The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions

The part flute bands are for connoisseurs; the ‘blood and thunder’ or ‘kick-the-pope’ bands are populist. Dominic Bryan, an academic who with Neil Jarman has done much to explain what parades are all about, exactly expresses my own mixed feelings about them.

Blood-and-thunder bands can be threatening to an outsider like myself and it is easy to appreciate why so many in the Catholic community treat them with a mixture of fear and loathing. On the other hand they are also the most entertaining part of the Twelfth in Belfast. They help create a sense of carnival which is in some contrast to the officials at the front of the parade and the religious service given at the field.

He remarks about the uniforms: ‘On the one hand you have plenty of sombre dark respectable suits whilst some of the bands are in bright orange, blue and purple uniforms. And there is invariably a group of young girls dressed in the latest fashion (or the latest Rangers shirt) walking alongside their band: the Twelfth is also about teenage sexuality.’

While most bands include women of all ages, teenage sexuality is most evident among the fife-and-drum groupies or the mini-skirted standard-bearers who march in front of the most villainous-looking bands. These bands have vastly increased in number over the last thirty years as a reaction to the Troubles. Many Orangemen who hate the militarism of these bands argue that they are a vital safety-valve for young people who might otherwise become involved in paramilitary violence and that their contact with the Orange Order is crucial. ‘I was not long a member of a flute band when one of our drummers was murdered by the IRA,’ one now senior Orangeman told me. ‘Some of us kids were full of rage. It was only the influence of older Orangemen in our lodge that stopped us getting guns; some of us would have gone out to get revenge.’

The flute bands also have the merit of being cheap. It is extremely expensive to support, for instance, a silver or a pipe band: £2,000 is nothing for a trombone. And for those lodges which hire bands, the choice can be between paying £500 for a silver band or £100 for the fife-and-drum equivalent.

The famous Lambeg drums never appear in Belfast now, but drumming matches are still popular in rural areas. The Lambeg’s origins are disputed, but it is agreed that it is the ultimate tribal symbol in Ulster. It is no accident that Lambeg drumming is strongest in Armagh, where republicanism is at its most entrenched and dangerous. The staccato beat can be heard for miles, even in bandit country.

Food

There are, in my experience, two expressions so miserable as to strike pity into the hardest heart. One is that of an Indian shopkeeper who fails to make a sale; the other, of an Ulster Protestant who has discovered his dinner will be late.

Rural Protestants in particular are people with few vices; fidelity and temperance are the norm. But they do love food. I kept track one day of the eating activities of a group of Orangemen. I had arrived in Belfast at eight o’clock and was taken to a friend’s house. The woman of the house, her daughter and daughter-in-law were preparing for the arrival at ten o’clock of three or four guests, who were being lavishly catered for despite the fact that there was no doubt that they would have had an Ulster fry two hours previously.

By the time the dignitary – the local county Grand Master – and the others arrived, the table was covered with five different kinds of sandwiches, sausages and home-made sausage rolls, home-made cakes and pies. There was orange squash, there was tea and there was coffee. And throughout the meal, as throughout so many of the meals I’ve had in Ulster, people looked at me in a worried fashion because to them my appetite seemed so small as to run the risk of my expiring at their very table from malnutrition.

Having eaten solidly, the men drove off to join their lodges and parade from their halls to the gathering point at which the main parade would begin. Those who had not had a spread like ours had the opportunity to have sandwiches or burgers before they started walking.

When the parade was over, at around two o’clock, most participants fell on the food tents in the demonstration field where ladies were raising money for various churches by selling sandwiches, cakes and tea. This kept the Orangemen going until at around six they went to their own lodge for a tea of meat and vegetables and piles of potatoes washed down with orange squash, followed by something very sweet and then by coffee and biscuits.

At lunchtime the VIPs – officers and distinguished guests – would have had a dinner in the nearest Orange hall consisting of ham and chicken and lettuce and potato salad and coleslaw and tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs and salad cream and lots of bread and plenty of something sweet to follow. My abiding memory of such dinners and teas is of ladies rushing around anxiously with food or enormous kettles, terrified lest any of their charges might be suffering from hunger or thirst for even a moment.

After all that, the non-teetotal lodges might have a nip or two of whiskey or some beer, while the drinkers in teetotal lodges might head off for a few drinks in the local pub. The serious drinkers would stay there to get plastered and the majority would go home to tea and sandwiches or biscuits before bedtime.

The Orange tooth is so sweet as to conjure up memories of one’s own childhood. I sat with a radical, intellectually aggressive, zealously evangelical minister and watched him struggle with his conscience over the issue of a second piece of apple pie, for his wife had put him on a diet. Sitting with an Orangeman who has more gravitas than almost anyone I’ve ever met, I loved seeing his hand sneaking out almost guiltily to take a chocolate biscuit.

I have a very happy memory of a visit to London by a group of Orangemen over to talk to politicians and the press about parades. Brian Kennaway, Bobby Saulters and I went for a stroll by the Thames and the Grand Master spotted an ice-cream van. As I sat beside them on a bench in the sunshine, licking an ice-cream cornet and watching the delight my companions took in that small indulgence, I remembered what one of the few defenders of Northern Ireland Orangemen had said to me over and over again: ‘They want so little. So very, very little.’

Souvenirs

In the field where a big march congregates there will be some souvenir stalls with loyal flags and red-white-and-blue hats and batons and so on, as well as tapes and T-shirts and other paraphernalia. My collection includes tea-towels – William crossing the Boyne, ‘Ulster Says No’ and a representation of the Union Jack – an apron with a crown over a Red Hand, and Drumcree-related keyrings.

At a big gathering there will be a stall or two selling various accoutrements supporting loyalist paramilitaries. In 1997 the nastiest was a T-shirt inscribed: ‘YABBA DABBA DOO ANY FENIAN WILL DO’, inspired by the LVF, whose victims had included a Catholic taxi driver who had just graduated in English Literature from Queens and an eighteen-year-old girl shot in the head as she lay in bed beside her Protestant boyfriend.

For republican kitsch, the place to go is the Sinn Féin shop on the Falls Road, where I have bought keyrings featuring Patrick Pearse, and one with the IRA slogan ‘Tiochaidh ár lá’ (‘Our day will come’) on one side and a balaclavaed chap with an Armalite on the other, as well as a tea-towel featuring the Irish flag and another with pictures of the signatories of the 1916 proclamation of the Irish Republic. I drew the line at a statue of Gerry Adams.

My favourite is the mad bigots’ stall at Scarva, manned by courteous evangelists who with the help of wares like The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, The Convent Horror, Escape from a Catholic Convent, Horrible Lives of the Popes and The Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse take one on a journey back in time.

Going home

Perhaps the best moment for me [wrote Alister Minnis, a teacher who comes home from Scotland every year for the Twelfth], is to stand watching the parade reassemble. The colour is overwhelming, the sights and sounds heady enough to sustain me until next year (or at least until Scarva). Of course, somebody who likes the sound of his own voice and has the public speaking appeal of Douglas Hogg is on the platform delaying the proceedings, but that only gives me all the more time to remember exactly who and what I am. And then the evening. To have the fellowship of our meal, to listen to the story-tellers, the singers. And later, to sit with a cool beer with my friends and family and to talk about ‘days of yore’ or ‘What will become of us?’

Drink does for some participants before they ever make it home.

One supreme recollection [wrote Rowel Friers] is of a country lodge returning from another townland where the celebrations had been hosted. When they started out they were led by His Majesty King William on a dapple-grey. William, pointing his sword defiantly heavenward, led his men to battle with an assurance worthy of d’Artagnan. Though hardly historically accurate in every detail, his uniform was acceptable to all but purists. Perhaps one could admit to a certain amount of antipathy towards his work-a-day wellies without doubt a jarring note. Nevertheless, despite any flaw in his royal raiment, his mind was fixed in the period. Proudly he led his men to glory, and if ever a leader was born, this was he.

The return journey was one of obvious triumph. Flushed from a successful day at the Field, with fresh air, good fellowship and brews, they marched homeward with chins, where possible, held high. Some had their jackets hung nonchalantly over one shoulder. Here and there a tie hung crookedly from an open shirt collar, and an odd sash had changed position – no longer de rigueur. The battle had yet again been won and William’s conquering heroes were returning. A kaleidoscope of colour – the brilliant uniforms of the bands and the glory of silken banners dancing in zigzag rhythm to the rousing music – added firmness of purpose to the multitude of boots marching muddied from the damp field. In the midst of his warriors, William sat astride his trusty, but now bored, steed. He had dropped back from the lead he held on the outward journey and was showing obvious symptoms of bottle fatigue. His hat sat at a rakish angle on a wig, now worn peek-a-boo style, and with sword pointing earthwards Billy drooped forward, nose almost buried in the horse’s mane. A loyal brother on either side of the mount kept steadying hands on His Majesty, thus ensuring that he remained, if not upright, at least mounted. The Prince of Orange had revelled in the bottle, but now neither the papist James nor anything else troubled his happy mind. His Majesty’s immortal memory had deserted him, and 1690 to him could just as well have been a phone number.

The historian David Hume is attached to a more sober lodge: ‘And then, after the Field and the return parade, they will march back along that country road, wearier this time around, and the band will play a hymn and the National Anthem after they have all lined up outside the hall. And someone will look around at someone else and as sure as anything, say, “Well, that’s the Twelfth over for another year.” ‘

‘How did you get over the Twelfth?’ is what his sister asks a Belfast friend of mine every year. As Catholic children in largely loyalist East Belfast, in the 1950s and ‘60s they spent every Twelfth in a house with the blinds down, listening to aggressive drumming sounds and fearful of violence when loyalists got drunk. ‘I’ve no difficulty believing that most Orangemen are OK,’ observed the apolitical and non-sectarian Eamonn. ‘But when you’re being beaten up, it’s hard to care whether it’s by Orangemen, bandsmen or just thuggish hangers-on. It hurts just as much.’

It was around that time that the public servant Maurice Hayes, though Catholic a fan of the Twelfth,

began to sense from Catholics in other areas that they saw the marching as a threat, a means of putting them in their place, of letting them know who was boss and that they were in a minority in a society ruled by Protestants and they had better know it and behave themselves. There was annoyance too at the sheer number of marches which kept people in houses, blocked roads, business interfered with, and the further aggravation of party tunes and some ‘kick-the-pope’ bands which insisted on playing more loudly when passing churches or chapels and the menacing beat of the Lambeg drums.

I wondered to myself why people wanted to march at all, and why others who were annoyed could not just pull down the blinds and refuse to be annoyed?

Hayes’s hope for the future is that of all sane people in Northern Ireland: that Orangemen will make more effort to explain themselves to their neighbours and that Catholics will try to understand that Orangeism is a celebration of civil and religious liberty. ‘We should be able to hold on to and to encourage the exercise of a tradition which is not only important to many people, and therefore to the rest of us, but which could add to the colour and meaning of life for all.’

It will be necessary, too, for both sides to deal with the thugs that do awful things in their name.

With the exception of William Bingham, George Chittick and Worshipful Master Charlton, whom I interviewed, and Neil Jarman, Elaine McClure and John Moulden, who appeared on a radio programme, the quotes from everyone else named in this chapter come from their contributions to The Twelfth: What It Means to Me (ed. Gordon Lucy and Elaine McClure).

(#ulink_624f55af-5ce2-525a-9567-c5f4da204861) Giving children pretend collarettes or lending them proper ones is common. Although Orangemen take their regalia seriously, they do not give it mystical status. I was watching a parade one day when I was summoned into it by Chris McGimpsey, who removed his bowler, placed it on my head and said: ‘That’s a thank you for taking the trouble to find out about us.’ I wore it slightly uneasily, afraid of giving offence, but when I consulted the Worshipful Master of my unofficial lodge he explained that no one would mind. Further, he told me that if I wanted a collarette as a souvenir, he would provide me with one. He duly sent one to me along with a miniature of Bushmills to toast it with.

4 (#ulink_a8b58305-bb1b-5940-b309-e168eee004f1)

The Family Abroad (#ulink_a8b58305-bb1b-5940-b309-e168eee004f1)

A loyal band of Orangemen from Ulster’s lovely land,

They could not march upon the Twelfth – processions were all banned,

So they flew off to the Middle East this dreadful law to dodge

And they founded in Jerusalem the Arab Orange Lodge.

Big Ali Bey who charmed the snakes he was the first recruit

John James McKeag from Portglenone taught him to play the flute

And as the oul’ Pied Piper was once followed by the rats

There followed Ali from the lodge ten snakes in bowler hats.

They made a martial picture as they marched along the shore

It stirred the blood when Ali played “The Fez my Father Wore’.

And Yussef Ben Mohammad hit the ‘Lambeg’ such a bash

He scared the living daylights from a camel in a sash.

Now the movement spread both far and wide – there were lodges by the score