It cannot be defined by my drinking capacity or my never ending thirst for divilment in all shapes and forms. It's not the way I speak or the way I take life a little less serious than some people. It's not even in my hatred of the rain or my suspicion of good sunny weather. It just is what it is, and I am what I am, and what I am is Irish. It's a daily occurrence, being Irish, I wake up in the morning and hey presto, I'm Irish. I open my mouth, and my Irish accent and my Irish slang come toppling out. My outlook on life is Irish. I carry it around with me everywhere I go, it's on my passport, it's not an annual one day event, its a 24/7 365 days a year job. Which is why, I find that sometimes, St Patrick's Day, can grate on me just a tiny little bit.
It feels so forced by times, it feels like we have to be in the best mood ever, drink ourselves into a stupor, be loud and obnoxious, curse and swear and generally make a nuisance of ourselves. Don't get me wrong, we're not all like this. But the same small group of people that have made sure all English football fans who go to away matches abroad are seen as football hooligans, seem to have their Irish counterparts that come crawling out of the woodwork for this the most holy of holy days.
For me, there is nothing worse than a donkey attituded drunken Irish person wrecking heads left, right and centre. When it's someone of a different nationality, you smile indulgently and shake your head and feel happy that at least s/he is from a different country and won't shame your nation. But when you see what kind of annoyance they are being and when you hear the accent, the Leinster nasal twang, the Munster overpronunciation of R, or the West's insistence of adding a H sound to anything containing the letter S, you cringe, hiding behind your drink or lowering the tone of your voice so people don't associate you with The Donkey. Well at least I do. See, I don't have any donkey friends, I know plenty of them, but try to avoid them at all costs because my life is just too short. You know The Donkey: the one that has to be louder than everyone else, the one that has to be "funnier" than his friends, the one who has to make lewd and crude remarks about all members of the female race as they scurry by for fear of being trapped with The Donkey, the one who drinks far too much because as we all know, the drunker you are, the more "craic" you are.
I digress however, bringing The Donkey to your attention is not what I came here for. I came to write about how instead of those types of people being a representation of our lovely country, how about we look back at the past and see what has made us, Us. Irish. Like all countries, we have a history, a bloody history, but still a history to be proud of. We have survived slavery, genocide, famines big and small, emigration in droves, our language and religion taken away, invasions from all corners of Europe and beyond, and for a small country such as Ireland, that is a lot to take. Another nation might have fallen to the outsiders and might have had their spirits broken by the invaders. But that, that right there, is what makes me exceedingly proud to be Irish. Despite the hammerings from other nations to our country and our being, we never lost our culture, we never lost our love of our traditional arts like music and story telling, we still have a respect of the countryside and of nature which harks back to our Pagan ancestors, we still have round towers that protected the communities from invasions, we still have the Hill of Tara stretching back to the High Kings of Ireland time, we still have the undefeated spirit that stood up and did it's very best to keep our country intact, and like it or not, these things have in fact shaped who we are today. We all have a twinkle in our eyes, we all have a lilting accent that makes men and women around the world get slightly flustered by the sound of our voices, we have a wit that is uniquely our own, we have a charm and we have a way of fitting in to situations where others might falter. Despite it all, we still have it.
There is still a sense of community at home, and it is something I do miss in London. Most of my friends here are Irish. We haven't actively sought each other out, it honestly has just kind of happened, so in a way, the community spirit we have all brought with us has continued. At home, neighbours, particularly in towns and the countryside, all know each other, and have possibly grown up with each other, they still help each other out, we say hello to people on the street even when we don't know them. Despite the fact that the country was torn apart by greed and the implosion of the Celtic Tiger, we are still a nation that helps others, even when we need the help ourselves. The Trócaire boxes are still full and sent to Africa every year, even in times when people didn't and still don't have much money. When you come into an Irish person's house, you will not leave until at least a tea, a coffee, a ham sandwich, a bun, a shot of whiskey, and another sandwich have been thrust upon you and consumed. There might be nothing in the fridge, but when a visitor comes, people make something out of nothing.
Dev once said "there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliation's, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul" That is how I would like us to be represented around the world. And for every Donkey that goes to a different country and shames Mammy, I think there are ten more who has the words and summing up of our identity that Dev so eloquently said, behind them, and shows the world our true colours. That is what we should be proud of, and what we should celebrate, the warrior spirit that never really went away, the soul of Ireland that is still to be found in the people at home and the diaspora, but maybe just got a little muddied along the way. The recession, though hideous in its affect on Ireland, could well be the thing we needed to bring us back to where we came from and how we should be. We got carried away in the now notorious Good Times and I think we sometimes forgot what we were. Clichéd as it sounds, we might be poor in money, but we are rich beyond our wildest dreams in so many other ways.
For me, there is nothing worse than a donkey attituded drunken Irish person wrecking heads left, right and centre. When it's someone of a different nationality, you smile indulgently and shake your head and feel happy that at least s/he is from a different country and won't shame your nation. But when you see what kind of annoyance they are being and when you hear the accent, the Leinster nasal twang, the Munster overpronunciation of R, or the West's insistence of adding a H sound to anything containing the letter S, you cringe, hiding behind your drink or lowering the tone of your voice so people don't associate you with The Donkey. Well at least I do. See, I don't have any donkey friends, I know plenty of them, but try to avoid them at all costs because my life is just too short. You know The Donkey: the one that has to be louder than everyone else, the one that has to be "funnier" than his friends, the one who has to make lewd and crude remarks about all members of the female race as they scurry by for fear of being trapped with The Donkey, the one who drinks far too much because as we all know, the drunker you are, the more "craic" you are.
I digress however, bringing The Donkey to your attention is not what I came here for. I came to write about how instead of those types of people being a representation of our lovely country, how about we look back at the past and see what has made us, Us. Irish. Like all countries, we have a history, a bloody history, but still a history to be proud of. We have survived slavery, genocide, famines big and small, emigration in droves, our language and religion taken away, invasions from all corners of Europe and beyond, and for a small country such as Ireland, that is a lot to take. Another nation might have fallen to the outsiders and might have had their spirits broken by the invaders. But that, that right there, is what makes me exceedingly proud to be Irish. Despite the hammerings from other nations to our country and our being, we never lost our culture, we never lost our love of our traditional arts like music and story telling, we still have a respect of the countryside and of nature which harks back to our Pagan ancestors, we still have round towers that protected the communities from invasions, we still have the Hill of Tara stretching back to the High Kings of Ireland time, we still have the undefeated spirit that stood up and did it's very best to keep our country intact, and like it or not, these things have in fact shaped who we are today. We all have a twinkle in our eyes, we all have a lilting accent that makes men and women around the world get slightly flustered by the sound of our voices, we have a wit that is uniquely our own, we have a charm and we have a way of fitting in to situations where others might falter. Despite it all, we still have it.
There is still a sense of community at home, and it is something I do miss in London. Most of my friends here are Irish. We haven't actively sought each other out, it honestly has just kind of happened, so in a way, the community spirit we have all brought with us has continued. At home, neighbours, particularly in towns and the countryside, all know each other, and have possibly grown up with each other, they still help each other out, we say hello to people on the street even when we don't know them. Despite the fact that the country was torn apart by greed and the implosion of the Celtic Tiger, we are still a nation that helps others, even when we need the help ourselves. The Trócaire boxes are still full and sent to Africa every year, even in times when people didn't and still don't have much money. When you come into an Irish person's house, you will not leave until at least a tea, a coffee, a ham sandwich, a bun, a shot of whiskey, and another sandwich have been thrust upon you and consumed. There might be nothing in the fridge, but when a visitor comes, people make something out of nothing.
Dev once said "there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliation's, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul" That is how I would like us to be represented around the world. And for every Donkey that goes to a different country and shames Mammy, I think there are ten more who has the words and summing up of our identity that Dev so eloquently said, behind them, and shows the world our true colours. That is what we should be proud of, and what we should celebrate, the warrior spirit that never really went away, the soul of Ireland that is still to be found in the people at home and the diaspora, but maybe just got a little muddied along the way. The recession, though hideous in its affect on Ireland, could well be the thing we needed to bring us back to where we came from and how we should be. We got carried away in the now notorious Good Times and I think we sometimes forgot what we were. Clichéd as it sounds, we might be poor in money, but we are rich beyond our wildest dreams in so many other ways.
