A Thousand Warmest Welcomes

Back in Texas, I have no problem finding a nice “please” and “thank you.” If I’m lucky I might even find that chivalry isn’t dead and a man will give up his seat on a packed bus for me.

But all of that above really only adds up to being polite. A “thank you” doesn’t turn into a conversation and two strangers don’t have interest in each other or anyone else around them.

That is just how Texas is and it’s not a bad thing, but it’s certainly not how it’s done in Ireland.

There is a reason the country has an old saying of a thousand warmest welcomes. The Irish people truly are the nicest people I have had the privilege of meeting.

 With my “accent,” as the Irish call it, it doesn’t take long for an Irish person to wander over and ask me where I’m from. The people are truly interested in why I came to Ireland, what I’ve seen so far and mostly what I think of the country overall.

I’m always happy when they ask these questions because I get to share how much I love this country, and a lot of that has to do with the people. I’m excited each day to go out and see something new and meet a new person. I never worry about getting lost because I know there will be someone on every street corner happy to point me in the right direction.

This blog was about defining what it means to be Irish, and after four weeks I’m not much closer to finding the complete answer, but I do know that to me Ireland in general means a welcoming country.

Because the people are so welcoming, I was able to steal away some time from an Irish student and ask him to define being Irish. He seemed to do it one word, “tea.”

“Irish people love their tea. Whenever you visit anyone, they always offer you tea first,” said Andrew McCreddin, a 25 year old graduate student at Trinity College Dublin.

I was lucky enough to experience this when my class visited several companies. Tea was always the first order of business, and I think that all goes back to the warmest of welcomes.

Street signs in Killarney with Gaelic and English.

When I asked about Irish heritage, he told me about another distinct Irish trait.

“We are all taught the Irish Gaelic language starting at the age of 4, yet nearly absolutely everyone is terrible at it,” McCreddin said.

I had talked to other locals throughout the trip about the Irish language, mostly because I never knew there was actually an Irish language. From what I learned, Irish is not only very difficult but it’s even more difficult to find proper teachers, and that is where the problems begin.

Continuing my conversation with McCreddin, he finished the conversation off with a list of more of his definitions of Ireland.

·         Appreciation of chippers (fried fast food restaurants) even though all the best ones seem to be run by Italians

·     Going to the bog for a day with a plastic bottle of tea and cutting turf

·         And of course, drinking. Especially on St. Patrick’s Day and Arthur’s Day and basically the entire year

Comparing his Irish to Irish list to my American to Irish list of music and dancing, I definitely feel like more of a tourist. I guess it takes more time to become Irish. 

Pipes, a Fiddle and Two Left Feet

Three Irish students perform traditional Irish music.
(Left to right: Zelda, Fiona, Luke)

In my first post, I wrote of traditional Irish music but it wasn’t until this past week that I discovered what traditional music really means.

Along with my class, I went to Culturlann na Heireann, an Irish cultural center, to listen to Irish music and learn Irish dances. I don’t know for sure what I was expecting but I know that I was not expecting the musicians and dancers to be younger than me…

The youngest, Luke, was only 17 years old and played the most complex instrument I have ever seen. Not only was the instrument complex, I still can’t even pronounce the name, the Uillean pipes. I prefer the simple name of the elbow pipes.

He attempted to explain the process of playing the pipes and I think as a group we were all in even more awe of how beautifully he played after hearing the complexity of the instrument.

There were two other musicians, both girls and both playing traditional instruments. Fiona played the fiddle and the other, Zelda, played the concertina. Both girls were also younger than me at 20 years old.

After listening to the music, it was the groups turn to learn. Our teacher, Zelda, showed us a few traditional dances and then attempted to teach us one.

I have to admit that I am musically challenged and lack rhythm so the dancing was not a success for me. But no matter how many times I messed up or got kicked by another classmate, I never stopped having fun. I loved every minute of it and jealously watched as the two Irish girls performed the dances with ease.

Watching Luke and the others perform, I realized how much of traditional Ireland never truly fades. There are kids like Luke who want to learn the traditions and there are places like the cultural center who want to teach them.

The benefits extend beyond Ireland as tourist like me get to experience the culture as well, and in turn share it with more people via Facebook, Youtube and, of course, blogspot.

History On and Off the Field

Street view of Dublin.

There is a growing list of things I didn’t know about Dublin until I came here, but the one that stands out the most is that Dublin’s official year of establishment is 988 A.D., though the city dates back even further than that.

With a thousand years to develop, you can imagine that Dublin is practically made of history. Walking through the city, the buildings flow from period to period. You see Georgian homes from the 1700s followed by monuments and statues representing a millennium’s worth of history.

But, as I learned Sunday, the history of Dublin, and Ireland as a whole, is not just found in the buildings and museums, but also on a 130 meter by 145 meter field.

On Sunday, I attended my first Gaelic football match and cheered a long with the crowd as Dublin took on, and defeated, Laois.

Dublin's Gaelic football team attempts to score on Laois.

Gaelic football dates back to the 17^th century and has been a regulated national sport since 1884 with the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association to preserve Irish sports. I’m so glad that they did because watching Gaelic football is entertaining to say the least.

The game is like a combination of rugby and football (soccer to us Americans) and is a part of the Irish traditions. I saw different generations coming together as Irishmen to watch the games as it has been for centuries. The game continues to be passed down from generation to generation and remains a part of Ireland.

I’m only a week and a half into my Ireland Maymester, and still have so much more to go.  

It’s All in the Music

My first day in Ireland, I walked the streets of the City Centre and from every restaurant and pub came the sounds of music, both live and recorded.

The music continuously drew me from place to place and finally I settled on one special pub in particular. Gogarty's pub was the epitome of an Irish pub and at the very front were two men with guitars cracking jokes and playing songs. I was lucky enough to walk in right as one song began and almost instantly, every person in the pub was singing right along.

My goal of not standing out shattered, but at that moment it didn’t matter because I was literally surrounded by the culture. It didn’t matter that I was in a foreign country away from my family, that I had just come off a seven hour plane ride or that I had already been rained on four times. I was in Dublin, in a pub, listening to live authentic Irish music and I was hooked.

You can find live music almost everywhere in this city. The streets of Temple Bar are lined with musicians waiting for people to listen to them. But locals have told me to be cautious of the pubs in Temple Bar. In some, the music is hardly what they define as authentic but you will still have a good time listening to the music over a pint.

My recommendation though is to find a pub like Gogarty's with authentic live music. Here, tourist and locals collide as one group. For me, I not only got to see how the music plays into their culture, but I became a part of the culture as well. A few minutes inside that pub, you will feel Irish and never want to leave.

Below is a video from my time at Gogarty's, but please disregard the Scots dancing in the front. Even they can't help themselves when it comes to Irish music.