When we arrived in Enniskillen, the sun came out and shone throughout our visit. What a pretty place it was, surrounded by lakes and woods and hills, Celtic monasteries and Neolithic megalith tombs nearby, enticing to us holiday makers.
It did not tally with what we'd heard of Enniskillen in the past - the 1987 Remembrance Day Massacre where a bomb killed eleven and injured sixty-three. However, as we began to explore the area by foot, car and boat, visiting local castles, we found that the long-enduring troubled past had been sprayed with the blood of previous devastating massacres on both sides.
In the main street of the town itself, the Catholic Church squared up to the Protestant one, each vying to be more massive and taller.
Yet on the front of each, there was the same symbol - a golden silhouette of a swallow, pinned to the wall. And soon, I began to notice these golden birds in other places - war memorials, shops.
I investigated.
Oscar Wilde, as a boy, had boarded at Enniskillen Grammar School. From his dormitory, he'd looked out on a statue of the first British governor there - Cole. Like Nelson's Column, it dominated the town. Young Oscar began to imagine what it would be like if the statue would sacrifice his grandeur for the sake of the poor townspeople below. The resulting story was The Happy Prince.
Thus, the gold birds dotted about Enniskillen are a reference to the swallow in the story who acted as messenger for the statue of the prince and delivered his gold and jewels to the people below.
But perching as they do both on Protestant and Catholic walls, it's hard not to see the golden swallows also as emissaries of peace. Nowadays, perhaps instead of gold and jewels, they are bringing hope for the future.
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