similarly themed Irish songs in my young folksinging days.
From Gladwell's book, I learned in detail about the Troubles in the North of Ireland, which I had only the sketchiest knowledge about before. The violence lasted from the summer of 1969 until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Gladwell uses interviews with people who were there to describe how this conflict began, and explains how it escalated in direct proportion to the extreme repression that was applied. The contemporary theory promulgated was that social movements could be quelled by force. It was thought that people would behave rationally in their own interest to avoid conflict when its costs were so obviously high.
Not so, says Gladwell. More important than force in the application of law and order is the perception of the legitimacy of those in authority. The more force the British Army applied in trying to suppress the rioting in Belfast during the Troubles, the more legitimacy they lost in the eyes of those they tried to control, and in a descending spiral into near-chaos, the more force they applied.
The heavy handed attempts to suppress a summer's rioting in West Belfast led to thirty years of violent social conflict entailing an annual death toll that reached 479 in 1972 (Council on Foreign Relations).
Listening to Gladwell explain his ideas, I suddenly wondered: was the devil's signing up for the British Army incorporated into the song during the Troubles? That would make a lot of sense.
One of the ditties I'd learned over there -- humorous but bitter -- gave alternate theories of the present location of the devil (Irish pronunciation: divil). The Wolfe Tones sing thus:
"Some say the devil is dead, (repeat twice more), and buried in Killarney.
More say he rose again (repeat twice more), and joined the British Army."
Humour is sharp, I thought, singing along and laughing with my Irish hosts. I'd sung lots of similarly themed Irish songs in my young folksinging days.
From Gladwell's book, I learned in detail about the Troubles in the North of Ireland, which I had only the sketchiest knowledge about before. The violence lasted from the summer of 1969 until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Gladwell uses interviews with people who were there to describe how this conflict began, and explains how it escalated in direct proportion to the extreme repression that was applied. The contemporary theory promulgated was that social movements could be quelled by force. It was thought that people would behave rationally in their own interest to avoid conflict when its costs were so obviously high.
Not so, says Gladwell. More important than force in the application of law and order is the perception of the legitimacy of those in authority. The more force the British Army applied in trying to suppress the rioting in Belfast during the Troubles, the more legitimacy they lost in the eyes of those they tried to control, and in a descending spiral into near-chaos, the more force they applied.
The heavy handed attempts to suppress a summer's rioting in West Belfast led to thirty years of violent social conflict entailing an annual death toll that reached 479 in 1972 (Council on Foreign Relations).
Listening to Gladwell explain his ideas, I suddenly wondered: was the devil's signing up for the British Army incorporated into the song during the Troubles? That would make a lot of sense.