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Catholic goatskins on Protestant drums

Oh, the shame of it! On the Glorious Twelfth too. Innocent, God-fearing Orangemen marching to the beat of Lambeg drums made with the skins of goats bred by Catholic farmers.

What is the world coming to?

And they say the Queen will soon visit demon Dublin, on a state visit no less. Och, it's more than anyone can bear. The disgrace! They must be laughing in the Vatican tonight!!

After expressing the pious hope that this website would never have to deal with the topic of goats again, here they come skipping in once more. How so? Not hard to answer.

You have heard of the cats of Kilkenny-they fought each other until only their tails were left. Now it's the goats of Kilkenny. Valuable kid goats. Goats worth hundreds of euros apiece. Stolen.

Their owner, Hugh Daniels, who runs a dairy enterprise near Piltown, on the Kilkenny-Waterford border, discovered eight of his pedigree goats had been stolen in early June, and reported their loss to the local Gardai. (For some reason, goats, Gardai, and in England, police, have figured in every story on the ruminants featured within the past year).

Mr. Daniels, a registered goat farmer, supplies milk to several cheese makers, and has said it would it would be nearly impossible to find high quality stock to replace the goats that were stolen.

Similar thefts have occurred in Wexford and Cork in recent months.

Now to the Lambeg drums, and here there is no connection with the stolen goats of Kilkenny. Kid skins are much, much too small to make big drums. It is just that annually in the month of July, Orangemen, both in the Wee Six and the Twenty-Six counties of Ireland, march in processions to the beating of drums.

Canadian Michael Ignatieff in his book, "Blood & Belonging" (Penguin Books Canada) published in 1993, at pages 173-177 treats with the significance of the Lambeg Drum to the Orange fraternity, and describes how they are made. The following is to be found at page 175:

"…….takes me out for a drive in his red Renault 4 van, which he calls the goat wagon because he uses it to scour the countryside in search of goats big enough to give him a 37-inch drum skin. He gets some of his goats from Catholic fellows around but he always makes sure to call ahead…That way his goat wagon won't be held up by the 'bandits'."

Bandits in Armagh. Rustlers in Kilkenny.

The goats didn't ask for this.

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