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The complete set of Government papers relating to the Act
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The Public Dance Halls Act was enacted by the Irish Government in 1935. Almost from the date of its introduction it has been believed to have been a significant factor in the decline in the practice of traditional music in rural Ireland, particularly the decline in the house dances and crossroads dances. It was believed that the Act prohibited these activities, and that it was enacted specifically to discourage them. Writing in Dal gCais in 1977, Junior Crehan said: The way of life at Markham's Cross and the country house dance was rooted in our traditions and culture. But this way of life was ended in the mid-30s by a number of events; and while it is hard to say that it would have continued in the same way for much longer it is safe to say that its end was quickened by those who, for different reasons, wanted to put an end to it. In 1932 the Economic War began. Times were very bad and money was scarce, and because most farm produce could not be sold the small farmer was badly hit. The year old calf was sold for ten shillings and I remember one widow who was forced to sell six of them for three pounds because the rent and rates had to be paid. She had no other income and the Widow's pension had not yet been introduced. To help each other out people started running card tournaments where everything and anything was put on the board: turkeys, geese, pigs, calves and cows. At each tournament there were thirty or forty teams of three or four people, and while the tournament was going on there would be a dance and a fine supper or grinders and red jam. The fee for all this was a shilling for men and sixpence for women. These tournaments could go on until three or four in the morning, three or four nights a week. It was all in a good cause. But in 1934 both Church and Government dealt a severe blow to country life. For a long time the Church had been against the country-house dance. They put forward many reasons for their attitude. They claimed that the house dances were places of mis-conduct, that there were no proper sanitary conditions and they seemed to be fearing greatly for our morals. The Government thought that some of the money collected at these dance-tournaments was going to illegal organisations. Both Government and Church seemed to think that the country people were making fortunes out of the dance-tournaments; but in fact the most that was ever made at one of these was four or five pounds which were badly needed. In 1934 [sic] the Dance Hall Act was passed. The Act banned the house dances and anybody holding such a dance after this was brought to Court and fined. The clergy started to build the parochial halls to which all were expected to go and the Government collected 25% of the ticket-tax. In these halls modern dance bands played a different type of music for a different style of dancing - Foxtrot, One-Step and Shimmy-shake. But country people found it hard to adjust and to them the dance halls were not natural places of enjoyment; they were not places for traditional music, story-telling and dancing; they were unsuitable for passing on traditional arts. The Dance Hall Act had closed our schools of tradition and left us a poorer people. In addition to this, in the 40's, the rate of emigration increased rapidly. The youth saw nothing in their own country but poverty, and Government and Church collected their Dance-Hall dues from a falling population. The countryside was once more going through that terrible silence which it had suffered after the Famine, the silence of a departing people and a dying of music and song. These were indeed the black Forties. As a musician I played at many house dances and there was nothing there but innocent fun with fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters present. Nor was there anything wrong with our morals in those days, something I could not say about today. All in all, a fine job was made of our morals, customs and culture and the country house was finished. . . . . . . . The Dance Hall Act had put an end to the customs of the country house and its traditions were being forgotten. In addition to all this there was a widespread lack of interest in Irish music, especially among townspeople, and those who thought themselves fashionable and wanted to get on in the world. They considered Irish music not quite respectable and thought it better to have it replaced by the modern music then popular in the dance-halls. They did not seem to realise the value of what was being lost. All in all it was a lonely time for anyone interested in the music and all that it meant. There was a silence everywhere and Markham's Cross of a Sunday was a deserted place with only memories of the music and dancing that had at one time filled it. It was this loneliness that I felt most of all; there was no one to swap tunes with, very few to talk about music, and the flag floors were silent. In corners, in attics, and on shelves, fiddles and flutes lay gathering spiders and cobwebs. There was no heart to play and I remember finding it a struggle to take down the fiddle and play a few tunes to oblige a neighbour. There seemed to be no point in it; the music was slipping away in spite of us. In 1982 Breandán Breathnach wrote, also in Dal gCais, : The clamour grew but it had become obvious that exhortations and condemnations from palace, pulpit and press were proving ineffectual and demands began to be made for state intervention. This the state did when it enacted the Public Dance Halls Act 1936 [sic] which required all public dances to be licensed and laid down the conditions under which licences might be issued by the District Justices. Intentionally or otherwise, country house dancing was not excluded from the scope of the Act and after its passing raffles, soirees and such were treated as illegal activities. That it extended to parties in private houses when dancing took place is unlikely but that is beside the point. The local clergy and gardaí acted as if it did and by their harassment they put an end to this kind of dancing in those areas of rural Ireland where it still survived. . . . . . . . It is accepted that the Public Dance Hall Act was enacted in response to pressure on the Government by some members of the Catholic Hierarchy. Although almost fifty years have passed since its enactment the matter is not yet considered dessicated enough for handling by the public. The Dept. of Justice refuses access to the the relevant file on the specious grounds that it is not its practice to allow researchers access to departmental records apart from material which has been transferred to the Public Records Office. Junior Crehan's criticisms have been echoed by others down the years. Breandán Breathnach's comments are more considered. He is certainly correct in stating that clerical pressure was the major influence in having the act passed. It is perhaps illustrative of the cast of mind of the time that the Dance Halls Act was dealt with by Government in tandem with the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935, which dealt with prostitution and sexual offences. Breathnach obviously believed that the file, when finally released, would contain material which would confirm his belief that it was enacted due to clerical intervention. This is not the case, however. There is nothing whatever in the file to indicate any religious input whatever into its framing or enactment. Perhaps it was naive to expect that there would be. The newspapers of the time are full of letters calling for something to be done about the perceived problem, many of them from members of the clergy. Perhaps the Diocesan libraries are the place to search for the real story. In a different respect Breathnach's understanding of the act is absolutely correct. The house dances and crossroads dances were not the target of the legislation. This point was explicitly raised and was answered by the Attorney General (see documents PDHA218, PDHA219, PDHA220, PDHA221, PDHA222, PDHA223), as follows: I am of opinion that the dances referred to are not held in contravention of the Act because they are not held in a place as defined in that act. Nevertheless, the clergy and gardaí continued to apply the act as if it did outlaw these activities, and although they were not the only factors in the demise of the country dances, they were at any rate the only agents of change who consciously and deliberately set out to do away with this part of our traditions. The Act was not to blame, but its agents, encouraged and assisted by the clergy, certainly were. For the most part the papers reproduced here are drafts, memos, covering notes and all the usual trivia of inter-departmental correspondence. There is material from local Garda stations and from Solicitors seeking clarification of aspects of the Act; documents dealing with the exemption of the Defence Forces from its application, etc. For those interested in traditional music the six documents cited above are the most significant. For a pen picture of a country dance in Banteer in 1941 see PDHA166. These papers are reproduced with the permission of the Irish National Archives. Copyright remains with the Archive and anyone wishing to reproduce them elsewhere or use them in any other way should contact the Archive at http://www.nationalarchives.ie. The papers constitute file number 8/21 in the Archive's system, and comprise 270 individual sheets, including copies and multi-page documents. They are presented here in the order in which they lie on the departmental file. In this site each document has been assigned an individual reference number from "PDHA001" to "PDHA227". The different sheets of a multi-sheet document are shown as "PDHA999a", "PDHA999b" etc. Copies are named as "PDHA999copy". There are no documents numbered 171, 172 or 173. The absence of these numbers in the series is due to a scanning error. The original documents in the Archive file are in very many sizes and formats. The copies supplied were on foolscap paper (215mm x 329mm). The scans on the document pages are in .JPG format, 872 x 1296 pixels at 72 pixels per inch. Higher resolution scans can be accessed by clicking on these. They should prove adequate to read the material. Should any reader require a higher resolution file it can be supplied on request. TERRY MOYLAN |
The Government papers relating to the Act
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