Shakespeare and the Irish

It seems we have been a troublesome lot since Shakespeare's time

It's worth listening to this short documentary on the great bard's view of the Irish, set in the context of Elizabeth's battles with her neighbours in the 1590s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01gg7dt

While the Scots had the great play Macbeth to themselves, the Irish have to console themselves with a relatively minor character, Macmorris, in that most English of plays, Henry V.

While Shakespeare's plays had few direct references to the Irish, we were never far from the minds of his audience.

Murphy and the Bricks

On a slightly lighter note than some of my recent missives, this song is a great favourite of mine and a wonderful example of just how the Irish manage to find humour in even the darkest of situations.

Why do the Irish let this happen?

The haemorrhaging of human talent runs unabated in Ireland, with over 100,000 having left over the past 12 months.

The IDA, a State run agency, ran adverts when I was in school in the 1980’s boasting that our young people were our greatest asset. Yet we celebrate the export of our own people to staff the offices, building sites, and hospitals of other countries all around the world.

The new government, elected in 2011, is just as bad as the previous administrations. It is turning its back on Irish citizens who are unable to make a life for themselves in the land where they were born.

Can you imagine the public outcry in the UK or the US if the citizens of those countries were forced to leave their homeland to obtain work? The government would be kicked out of office at the earliest opportunity.

Why do the Irish accept emigration, and the destuction that it leaves in its wake so easily?

The Famine never happened

Sinead O’Connor, despite her own personal and very public  troubles, is an excellent lyricist.

Her 1994 song on the Famine outlines her thesis on how so many of Ireland’s problems today in terms of our high rates of alcoholism, drug addiction and child abuse harp back to our guilt over the famine when our political and religious leaders turned their back on the starving peoples.

The video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZIB6MslCAo&ob=av2n

As a people, we have never really come to terms with the fact that so many Irish people were complicit in this terrible event that saw a million die from starvation and millions more forced to leave the country in search of a better life. The pain is still very raw. 

Shi'ite Irish girls say

Apologies to any non-Irish people trying to fathom this young lady's accent.

She uses a lot of very local Irish expressions, that probably wont mean a lot to anyone born outside the island of Ireland, but it is very funny nonetheless.

On a seperate note, I've now got a twitter account (like all you crazy kids do with your computers and U2).

Please feel free to follow me here:
https://twitter.com/#!/IrishExileinLdn

Next thing you know, I may even get a mobile phone that doesn't look like something that should be in a glass case in the British Museum

Dara O'Brian on the English and the Irish

I was recently described as looking like the love child of Dara O'Brian and Adrian Chiles.

I don't know which is more disturbing.

Here is another great comedy sketch from Dara on what he calls the "awkwardness" between the English and the Irish:

Castletown Donkey Derby 1994

http://youtu.be/8XtVm8z28e4?t=1m26s

The Lonely Planet on Ireland

“The two decades since 1990 have transformed the country immeasurably, with prosperity, modernity and multiculturalism helping shift traditional attitudes and social mores,” the book notes.

It notes too that we are more than used to this austerity and in some ways that is to our credit: “The Irish – fatalistic and pessimistic to the core – will shrug their shoulders and just get on with their lives.”

Drink and the pub does of course get a mention and Lonely Planet notes that there is “no sign of letting up” when it comes to “the country’s most popular social pastime”.

http://www.thejournal.ie/pessimistic-boastful-but-loves-a-drink-what-lonely-planet-says-about-ireland-326313-Jan2012/

Pretty much sums it up, I'd say

In the beginning ...

I've lived in England now for almost 20 years, and it really has been a great home to me.

I swore when I left Dublin, that I was different, that I'd be back in Ireland's bosom again in a few months. As the song says: "Months turn into years. How quick they pass". Now almost 20 years later, I've started this blog to tell some of my story.

Ireland has many faults, and I am a huge critic but being Irish means that you have a unique view of the world that others often envy. And like so many others, I always think fondly of my homeland.

I was one of the last who left Ireland, through forced emigration. That probably made it all the more difficult watching Ireland grow as a country, as I scratched through my twenties trying to forge a life in London, hanging out at the Swan in Stockwell or the Archway Tavern in north London dreaming of a country that I would find very different if I ever went home.

That distance strained most of my friendships, as every time I went home we had fewer and fewer common stories to talk about and we grew apart.

And so I took a job that allowed me to travel to strange and wonderful corners of the world: Israel, Europe, the US, Saudi, the Far East, you name it.

The taste for Lyons Tea and Tayto crisps soon passes, but the feeling of being Irish in Exile never does