Maiden City Festival
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The Maiden City Festival occurs in the second week in August every year in the walled city of Derry in Northern Ireland. The festival was created to extend an understanding of local Protestant culture among all communities in the city and offers a variety of exhibitions, shows, talks and evening entertainment including cross-community events involving Ulster-Scots, Chinese, and other minorities, culminating with the Relief of Derry celebrations by the Apprentice Boys of Derry.
The Maiden City Festival is a celebration of diversity in Northern Ireland, a tribute to the Apprentice Boys of Derry and to the communities of the City in the way in which the Festival has been embraced as a festival that genuinely promotes the Maiden City. The festival is seen as a show for Protestant culture of tolerance and openness for the heritage that is entrusted to the Apprentice Boys of Derry. The Maiden City Festival is a way in which the Protestant community of Derry, a minority community, feels it is able to make a contribution to the life of the City and to the diversity of expression of culture.
The celebration is part of a long history of Protestant celebrations in Derry, characterized by large numbers of Orange lodges marching on the town, and often accompanied by riots and violence. Leon Uris describes Apprentice Boy's Day in 19th century Derry (celebrated on the date of the Battle of Boyne, July 1st, which was the turning point in the war to make England Protestant) in his book "Trinity." "A black mass of men spewed over the Carlisle bridge with the band ka-booming "Onward Christian Soldiers." They led a line of gilded carriages holding high officials and aristocrats... The carriages were followed by legions of swaggering Orangemen in black bowlers, black suits and black rolled umbrellas that went together with their black mouths. This black ocean and its black tide was punctuated with sprigs of orange lilies for the Orange Order and sweet Williams for King Billy, which they wore in their hatbands and lapels and their sashes, which told if they were purplemen or blackmen or scarletmen or bluemen, and on their breasts many colored ribbons to boast about their military service to the Queen. Bands and bands followed. I counted seventy. Bands and pipes and drums and bagpipes and accordions came before the banner of each lodge... There was a preacherman leading every lodge. Alongside him another man holding a velvet cushion and on the cushion a Bible inside a glass case and the glass case topped with a crown. Alongside the biblebearer another man walked with drawn and polished sword...Half of them were singing and half of them another in a mess of discord."
What remains the same about modern day Apprentice boys celebrations, probably doesn't nearly match the spectacle of 19th century Apprentice boy's day.
