Damn! That Sexy Accent poll's got me thinking about Ireland again! [View All]

[dbt]

(WTG, corporatewhore, just when I was about to get over it!) :)

We flew from Manchester into Shannon, meaning that scrawny little airplane crossed the countryside and I saw what they mean about "forty shades of green." There were no two fields that were the same shade and a lot of 'em looked as if they were illuminated from underneath somehow.

I despise airports, but the very air inside Shannon Airport was cool and sweet. It increased by a factor of ten by the time we got outside. OMG! The green-ness all around me overloaded my poor old retinas in such a pleasant manner!

It took about an hour to get used to driving a car with the controls on the "wrong" side and to get used to driving on the "wrong" side of the road. After a lovely night at Peg O'Donoghue's B&B (just around the corner from Bunratty Castle), we were off for a week's stay in the cabins at Spanish Point.

Driving into the nearby town of Milltown Malbay, what I had long thought was a purely Southern (American) phenomenon manifested itself: drivers in oncoming cars would invariably wave at me, the exact way that rural Arkies still do. And, same as Arkansas backroads, I would invariably get behind a tractor making perhaps 15 miles an hour. Damn! I was somehow home, yet three thousand miles away!

It was inexpressably cool to see tractors pulled up on the curb (kerb) in front of a pub in the village. Seems Billy Bob O'Grady couldn't be bothered about going home to get the car before he'd go into town for a pint after a hard day's plowing. He'd just drive his tractor to the pub!!

And then there's TURF--what we would call peat over here. It makes the hottest, most fragrant fire you can imagine. Smells halfway between a wood stove and a blacksmith's forge. Three or four bricks (sods) of turf in a curiously small fireplace with a slate bottom, and your ass will have to move to the farthest corner of the room.

So you turn on the TV and get the evening news from the RTE network. In County Clare, it's done in the Irish language (what Yanks are prone to call Gaelic). You can't understand a fickin' WORD, but you somehow think you should be able to!

Naturally, I had brought my fiddle and was eager to show the Irish musicians how it was properly played. Talk about yer rude awakenings! We somehow got invited to a christening party one night at Cooley's pub in Ennistymon--to which all musicians were "invited and expected."

Sure enough, that dark little joint which had no inside bathrooms featured a musical group consisting of Mick (who had just returned from Boston) on fiddle, a woman on accordian, two women on bodhran (Irish hand drums) and a man on guitar, who was drunk on his ass (langers) already. They took me for an American right away and wanted to know if I could play Johnny Cash's version of the Orange Blossom Special (they were quite specific). Being an Arkie, I counted them in and it was ON, as they say.

I got to sit in with the band for the rest of the night, but I soon discovered there was NO WAY I could hang with an Irish fiddler!!!! Fortunately, your man on guitar handed his instrument to me so he could give his full attention to getting beyond langers, a condition which is called stocious over there.

After a good round of tunes (in which I discovered that the Arkie fiddle tune called "Red Haired Boy" was Irish and had words to it), the crowd began calling to a woman named Teresa at the bar: "Give us a SONG, Teresa!"

It took a while, but this plain-looking female finally came over and sat down beside me. From her totally unremarkable mouth came a voice that must have been ten foot tall! She sang a song called "Caledonia" (NOT the Van Morrison song) which has got to be the saddest thing I have ever heard. To this day, I have not been able to find it anywhere else; must be a County Clare thang.

All too soon, we had to leave Ireland. I cried like a little girl when the plane lifted off the runway.

Any other DUers been to Ireland?

:loveya:
dbt