till.
“Are you okay?” the teenager asked, which did not help my road-frayed nerves. Did we look terminally ill? The phrase was dumbfounding, and in this country, where language is so often wielded with a fine brush, such mindless utterances fall with a deafening thud. For the last few weeks we had heard, ad nauseam, the same words greeting shoppers who approached Irish cash registers with their arms wrapped around masses of expensive clothing or toys. In most countries, people thrusting wads of cash over checkout counters are not asked, “Are you okay?” but rather, “May I help you?” We couldn’t help wondering if the phrase “Are you okay?” really was a nod to the old indolence of the land, meaning, “Why the hell are you bothering me?”
“I’m grand. How are you?” I responded, waiting for the inevitable three-beat response. Ever-observant Laura, knowing my hobbyhorses inside out, caught the sarcasm and scowled. Variants of such amiable how-are-yous are asked all over the world, and in many places are even answered brightly. In Ireland, no positive reply can be offered – that’s bragging. Better to feign unhappiness.
“Not too bad,” the clerk said right on cue. Irish people always say that to inquiries regarding how they are faring. The words convey that the people mumbling them are not yet dead, nor have they had their entrails recently cut out by invading Norsemen, nor their entire family stricken with typhoid only to depart in the night on a pestilential Famine ship. The response expresses theIrish infatuation with poor-mouthing, meaning a stoic sharing of life’s miseries with the rest of the unfortunate inhabitants of their godforsaken wet bog of an island. “Not too bad,” I knew by now, is never, ever to be rendered with a smile. The point is to convey that one’s as miserable as everyone else, even though public opinion polls consistently show that the Irish today are actually among the most cheerful and optimistic people in Europe. The phrase is undoubtedly a remnant of the post-Famine psychology that has never caught up with the “Smartie” age.
Eating helped my mood, and we ventured outside, by now forgetting the frenzy on the roads. The music festival was materializing, with traffic diverted and the town’s main thoroughfare flooding with pedestrians. A great cluster of them gathered in front of a bevel-windowed old pub called De Barra’s, which, Ireland being what it is, has hosted as its most celebrated regular and provider of Friday night entertainment the former wah-wah amplified bass guitarist for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Noel Redding. Today, three trad musicians sat on stools on the sidewalk, all as clean-cut as bankers, tuning wah-wah-deprived fiddles. As it turned out, their first song was based on a series of letters a heartbroken father had written to a son who had emigrated to Boston in 1860 – never, like millions of participants in the Irish diaspora, to be seen again by his family. The words could have as easily been penned to one Owen Monaghan, namesake of the little son I’d just hoisted onto my shoulders, who departed forever from County Monaghan in 1844 to a miserable factory job twenty miles deeper into Massachusetts. They could have been directed as well to millions of others who would never return from Australia and South Africa, Argentina and Ontario, anywhere at all that would have them.
The ballad was so poignant, its mournful fiddles and tin whistles and aching words so expressive of the terrible exodus from places just like Clonakilty, that I began brushing away tears. Jamie, I saw, was doing the same thing. Laura looked from one parent to another and caught our emotion; even Harris stared off wistfully. Here lies then, ye transplanted children, another sad initiation rite to your past, I thought. Yet the level of literacy and devotionto history that resonated through the singers’ rich baritones, and through the crowd’s rapt appreciation,
“Are you okay?” the teenager asked, which did not help my road-frayed nerves. Did we look terminally ill? The phrase was dumbfounding, and in this country, where language is so often wielded with a fine brush, such mindless utterances fall with a deafening thud. For the last few weeks we had heard, ad nauseam, the same words greeting shoppers who approached Irish cash registers with their arms wrapped around masses of expensive clothing or toys. In most countries, people thrusting wads of cash over checkout counters are not asked, “Are you okay?” but rather, “May I help you?” We couldn’t help wondering if the phrase “Are you okay?” really was a nod to the old indolence of the land, meaning, “Why the hell are you bothering me?”
“I’m grand. How are you?” I responded, waiting for the inevitable three-beat response. Ever-observant Laura, knowing my hobbyhorses inside out, caught the sarcasm and scowled. Variants of such amiable how-are-yous are asked all over the world, and in many places are even answered brightly. In Ireland, no positive reply can be offered – that’s bragging. Better to feign unhappiness.
“Not too bad,” the clerk said right on cue. Irish people always say that to inquiries regarding how they are faring. The words convey that the people mumbling them are not yet dead, nor have they had their entrails recently cut out by invading Norsemen, nor their entire family stricken with typhoid only to depart in the night on a pestilential Famine ship. The response expresses theIrish infatuation with poor-mouthing, meaning a stoic sharing of life’s miseries with the rest of the unfortunate inhabitants of their godforsaken wet bog of an island. “Not too bad,” I knew by now, is never, ever to be rendered with a smile. The point is to convey that one’s as miserable as everyone else, even though public opinion polls consistently show that the Irish today are actually among the most cheerful and optimistic people in Europe. The phrase is undoubtedly a remnant of the post-Famine psychology that has never caught up with the “Smartie” age.
Eating helped my mood, and we ventured outside, by now forgetting the frenzy on the roads. The music festival was materializing, with traffic diverted and the town’s main thoroughfare flooding with pedestrians. A great cluster of them gathered in front of a bevel-windowed old pub called De Barra’s, which, Ireland being what it is, has hosted as its most celebrated regular and provider of Friday night entertainment the former wah-wah amplified bass guitarist for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Noel Redding. Today, three trad musicians sat on stools on the sidewalk, all as clean-cut as bankers, tuning wah-wah-deprived fiddles. As it turned out, their first song was based on a series of letters a heartbroken father had written to a son who had emigrated to Boston in 1860 – never, like millions of participants in the Irish diaspora, to be seen again by his family. The words could have as easily been penned to one Owen Monaghan, namesake of the little son I’d just hoisted onto my shoulders, who departed forever from County Monaghan in 1844 to a miserable factory job twenty miles deeper into Massachusetts. They could have been directed as well to millions of others who would never return from Australia and South Africa, Argentina and Ontario, anywhere at all that would have them.
The ballad was so poignant, its mournful fiddles and tin whistles and aching words so expressive of the terrible exodus from places just like Clonakilty, that I began brushing away tears. Jamie, I saw, was doing the same thing. Laura looked from one parent to another and caught our emotion; even Harris stared off wistfully. Here lies then, ye transplanted children, another sad initiation rite to your past, I thought. Yet the level of literacy and devotionto history that resonated through the singers’ rich baritones, and through the crowd’s rapt appreciation,
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