Ireland

Before bursting the widget on this edition of DDW’s Complete Generalisations About Other Cultures, it must be noted that there is genuinely a Leprechaun Museum in Ireland. Being funny is serious business in the home of St. Patrick and taking the piss is the finest remedy against poor weather, potato famines or a thousand years of English bullying. After a few afternoon litres of Guiness, one can navigate the fine line between singy, jolly drunk and shouty, stabby drunk on the streets of Dublin – often before 6pm.

Calling pubs the centre of Irish culture would be an exaggeration; they are also places of learning, music halls, counselling centres and insane asylums. The local watering hole is the most effective method to escape the occasional sunny day. Irish pubs produce an elite class of barmaid, one who can reject the advances even the most committed middle-aged man and still leave him with a smile on his face. Dispensers of holy libations and warming stews, pubs are the next best thing to do in Ireland besides church.

Ireland is a nation on the move…out. The warm climate and sunny beaches – of Bondi – has made Ireland the only nation in the last two hundred years to decrease in population. This is odd considering the time taken to occupy Ireland by its neighbours throughout history. Vikings used the jolly green isle as a holiday resort to escape the Scandiwegian winters while later Norman conquerors sought to keep Irish lords weak and divided. Not until Henry VIII invaded in the late fifteenth century had a foreign power succeeded in taking complete control of Ireland, bringing his new divorce-friendly religion with him.

 

It sure is.

 

Unfortunately, for Henry, the Irish were quite fond of their own Gaelic-Catholic Church, introduced by St. Patrick long before in 383AD. After the puritanical Oliver Cromwell beheaded the Catholic English King Charles I, he retook Ireland for Britain in 1649 – needing only to kill a third of all Irishmen to do so. Thankfully, Ireland was no stranger to population decimation and there were plenty of Protestant English and Scottish settlers to take up the vacancies in the landed aristocracy. Combined with the selling of dissenting Irish into slavery in the Americas and famine-inducing tax laws, Ireland became the happiest province in the British Empire.

Irish independence saw no light until the twentieth century, culminating in the 1916 Easter Rising. While the bloody guerrilla war that followed resulted in a treaty with the British, the Irish Free State was such a long time coming, that the northern half of the country preferred remain a part of the United Kingdom. A cultural divide became a religious war in all but name, resulting in decades of bad blood and vengeance. Catholic vs. Protestant. Euros vs. Pounds. Kilometres vs. Miles. Guiness vs. Guiness.

The Irish may not have all of Ireland, but they have conquered the world. Irish generals fought for Napoleon and fought each other in the American Civil War. The lobstered skin of Irish can be seen from the Caribbean to the beaches of Sydney. Closer to home however, a bad climate creates warm hearts and friendly faces – with endless conversation and hospitable folk. Local legend and tall stories cover landmarks and museums, taking rightful precedence over dull historical fact. The narrow, meandering roads are wonderfully kept, striking the perfect balance between quality workmanship and blind-corner terror.

One cannot help feel suspicious at the mystical, postcard-like nature of Ireland and even your humble author had reservations when standing before a perfect rainbow over a lush green valley with stone walls and cottages dotting the landscape. Conversely, the ancestral hum you feel after purchasing the handmade coat-of-arms of your Irish family name from a quaint shop in a country town loses its lustre when the very same souvenirs can be found in the fridge-magnet section of any petrol station. Perhaps they put something in the Guiness, perhaps they are all actually lovely. Either way, the Irish have a skill at making the rest of the world weak at the knees and we fall for it every time.