So, we went to Ireland. Yes, there is a ‘we’ outside of the Reed-Editor bickerfest. And anyway, I did say The Editor wouldn’t be coming with us. I’d quite like to have a holiday that was not overly flavoured with mutterings about grocer’s apostrophes, digs at how poorly my journal-keeping was going, who did I think I was, George Eliot*? and insistent demands that I buy more notebooks. [Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord - Ed]

I will not bore everyone including myself with a proper travelogue. Most of the trip was just dandy and I can’t tell you anything more interesting than a decent guide-book can. So we’ll stick, as promised, to anecdotage. On which the Emerald Isle prides itself, after all.

Nothing can prepare you for the landscape. You’d've thought Emerald Isle was a clue, but really, nothing prepares you. Ireland in late Spring is not green. It is Green. And what with the hedgerows of flowering May and the livestock, it looks like a butter commercial. Miles and miles of butter commercial. And then you drive round a corner and come eye-ball to rocks with this:

The Burren

You have no idea - how can you, from one photograph? It rises out of the buttery green land like the skull of the island. It is grey, and bare, and goes on for miles. A vast upland of rocks, and lost sheep, and sadly, these days, gawpers in day-glo anoraks.

As one American tripper, fresh off a coach that had just crossed the Burren, with all this moody grandeur behind her, said to her husband, ‘It’s a little samey.’

We spent quite a bit of time hanging about picturesque ruins with glorious histories and convenient little museums and tea-shops, and it being May and June, they were infested with grockels. These came in two sorts - astoundingly bored French or German teenagers who clearly would sooner be dead than dragged about a bunch of damn rocks all day with no one to flirt with except each other (and that had clearly palled on the ferry); and middle-aged to elderly coach-parties, either British or American, very few of whom seemed to give a sweet bejaysus about the sights and whose conversation veered between whinging about the facilites and being pompous about their Irish roots. A few gems:
While examining a 1000-year-old ruined cathedral that had been smashed up by Cromwell: ‘I wonder why they never put a roof on it?’
‘My ancestors were Irish, you know. They came from Liverpool.’
‘What’s this gaelic everyone’s talking? Why don’t they speak Irish?’
and of course ‘Ooh, look dear, they have coffee in Ireland!’

I have no idea what the teenagers all thought. I am not a polyglot [More a semi-clot. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Irresistable - Ed].
I shall now give The Editor a Hard Stare, but while I do, here are some photos that have no anecdotage beyond their own good selves:

Very Irish Ruin - the whole country was littered with sort of thing

“What colour shall we paint Castle, dear?”

I have no idea why monkeys or why billiards.

Most of Ireland’s ancient history lies in ruins (yes, it is the fault of the English. Deal with it). Some hugely important and wonderful places are in such shabby disarray that the sight of them hurts the heart. It’s not even that the Irish have forgotten then or are neglecting them (not now, anyway, though I think the Church, Protestant AND Catholic, has a hell of a lot to answer for). They have been too battered for too long by too many enemies. Take Tara, for example, the great sacred and royal heart of the island, High Throne of Ireland, pre-Christian centre of worship, burial-place of Kings and High Kings. It figures in so many Celtic legends, CuChulain, Finn MacCool, Dierdre of the Sorrows, Diarmuid and Grainne. It is legendary and yet it actually exists. Daniel O’Connell actually held meetings there while struggling for Irish Emancipation because of its immense weight of history and symbolism. It looks like this:

Strangely, it made me think not of Celtic Myth but of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer:

The Maker of men has so marred this dwelling
that human laughter is not heard about it
and empty stand these old giant works.
A man who looked on these walls wisely
who sounded deeply this dark life
would think back to the blood spilt here
weigh it in his mind. His word would be this:
“Where are the horses now? Where are the warriors?
Where is their lord? Where is the hall of the feast?
Where is the hall’s joy? …
How that time has passed,
dark under night’s helm, as though it had never been!

[You’ve embarrassed everyone now, you know - Ed]

Oh very well. Back to the whimsey. Half-way across the island, there is a little town, with a little pub in it. In said pub, the locals actually sing and play Irish folk music. Every night. Not for the tourists, but because they like it. Nevertheless they had a few that night, us, and a group of very happy Germans, who were having trouble getting over the delicious fact that they were actually in an Authentic Pub. We heard a young woman in a football shirt playing the accordion, and a dignified gent with silver streaks in his hair, playing the banjo. All mightily enjoyable, and the Guinness is better in Ireland. We also got a coven of three blue-rinsed ladies who took over our table, drank ginger ale (a younger, somewhat desperate-eyed woman, clearly driver, lackey and target, drank Baileys frantically and was harangued about correct change on no fewer than four occasions), and kibbitzed in a way that made Simon Cowell look benevolent. ‘She’s good,’ said the fluffiest witch. ‘But she is very young,’ said the widest. ‘I wonder if her mother is here,’ said the thinnest.

And then a chap, clearly parented by a leprechaun and decidely doing his best to live up to it, stood up and sang, deep-voiced and richly larded with sentiment, several songs about missing his old home by the Shannon, the pretty girls far across the sea, the sweet green hills of Ireland and the Shannon again. Meanwhile, about 100 yards from the pub itself:

Oh the irony.

Meanwhile the German tourists were in transports of delight, and photographed every one and every thing in the pub. If I appear masquerading as an Irish Rose on a German blog, sorry, but they were unstoppable and unexplainable-to. Is gut, yah?

One last photo, taken on the quay in Galway:

Which explains everything.

*Erudite remark especially in honour of Ed’s first comment. This Ed not being anything to do with The Editor. Is this going to cause confusions?

Posted by Reed on Saturday, June 10th, 2006 at 6:03 pm.