Dergvale Hotel - interesting read

Interesting article by Sean Moran in today's Irish Times - read it all here

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If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's a very apt extract in the context of a lot of recent threads. It's certainly food for thought.

There was a poignant contrast between last week’s event and the book launch of 2006.

Four years ago the commemoration of Cusack involved much reference to the then zeitgeist of prosperity and soaring material wellbeing against which backdrop the passionate and largely unremunerated energies of the GAA founder appeared out of time and almost in need of explanation.

By last Thursday the IMF were in town, emphasising the precipitous fall from the hubristic heights of four years ago when our notional wealth and self-satisfaction convinced us that we’d reinvented economics, permitting us to bask in the admiring attentions of other countries, who now riffle their wallets to see what alms they can spare.

It has also created a far closer parallel with Cusack’s time. In the closing decades of the 19th century, Ireland’s morale was at a low ebb. The GAA became one of the great cultural revivalist organisations founded in that era, such as the Abbey Theatre and Conradh na Gaeilge, and the one that has thrived most since.

Improving that national morale and advocating economic revival were key themes for Cusack.

Incidentally, the aforementioned Dergvale Hotel was also the birthplace of JCs drinking career. The brother and a couple of the lads chanced upon it one night and we soon became regulars - at 16. No-one ever asked for ID and they sold mints in the toilets! (From a vending machine of course!) It wasn't in the best spot in town but we never had any hassle going, coming or in it. It will always be remembered in a haze and with fondness by JC.

Marginal....l..