Interviewer
This interview is being recorded. Your details and any identifying details that you supply in your answers will be kept private. You can choose not to answer any of the questions or stop the interview at any pint. I will be making a transcription afterwards which you are welcome to check over. Any you happy to proceed?
Interviewee 5
Eh yeah sure
interviewer
how do you feel about peace walls in Belfast? Should they be removed, preserved, kept where they are?
interviewee 5
I think they should take them down. Mind you, I'm saying that I'm not from Belfast and have never lived in Belfast, but I think at this stage they should probably probably take them. Take them down, I would say.
interviewer
Yeah. Thinking about the area you grew up in, were there murals, painted kerbs, flags. And what did you think about from.
interviewee 5
Um, it was definitely murals, less so flags and painted kerbs, but maybe sometimes there was. How did I feel about them? The murals, were actually quite good in terms of like artistic quality. They were, they were good. I, I guess I kind of always wondered about them because the ones near where I'm from, Derry, were kind of a bit obscure.
Sometimes they can have obscure references. The flags and the painted kerbs, I just thought what well I thought it was a bit much, you know? Yeah. What's the point?
interviewer
I, I had the same thought. I was in Belfast, the start of the year, and one of the areas I drove by, they had painted trees,
interviewee 5
laughing
Painted tree? Seriously?
Interviewer
Yeah. waste of paint.
interviewee 5
It is Aye and wrecking a good tree as well. ha-ha seriously.
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, I know, anyway back to the questions.
How do you think those murals are viewed by the other side?
interviewee 5
Um, I think any mural from the other community is probably they probably think they're kind of strange and maybe some people are are intimidated by them. Maybe I don't know. Yeah, I, I'm kind of not really sure. Really.
interviewer
Yeah. I’ve found with doing this and with some of the people I’ve interviewed before one of them had admitted that they thought that the murals by the republican side were usually done better, looked better actually, just because they went out and actually went and paid someone to it properly.
interviewee 5
laughs
Well I think objectively that is true. They're they're slightly better.
interviewer
Are there any murals that stick out in your mind?
interviewee 5
Yeah, there's one in the Bogside I think it is that has a picture of it's the picture of Bernadette Devlin when she's a schoolgirl, just kind of standing and the background is kind of dark and but I just always thought that was interesting. And because I didn't know who it was to begin with. Yeah. I had to ask someone and they, they half kind of had to explain the history of it to me.
And then I looked it up myself and, um, I think that always stood out to me because she was really young when she got involved in politics and, and she was quite outspoken. So, it was kind of inspiring in a way, like for a young person at the time, just that young people mattered, you know, and have a voice, which.
interviewer
How do you feel about tourists having tours, taking photographs and selfies at these murals or even other significant locations, because obviously Derry has a big tourism interest?
interviewee 5
em it's interesting, you know, because a few years back and my in-laws came to Derry as tourists, and they wanted to do like the walls tour. And so, I went with them, and it was kind of weird for me walking around like my own city hearing the history told to other people and, and it was kind of like a it was a very balanced view of history, I think maybe,
interviewer
yeah ?
interviewee 5
it was even I it was difficult to kind of, you know, not interject and stuff. So, I don't know. I think, I think it's probably a good thing. I think the outside world is definitely interested Northern Ireland, em people want to know what happened in Northern Ireland, [redacted]. People will ask me about it all the time. So, I think it was a good thing. I think at this stage, if we're ever going to kind of deal with the past, then I think people need to know and be aware of what happened.
interviewer
Yeah.
Have you seen or you were aware of threats or warnings, written on houses or walls and if so what’s your opinion of them?
interviewee 5
And I used to see stuff like this all the time, and it came out in lesser populated areas of Derry and maybe where I was and oh, I just thought, I just think they were ridiculous, you know?
interviewer
yeah, I mean, I saw some I was in Bangor and one of the houses along the main road, it had the windows all boarded up and the target on it. And even when I went back like a couple of months later. It was still there.
Interviewee 5
Exactly there’s one up in [redacted]I think in Derry. It's been there for years, it’s some threat against some fella. And id imagine and he's probably died of natural causes by now cos it’s been there for 30 years.
Interviewer
Yeah. So, it's been 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement. Should we consider removing the murals?
interviewee 5
Um, maybe some of them. I think we should definitely keep some, like on both sides. Maybe like the more artistic ones should stay. yeah.
Interviewer
So maybe not the ones with the, like the paramilitaries and the guns?
Interviewee 5
Aye like the ones in the speaks to kind of like important moments. And history I think should stay because I definitely don't think that we should try and like, you know, erase the history for sure. But yeah, we could probably cut down on some of them, maybe build more houses.
interviewer
Um, so how do you feel about the border between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland or lack thereof of an actual border?
interviewee 5
Um, well, when I was pretty young, I don't, I can't remember when it went away, but I think maybe before I was ten. But I remember going through, like, a physical border a bunch of times in the summer when, like, we could down to Donegal and stuff. It always just seemed a bit needless. Um, although I guess maybe there was probably a little bit of a need for it, but I don't know.
It always just seemed like it wasn't even properly enforced, you know?
interviewer
And yeah, it just was something strange.
Interviewee 5
Yeah, there was, there was a, there was an army people there, but they were kind of half assed checking the cars and stuff. So, it seemed like they didn't even really want it to be there. Um, I definitely don't think there should be a border in Ireland. Just because it's a logistical nightmare for everybody. And. And there must be a way that we can do it with hardly any border presence.
Interviewer
yeah.
interviewee 5
I just don't think it makes any sense.
interviewer
That sort of bleeds into my next question, how do you feel about potentially new border due to Brexit like an Irish sea border or a stricter physical border?
interviewee 5
Yeah. I mean again, if it, if it's good somehow for the economy or it makes sense like in that way or it's really necessary, then okay. But I don't know, I just think I'm trying to put myself, pretty soon I'll be driving from Dublin up to Derry and the last thing I need is another border already have come through the [redacted] border to get here.
So, on a small country like Ireland, if I was a truck driver or something, I'd be losing my mind.
Interviewer
Oh yeah, some of it has been ridiculous with the amount of checks and forms you have to have to bring stuff over. Or bring stuff in, forms to bring something in and another form to bring things to Britain from Northern Ireland
interviewee 5
Man, that’s madness, so, we don't need that. Like there's I think there's enough kind of economic poverty in in Ireland, north and south that we don't need more barriers. We need less barriers, I think.
interviewer
Yeah. So how do you feel about government buildings flying flags should they just fly the UK stuff, or should they try to be inclusive and fly both the UK and Ireland?
Interviewee 5
Um, I don't know. I don't. I'm not a big fan of people flying flags regardless of what they are. I think as long as Northern Ireland is part of the UK, they should fly whatever flag the government thinks they should fly. I don't think there's much point in, especially, you know, from a nationalist or Republican point of view of sticking a sticking in a Tricolour on government buildings.
Like people don't really care about that. I don't think it's not going to change anything. And it just seems like it would be somehow like a kind of an empty gesture. Um, so I, I think maybe stick with the status quo or just get rid of them entirely. Yeah.
interviewer
So, do you think Gaelic should be taught in all schools as a second language?
interviewee 5
Ehh, I wouldn't say all schools. I think I think for the most part, people have been able to learn to speak Gaelic if they wanted to and like I didn't learn it at school and maybe I had an opportunity to learn it at school. But you know, I wanted to speak Spanish because like, I think. Yeah, that's sort of just better as an option and id be ……….
INTERNET DIFFICULTIES
interviewer
should schools make concentrated efforts to include more of Irish history and culture?
interviewee 5
Sorry I missed the start of that last question, Joe. Sorry the Internet went funny.
interviewer
Should schools make a concentrated effort to include more Irish history and culture?
interviewee 5
Um, yeah, I think so. Um, it's hard. I don't know what other people learned in school. I learned a lot about the Russian Revolution and the second World War and the First World War and that, um, stuff like that, I didn't learn an awful lot of Irish history, but I think I probably learned more Irish history than most people. And I think it's important to know the history of the country that you're in.
interviewer
Yeah.
interviewee 5
So yeah, You're in Ireland, more Irish history. If you’re in France then more French history.
Interviewer
Yeah. I’m in Scotland and went to school here and that was all relating to Scotland. And even when you were learning about World War Two, you were looking at how it impacted Scotland and everything.
interviewee 5
Mmhm. Yeah. It just, it helps you make sense of the place that you're living in right.
Speaker 1
So, should the troubles be taught in schools?
interviewee 2
Definitely. Yeah. I’m kind of the mind that, you know, if you, if you forget your history, you're doomed to repeat it kind of thing. So, I think people should definitely know a lot about the troubles and because as time goes on, we, we, we tend to minimize things like even my generation kind of minimizes what the Like the generation before us went through.
interviewer
Yeah.
interviewee 5
So, I think it should definitely be taught. Yeah.
interviewer
How do you feel that national teams like football playing God Save the King should they be more like Scotland, who have Flower of Scotland as their song?
interviewee 5
If it's England and England want to play their national anthem then happy days, go ahead and yeah. I don't know. Well yeah, I suppose so. Football's all about patriotism isn’t it so yeah, international football anyway. So Yeah. Well, I suppose then whatever they want to play.
Interviewer
When you were a child were you aware of things like faery rings and thin places and so on and what did you think they were.
interviewee 5
Yeah. Um, only because my mom's side of the family are kind of quite attached to that Irishness, I guess, or Celticness. So my mom used to tell me about, you know, faery trees and faery rings and, um, thin places, and I just thought it was a bit of craic really, you know, that it was kind of it was good fun and kind of mysterious and mystical, and it just made Ireland kind of, you know, if you're going into Donegall and go in some of these places, you can see how people would get into this kind of this kind of way of thinking about the world. And yeah, I liked that. I thought it was a good craic.
interviewer
How do you feel about commercial versions of these things being sold for profit, like faery doors for trees and people trying to sort of capitalize on some of the stories?
interviewee 5
Yeah, that is a bit weird, I have to say. I mean, I was always kind of introduced to the faeries as the faeries were kind of like the mafia. Like you didn't mess with the faeries. They would really do quite a lot of damage, like generational damage to people. So now when I see people like kind of thinking about faeries as, you know, cute little things and like, like…
Interviewer
Like the Disney version we have a version
interviewee 5
Yeah, I was confused. You know, like the place I got married [redacted], It's like an old stately home. So, there's a story there from like the turn of the century, last century with the fairies murdering and, like, a whole family of people and which is like, it's not very cutesy and attractive, you know, It's like, Oh, okay, things are a bit of a scary, supernatural thing.
So, I don't know. I do find it a bit weird. Like, you see it here. You know you see it in[redacted] where people put faery doors on, on the bottom of these huge, big trees and stuff. Well, it's not like that.
I was at a like kind of non-denominational church service One time when someone decided to say that they wanted to invite the faeries into the service and I was like, this is hmm, I don't know that you want to ‘invite’ them in you know, it's just, yeah, let’s just leave them alone.
interviewer
yeah, I mean isn’t there one of the faeries that will steal your baby and replace it with one of their own.
interviewee 5
Yeah. Exactly and you want to invite that in.
interviewer
yeah. And that was, I think some PhD student wrote a thesis that this was the explanation people had for children with autism It was one of these Faeries replaced your baby with one of theirs. You know the Faery Child
interviewee 5
That's so crazy man. Yeah, well, um. Yeah, it's. It's always, like, quite dark and mysterious stuff, right? And like, I remember when I was, like, reading about, like, where their idea of fairies came from in Ireland and the history of it and stuff. It's like these, these people were like an ancient civilization, and they were quite powerful and magical.
So, it seems kind of weird that they're again, it's the kind of minimization that happens over time, right? Things become more unimportant and, and like, that's a subject that has a lot of levity. You Yeah, I don't know It's, it's a bit weird when when it's kind of mass marketed and stuff like that.
interviewer
I still I still find that strange when you actually still see faery rings or faery trees and like the middle of a field.
interviewee 5
Yeah, it is weird. Like, um, but I it's funny how it comes up as well because, like, like I say, when I decided to get married at that place, it was unbelievable how many people that I knew, like uncles and aunts and cousins and brothers and sisters and stuff who came up to me. like, are you are you sure you want to get married there because you do know the story about the faeries?
And I'm like, you have never mentioned faeries to me in your life ever before. And now all of a sudden, it’s oooh the faeries, you know? So, it's still there.
Interviewer
It’s something that people still obviously believe in a bit even today.
Well. That’s pretty much all the questions I had for you so thanks very much for taking the time [ redacted]
interviewee 5
Yeah, no problem