"In Ballymenone, at home, in place, they move among meanings, using details of the landscape to locate themselves in time. That grassy bump, the site of a kiln, rouses memories of wet clay slapped into a wooden mold, of the sound of a fiddle on the night air. Then past and present lock into contrastive relation- today there is no work so festive, no labor so cruel- and memories become general, cultural, when they register in an account that balances loss against gain. Deftly meshing knowledge of the place where they live with knowledge of the work they must do, people come to understanding. They understand the drift of history, the surge and seethe of time- the ebb of sociability and the flow of ease- and aware of their course, protected from the delusions of nostalgia or progress, they are thrust into life, knowing, as Hugh Nolan put it, that the two things happen at the one time:
"Things get better.
"and they get worse.""
-from The Stars of Ballymenone by Henry Glassie
No comments:
Post a Comment