Belfast at the end of the 18th century was said to be not much more than an enlarged village. Today, like most cities, it is more a collection of villages; perhaps especially since the Troubles started. Anyway, a friend just received a present from that city: North Belfast in the Gill and MacMillan series Images of Ireland. And to his surprise, there are already published East Belfast and South Belfast. Other places, too. It is almost all pictures with captions. Some of the captions, our friend tells us, are loaded with implications, but that's not evident. The first thing to note is that so many of the photographs are dominated in the background by the great Mac Art's Fort on the Cave Hill. Alice Milligan put it: Made when the world was fashioned, / Meant with the world to last, / The glorious face of the sleeper / That slumbers above Belfast. The first section is not, as one might expect, about work and industry, but leisure pursuits. Bellevue on the Antrim Road, great playground for the best part of the century, had for decades a dance hall, the Floral Hall, no less, but it "is now in a seriously dilapidated condition." Pity. "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree." And we have model yacht racers in the Waterworks on Antrim Road, walkers or hikers, footballers, and hilarity when boys from St Malachy's College go tobogganing in Buttermilk Loney. "The boy with the cigarette is Brian Moore, the celebrated author." All colours get a show - Catholics, Jews and Protestants.
Industry and Transport is fascinating, from aproned, moustachioed men in working kit to a posh pony and trap with posh owner, to barefoot women at Ewart's Mill (around 1908). And a striking, artistic photo of the small ruined beetling mill in Carr's Glen. Carlisle Circus shows horse-drawn vehicles alongside the new (1905) electric trams. A striking wall painting of a hedge school under the heading "Labhair an Teanga Ghaelige Liom." Then, strikes at the docks, Jim Larkin just come from Liverpool. And Fitzwilliam Golf Club, in the first World War, planted with flax, is seen with the crop being pulled and stooked. Some of the wreckage of the Belfast bombing of the last war. The Harbour, the schools - Jack Kyle as captain of the Academy rugby team.
One of the most striking pictures is of the outside of Fleming's butchers shop, no date, with at least 200 corpses of various fowls hanging, maybe rabbits and meat portions among them. Jimmy Galway, of course, Stephen Rea; and a lady issuing from a nice house: "Note Mrs Kelly's musquash fur coat, fashionable in the late 1920s." And so much more. Y