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The new craic
We had thought the craic or crack was Irish for sharing the news or gossip, or engaging in a type of exuberant pub banter, but that may not be so. A new derivation may be more suited to the sort of young Irish women we have become accustomed to seeing, those we could generalise as akin to tattooed granite blocks, like front row forwards who, as they bend over to eat another potato pie or cream pastry, reveal G-string underwear riding entirely out the top of jeans desperately looking for hips to cling on to. Then, rising phoenix-like, dead-centre between their ample backside cheeks, a big hot-rod flame-shaped tattoo licking the small, or in these cases the large, of their backs. Usually there are other markings as well; a matching dove or cherub above each plump,trussed breast and bands around ankles and arms, and it is not a good look, but one from which eyes cannot find refuge. We have been exposed to an altogether different form of craic and we hope it is not a lasting form.
The topic of Irish women raises a another issue and that is American-Irish women. Apparently it is fact that 95 percent of Americans see no need of travelling outside of the United States and so do not have passports, but it seems that every single one of the other 5 percent is in Ireland at the same time as us and every one is celebrating their Irish heritage. In Galway the pub was full to overflowing with sparkling-eyed Colleens, all with fair skin and reddish wavy hair, and only when they spoke was their drawl revealed. It must be that, despite the time that has elapsed since the Irish colonised the East Coast of the United States, they have carefully maintained a diminishing gene pool by breeding only with their own. Still, we gave encouragement to one, from North Carolina, who had her ten month old baby out for a night of revelry, dancers tapping out their liverdance routines to the accompaniment of mournful live music.
These Americans must all be Republicans because when we discovered by chance the ancestral home of the Kennedy family in County Wexford not a single one of them was there. Actually we just stopped at the gate and peered in as Marty was not about to fork out 5 Euro each to step inside the one room cottage of Patrick Kennedy, the great grandfather of John F Kennedy, particularly when the great JFK only went there once himself on the 27 June 1963. On the back of that single visit the locals have planted an arboretum with 4,500 different varieties of trees, and we magine that, had Kennedy not been assassinated and become a regular, Ireland could now be completely wooded with not an acre of farmland left.
Our drive down down the South-East coast took us through countryside which is far more similar to that of New Zealand than any of the other British or European landscape we have seen. The roads are different though, narrow lanes flanked on either side by stone walls or hedges, in some cases trees form canopies right over the lanes, and the old towns have houses of different colours fronting onto the streets. In some parts too, only the local Irish language is spoken and none of the road signs are in English.
Perhaps the real find was the castle at Lismore which unexpectedly appears in the woodland as you turn a corner approaching the town. Sitting imposing and high above the Blackwater river in County Waterford, the castle's website describes it as perhaps the most spectacular in Ireland and remains the private residence of the Duke of Devonshire, Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavenidish. The castle can be hired out when the Duke is not in residence, it sleeps up to twenty-four guests who are able to "enjoy all the splendour and privacy of living in the Duke's quarters of the castle and are looked after by his own personal staff". The price for renting it is available only on request, and only the garden and art gallery are open to the public. Despite that, it is utterly spectacular and by way of trivia, we learned that Adele Astair, the sister of Fred, lived there between 1932 and 1944.If there are generalisations or be made about the Irish, one would be that the farmers seem to spend all day driving their tractors through towns and along country lanes, completely blocking roads for miles on end and causing rural traffic jams. Not once have we seen a tractor working a field, but there are dozens and dozens out driving. That, of course, may explain the great potato famine of the 1800's, the farmers were too busy careering around the countryside than tending to their crops.