Ireland -- On the Road

My first wish in going to the Emerald Isle was to see how green it really was. Traveling in our bus from Belfast to Dublin provided us a good look at the very green landscape. The reason it is so green is that it rains--at different times and in different amounts--but it rains every day. And compared to England, it is also a little bit warmer in the winter and a little bit cooler in the summer due to the Gulf Stream. There are also fewer flowering plants, which augments the intensity of the green.

These photos were taken in a moving bus, and so they are a bit blurred. Nevertheless, they capture the rich green of the many pastures and landscapes of eastern Ireland. And like England and Scotland, the pastures are neatly and beautifully separated with rock walls or hedges and trees.

 

 

Ireland was a much-anticipated visit by most of the people in our group. Probably because it is so familiar through its stories, its music, its wit. Many Americans know about the Potato Famine in 1845-52 that prompted thousands of Irish people to flee their lands because the poverty was too much to bear. A lot of Americans are familiar with Frank McCourt's 1996 memoir about his very poor childhood in Angela's Ashes. And most Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day--March 17--a day where everybody is Irish and the beer and Chicago River turn green. 

But Ireland is so much more. It has a rich history of the struggle for independence and freedom as well as a pride of country that is lived out in its culture, its spirit, and in various people's characterizations of what it means to look and be Irish. Our time spent in Ireland was quick, but it was fun. And I think it lived up to many of its stereotypes. 

Black Irish

Many Irish are red-haired and light-skinned, but there are also people with jet-black hair and creamy, white skin. These are known as black Irish. It's not about race, but rather, the color of their hair and eyes. Many times their eyes are a radiant blue. I couldn't take my eyes off of these people when I encountered, but couldn't stop and ask for a photo. So here are some famous black Irish people who have the look.

                                                                                       

                 

        

Famous Irish People

 

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays as well as his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

James Joyce (1882-1941) was an novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish literary establishment who helped to found the Abbey Theatre.

Samuel Beckett (1906-89) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. It became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in the Theatre of the Absurd. 

 

 

Resources

Andrew Speed, guide of CostSaver Travel Company

Black Irish --  https://ireland-calling.com/black-irish/