Arnaud Mouratoglou

21124880
28/11/2021
2122-IS2102 Festival, ritual and commemoration
Dr Verena Commins

According to Falassi, the social functioning of the festival is closely linked to the values that the
community considers essential to its idealism, such as social identity, historical continuity, and
physical survival. In addition, according to Arcodia and Robb, Festival revolves around the
celebration of special occasions and the celebration of important events. In essence, the festival can
be seen as “the cultural resources of an area that make possible the successful hosting of visitors”
(Usyal, Gahan, & Martin, 1993, p. 5). South Australia Tourism Board (1997, p. 2) Provides a
broader definition of the festival: The festival is something the local community wants to share and
it also implies the participation of an external public to the event. The main goal of a festival is to
attract the greatest number of people. It's often economically desirable. An essential feature of the
festival is the sense of community and celebration that arises from the opportunity to be part of a
community and access to social encounter involving various media such as arts and crafts,
performances and demonstrations. ( Goldblatt, 1997). Getz (1997, pp. 8). It can be argued that
festivals throughout history have mimicked cultural traditions or have shown religious or historical
opportunities related to the community hosting the festival (Arcodia & Robb, 2000). (Festival
Attendance and the Development of Social Capital Charles Arcodia PhD a & Michelle Whitford
PhD , p3-4). In that essay I will try to demonstrate and critique different aspects of the Rose of
Tralee festival, such as its organisation, its design and dynamic, its cultural contexts, its impact on
Ireland and its international development.

The Rose of Tralee International Festival or Rós Thrá Lí Féile in Gaelic is a worldwide event that
brings together Irish communities from all over the world. The event, which takes place every year
in Tralee, County Kerry, takes inspiration after a 19th-century ballad about a woman named Mary
who was dubbed "The Rose of Tralee" because of her beauty. The song's words and music are
credited to Mordaunt Spencer and Charles William Glover, respectively, but rumors claim that the
song was written by William Pembroke Mulchinock who was from a Protestant family, and who

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was in love with Mary O'Connor, a Catholic woman servicing his parents. (“The story of the Rose
of Tralee” Rose of Tralee, archived from the original on 17 july 2008)

The celebration grew out of the local Carnival Queen, which was formerly a yearly municipal event
but faded away owing to postwar emigration. The Race Week Carnival was revived in Tralee in
1957, and it included a Carnival Queen. The Rose of Tralee International Festival was conceived
when a group of local business men met in Tralee's Harty's bar in order to attract more tourists to
the town during the horse racing meeting and to urge expats to return to Tralee. They came up with
the idea for the Rose of Tralee Festival, led by Dan Nolan. The festival began in 1959 on a small
budget of £750, by 1965 the budget had grown to £10,000.(“New Rose calls on Ireland to embrace
its diversity” RTE, 22 August 2018, retrieved 19 October 2019)

The organisation’s founders were Billy Clifford, an accountant with the Rank Organisation who was
one of the first recipients of the Golden Rose award; Dan Nolan, who was involved with the Tralee
Races; Jo Hussey, a Tralee shopkeeper; and Ted Keane Snr, a local restaurateur. (Heffernan, Breda
(22 January 2009), “Lovely Girl festival going strong after half a century despite changing times”.
Irish Independent, retrieved 22 January 2009)

Originally, only women from Tralee were able to participate; in the early 1960s, it was expanded to
include all women from Kerry, and in 1967, it was expanded even further to include all women of
Irish descent.

The Rose of Tralee Festival is now held annually in late August in Tralee, Kerry, to select young
women wearing rose crowns. The winner, the Rose, is the woman who best fits the song's attribute
of "lovely and fair." Winners are selected based on her personality and aim to be a good role model
for festivals and Ireland as she travels around the world. Unlike the Beauty Pageant, the Rose of
Tralee contest does not have a bathing suit category, and participants are judged not by appearance,
but by their overall personality and suitability as a festival ambassador. The festival explains that it
celebrates the identity of modern young Irish women, it is a kind of ritualised transgression,
“festivals constitutes spaces organised by alternate norms of behaviour, often linked to forms of
exaltation and the satisfaction of various erotic desires”(Remaking Worlds: Festivals, Tourism and
Change David Picard and Mike Robinson, p11). Indeed women have to be unmarried, young,
beautiful and clever. They have to represent a kind of purity. It is similar to how women were
perceived in the past by society in Ireland, a kind of “cliché” elaborated by the history of the

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country and slowly integrated in the Irish society. Ireland itself was often personified as a women.
That fantasy has mostly disappeared through time but there are still some remains of it and many
people could argue that this festival is a celebration of post colonialism and patriarchy.

However that festival brings social capital to Ireland and to people participating to it. Social capital
is the ability of an individual to secure benefits for himself, thanks to membership in the social
structure. Social capital is based on the connection of human behavior, as explained by Putnam
(1993, p. 3536). As Putnam suggests, it involves “features of social organisation, such as networks,
norms, and trust that facilitate co-ordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.”, the Rose of
Tralee festival allows the Irish community to fit to traditional values linked to the characteristics of
being an Irish woman, it also allows people all around the world to gather around these
characteristics and to identify themselves to them.

This world-famous festival has a wide range of effects on Irish culture, including artistic, economic,
and social ones. This festival that has increased in popularity over time, resulting in it being
videotaped and broadcast live. With over a million spectators tuning in to discover who will be
voted the next Rose of Tralee, the competition finale is the show-stopper. The viewers are curious as
to who will represent them and what will occur during the competition. One of the Roses was
proposed to on broadcast one year, eliciting a standing ovation throughout Ireland. The competition
draws large viewers on television. Every year, The Rose of Tralee is one of RTE's top ten most
watched shows, with 881,000 viewers tuning in for current host Ray D'Arcy's debut in 2005.
(Record Audiences in a time of challenges”, the Kerryman, 19 August 2009) “This interaction over
the period of the festival’s organization raises awareness of community resources and expertise,
produces social links between previously unrelated groups and individuals, identifies possibilities
for the development of the community’s resources, and generally encourages a stronger interaction
between existing community organizations.” (Festival Attendance and the Development of Social
Capital Charles Arcodia PhD a & Michelle Whitford PhD , p11). In 1937 and in 1942 two films
called Rose of Tralee were broadcasted, they were made by different producers but the stories were
similar, their are songs related to the poem that were sung during sport matches and some of them
are now available on the Internet. The artistic culture linked to the festival is then expanding to
people outside the physical community, it is even exported at the international.

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Due to its success, the festival became international, more and more tourists from Ireland but also
from all over the world were coming to the event. The fact that the possibility of participating to the
competition had been expanded to not only Irish women but to every women who have some Irish
heritage, has opened the gate to international participation. Because of that the event became bigger
each year, nowadays many countries participate to the competition such as Ireland, Britain, France,
Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Germany, Australia, Italy… The festival adapts to the modern
days, as it follows the logical of globalization, that is to say “the increasing worldwide integration
of economic, cultural, political, religious and social systems.”(Oxford English Dictionary). Its
shows that the festival of Tralee is no longer a village festival but an international festival.
“According to Lanfant (1995), international tourism can be defined as a total social phenomenon
involving a complex web of global and transnational politicat, economic and social instances”
(Remaking Worlds: Festivals, Tourism and Change David Picard and Mike Robinson, p15).

That expansion brought money to the locals and the country. It plays a role on the economy, as said
previously the festival started with a small group of people and a small budget. But today it is one
of biggest money maker of Irish festival. However the management of the founds can be a real
difficulty. The Rose of Tralee has gone through a lot of changes since 2000, with the event going
through its most significant alterations since the 1970s. Despite a one-time government contribution
of 320,000 in 2001, the Rose of Tralee was facing rising indebtedness and was fighting for
existence. The Rose of Tralee had debts of around € 900,000 by September 2003, and
reorganization was necessary if the event was to avoid bankruptcy. The firm had a five-year strategy
to revitalize the festival, focusing almost solely on the Rose of Tralee competition and related
events while cutting its street entertainment expenditure in half.In 2007, a new distinct body, the
Festival of Kerry Support Group, was founded by local vintners and tourism interests in order to
continue the festival's street entertainment, which was its lifeblood. Though the two groups would
collaborate closely, with the Rose of Tralee corporation subsidizing illumination, parades, and
fireworks, the festival was now organized by two different groups for the first time. The festival
organisation had been cut in two in order to cut expenditure and increasing income.
(https://www.independent.ie/regionals/kerryman/lifestyle/record-audiences-in-a-time-of-great-
challenge-27386252.html)

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The Rose of Tralee festival as others festivals play a key social role in our modern societies
(Alomes, 1985), it appears to be an economic challenge as well as a social one and sometimes a
political one too. But the benefits can be huge and the impact of the festivals is mostly positive,
festivals are a modern heritage of a culture, they “develop social capital by providing the
community with specific opportunities for accessing and developing community resources,
improving social cohesiveness, and providing a focus for celebration” (Festival Attendance and the
Development of Social Capital Charles Arcodia PhD a & Michelle Whitford PhD, p15). Through
ritualisation and community, the Rose of Tralee festival gathers people of the Irish community and
even people from all over the world. It allows to spread the Irish culture abroad and to give people a
glimpse of a cultural identity that is, as all the Roses, beautiful and authentic.

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 Bibliography:

Alomes 1985

Arcodia & Robb, 2000. (Festival Attendance and the Development of Social Capital Charles
Arcodia PhD a & Michelle Whitford PhD , p3-4, p11, p15)

Heffernan, Breda (22 January 2009), “Lovely Girl festival going strong after half a century despite
changing times”. Irish Independent, retrieved 22 January 2009

Getz (1997, pp. 8)

Goldblatt, 1997

http://blog.roseoftralee.ie/rose-of-tralee-selection-form/

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/kerryman/lifestyle/record-audiences-in-a-time-of-great-
challenge-27386252.html

“New Rose calls on Ireland to embrace its diversity” RTE, 22 August 2018, retrieved 19 October
2019

Oxford English Dictionary

Putnam (1993, p. 3536)

“The story of the Rose of Tralee” Rose of Tralee, archived from the original on 17 july 2008

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Record Audiences in a time of challenges, the Kerryman, 19 August 2009

Remaking Worlds: Festivals, Tourism and Change David Picard and Mike Robinson, p11, p15

Usyal, Gahan, & Martin, 1993, p. 5). South Australia Tourism Board (1997, p. 2)