Ireland Uber Alles

guy_awoke

Sometimes it annoys me when Irish people go on so much about great we are. Almost every day the media is filled with self absorbed quasi nationalism thinly disguised as cultural discussion. Otherwise intelligent people easily spin off into how "kind", "generous","intelligent", "culturally rich", "great craic", "sensible", "welcoming" or whatever Irish people are supposed to be. What I'm getting at is not whether these things are true or not, it's the seemingly inward looking brooding over these things and giving ourselves these labels that bugs the hell out of me. Recently I heard an Irish person talking at length about how brilliantly self deprecating Irish people are. I would hope that the Irony wasn't entirely lost on them.

If a band or orchestra gives a good performance, they might feel good about it and enjoy due praise afterwards but they don't usually have radio and TV discussions about how good they are and call themselves the best in the world, they wait for others to give them those labels and invite them to partake in such media coverage. This is not the same as promotion, such as in the tourism sector, where obviously one wants to paint the best picture possible of their destination, whether it is truthfully economic or not. What I'm talking about is the sheer shameless "Lets talk about ourselves and wallow in our greatness" type of thing that seems so prevalent lately.

Inwardness isn't just unhealthy, it's boring and promotes conformity.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Putting on my asbestos suit now.

purple'n'gold

We are Irish. We are part Celt, part Viking, part Norman, and part Anglo Saxon. There is nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary about us that differentiates us to any great extent from other north western Europeans. Some of us like to think we are superior, morally, to other countries.
(For instance, we are not in any way racist) this of course is all absolute nonsense. We are no more or no less racist that any other north western European people. We also tend to kid ourselves that we are a very cultured people; again we are no more or no less cultured than the rest. What a lot of us are of course are liars, just look at the amount of people that claimed in the last census that they can speak Irish.

LadyJ

Well we were voted the friendliest or most welcoming (or something along those lines) country in Europe (or the world) recently..... I'm pretty ill-informed here but it's not always just patting ourselves on the back. Blame the rest of the world for indulging us too!

mike65

guy_awoke wrote: »

Inwardness isn't just unhealthy, it's boring and promotes conformity.

I'd tweak that to

Inwardness isn't just unhealthy, it's boring and promotes low standards

Mike.

Archeron

OP, where do you find this to be prevalent?

I honestly never see the things that you are mentioning. While I dont watch TV, or generally listen to the radio which probably has some bearing on that, I find Irish people to be no more inward focused than other nationalities. No-one that I know consider themselves to be anything other than just ordinary joe soaps getting by with no airs and graces. In fact, if I was to think of a nation that I would consider some of its people as being self obsessed, there would be many countries above Ireland such as the USA, France, Italy, the UK, Australia, etc.

In fact, the only thing I would say that is somewhat unique about the Irish is that we dont complain about things, and that is not specifically a good thing.

Perhaps the OP's statement is a large part of the reason WHY I dont watch TV, but I dont get the feeling from other media sources such as the interweb, newspapers, magazines, real human contact and so on.

I wonder if we done a comparison on Boards.ie of "we are great" versus "we'e a nation of losers/idiots/gimps" threads, which would have the highest percentage? I'd guess the latter.

dr_manhattan

"We are part Celt, part Viking, part Norman, and part Anglo Saxon."

1. What's a 'celt'?

2. Anglo saxon is itself a mixture.

We are in fact part everything: spaniard, north african, arab, persian... they have all left strong marks in our culture.

But I'm not sure that's very relevant to our fondness for self congratulation.

Anyways: I agree with the original poster. I do think we, as a nation, are very fond of talking about how great we are at pretty much everything, Except killing each other which has until recently been our major talent ;-)

purple'n'gold

dr_manhattan wrote: »

"We are part Celt, part Viking, part Norman, and part Anglo Saxon."

1. What's a 'celt'?

2. Anglo saxon is itself a mixture.

We are in fact part everything: spaniard, north african, arab, persian... they have all left strong marks in our culture.

But I'm not sure that's very relevant to our fondness for self congratulation.

Anyways: I agree with the original poster. I do think we, as a nation, are very fond of talking about how great we are at pretty much everything, Except killing each other which has until recently been our major talent ;-)

north african, arab, Persian? Where did you get that from? When were we invaded by north Africans, arabs and Persians? Did I miss something in my history lessons in school?

dr_manhattan

You don't have to be "invaded" by a culture for it to be important to your development. And no, I think you listened well, because this kind of stuff is simply not taught in schools because it's what's referred to as speculative.

This could occupy a thread of it's own, so I'll be brief:

Because we're an island, we have had any number of influences through sea trade down the millennia. The irish language shows signs of the influence of former languages, and even our mythology says that successive peoples 'arrived' here. 'more irish than the irish themselves' etc is a cliche but applies to way more than the cultures we are taught to accept as ingredients to what is 'irish'.

The term 'celtic' has become a catch all for the influences of tribes that arrived after a long migratory process from mesopotamia: similarities to the irish illuminated manuscripts, the sean nos singing tradition, and the styles of decoration abound in persian and arabic written and oral tradition. Even the farsi for 64 is phonetically identical to 'seasca cathair' (sp?)

There are apparently convincing similarities between currachs and egyptian boatbuilding tradtions: but I lay no claim to be a sailing type, y'aaar.

However I have read and believe that the roots of aran sweater patterning can be seen in early egyptian coptic cloth patterns, and there is a body of 'specualtive' evidence that connects the egyptian and north african monastic traditions with the slightly later irish ones. Certainly there was abundant trade, and there have been many archaeological finds on the south coast of combined christian and islamic artefacts such as a cross inscribed with the arabic characters 'bism'llah'.

People tend to forget that christianity is a middle eastern religion. People tend to make no connection between 2,000 years of pilgrimage to rome and jerusalem, and the similarities between middle eastern manuscript styles and 'celtic' styles. Instead we are taught that the 'celtic' tradition is european.

Basically I believe that the term 'speculative' is applied to any historical theory that does not support a separation between 'european' and 'middle eastern' culture. I believe there are many threads in the irish tapestry (sorry about the lame mataphor) that reach much farther than we have been taught to believe.

If you want a set of links to any of the above vague references, I'd be glad to comply as it's something of a favourite point of argument for me. Sorry for being lazy but I'll wait until you say you're interested ;-)

But as a nice anecdote: apparently in the mid 80s trinity college hosted a delegation from israel/palestine of islamic clergy, who were demonstrating traditional calls to prayer. The story goes that a sean nos singer happened to be passing the lecture room, and recognising the sean nos singing style, replied to the call to prayer in irish, but without breaking the style.

I feel that it would benefit the idea of irish culture to begin to reassess where we have been taught we come from, and to remember that an island nation does not take in culture from only one direction.

Rant over ;-)

oh and PS influences such as spanish and portuguese are also downplayed, despite the long history of trade and connection with these countries. The idea that we are a separate european culture is ironically, somehting I believe we have taken on from the british empire. We learned enough to want ourr own identity, but we also learned to only value those parts of our identity which were 'european'.

dr_manhattan

Oh and as a final PPS (and then I'll shut up with my liberal agenda claptrap):

In considering history, I feel it's important to remember that it's written by the victor only, with footnotes available only if the conquered actually survive and write it down.

The anglo normans arrived here 900ish years ago and never really left. So is it surprising that we are taught that this is the most important and transformative date in irish history? How we know the names Diarmuid and Aoife and Strongbow?

If the morrish empire had pushed north, we would know the names of the earliest moors to visit here, and the story of the invasion that came after. If the french had successfully invaded, we would know the names of french men from years before they arrived, who had laid the first paving stones for france.

But we didn't: we were amalgamated into the one thing that europe's imperial powers could agree on. That was that european people got their culture from each other and this was a separate thing to the culture on two sides of the mediterranean, and the far side of the caucasus mountains.

This does result in funny terminology though: Like why aren't "east europeans" called "west middle easterners"? And why do you never hear of "west eurasians" or "west russians"?

Okay I'll get my coat...

guy_awoke

Thanks for the replies folks, I honestly didn't think I'd get any :-)

The Dr. has some interesting points there, which I've heard before. I guess what he's saying in short is that the notion of an Irish "race" or even of a wider "celtic" diaspora is not an accurate one. Pre Industrial age European migration patterns were probably the most complex in the world and Ireland is certainly no exception to this. By European I mean a much wider area than the present European continental boundary as that boundary is a political one which meets certain needs. Almost all European languages spoken today come from the indo-slavic tradition which has roots way futher east than some would imagine. This includes the Irish language, though the version of it spoken today probably doesn't sound anything like it did in it's time.

In an effort to consolidate peoples into distinct geographical groupings for political ends, the idea of the nation state became a reality. The basic idea being - Ok well the people in this area have lived long enough here, lets give them an ethnic identity, draw some lines around them and hey presto, a nice little governable package. Job done.

The truth, is of course very far away from this. Britain and Ireland have for thousands of years been settled by multitudes of different peoples, including all the ones the Dr. and Purple mention. In an effort to establish a distinct ethnic identity seperate to Britain, the upper middle classes in Ireland who were responsible for the growing independence movement in the late 19th century endeavoured to promote the Celtic one, as this was one which most suited their needs, even though in terms of archaelogical evidence, there was almost as much Nordic stuff being dug up at the time and for years afterwards. Once an agenda like that gains momentum, it is very hard to see things objectively.

However, the growing field of genetics is revealing some interesting insights into Europe's past, some of which may upset some, and may excite others. The only danger there is that all agenda's should be left outside the door before proceeding with studies of this type. Science and Agenda's don't mix well.

Anyways to get back to the original post, I guess some people will know exactly what i'm on about, others won't and some will but will not like to admit it. I was really trying to see if anyone else knew where I was coming from, not trying to change anyone's mind if they saw things differently.

:-)

gurramok

dr_manhattan wrote: »

Because we're an island, we have had any number of influences through sea trade down the millennia. The irish language shows signs of the influence of former languages, and even our mythology says that successive peoples 'arrived' here. 'more irish than the irish themselves' etc is a cliche but applies to way more than the cultures we are taught to accept as ingredients to what is 'irish'.

The term 'celtic' has become a catch all for the influences of tribes that arrived after a long migratory process from mesopotamia: similarities to the irish illuminated manuscripts, the sean nos singing tradition, and the styles of decoration abound in persian and arabic written and oral tradition. Even the farsi for 64 is phonetically identical to 'seasca cathair' (sp?)

I heard about the egyptian thing before. Also, heard on radio before someone had mentioned some small town/vilalge in either Kerry/Cork where the people even look Egyptian!

One thing that fascinates me, a fair few Irish people have dark hair/eyes with white pale skin(including moi), was that a past Arabic influence or was it Spanish/Portuguese/French/where? influence on the 'Irish' race?

Same can be said for the Scots. If the blondie/blue eyes among us can be attributed to Vikings/Norman/English influence, where did the redheads and curlyheads come from?

dr_manhattan

Heh, actually someone once told me that red hair was an inbreeding thing ;-)

I was born in waterford, a town which has been invaded / razed / decimated a hilarious amount of times, and I'm convinced the effect is still in the gene pool. Two mates of mine, brothers, are both 6'6" and look like arabs, despite coming from 5'5" brown haired irish parents - this kind of thing - I believe - can skip generations and just pop up.

Could the arab-looking town in cork be the place the Syrians destroyed? I've also heard that myths of arab mercenaries in a fort in the north have been put in new light by the discovery of the remains of a Barbary ape found in the fort's foundations... again, I can check this if anyone needs verification.

Personally I'm very proud of this notion: I prefer mongrels to purebreds anyways LOL.

But as regards the black hair / pale skin thing (what they call "the black irish" in the US, no?) - no idea. On the far left of stuff I've read about Ireland's heritage is notions of all sorts of migration, but tbh I've never seen a people who resemble those of us who look this way.

Could this be the remains of an "indigenous" irish?

Also, when I first visited mainland europe, I was astonished at how *real* blonde nordic types look - tbh I've never seen the like in Ireland, except among 2nd generation germans and scandinavians.... the blonde could eb from anywhere, no?