COMMENT: The return of the summer festivals

To judge by reports from around the country, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, summer festivals seem to be making a comeback. Maybe not quite the heady days of the 1980s, when every town, village and crossroads worth its salt could boast of its own summer festival, but enough to suggest that a major comeback is on the cards.

Back in the day, the summer festival was the mid-year equivalent of the Christmas dinner-dance season, and it would be hard to travel a ten-mile journey of Mayo road without encountering the bunting, the signage and – most frequently – the marquee, the signal that summer frolics were in full swing in the locality.

There was a festival in Turlough and another in Ballyvary; a harvest festival in Ballintubber and another in Belcarra. A Round Tower festival in Aughagower, high jinks in Geesala and Ballycroy, and mid-summer merry making in Tourmakeady and Kilmaine, in Islandeady and Lahardane, in Balla and Breaffy and on the shores of Beltra lake. In Louisburgh and Foxford and Killala and Midfield, Crossmolina and Derreens, there was laughter and fun for all and sundry.

Some festivals were specialist – sea angling or walking or drama or songwriting. Many were short lived, with enthusiasm wearing thin within a year or two. Others were built on more solid ground – the Ballina Moy festival, Coillte Come Home in Kiltimagh, the Claremorris Ham festival, the Gráinne Uaile in Newport, the Cailín Deas in Westport, the ambitious International Rose festival in Charlestown.

Festivals seemed to be planned to a common recipe, with each in turn seeking to add something distinctive enough not to be replicated by the rival down the road. The obligatory ingredients included a singing pub event, a fancy dress, a sports day, and the crowning of a festival queen, complete with regal tiara.

But central to every festival was the late-night drinking exemption for the local pubs, a feature that explained why so many festivals were sponsored by drink suppliers, breweries and distillers.

It was, in the end, the prevalence of applications for licensing-hours extensions that spelled the end of many festivals.

District justices were initially lenient with exemption applications, taking the view that if a festival were being run for the benefit of a local community group – as was mainly the case – then allowing some late-night drinking was tolerable enough.

But when the trend emerged of pub-backed festivals – with wafer-thin programmes of real events – seeking exemptions, the legal system called a halt. When an application at Ballinrobe court was moved by a publican rather than by a member of the organising committee, and the publican, under cross examination, admitted knowing nothing about the festival events, the judge decided it was time, as he put it, to draw the line.

Meanwhile, festivals were beginning to incur the disapproval of the statutory tourism bodies. The chairperson of Ireland West, Mary Bennett, condemned those festivals which, she said, were being organised as an excuse for a booze-up. ‘Beer festivals’, she said, were being held mainly to provide an excuse for an extension of the licensing laws.

It was a pincer movement. The courts and the Garda authorities began to demand greater authenticity that a festival was the special event it purported to be. And the tourism bodies reaffirmed the call that festivals should offer visitors something more genuine by way of native culture than tug-o-war or pub quizzes. Meanwhile, the volunteers who planned and organised and ran local festivals grew tired of seeing the benefits being creamed off by vested interests who contributed little to the overall effort.

The age of the festival had come to an end.