Rocking the vote in Meath

Malcolm has been ignoring the elves of late: in fact, there has been rumination about a bulk issue of P45s. Yesterday, though, Malcolm hit upon a huddle of the little buggers twittering over Frank McNally's An Irishman's Diary in the Irish Times.

So, it being spring, moonless night in the Norf of Lunnun, starless and bible-black, Malcolm decided to investigate, and begins at the beginning.

One of the thorns in the flesh of the retiring Fianna Fáil government has been the long-overdue M3 motorway from Dublin into the County Meath. Slap in the middle of the direct route is a hill. Not just any old hill: the Hill of Tara, Teamhair na Rí, no less. Molehills do not come more mountainous than this one.

Heavy brain-bashing by the planners eventually provided no less than ten possible routes in a rainbow of colours. The line of least resistance, designated the "Pink Corridor", ran well north of Tara's Halls, and was given more kudos than the rest. The government, however, winced at the additional cost of such a routing, and ordained a shorter line going south of the village of Skryne, and so much closer to Tara.

All hell broke loose among the chattering classes, involving anyone who had watched more than ten minutes of archaeology on TV.

However, back to elven excitement over Frank McNally's prose.

It seems the latest twist in the saga is The Ark of the Covenant, last seen (one might think) safely tucked away in a US government warehouse. Not at all, at all. In point of supposed fact, the Ark was reburied at Tara. Check it out here.

At the end of the 19th century the British Israelites went digging for it. Máiréad Carew of UCD tried to keep a straight, academic face to write the story of that bit of the farce. Arthur Griffith, WB Yeats, George Moore and Douglas Hyde (a fine team there) tried physically to intervene, to prevent the desecration of a national monument: they were seen off by a gun-waving gent. Maud Gonne's protest involved lighting a bonfire on the Hill of Tara and singing "A Nation Once Again".

Anyone writhing in mirth should pause, recall that British-Israelite nonsense permeates the Orange Order's and the Black Preceptory's mythologies, then redouble the writhing and mirthing.

Yes, Malcolm decided: P45s all round.
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