Let's Talk about People and Irish Pride

Wherever we go, we always seem to see the beauty in the landscape and the surroundings. We see it in the  mountains, the streams, the gaps, and the oceans. But more importantly, we see it in the people. 

As we said on one of our prior trips, the things that always jump out at you are not the differences between us, but the things we have in common. 

I'll illustrate this with some stories from some of our encounters.

In a restaurant in Dublin, we sat back to back at a booth with a couple with two young children. A precious little girl who was almost two and her older brother who was four. As happens in every country, the children get bored. So what do they do? The two young kids start dancing the Macarena. A skilled 4 year old leading his eager two year old sister to learn the Macarena. It was a site to behold. Something I would have expected from Lisa and Heather when they were young and bored. 

In Castlebar, after the Christy Moore concert, we're standing up at the bar waiting to get a drink. The guy next to me recognized that we're from the states and then realized that we are the ones that Christy dedicated the song 'Voyage' to, and he buys our drinks. We chat for a while.

A cab driver in Dublin, is taking us to the airport and spends the whole trip talking about the world's political situation. He's from Albania and has been here over 20 years, now having joined the Irish melting pot. And, like the rest of us, he just wants peace in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

A lady sitting with us in Galway had her niece with her. The niece is from Ukraine. She's a young girl and we can only assume she is a refuge from the war. We're so removed from the Ukraine - Russia war that we don't often think about it but you can't help but think about how this war had removed this child from her mother and father and placed her with an aunt in London.

In Lisdoonvarna, we had stopped at a Spar grocery store. We were talking to the clerk and she is from Poland. She said she had been in Lisdoonvarna for 16 years. When Chris and I stayed here for a night 16 years ago, we were having drinks in the hotel and the waitress was from Poland. Quite possibly the same woman, just doing what she can to better her life. On that trip, Chris and I met a farmer from the area who complained about all of the help coming from eastern Europe to take the service jobs. But it looks like a lot of them have stayed to make that better life for themselves and to become Irish. You can't blame them.

A couple we met at the Mary Black concert. We got there about 25 minutes early and were at tables on  the floor. There was a couple at the table next to us. About our ages, they too had arrived early. We struck up a conversation. Their names were Mary and John. Mary had grown up a few blocks from the theater we were in. We talked about our shared interest in Christy and Mary and their music. They had lived in the city but now lived outside of town. Like many our age, the changes that they had seen happen in the inner-city of Dublin had made them fearful of moving about on foot in the city. They were concerned about us taking a bus back toward the hotel and took us back in their car. It was a beautiful gesture of kindness and friendship to someone that they had just met. We see these changes in perceptions of safety and our environment every day, but they are subtle and happen over time. I'm probably less prone to walk a street on a dark night than I was 25 years ago. It's not living in fear, it's just an added layer of caution that guides us.

In the airport in Dublin we met two young women. Probably early 20s. They were waiting for their flight to Thailand. But as we talked we realized that they were Irish and leaving Ireland for Australia for work. They live in Dublin but can't afford to live and work there. The pay is better in Australia and their life could be different there. They see the opportunity. 

While talking with them I'm reminded of Ireland's history with The Great Hunger. This was a famine in Ireland from 1847-1852 that drove many from the land to America, Canada, Australia, and other places of the world. Ireland is a small country but this was a huge event. Around 2 million people scattered out throughout the world reducing Ireland's population by about 25%. Most of these folks never made it back to Ireland. Travel was hard then. They started a new life in their new lands. But the children and grandchildren of these migrants were always reminded of the Irish content of their souls. There is something special about being Irish anywhere in the world. The people in Ireland exhibit this same sense of value of being Irish. They are proud of their Irish heritage. They know their history and their myths. Their war of independence was in 1922 so only a 100 years have passed or about 4 generation. Many of the songs of Christy and Mary and their peers celebrate the people that fought the war of independence from England. Their songs celebrate their culture. We have a certain amount of this in the US, but frankly we've been too much of a melting pot for too long to have a 'single tribe' vision of our culture. Our culture is a product of many of the immigrants who came here including the Irish, Susanne's family and others from Hungary and across Europe, and mine from England and Germany.

It was great to get a glimpse of the Irish pride. 

(For the record, neither of us are Irish or at least not enough to claim to be Irish.) 

It's hard to talk about Ireland without realizing that there are two Irelands. Most of our time has been spent in the Republic of Ireland which is about 80% of the Emerald Isle. But there is also Northern Ireland made up of six counties at the northeastern corner of the Emerald Isle. Northern Ireland has a history of its own, a culture of its own, and problems of its own. On a brief tour of that area on a bus tour, we learned so much more about this history. 

Along with other history of the Emerald Isle, one that stands strong and recent is referred to as "The Troubles."  It was a conflict from the 1960s to 1998 in and around Belfast and Northern Ireland but often reached into Dublin, London, Derry/Londonderry and other parts of Ireland. It was often referred to as a Protestant vs. Catholic conflict. But there is more to it than that.

The majority of Northern Ireland citizens are descendants of settlers from England and the UK. They share a Protestant faith and are referred to as Unionist for their desire to stay connected to the UK. They see themselves as Brits. Their culture is defined by the UK and they want to keep it that way. In the Republic of Ireland and for a minority of people in Northern Ireland, they are Catholic and see themselves as republicans because they desire to be in a free 'Republic' of Ireland, free from the UK. (Don't think of US Republican party, but rather lower case republicans that want their own republic.) The battles, the bombings, the fighting that went on in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s, were really about political desires of how the people wish to be governed, i.e., do they want to be a free Ireland or a part of England. 

In the US, our news media covered this as a fight of Protestants vs Catholics and vice-versa and that's all I've ever known. It was really more of a culture war or political war. No one wanted to give up the culture they were raised with - the republicans or the unionist. Each wanted change not to happen. Ironically, a good number of the people providing services today are themselves immigrants from somewhere else to Ireland as shown by some of the people we met. The almost inevitable outcome is that the culture will end up being neither of the two existing cultures, unionist or republican, but will become a new melting pot culture with many layers of influence. Immigration into Ireland will surely present them with many of the challenges that the US, the UK and other countries are experiencing in cultural change.

When we asked our tour guide whether there would ever be a united Ireland, he couldn't give us an answer because this division is still there and it's not going away. But the one thing he did say, in jest, was that '... you can always count our our politicians to do the right thing..." So there you have it, one man's opinion.