On The Twelfth of July as it/yearly did come/Bob played on the flute/to the sound of the drum./You may talk of piano or/fiddle or lute,/But nothing could sound like/the Auld Orange Flute.
Unlike Bob Williamson, the turncoat flautist from the town of Dungannon reviled in one of the finest of Orange ballads, I never graduated to playing the flute. My instrument on the Twelfth was the triangle. About a month or so before The Twelfth in our townland in Fermanagh the flutes and drums were taken down from the loft in the church hall and distributed among those brethren in the local Orange Lodge who were deemed to have musical proficiency. It was an arbitrary distribution. The chosen few were men of the land, more used to handling a horse-drawn plough or a scythe than a delicate instrument. They rehearsed twice a week in the church hall if it was wet, or marching along the roads if it was dry.
As the great day approached it became possible to distinguish between the tunes they played. In view of the limited time available for rehearsal the repertoire, of necessity, was severely pruned - to just two tunes, in fact. The Sash My Father Wore and Onward Christian Soldiers Marching as to War were played one after the other ad infinitum or, depending on the sensitivity of the ear, ad nauseam. It was at this advanced stage that the two junior members of the band were recruited to augment the percussion section. The bigger lad was given the cymbals and I got the triangle.
For the last couple of rehearsals we took our stations of either side of the Big Drum. The year was 1943. Our Ulster generals - two of them, Alanbrooke and Alexander, from our own Clogher Valley and one, Montgomery, from over the Border in Donegal - were showing Rommel and Kesselring that they had met their match on the shores of Sicily and southern Italy. But that was far away and our preoccupation among the summer hedgerows of peaceful Fermanagh was getting the tunes right for The Twelfth.
I became convinced that my firm striking of the triangle was adding a much-needed and disciplined beat to the performance of the entire band in spite of the unnerving and disorderly clashes of the cymbals emanating from the other side of the Big Drum. At the rehearsals we wore our everyday clothes. On The Twelfth itself we would be clad in our Sunday best. Unlike the big bands that accompanied the wealthier lodges we did not have uniforms, or even shirts of the same colour.
On the Sunday before The Twelfth the parish church was packed, women and children on one side of the aisle, men on the other. The rector, normally a timid creature, knew what was expected and delivered in full measure - a ranting, roaring sermon denouncing the iniquities of Rome and all its pomp and beseeching all those present to remain steadfast to the cause that had given us our freedom, religion and laws.
In the year of my triangle the Field was at Lisnaskea. The pattern never varied. All the lodges in the county and a few from Monaghan and Cavan would assemble in a field on the outskirts of the town to participate in a religious service and then listen to political speeches delivered from the back of a decorated lorry. Few bothered to listen. Most of the brethren preferred to wander around the tea stalls and ice cream vans to talk about more relevant matters such as the problems of saving hay in a wet summer and the poor price of cattle. The more dissolute slipped into the town to drink in the pubs (nearly all of them owned and manned by Roman Catholics).
The road to Lisnaskea was a familiar one. I had often accompanied cattle to the fair there, running ahead of the herd to stand guard at gaps in hedges to prevent a bolt for freedom and pastures new. On The Twelfth we would walk the dozen or so miles to the town regardless of weather and after the demonstration return to the church hall, again on foot. The women of the parish always remained behind to prepare a substantial meat tea for the weary marchers. Thick sandwiches of beef, ham and chicken were piled high on the tables, to be washed down with strong tea. Then there was a luscious choice of apple tarts, cream cakes and Paris buns. Some of the men who had smuggled bottles of stout back from the pubs of Lisnaskea would slip away quietly among the trees to do their own washing down.
On the morning of The Twelfth itself we assembled early at the church hall. The lodge's banner was unfurled and held high to allow the breeze to dislodge the dust of the past year's storage. On the front of the banner was a painting of William of Orange crossing the Boyne on his white charger, his sword of victory pointing towards the heavens, signifying that the succession to the British throne would be forever Protestant. On the other side was a primitive portrait of a long-forgotten past master of the lodge.
The band lined up in front of the banner and the scattering of brethren from four townlands took up their marching positions behind it. With a beat on a side drum we were off. No flutes in the land were played louder, no drums beaten with more vigour, no cymbals clashed more violently and no triangle jingled-jangled more sweetly. As we crossed the Colebrooke River on the way to Lisnaskea even the Walls of Jericho would not have prevailed against us.