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April 22, 2005
The wit and humour of the Irish ....
"..... the great Gaels of Ireland,
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad."
Recently I acquired a book which gives some lovely insights into Irish humour and to some of the mindset that is so peculiarly Irish. This is a fighting nation; one of their "proverbs" says; "The Irish are only at peace when they are fighting." Both their enemies and their allies have found them difficult bedfellows. A story of the "Wild Geese", the famous (or infamous!) 18th Century mercenaries, concerns the complaint by Louis XIV to their commander Count Mahoney that "Your soldiers are more trouble than the whole of the rest of the Army!", to which Mahoney replied, "Yes, Your Majesty, your enemies say so as well!"
Looking back at the history of this often turbulent race, one finds that their first brush with conquerors goes back to the Vikings, mainly Danes, who settled along Strangford Lough, Belfast Lough, and at Dublin (then called Dubh Linn, meaning Dark Pool). Then, around 1070, they rebelled against the High King, the O'Niel, and the rebels, by then driven back to the area around Dublin, appealed to William the Conqueror in England for help. William had a number of "landless knights" for whose loyalty he had thus far been unable to find reward in England - so he sent them to Ireland. At the Battle of Howth these Norman conquerors, ironically themselves descendents of the Viking settlers in Normandy, set in train the occupation by "English" forces of Ireland for the next 900 years.
Thus began the legendary resistance - and the deep divisions in Irish society. This gave rise to the saddest epitaph in any history, that used for Irish soldiers of fortune until 1916 - "We fought every nation's battles and the only ones that we lost were our own."
They have certainly enriched British history and British politics, as well as providing a huge fund of wit and humour. They have given us some fine minds - Jonathon Swift, George Bernard Shaw, Brendan Behan to name but a few. They have given us some fine generals, too - the Duke of Wellington being just one. Sometimes, in politics, their MP's have had a talent for unintended humour, and sometimes the same man can be devastatingly to the point. One such example is the Cork MP Sir Boyle Roche, who, tired of the Opposition's attempts to drown out his speech to the House in fits of coughing, produced a handful of lead bullets from his pocket and waved it across the floor, shouting, "These are infallible cures for the cough, and I will be happy to administer them if any of the gentlemen opposite would care to try them!"
Wisdom can be found in their sometimes ironic observations on life. For example: "Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle." Or the slightly more enigmatic, "Great men will never do great mischief but for some great end." Even the straightforward "It is a hard task to comfort the proud."
Their music is ancient and has a lilt and quality that is found in its influences in such diverse things as the Bluegrass sound of Kentucky and the hymnals of a range of church traditions around the world. The traditional Irish Ceilidh is something else again, especially when the traditional instruments, drum, Celtic pipes, harp, and fiddle are played. The sound of the Irish drums beaten in tattoo and accompanied by the Celtic Pipes or the harp raises the hairs on one's neck! But perhaps the real soul of this people is summed up in the last verses of the song "The Minstrel Boy"
"The Minstrel fell - but the foeman's chain
Could not his proud soul bring under:
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again
For he tore its cords asunder.
And said, No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery." (Thomas Moore)
Posted by The Gray Monk at April 22, 2005 11:15 AM