“The longer you stay away, the less likely you are to go home.” That was another piece of wisdom the auld fellah imparted to me up in The Archway so many years ago.
He neglected to say that once your parents pass away, there’s even less likelihood of a grand return. It’s like the roots have been cut from under you.
I used to feel like I was floating over Ireland when I’d return on vacation. I could see and hear everything, but I was no longer involved. That’s when I got the idea of taking a tour group back every year.
Not only would I see Ireland through the group’s eyes, but I’d be working. That’s how I experienced America with Black 47. Each club, pub, or concert hall was a new challenge. You had to be alert because there was often a bonus to be negotiated. Likewise, to attract a crowd, you had to do interviews with local press and radio – that’s how I came to know each individual city, college or town.
There’s not nearly the same pressure taking a group to Ireland; but I’m still working and making sure that those traveling with me are seeing the real Ireland.
And, boy, has the real Ireland changed over the last twenty or so years!
Ireland is now a modern, secular European country. Moving statues have long since hung up their dancing shoes.
I’m not even sure I saw a priest or nun in the recent couple of weeks I was over there. I did attend two concerts in St. Iberius, the stately Protestant church on Wexford’s Main Street. The place was jammed with opera lovers, whereas the nearby Church of the Immaculate Conception and the Friary where I’d served as altar boy, were deserted.
Membership of the EU has been good for Ireland. Many old friends now winter in Portugal or The Canaries, “It’s much cheaper and you can’t beat the weather,” they tell me.
Big Tech and favorable tax laws have dumped bucketfuls of Euros on the country. It goes without saying that this moolah has not been equitably distributed.
Still, everyone lives in fear of President Trump and follows his daily pronouncements like scripture. Will he introduce new tariffs on Pharma exports, will he force Ireland to rescind its favorable corporate tax laws?
Is he really going to check every visitor’s Facebook page for snide comments about his sanity, or for supporting a Palestinian state? I’ve had to assure ladies in their 70’s who wish to visit their American grandchildren, as well as students in their teens, that the man from Queens has bigger fish to fry.
They even worried about me being allowed back in the US after describing the great man as a “megalomaniac” in the local newspaper. But here I am in Lower Manhattan, jet-lagged and writing this, with no sign of ICE breaking down my door.
Ireland is still a beautiful country that can take your breath away. A visit is good for the soul.
And yet, the country is becoming more like the US by the day. Things I heard with Black 47 while crisscrossing the US 30 years ago, I heard in Ireland last week - that self-same dull rumble of racism and xenophobia.
It’s not loud and the great majority are resisting it, but the “us against them” sensibility is, as ever, being fanned by lies and rumors spread on social media.
Recent Irish governments have done the country no favors by allowing quite so much immigration and refugee intake in the midst of an acute housing shortage. Biden revisited!
In the long run this influx of people will add immeasurably to the country. In the short run, however, there will be further turmoil as budgets tighten - for as the owner of a popular Wexford pub mentioned, “disposable income is at a new low.”
It doesn’t take a genius to notice that the “rare auld financial good times” are coming to an end. Same as the US, “affordability” will be the next big word in Irish life. It will sit snugly next to “immigration” and “refugees.”
In other words, beware of politicians – Irish or American - who traffic in loud words and drastic solutions.
For as Mr. Yeats put it, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity.”
