An Irish Diary

Just Another Manic Tuesday – Frank McNally on a day of mixed Emos

The Irish origins of “Emo” are mysterious

Frank McNally's face
Frank McNally
Wed May 25 2022 - 19:46

Near where I live in Dublin, there is an “Emo Filling Station”, named for the Laois-based oil distribution company which is in turn named after a local village.

The Irish origins of “Emo” are mysterious. By some accounts it derives from a Saint Dioma. By others, it refers to a saint’s “bed”. A third theory is that it means “place of contention”.

Whatever it means, I was reminded of it on Tuesday when my neighbourhood was taken over by another kind of Emo, the sub-cultural one involving certain teenage or twenty-something music fans.

These Emos are associated with extreme emotions – hence the name – including hypersensitivity, angst, and a general feeling of being socially oppressed. They reflect their alienation by dressing in black, with gothic accessories, often involving skeletons.

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In this case, they were gathering for a concert at my next-door neighbour, the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, headlined by one of their favourite groups, My Chemical Romance.

The more enthusiastic fans camped out for 36 hours before the gates opened. And as usual – since living in a cul-de-sac next to a music festival is a bit like being beside a reform school and owning an orchard – we had to be barricaded in to prevent invasion, especially by those hoping to escape admission charges.

Also as usual, a few did make it through the cordon. As I left the house on Tuesday afternoon, I had to run the gauntlet of several who were engaged in the time-honoured music festival practice of pre-loading themselves with drink.

Even if they hadn’t been wearing black, this would have looked a bit sad. Our road, I reflected ruefully, had become another Emo Filling Station.

***

By poignant coincidence, I was on the way to an event involving a different but also oppressed sub-culture associated with emotional disorder: the people of my native South Ulster border region.

The occasion was the launch of a new novel by fellow Carrickmacross man Ardal O’Hanlon. His book – a darkly-comic murder mystery – is set in a town that bears many superficial resemblances to Carrick and to a once-famous dancehall a few miles outside it.

Of the fact that nobody admits to having seen the tragic central character at the dancehall on the night in question, for example, the book comments:

“That didn’t mean she hadn’t been there. Dark corners abounded on the premises, and the people of the area were cagey and unforthcoming by nature, and by dint of history, recent and less recent . . . ”

I was slightly disturbed, early in the novel, to see that it features a character called “Francie McNally”, one of several local variations on my own name.

Throughout life, I have been at various times “Francis” (on my birth certificate and when we had visitors and my mother was trying to sound posh), “Frankie” (to friends and family); “Francie” (at school); and “Frank” (in Dublin).

None were particularly objectionable. But perhaps due to the influence of another famous South Ulster border novel, by Pat McCabe, “Francie” has since taken on slightly sinister overtones.

That’s why I was relieved to see that the Francie McNally of O’Hanlon’s novel turns out to be a minor, background character. Yes, he does inadvertently help crack the case. Apart from that, let me state for the record – minor plot spoiler alert – he wasn’t there and knows nothing.

***

Later again on Tuesday, I attended the Oireachtas Table Quiz, an annual exercise in masochism that was returning after a pandemic long enough for me to have forgotten how hard the last quiz was.

As I now recalled, the event attracts the greatest collection of political anoraks ever assembled outside Bertie Ahern’s wardrobe and requires a level of engagement with the lives of politicians just short of stalking.

I had assembled a quartet that, anywhere else, would have been considered quiz sharks. Here we were more like plankton. Of the 70-odd teams (some more odd than others), we performed heroically to finish in the top 15 or so, but I had a headache afterwards from thinking so hard.

It was no surprise that the winners of the event – apart from the Irish Red Cross Ukraine Appeal for which it was a fundraiser – were a team of professors from DCU, led by Charlie Haughey biographer Gary Murphy.

Wandering home afterwards, thanks to a long day, a heavy defeat, and the free bar, I already felt tired and emotional. Then I ran into the aftermath of the concert: hundreds of pale-faced creatures dressed in black with skeletons on their T-shirts, traipsing past in the opposite direction.

Maybe they were happier than they looked. But I couldn’t help sigh for suffering humanity, as I slipped wearily through the barricades to bed.

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