e-mail: Angelique Chrisafis @ Lisselton
Heading through fields towards the blinding white light of the Atlantic coast of north County Kerry, there is a crossroads at Lisselton.
Just after breakfast Tomaísín's pub was heaving. Outside, a riot was brewing as a group of bedraggled men between 21 and 61 were herded with sticks on to a cattle trailer. The men - in bad wigs, badly fitting jackets and the occasional cowboy hat - stamped their wellington boots until the trailer swayed in the wind. Begging for mercy, they pushed their outstreched hands through the small slits in the side of their prison.
Then the tractor started up, towing them down the country road to the coast, where they would be forced to play darts with a bucket over their head. Later they would compete at knitting, nappy-changing, wheelie-bin parking, stacking turf, telling lies and the favourite of agricultural shows: wellington boot-throwing. A champion squeeze-box player would start up, with his sister on violin.
Ireland's national culchie festival is a rural charm contest trying to soothe the nagging worry that post-Celtic Tiger Ireland has lost its soul. The word culchie has become an insult and stereotype according to Paddy Rock, a County Galway farmer, and this is one way to reclaim it.
The term, which came from the remote townland Coillte Mach in County Mayo, has come to mean a rural Irish person, anyone from outside Dublin. But it has morphed, say the culchies, into an insult, shorthand for thick "muck savage", or "bogman" - the opposite to the sly city boys of Dublin they call "Jackeens". There is some bad feeling at the festival that the word culchie has found its way into the Oxford English dictionary defined as "country bumpkin."
The city-country divide in Ireland is growing and the landscape is changing. Across the fields and hills, old stone cottages are crumbling into mossy graves while canary-yellow and pastel-pink Southfork-style houses spring up, with vast front lawns and inventive stone cladding.
Ireland is one of the most centralised countries in Europe, with more than one third of its 4 million population living in Dublin. A small farmer in the west of Ireland might not have noticed the Celtic Tiger boom as they take on part-time jobs to keep afloat.
Dressed in an orange boiler suit, with "culchie interrogation agent" stamped on the back, Paddy Rock said he launched the festival to send up stereotypes, mock the genteel Rose of Tralee contest for good Irish ladies and celebrate culchiedom before it dies out: the affectionate country characters who greet everyone, entertain strangers and feel a passionate connection to the land.
John B Keane, the Kerry writer whose play inspired the film The Field, defined a culchie as anyone who could walk confidently across a freshly pastured field and not put his foot in a cowpat.
Enjoying a cigarette outside the pub in the rain, Mike Troy, a juke-box engineer from County Waterford, was writing a poem defining the culchie. A culchie, he said, instantly understands the music of John Denver which "doesn't mean a wit" to a Jackeen. The culchie knows the intricate workings of Brussels politics and the agricultural subsidy debate. The Jackeen can't see the point. The culchie understands the work of Patrick Kavanagh, the great rural poet from county Monaghan whose centenary is being celebrated throughout Ireland this month. The Jackeen is still trying to figure out what Kavanagh was on about - which might explain the raucous pastiches abounding on radio phone-in shows in Dublin last week.
The culchie king who wins the contest will wake up this morning with a new anorak, perhaps a sack of potatoes and maybe a new pair of wellies. Any prize money would ruin the concept. You would get amateur actors in pretending to be culchies, and that, according to the locals, would be very wrong.
Just after breakfast Tomaísín's pub was heaving. Outside, a riot was brewing as a group of bedraggled men between 21 and 61 were herded with sticks on to a cattle trailer. The men - in bad wigs, badly fitting jackets and the occasional cowboy hat - stamped their wellington boots until the trailer swayed in the wind. Begging for mercy, they pushed their outstreched hands through the small slits in the side of their prison.
Then the tractor started up, towing them down the country road to the coast, where they would be forced to play darts with a bucket over their head. Later they would compete at knitting, nappy-changing, wheelie-bin parking, stacking turf, telling lies and the favourite of agricultural shows: wellington boot-throwing. A champion squeeze-box player would start up, with his sister on violin.
Ireland's national culchie festival is a rural charm contest trying to soothe the nagging worry that post-Celtic Tiger Ireland has lost its soul. The word culchie has become an insult and stereotype according to Paddy Rock, a County Galway farmer, and this is one way to reclaim it.
The term, which came from the remote townland Coillte Mach in County Mayo, has come to mean a rural Irish person, anyone from outside Dublin. But it has morphed, say the culchies, into an insult, shorthand for thick "muck savage", or "bogman" - the opposite to the sly city boys of Dublin they call "Jackeens". There is some bad feeling at the festival that the word culchie has found its way into the Oxford English dictionary defined as "country bumpkin."
The city-country divide in Ireland is growing and the landscape is changing. Across the fields and hills, old stone cottages are crumbling into mossy graves while canary-yellow and pastel-pink Southfork-style houses spring up, with vast front lawns and inventive stone cladding.
Ireland is one of the most centralised countries in Europe, with more than one third of its 4 million population living in Dublin. A small farmer in the west of Ireland might not have noticed the Celtic Tiger boom as they take on part-time jobs to keep afloat.
Dressed in an orange boiler suit, with "culchie interrogation agent" stamped on the back, Paddy Rock said he launched the festival to send up stereotypes, mock the genteel Rose of Tralee contest for good Irish ladies and celebrate culchiedom before it dies out: the affectionate country characters who greet everyone, entertain strangers and feel a passionate connection to the land.
John B Keane, the Kerry writer whose play inspired the film The Field, defined a culchie as anyone who could walk confidently across a freshly pastured field and not put his foot in a cowpat.
Enjoying a cigarette outside the pub in the rain, Mike Troy, a juke-box engineer from County Waterford, was writing a poem defining the culchie. A culchie, he said, instantly understands the music of John Denver which "doesn't mean a wit" to a Jackeen. The culchie knows the intricate workings of Brussels politics and the agricultural subsidy debate. The Jackeen can't see the point. The culchie understands the work of Patrick Kavanagh, the great rural poet from county Monaghan whose centenary is being celebrated throughout Ireland this month. The Jackeen is still trying to figure out what Kavanagh was on about - which might explain the raucous pastiches abounding on radio phone-in shows in Dublin last week.
The culchie king who wins the contest will wake up this morning with a new anorak, perhaps a sack of potatoes and maybe a new pair of wellies. Any prize money would ruin the concept. You would get amateur actors in pretending to be culchies, and that, according to the locals, would be very wrong.
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