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IRISH JOKES
"Go past the pob," he told us firmly, "Then keep straight till the end of the road. Turn left, go for a mile, then right at the bottom of the hill."
"See, who said the Irish weren't smart!” I said to my husband as soon as we were out of earshot. He didn’t answer me – too busy manoeuvring our huge red and white camper van back onto the narrow road, I guess. “Those were the clearest directions we've had anywhere so far," I continued, tempting fate. Later wished I hadn’t said that.
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An hour later in the dark, irretrievably lost and still looking for the camping ground, we both conceded I'd spoken too soon. Yet it seemed hard to blame the man with the twinkling blue eyes who had directed us. He’d been so sure of his facts – perhaps we had misunderstood him.
Welcome to Ireland – the land of ten thousand welcomes and just as many false turns. Visitors only have to spend a few days in this green and misty country to begin pinching themselves and asking: ‘Is it me – or is it them?’ (read more)
It’s certainly not that the Irish are crazy. Far from it. It’s just that they seem to view the world from a slightly topsy-turvy angle – or, depending who you’re talking to, it could just as easily be described as tipsy-turvy! You see Guinness is a favourite everywhere. Whiskey (with an 'e') is the national lubricant and there's a 'pob' on every corner – to be sure.
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Welcomes, yes, abound. But it's also a land of leprechauns and laughter; a country where you can round a country corner and find a pipe-smoking dog perched on a donkey’s saddle supervised by their entrepreneurial owner; a place where there are thatched caravans, and goats that scratch their backs on an electrified fence. Why there's even Blarney Castle where, if you lie down over a 15-metre drop and kiss a stone, so you’ll be able to talk yourself out of trouble ever after. They say.
Northern Ireland even has a ‘joke’ of nature – the Giant’s Causeway – where huge basalt columns thrust their hexagonal edges against each other making an angular promontory in parts up to 120 metres high.
For many Aussies a trip to Ireland is like going home. Regardless of the amount of shamrock-coloured blood in your veins, once you set foot in Dublin, people just look familiar. It's not surprising when you realise that as many as 40 percent of Australians may have an Irish background. In fact many return to Ireland just for family research.
There's a casual slant to Ireland too, a relaxed list to the place that is infectious. After a while you feel yourself unwinding. And if something goes wrong, if the directions don't make sense, well, they're sure to be right sooner or later.
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Then there's the music – tiny flutes and whistles embroider the air with their tinny sweetness, and people dance – just because they're happy. There are singalongs in the pubs as the rounds are shouted and arguments erupt, subsiding again as quickly as the froth on a Guinness. By day old men in cloth caps hum as they thatch their roofs before winter.
Some say that music is one of Ireland's gifts to the world. We hear it echoing in Australian bush ballads and American country music. Handel's Messiah was first performed in Dublin in 1742 and today dozens of bands and singers and instrumentalists from U2 onward continue to entertain us.
Ireland has become synonymous with 'green', yet that's too simple a hue. Tick-tack-toe lines of white-washed stone walls, draped in palest lichen divide the emerald hillsides. Indeed there are a hundred shades of green in this land of grass and trees, clover and cliffs – a beautiful monotony.
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Yet it’s a country of colour too. Some tiny villages are washed with colour, no two houses the same – pink and mauve and blue, yellow and lime. In the cities bright signs and shop fronts reflect the jewel colours beloved by the Irish for centuries. You see those in ancient Dublin, capital of Eire, where, every day page after illuminated page of the 8th-century Book of Kells are reverently exhibited daily in Trinity College.
A few blocks away Temple Bar swings madly enough to attract young people by the busload from Britain and the rest of Europe.
Others find the nearest pub (there's never one far away) and order a pint and make a dozen new best-friends. The Irish love to talk (and drink) and any newcomer soon becomes part of an exuberant extended party.
'When Irish eyes are smiling' is not just a line in an old song. The Irish sense of humour stretches to laughing at themselves (who do you think made up all those Irish jokes?) and can see the funny side of any situation. So if you’re after a wee bit of a laugh and some fun (the Irish call it craic), if the rest of the world is seeming too proper and clear-cut, if you want to ‘dizzy-up’ a little – then you'd better get yourself off to Ireland, and discover a new perspective on life.
Maybe it’s all the green that gets to them and their visitors – or perhaps it’s the Guinness. Whatever it is, there is one thing you'll never joke about. You’d never jest about not returning.
Now that would be a very serious matter.
HAVE A FANTASTIC ST PATRICK’S DAY!
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Did you know? Ireland wasn’t the first country to celebrate St Patrick’s Day with a parade.
Up until 1970, pubs across Ireland closed their doors as a mark of respect for this religious occasion! It was, in fact, colonial New York City that hosted the first official St Patrick’s Day parade back in 1762, when Irish immigrants in the British colonial army marched down the city streets to St Patrick’s Cathedral. Dublin’s first St Patrick’s Day Parade is little more than 75 years old, but the occasion has changed dramatically since then!
For information about travel to Ireland: www.discoverireland.com/au or subscribe to the newsletter.