WHEN he wrote and recorded his iconic protest song in 1963, Bob Dylan was asked about the meaning behind his unusually profound lyrics in ‘The Times They are a-Changin’.
“I didn’t write it as a statement,” he replied. “It’s a feeling.” I experienced an intense feeling of changed times when the recently published book ‘Scouting in Fermanagh’ arrived on my desk. Amongst a compilation of uniformed boys photographed on the front cover were two smiling girls! In my day back in the 1950s the Boy Scouts and the Wolf Cubs were all-male organisations, characterised by leather-belted trousers, knee-length gartered socks and toggles, reef knots, and merit badges for all sorts of vigorous outdoor activities. I vividly remember attending a concert held by the Enniskillen Scout Troop in the town’s cathedral hall in the mid 1950s. Led by local school teacher Ronnie Kemp the boys sang “Let every good fellow now join in our song, Vive la compagnie! Success to each other and pass it along, Vive la compagnie!” Their hearty rendition of their scouting anthem included the words: “Now wider and wider our circle expands, we’ll sing to our comrades in far away lands.” Maurice Lee, Fermanagh’s Scouting County President and author of the book, confirms the truth in those prophetic words. There are countless reports and photographs in his 224-page history of girls’ and women’s vital and enthusiastic involvement with the movement, and of “some 30 million young people world-wide now taking part in the adventure of scouting.” Times have certainly changed since a first reference was made to Fermanagh’s embryonic scout troop in a local newspaper on April 28 in 1910.
Four years later in July 1914 the Impartial Reporter carried an advertisement for a military concert in aid of ‘General Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts Fund’.
Tickets were two and sixpence, one shilling, and sixpence, and the paper later reported that the matinee and evening performances in Enniskillen’s Town Hall were sold-out, and “were decided successes, notwithstanding the sultry weather of a July evening and the (competing) attractions of an outdoor pastime.” Author Maurice Lee, who originally joined the Wolf Cubs in Omagh in 1950, draws on his half-century of scouting, and along with numerous others’ varied and detailed recollections, has compiled a veritable encyclopaedia of a movement that was officially registered as the 1st Inniskilling Troop in 1921, 10 years after the first newspaper reports.
“The man who is blind to the beauties of nature has missed half the pleasure of life,” said Scouting’s founder, Lord Baden-Powell. Thus Fermanagh, with its lakes, forests, hills and drumlins, was the ‘Fermanagh-from-heaven’ that nurtured almost 30 Scouting Groups, boasting several pages of ‘milestones’ faithfully recorded in Mr. Lee’s book. Amongst the chronological account of the formation of new scout troops all over the county, and international jamborees, camps, celebrity visitors and leader appointments, there are some endearing milestones! In 1926 the 1st Inniskilling troop collected “over 2,000 eggs for local hospitals.”
In 1928 they collected thousands more eggs “for the County Infirmary and Workhouse.” In 1952 a beret was “permitted as alternative headwear” and in 1963 “long trousers were introduced!” One of the oldest photographs in the book shows a youthful Bertie Paine, resplendent in his uniform, beside an old army canon in Forthill Park in 1913. There’s also a copy of a letter from Lord Baden-Powell, welcoming a “helper into the brotherhood of the Scouts”.
“It is very important to have on record what actually took place within scouting in Fermanagh since the early 1910s,” Maurice Lee explained when his book was published. There’s little, if anything, left out, and amongst the wonderful collection of Scout leaders’ and members’ recollections is one little snippet of information from Walter Vaughan which colourfully and poignantly gives the Scouting Movement an unusual context in Irish history. Walter joined the 1st Inniskilling Wolf Cubs aged 12 in 1930, and progressed to the Scouts, who regularly went camping in Mullaghmore.
“On more than one occasion butter was smuggled back across the border!” he recalled. Taking their founder’s most famous motto to heart - ‘Be Prepared’ - the young scouts found the perfect hiding place in their car for their illegal import. “Despite usually making a detailed search of all our other gear,” said Walter, “the Customs never checked the First Aid Box.” The butter was hidden amongst the bandages! Scouting in Fermanagh by Maurice Lee is available at £10 (proceeds to charity) from N.I. Scout Headquarters, Discover Outdoors UK, the Scout Shop, or any County Fermanagh Scout Group. Alternatively e-mail mauricelee21@hotmail.com
