by Frank Gannon
It was like that now in Ireland. I struggled to keep the only two ideas I had to keep: 1) In a couple of weeks we have to be at Dublin airport. 2) Find out where Mom and Dad came from.
Like the lights at the factory, these ideas kept leaving my brain. I finally wrote them on my hands: Dublin and Mom and Dad, in big red letters.
I started to think of my mental state as related somehow to Ireland. Despite the fact that I have always been an airhead, I think the Old Country contributed to my condition.
As I wandered around, I found myself doing odd things. Like watching turf-cutting. Turf-cutting is not a great spectator sport, but in Ireland I watched a lot of turf-cutting, and I was not alone. I watched a turf-cutter for over an hour one day. There was a crowd of about ten people with me. Some left, some came, but the crowd stayed about ten. Some brought food, which they shared. The tool that turf-cutters use, I learned, was a “slan.” The turf-cutter we were watching was very good with his slan. The crowd actually made comments.
“He’s good.”
“Look at that!”
“Man can handle that slan.”
That was about it as far as commentary went. You don’t need Al Michaels and John Madden to call a turf-cutting.
I couldn’t imagine killing an hour doing something like this in America. Even doughnut-making or taffy-pulling gets old in a hurry in America. But watching turf-cutting seemed like a fine thing to do in Ireland. Next time I go back, I’ll know what to look for in slan handling.
Every night in Ireland we slept in somebody’s house. There are bed and breakfasts all over the place. Many of them have a little green sign. The sign means that the tourist authority, the Bord Failte, has inspected them. The best thing about them for me was the odd sense that I was home. My mom’s sense of what should go where is the same sense that informs all these B&Bs. Anne Forde, decorator, seemed to haunt the B&Bs.
Except for the brief time we spent in Dublin, somewhere in my mind, I was home. My days always began the same way. The B&Bs were all different, of course, but they sort of bled into each other and I find that I have one big memory of Plato’s Irish B&Bs.
I open my eyes in a room that looks like my room. Not the room I’ve been sleeping in for the past ten years. This room is like the room I slept in thirty-five years ago.
This room has one bed instead of two, and the wallpaper is different. Still, there are many similarities between this room and the room I slept in as a child.
There is a holy water font near the door so you can dip your finger and bless yourself when you enter. There are three crucifixes: one over the bed and one on each side. I find this very comforting somehow, as if I am, in some odd way, back home again.
I get out of bed and look at myself in the mirror. I see a guy with a beard and some gray hair. The guy in the mirror has wrinkles and squints like a man who wears glasses but doesn’t have them on right now. He’s only been in Ireland a few days and he is developing a Guinness waistline.
I’m in Ireland, not the New Jersey of my youth. It’s July but the windows are a little fogged with the cold. I wipe the fog off and have a look. It’s the Atlantic Ocean out there. I look over and see that Paulette is looking out the other window. We’ve only been awake for thirty seconds but we’re already looking for Irish stuff.
After a low-water-pressure shower we get dressed and head downstairs for the breakfast portion of the bed and breakfast experience. I’m already looking forward to what I know will be downstairs.
“The Irish breakfast” that is served at B&Bs and hotels is a remarkable thing. The standard meal is this: a lightly fried egg, some homemade sausage, two kinds of bread, coffee and tea, sliced mushrooms, sliced tomatoes, Irish bacon, pancakes, ham, some fruit, and usually, another variety of homemade sausage.
This might have been more accurately titled “The Major Cardiac Event Breakfast.” Anyway, people seemed to eat it and live. (I saw four people eat it and make it out of the room.) So, I, too, ate it. I could feel an artery closing as I took the last delicious bite.
We ate “The Irish Breakfast” every day we were there and made it back to America. I’m sure many were not that lucky.
As you eat your Irish breakfast, you will probably be joined by other visitors to Ireland. When we were there we met people from all over Europe, but most of the people we met were Americans. Many were just traveling around, but many were engaged in “searching for their roots.”
Most of the Americans weren’t first-generation Irish-Americans, but they had some Irish connection they were searching for. It is amazing how many Americans are of Irish ancestry. For instance, 30 percent of Massachusetts is Irish. As you might figure, that is the state with the highest level of Irish ancestry, but many other states are close. Rhode Island, 22 percent. Delaware, 21 percent. New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Tennessee, one-fifth Irish. New Jersey, my home, 18 percent Irish ancestry. If you put an “O’ ” or a “Mc” in front of many, many names, they sound quite Irish.
On this particular day, at this particular table outside Clifden, the people at the table with us are Mark and Marcie Berk of Philadelphia. They are very typical of the Americans visiting Ireland with some genealogical motivation. Marcie’s family has the Irish connection. One of her grandparents emigrated from Ireland. She didn’t know where her people came from but she was just trying to establish the general area. Mostly the Berks were having a lot of laughs. They had been hitting a few pubs, listening to a lot of Irish music, and, as happens to everyone who goes to Ireland, the beautiful places and the lovely people genuinely touched them. They would be back. They almost didn’t want to find out too much about Marcie’s ancestors. They wanted a reason to come back.
That was a very typical morning. If you went to Ireland in 2001, meeting and talking to Americans was something that came up all the time. Although some Americans attempted some form of camouflage, their Americanness was painfully obvious to the natives. As soon as you opened your mouth you screamed “American” with your “Yank accent.” I grew up in an Irish home, but sometimes in Ireland people would be so struck by my manner of speech that they would say, “Say that again. That’s lovely.”
There were many other red flags.
Americans tip way too high. In Ireland bartenders and waiters get paid a decent wage, but they are very happy when Americans come in. It means tips that are uncalled-for, but welcome.
Americans call the money “punts.” Although that is the official term, I rarely heard it used by Irish people. Pounds and pence are normal speak. The “euro,” which I had read so much about, is rarely used, except in banks. (In 2002, I am told, this has changed somewhat.)
Irish tourism is a massive, billion-dollar industry, and the quest for Amero-Benjamins has taken some truly bizarre forms. One of the most appalling manifestations centers on the famous John Ford movie The Quiet Man.
The Quiet Man is a wonderful movie, but it has become, in America, the cinematic equivalent of watching a Saint Patrick’s Day Parade while eating corned beef and cabbage and washing it down with green beer. The touristic essence of The Quiet Man is floating all over 2002 Ireland.
“The Quiet Man Experience” is an amazing commercial construction I observed near Castlebar. The movie is almost fifty years old, but still alive in the tourist mind. For a reasonable fee the tourist is given the opportunity to dress as the characters in the film (“The Colleen” [Maureen O’Hara]; “The Yank” [John Wayne]; “The Priest and the Minister” [Ward Bond and Barry Fitzgerald]; and “The Big Brother” [Victor McLaglen]) and be photographed in the act of acting like Irish people in a simulacrum of the little thatched cottage. The fortunate tourist will be able to (from the brochure) “get a feeling of what life in Cong was like during the filming by reading local newspaper articles of the time.”
The brochure goes on to say, “Painstaking effort has ensured that all the furnishings, artifacts, costumes, etc. are authentic reproductions [a phrase Richard Nixon would love]. The four-pos
ter bed and the tables and chairs which ‘Mary Kate’ cherished, the thatched roof, emerald green half door and white-washed front combine to enchant all who visit it.”
I was assured that this is a popular attraction for tourists.
“We always have lines,” the guy in front of the attraction told me.
One night in a pub, a young Irishman named Robbie Walsh told me something I remembered. Considering the time of night, that is worth mentioning.
“Will you get offended if I tell you something?” He had to almost yell this over the frantic fiddling.
I assured him I was not easily offended. I was several pints past the point at which almost nothing offended me.
“You Americans,” he shook his head. This was hard for him to say. He went on after my blank eyes gave him the go-ahead.
“You Americans, don’t be offended, but you Americans are really, really stupid.”
“Why?” I asked. I was genuinely curious.
“Because we can take anything, put a fooking shamrock on it, and you’ll buy it. I could wipe my ass with a towel and sell it to you because it’s Irish. I could sell some Yanks used toilet paper and they’d take it home, frame it, and put it over the mantel. Then when their friends came over, they could say, ‘See that? That’s real Irish used toilet paper. It came directly from Ireland. That is authentic Irish shite from the Old Country.’ ”
I nodded. He went on, screaming into my ear.
“Why will you Yanks, who have the best technology, the most advanced stuff on the planet earth, the most money, the best schools, the best everything, why will you Yanks spend good money on this shite? I saw a man selling fooking sticks! Sticks he picked up off the fooking ground! He tied a goddamn piece of green ribbon around them and he was selling them to the tourists at the Cliffs of Moher for ten pounds! He called them ‘Celtic ceremonial twigs’ or some shite. But he was selling them to the American tourists. And they were buying them!”
I looked at his utterly bewildered, alarmingly red face. We both had a sip. He had something else to ask, some overwhelming question.
“What in God’s name is wrong with you Americans?!”
He offered his ear. I leaned over.
“Drugs,” I said.
When we were in Ireland, I had an odd conversation with Paulette.
“Why can’t you be more like these people?” she asked. It was a genuine question.
“What do you mean, ‘like these people?’ ” When in doubt I always lean on some variation of “define your terms.”
“You know,” she said, “Irish.”
“I am Irish, my mom’s from Mayo and Dad is from near Athlone.” I have said that sentence many times, my credentials for the Irish guy’s club.
“You’re more New Jersey than Irish.”
This was true. Still, I liked to think of myself as “Irish,” not “New Jerseyan” (is there such a word?).
“Well, I’ve spent a lot more time in New Jersey.”
“There’s your problem,” she said. “If you could get rid of the New Jersey you, you’d be a better person. Like these people.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do,” she said. “It’s obvious. Plus, I know you. New Jersey. Not Ireland. Obviously.” People always say “it’s obvious” when it isn’t at all obvious, at least to me.
She explained further.
“You have a core of Irishness. But the years and years of New Jersey have built up around you, like rust. Now it has to be scraped away. If you did that, you would be a good person.”
“How,” I asked, “do you ‘scrape away’ New Jersey?”
“I don’t think you can.”
“So I’m stuck being a bad, New Jersey person?”
After a moment of reflection she said, “Yes.”
I silently promised myself, I am going to scrape away New Jersey.
Many Irish writers modify their use of quotation marks or get rid of them altogether. Molly Bloom’s reverie in Ulysses is just the most well-known instance of this. Irish writers from Flann O’Brian to Roddy Doyle have abandoned the quotation mark. After a while in Ireland, I realized why this is so. Conversation doesn’t seem like something that requires quotation marks. It just seems that a period may be needed, maybe, at the end.
I left my bed and breakfast and decided to buy a local paper. It felt that this might give me a better feel for things. It was a rainy day (big shock there) and the store was about a block away. When I got in there I decided that I would get some candy and a few other things, maybe a cigar.
The man behind the counter, a man about sixty with a bald head, big ears, and interested-looking eyes, said something to the other man in the store, a younger man with a cap and a jacket and a cigarette. It went like this.
They’re working on the road again and they don’t seem to be any different than they were the day before. It’s a wonder that we pay these people. They stand around and we pay for it. That’s the system. They’re working under the ground. I think it’s the pipes. Now, what are pipes doing under the road? You’d think they could put them under the ground. Then they wouldn’t have to be tearing up the roads. It’s some sort of sewer apparatus that they’re hammering at. Why do they hammer when the work involves pipes? You turn pipes, you don’t hammer at them, for Godsakes. Did you see them? Yes they were out there already. Already, they’ve been there for three hours. Drinking coffee. My son works for the city and he spends half his day drinking coffee. Why isn’t it tea? I’ll tell you why. Because there is just coffee that they use for these things. And they can’t bring tea? Sure, they can bring their own tea but why bring it when the city has coffee? It’s a small thing to bring tea, but why not let them pay for everything? My son doesn’t bring tea. But he doesn’t like tea anyway. He drinks water. And we know why he’s drinking water in the morning. The Guinness. He loves Guinness. He drinks that enough. Is he still doing that? He’s doing that and a lot of things don’t you know? His mother is beside herself with all that. I say don’t worry about it. He’s young. He won’t be young for long. That’s right, let him do his thing, woman, they’ll have him tied down soon enough. The women won’t understand that. No they’ve got their ways. They think a man should be a saint. A saint. Sure. They’re all like that. Sure my boy was one but now look at him. Yeah you have to say that, you have to let them. You’re from America. I could tell by the way you look. You might as well announce it. God bless you, are you down the road, you and the missus? No children. That’s the way. Do it when you can. You only live this one time. And it’s over before you get started. I was, it seems that way yesterday and now look at me. Yeah, look at you. Ah, you’ll look like us soon enough.
Where do I put the quotation marks?
One of the really great things about Ireland is pretty subtle. When you are in Ireland you get, every day and free, the sound of “Irish English.” I grew up listening to it, and I never get tired of it. People of the non-Irish variety have told me that they love the sound of Irish English. There is nothing like it, don’t you know?
On the surface, one might understand why the Irish people might have a resistance to English, the language of their long-term oppressors. But that isn’t the way it is. That isn’t the way it is at all.
While I was in Ireland I tried to investigate the subject. What was there about the Irish use of English that made it such a wonderful literary tool? John Synge, the great playwright, said that whenever he was stuck for a line, he would listen to the western Irish people in the kitchen below his workroom. They would always give him amazing little tidbits like this one from Synge’s Playboy of the Western World:
Christy: “It’s that you’d say surely if you seen him and he after drinking for weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before it maybe, and going out into the yard as naked as an ash tree in the moon of May, and shying clods against the visage of the stars till he’d put the fear of death into the banbhs and the screeching sows.”
There were
many times in Ireland, not always in a pub, when I’d hear amazing words put together in a way I had never heard before. While I listened to these little spontaneous prose poems, I would always think, “I wish I had a tape recorder,” or, failing that, a much better memory.
These amazing little verbal flourishes weren’t spouting from some poet or writer. Often they’d be coming from a guy who worked on the road or a bartender or just somebody who wandered in to sip a few. It’s a place where words are important, where words, in a sense, are life.
The Mecca of all this Irish talk is, of course, the Blarney Stone. The stone itself is set in Blarney Castle in County Cork. The kissing of the stone is supposed to magically produce that “Irish talk” quality in the kisser. According to legend, Queen Elizabeth I was putting a lot of pressure on the local Blarney chieftain, a man named Cormac McCarthy (maybe a distant relative of today’s Cormac McCarthy). Elizabeth kept pressing him for a tangible show of loyalty, and Cormac kept adroitly fending her off with a torrent of words. Finally, fed up with McCarthy’s continual verbosity, Elizabeth is said to have screamed, “Blarney! Blarney! It’s all Blarney!”
Since records of all the utterances didn’t exist until the 1800s, the whole story is pretty dubious. But it makes for “some fine talk.”
Whatever the truth, if you want to kiss the stone, which is located on one of the castle’s parapets, you have to hang down and trust someone to hang on to your feet. (For the record: I did it; Paulette chickened out. Hey, I’m the writer.)
Cork
Cork is the extreme southwest of Ireland, maybe three car hours from Dublin, ninety minutes from the Cliffs of Moher. It’s a small trip when you consider the fact that you’ll be receiving the gift of eloquence. It will be more than handy if I’m ever audited by the IRS.
My mom and dad spoke “Irish English”: That is, they spoke with a “brogue.” The word “brogue” is Irish for “shoe,” and it was originally used in a derogatory way, something like “having a shoe on the tongue.” The shoes on my particular tongue are more New Jersey than Irish. The only trace of “brogue” in my speech is a tendency (I am told) to turn “th” into “d” once in a while. After kissing the Blarney Stone I expected that I would never again say “this” when I meant “dis.”
