From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced, that while it lasted this country would never be free or happy. Wolfe Tone, 1798
When you are lying drunk at the airport you’re Irish. When you win an Oscar you’re British. Brenda Fricker, first Irish actress to win an Academy Award, while earning the award.
For the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown, Patrick Freyne quoting an unnamed Irish journakist asked about the British monarchy from an Irish perspective.
On our way home from France, we stopped by Michele’s second family home in Baltimore, Ireland. Baltimore is a picturesque, small, former fishing village and current home to a couple of sailing schools and two ferry hubs. Michele’s family has had a small home overlooking the Baltimore harbor for about forty years, long enough so they consider themselves locals. The home is a converted garage and is about ten feet wide and three stories high (the picture, above, was taken from in front of the family home, and the picture, below, was taken from their second-story window). The closest bar is about a hundred and fifty feet away, and a two-star Michelin restaurant is about 500 feet down the road.
Ireland was England’s first colony, and the country is still trying to deal with that. It is a little disconcerting because the Irish are White, probably very close genetically to their conquerors, and they all speak English. English with a brogue, true, but English as their primary language. As a short aside, all the street signs are in both Irish and English, but I never heard two Irish people talking to each other in Irish (although Michele says that she has). End short aside.
From everything I read, the national narrative still seems to be one of imperial victimhood, although it seems as if this is changing. A 1972 amendment of the Irish constitution, for example, removed the “special position” of the Catholic Church, which the oppressor brought with them, as “guardian of the Faith” and the recognition of other named religious denominations in Ireland, and in 2018, the Irish repealed, by referendum, the constitutional prohibition of abortion.
There are ruins or restored stone buildings everywhere, in this part of Ireland, anyway, and they seem like a fading image of the old imperialism. There are also a lot of new manors, as the Irish call the new big houses built by a new rich class, presumably – by me, at least – from Cork and Dublin. Sometimes, it is easy to tell the new imperialism from the old imperialism. Sometimes it isn’t.
At the end of Michele’s street is a restored castle, O’Driscoll Castle, which was reputed to be a sanctuary for druids in the “ancient days” and less than 30 kilometers away is Drombeg Stone Circle, a site sacred to the druids.
Above all, Ireland is beautiful, and this is an especially beautiful part of Ireland. There is not much topography, which is to be expected after the long time Ireland had been under ice during the last glaciation. The countryside is riotously green and meticulously maintained, giving everything a look of a very nice park or an expensive estate. Meticulously maintained is the operative phrase here. Everyplace is clean and neat. It reminds me of my mother, who constantly told us, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”
Every day that we were there, the weather was lovely, but that is unusual; Ireland is beautiful because, on average, it rains 146 days per year. Still, whatever the reason, Ireland is beautiful and very photogenic.
