Transnational Perspectives on the Irish Foundation Myth

Abstract

IntroductionThe town of Woodstock, Illinois, is perhaps most famous for being the shooting location of Bill Murray's 1993 film, Groundhog Day. Too distant from Chicago to be called a suburb, yet too populous to be called truly rural, Woodstock is instead a picturesque example of Middle America that proved ideal for the purposes of Mr. Murray and company. In reality, it is also home to the Stage Left Cafe, a small performance space on the town square where live music and spoken word events are hosted most nights of the week.The storyteller Clare Muireann Murphy came to Stage Left Cafe for a per- formance one Saturday night in November 2009. show was donation only, and the crowd was sparse but enthusiastic. Applause erupted in bursts after each of Murphy's stories, which she drew from her repertoire of legends and folktales from the Irish tradition. Then, at one point, she paused. She informed the audience that the story she was about to tell was not a regular feature of her sets, though she was willing to give it a try on this night because it-the story-was asking persistently to be told. Thus began the Irish foundation myth, told on this cold autumn evening, in a modest venue on the edge of the Midwestern prairie in the United States (Murphy, The Coming of the Milesians).In the next fifteen minutes or so, Murphy called up a myth both ancient in origin and foreign in location. Drawing on a blend of extemporaneous and theatrical performance techniques, the story was told, rather than recited, while voices and gestures were used to heighten dramatic effect. narrative tension reached its peak as the earliest ancestors of the modern Irish people defeated the monarchy that had previously ruled the island. When the three kings fell, the heart went out of the people, Murphy announced before the silent crowd. performance was an aesthetic success. mythic landscape, both alien and familiar to the modern mind, materialized in high relief through Murphy's telling. Yet the social question arising from this moment is how a culturally specific myth remained meaningful in the context of international performance and, moreover, how it reached Woodstock, Illinois, from its apparent place of origin in Ireland. Such concerns inform this study, which attempts to provide an interpretive frame- work for traditional narratives that cross national borders through the activities of traveling storytellers.Contested meanings surround the Irish foundation myth, as it is performed by Murphy on her tours of the world. Although she asserts that the main purpose of the story is to bring audiences together, alternative readings suggest connections with Ireland's history of sectarian conflict, as well as its present economic pre- dicament. Through this dialectic of personal and social forces, Murphy's version of the myth emerges as a quietly subversive ritual intended to foster narrative communion in a transnational performance context that imbues all stories with multiple meanings. following pages briefly discuss the terms and processes associated with this argument: globalization, mediation, transnationalism, myth, and ritual. Next, a description of Murphy's storytelling work outlines her history in the profession and her artistic interests. A subsequent interpretation approaches Murphy's version of the Irish foundation myth through the lenses of politics, economics, and ritual. Concluding remarks explore the connections among these forces, as well as the resulting perspective that may be applied to traditional narratives that travel far outside their culture of origin.1Globalization and the Performance of MythDefining globalization is the object of a perennial debate (Scholte 54-59), but it is generally accepted that one of globalization's practical outcomes is concurrent experience in different locations. For example, globalization allows for the simulta- neous online viewing of an international news event, such as the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, on 14 December 2012. …