Magdalene Laundries: Bizarre Opening

It is a bit late in the day to catch up with the film 'Magdalene Laundries', but as it has just been broadcast on Channel 4 on 30 November it has been my first sighting of it. It is a powerful film which portrays the sheer awfulness of treatment issued to 'errant' women in Catholic Ireland in the 1960's - although such treatment isn't confined to Ireland, or to Catholics, nor to the (not so distant) past. Young women and girls who had illegitimate children, or who were thought to be morally at risk were sent to institutions run by nuns - portrayed in the film as cruel and sadistic, but who were probably in reality as much victims of a harsh moral climate as the inmates themselves.

The film began badly; there is a wedding scene with Irish music playing but a sinister note is introduced by a priest singing the song 'The Well Below the Valley' which tells of a girl who has had illegitimate children and will have to pay penance in purgatory for her sins. The scenes then show a girl being raped by her cousin while the wedding celebrations merrily continue.

BUT - and this reveals huge difficulties. The song 'The Well Below the Valley' had a reputation as an unlucky song as the full version describes incest and infanticide; by the 1960's hardly anybody in Ireland sang it except a few among the travelling community. No priest would have sung it. It would never, ever, have been sung at a wedding. ( I shall pass over the sheer anachronism of the highly decorated bodhran the priest is seen to be playing.)

The song was popularised in the 1970's by the Irish folk band Planxty who had learned it from the recording of an Irish Traveller, John Reilly, who had died from malnutrition in 1969. But its theme ensured that it is still seen as a 'difficult' song and other recordings of the song are still relatively rare.

Above all it isn't a song for a social occasion and it is this inability to understand cultural contexts that grates so much that for me it undermines the truth of the rest of the film.

Denvir's Penny Irish Library

If you perform a Google search for "John Denvir", you will likely be asked whether you really meant to search for John Denver. In the 19th Century John Denvir (1834-1916) was a noted Liverpool Irishman and a strong supporter of the republican cause. Although born in Ireland while his father was working there, Denvir belonged to an Irish community that was well established in Liverpool before the 1840's. As a young boy in Liverpool he witnessed the terrible scenes of distress among migrants escaping the Famine, scenes which powerfully influenced his political development as an Irish nationalist. His autobiography, 'The Life Story of an Old Rebel', was first published in 1910, and it is now available to read online at Project Gutenburg.

It is well worth reading for the story it gives of how the Irish in Britain developed a heightened political consciousness which was almost entirely based on Irish events, rather than on their own experiences in their 'home' community. Denvir himself contributed significantly to this expression of a distinct Irish cultural and political identity by publishing a series of penny booklets in the 1870's in his 'Irish Library'. These were sold by the thousands at the time but are extremely rare today. I've had to look in the British Library catalogue to find a list of his titles and I've shown them below to indicate how 'Irishness' was being expressed at the time.


Denvir's Penny Library, later issued as Denvir's Penny illustrated Irish Library
Published in Liverpool in two volumes in a monthly series, 1873-1874

No. 1 Ireland: her monks at home & abroad. Richard J. O'Neill
No. 2 Catechism of Irish history. John Francis MacArdle
No. 3 The Book of Irish Poetry. John Denvir
No. 4 The Second Book of Irish Poetry. John Denvir
No. 5 The Third Book of Irish Poetry. John Denvir
No. 6 Biography of Marshal MacMahon, Duke of Magenta. W.J. Ashton
No. 7 The red hand of Ulster; or, The captive chief of Tyrconnell. John Denvir
No. 8 The life of Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan. John Hand
No. 9 The life of O'Connell.
No. 10 How Ned Joyce went to his own funeral.
No. 11 The Life of Robert Emmet. John Hand
No.12 A wreath of Irish song and story

Vol. 2 No. 13 What is home rule? Hugh Heinrick
Vol. 2 No. 14 The camp fires of the legion in the late Franco-Prussian war. J. Lysaght Finigan
Vol. 2 No. 15 Hugh O'Neill, the great Ulster chieftain. Slieve Donard
Vol. 2 No. 16 Rosaleen Dhu; or, The twelve pins of bin-a-bola: an Irish drama in three acts. John Denvir
Vol. 2 No. 17 The story of '98. Ross E. Trevor
Vol. 2 No. 18 Home rule ballads. John Denvir
Vol. 2 No. 19 Irish street ballads. John Hand
Vol. 2 No. 20 The Irish in England. Hugh Heinrick
Vol. 2 No. 21 The Irish in the United States of America. John Denvir
Vol. 2 No. 22 Brian Boru and the Danish invasion. Daniel Crilly
Vol. 2 No. 23 "God save Ireland!" or, The rescue of Kelly & Deasey. Slieve Donard
Vol.2 No. 24 Our Irish Christmas garland

"Slieve Donard" was the pen name used by John Denvir