The first task in any public debate is getting to frame the discussion in a manner that suits your point of view. In a piece arguing for an end to the displaying of a Goat at Puck Fair, published on this platform this morning, John McGuirk gives a good example of this with his predefined title for the counter argument, referring to “a suspended goat”. The goat isn’t suspended. It’s on a solid stable platform and it’s not in any danger. The aim of this framing is to make the other person spend their time invalidating your viewpoint instead of giving their own viewpoint.
You build on this by using terminology that makes the other viewpoint as unappealing as possible, without regard to whether it’s remotely accurate, hence references in this debate to King Puck being hung or suspended or dangling, all intended to invite the listener/reader to imagine the goat being in some sort of ongoing peril that’s leaving it a bag of nerves.
Then make sure to include an analogy that makes the situation seem even more unnatural, in this McGuirk asks “would you do it to a dog?”
Well, I’d not put a dog in a curry but plenty of cultures have a goat instead of a chicken in one. A goat isn’t a dog. Animals aren’t people.
So that’s what we’ve had over the last week or so, in a recurring “debate” about Puck Fair that bubbles up every few years, like Seanad Reform or joining NATO. Some small grouping, that gives itself a catchy name and a website, gets disproportionate airtime during the low news period in August known as the Silly Season. They frame the debate they want to have in terms that suit them, using terminology that’s either not accurate, or tangentially at best related to the topic and finally make emotionally based analogies that don’t hold water once you look at them properly.
Some people online have listed out specific aspects of the practice that they believe are wrong, but when asked if changing those aspects would change their minds about the basic premise of Puck the answer is “No”. That’s perfectly fine, people are entitled to their feelings. What comes after that is a rationalisation for something that’s not based on facts. People have made their judgement already and no amount of talk is going to change their minds. A larger enclosure, a lower height, more shade, holding the festival during a cooler time of the year, taking the goat down during extremes of temperature: none of those changes will shift them from their viewpoint. Let’s not pretend that’s why they’re opposed to Puck Fair.
The fact is they just don’t like it, any of it. They have an emotional, indeed, visceral reaction against the whole enterprise. Try as they might, they’ll likely find it hard to explain it, even to themselves. They’re just down on this sort of thing. It doesn’t sit well with them.
As to specific points that those with a less visceral reaction have heard exercised over the last week: Puck Fair is not traditionally associated with hot weather; if anything, bucketing rain once the band has started playing is much more the norm. Once it was the case that it seemed too hot for comfort, King Puck was brought down and placed in greater shade. That’s just good animal husbandry. That’s what rural people are doing day in, day out.
Others are highly exercised about the noise and unfamiliarity the goat will have with large crowds, a problem that doesn’t apparently exist as a matter of concern with babies and small children at music festivals and large sporting occasions.
People are keeping dogs in apartments and going to work each day leaving these highly social animals alone. There’s tv series about how to manage an unruly dog and it’s typically the owner’s behaviour that’s at fault, but we’ve had a week talking about a singular goat that’s doing fine.
The height seems to be a concern for many, despite this being a mountain goat that will encounter far greater heights in the wild without anyone being concerned for its wellbeing.
John compares Puck to Horse Racing, which involves multiple untimely deaths of horses each year, the whipping of the horses during the races, and many other abuses. Except there are the right sort of people are enjoying themselves, so it gets a pass. The goat doesn’t die nor is it harmed at Puck Fair, and there’s nothing to suggest it is in distress, but the wrong sort of people are enjoying themselves so it’s time for some outrage by the right sort of people with the right connections. People are imagining themselves as the goat and thinking they’d not like it. They might not, except there again they’re people not goats. Human beings do all sorts of things involving animals that other groups of people don’t like or care for, people eat meat, wear leather items made from them, ride them, breed them, domestic them and keep them confined in their own homes. Compared to that lot, a goat getting fed and watered, medically supported and free from predators for a few days is strange thing to focus on.
The goat spends its time eating, drinking, sleeping and seems bemused by and indifferent to its surroundings more than anything else. There again, just there, I’m doing what many of the critics of Puck Fair are doing and engaging in anthropomorphism of a goat. This isn’t Beatrix Potter.
The people involved in the running of the festival have been doing it for years and have the wellbeing of the goat at the heart of what they’re doing, because if anything untoward was to happen to the goat, that would undermine the reason for having the festival in future years. Caution is essential to what they’re doing.
Puck Fair is weird, it’s strange, it’s peculiar and it’s clearly an oddity in the modern world; it’s not necessary for everyone to like it. If there’s nothing illegal about the festival – and there isn’t – then it’s solely the decision of the people of Killorglin if they want to continue the tradition. It’s their choice to make. Puck is something people in Killorglin do; the people in Killorglin don’t need to explain or excuse themselves to the world at large, nor should it be demanded on the national airwaves that they do so moreover in the sneering way that was done in LiveLine. People, singularly and in groups, are free to make decisions for themselves as to what traditions they want to continue and those they change or leave by the wayside.
Puck Fair wasn’t created as a tourism whizz, 400 plus years ago. It’s how the people of Killorglin mark the years and anyone who wants to is more than welcome to come and experience it. If they’d prefer not to, that’s ok too. That’s their choice. That’s all part of living in a heterogenous world, people doing stuff that you’d not do yourself.
Daniel K Sullivan grew up in Killorglin but currently lives in Dublin. He has been a margin of error candidate in several local and Seanad elections. He holds any number of apparently contradictory views, which he will happily bloviate on before enjoying a hearty breakfast at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.