The Irish

destroy: the current amurrican hard on for all things irish.

"Father Ted" was a load of arse-juice but the "D'unbelievables"...

Destroy: What Ned said about St. Paddy's in the USA, my ridiculous "Kiss Me I'm Irish" relatives: stop the Erin Go Bragh insanity please!, the Cranberries, Hothouse Flowers, the Troubles (wouldn't that be nice?).

I lurve leprechauns. And shamrock shakes.

Now, Irish Americans, that's *quite* a different story.

I love Ireland solely because of Guinness, Murphy's and Bailey's. I'm a lush.

Destroy: The food.

I believe it was Shane MacGowan once poignantly said: "Ertwas swillin' 'n' sllen/ inna mrsts o' Culcllan/ er pour me a-point o' whiskey t'day..."

My favorite Ireland memory: driving up the Conor Pass on the Dingle Peninsula, parking the car and hiking up a mountain. The view of the countryside, the ponds, the sheep and the sea was breathtaking, of course. But what was really remarkable was just how quiet it all was -- I could hear the grass crunching under my feet and I thought I was stepping on dried out grass, till I realized that it sounded so loud only because it was so quiet. I'd literally never "heard" silence like that before. I realized then how really loud even "quiet" moments are where I live, how there's always some sort of ambient noise in the background disrupting the perfect quiet. And then you just stand there, with the knockout view in the closest thing to perfect peace and quiet I'd ever experienced. Then you walk down and throw some money at the person playing some cliche Irish music on a harp at the foot of the hill.

destroy people who say: "I'm Irish, my mother's brother's budgie was bought from a pat shop in Galway"

paddy's night in Kilburn too, destroy that, even more so in Neasden.

search: Tony Cascarino

Anybody want to recommend some traditional Irish music? There's so much stuff out there and a lot of it looks terrible.

Ooops, sorry I thought this was an ILM thread 'cos I was on ILM and then I did a search and so I thought...I know...I am dumb.

And it's quite a late night for me.

'search' and 'destroy'? UMkay

Ned, not quite full blown trad....but you can't go wrong with Christy Moore.

Specifically, I'd recommend Planxty's 2004 (or is it 2005? I can't remember) live album, which is brilliant and has Christy Moore singing on it. Any one of the first four Chieftains albums are also top class. Martin Hayes is also very popular and good, and there's a great, great singer called Iarla O Lionaird who sings unaccompanied Irish songs. His voice is beautiful, but it can get a little wearing after a while if you don't understand what he's singing about.

The Dubliners ain't half bad either.

luke kelly.

also, what's with lack of WB Yeats love upthread?

Ned's question inspired me to dig out that Planxty 2004 album. It is GRATE.

Ned, not quite full blown trad....but you can't go wrong with Christy Moore.

My lord, the prosecution cites "Don't Forget Your Shovel".

search: Planxty's "The Well Below The Valley", if only for the title track.

My lord, the prosecution cites "Don't Forget Your Shovel".

Also "The Voyage", and his version of "Ride On".

xpost

If it's the same one the Devil's Interval do then it's got incest and 6 cases of abortion/infanticide, body count is the hallmark of a good folk song.

Planxty, yes - I only know the first three albums though. Also that Andy Irvine+Paul Brady album - in fact, is Andy Irvine famous? He's certainly not as famous as he should be! (He's also from London, of course!)I don't know as much about Irish music as I should.

yes well, not every track! I'm out of my depth here, and I've forgotten my shovel.

Planxty, yes - I only know the first three albums though. Also that Andy Irvine+Paul Brady album - in fact, is Andy Irvine famous?

he is famous enough, but maybe not as famous as he deserves to be. He plays live a lot in Whelans, and every time I go to see him I kick myself for not going to see him every time he plays, as he is awesome.

In a piece of inspired supportage, the first time I saw him was when he was supporting Will Oldham; a whole new generation of fans was born.

He is awesome. Everything I've ever heard him do, from Sweeney's Men onwards, has been great, and he always seems like the most talented and yet least well known in whatever setup he's involved in.

I think he is all about the music rather than about the self-promotion.

I love his song about how Ronnie Drew is actually a culchie.

CINCINNATI -- A man was caught Tuesday morning inside a car with his pants down.

Police said Kim Leblanc broke into a parked car overnight on Central Parkway, and the owner found him asleep inside and called police.

Officers said Leblanc was not wearing any pants when they arrived.

Investigators said Leblanc told them he had done drugs and believed that a leprechaun had let him into the car.

Leblanc remains in police custody on a variety of charges.

top scientist claims irish less intelligent than other ethnicities,

blames leprechaun influence.

Thieving Irish. Here's something funny: I'm American, and my grandfather raised us to be conscious of our Irish heritage. We just find out our Irish side actually came from England ... and had lived there for centuries before coming to the US, rather than actually coming here from Ireland during the potato/weird root tasting beer/cable knit sweater famine.

So what's the deal with that - English, Irish, what? I'm sure most of the people who claim Irish heritage here are less of Irish heritage than suspected.

http://www.dk-ink.com/AngelsRemembered/files/leprechaun.gif

Oh who knows. My family could care less about it, we're American...but my boyfriend's family is v v proudly Irish...except at this point all their relatives back home live in the Leith district of Edinburgh. At least they're all Hibs supporters!

um, hibs aren't the 'irish' team in scotland.

they are one of the Irish teams, as far as I know. especially if you live in Edinburgh. Scots may know better.

Hibs were the "Irish" team in Scotland before Celtic were.

If by "Irish" you mean "charitable club set up by members of the Catholic church to provide aid to poverty stricken Catholics who were mostly Irish immigrants" or something. Hibernian means Irish, doesn't it?

I've never understood Hopkins. Wished they'd put chattier gays on the LC

rip

how was hopkins not chatty, he exploded sonnets to 500 words for god's sake

Hopkins was not good

burton reading leaden/golden echo is maybe the best thing humans have done

No, I was wrong. My chosen four were Yeats/Plath/Heaney/Mahon. I think of Heaney a lot and bought several books of his, but Mahon I still know by heart <redacted> years later.

mahon cailin indeed

Gyac I suspect we did the leaving the same year

Wouldn’t be surprised. What was your core text?

I want to say Macbeth

A fine vintage

same but id imagine from an earlier cycle

Hopkins was not good

ftfy

well it's a given that one cannot simply agree with another's opinion, this is the irish thread

Speaking of vintages, I think pom and I are the same age. Jurd “Manly” Hopkins was not good.

The sprung rhythms and talk of inscape and instress are all classic imo but I'm fond of poetry that aspires towards the condition of music (short of actual sound poetry, which lacks all the desirable qualities of language and music both).

I think we are the same age, yes. I'm a 1985-er.

A fine year.

That’s interesting. I may look at him again now that you’ve said that. I never had quite that association between the sounds and rhythms of poetry as I did with music in English - but I can still remember some of the Irish poems I learned because of their musicality.

I'm younger but I was quite young when I did the leaving

Hopkins drew on Anglo-Saxon cadences so he was definitely working within a wholly different tradition (apologies for mentioning it itt).

xp

It’a fine! What else is this thread for?!

In the absence of a The Anglo-Saxons thread...

Anglo-Saxons is a kinda nonsense category tbf

It is kind of telling that the canonical Anglo-Saxon epic begins with a reference to the 'Spear-Danes'.

We've got our own Saxons, incidentally:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvanian_Saxons

Same!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxons#Netherlands

The local language, although strongly influenced by standard Dutch, is still officially recognised as Dutch Low Saxon.

Damn continental immigrants.

Anglo-Saxons is a kinda nonsense category tbf

― éminence rose et jaune (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 12:17 (fifty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

and don't ye behave like it

happy to take my share of the blame but i've got enough self-loathing for one or two more if needed

its valuable work and we surely appreciate it

I did Hamlet and if nothing else it's almost certainly provided me with more University Challenge answers than any other subject

"leaving cert" is one of the fascinating concepts I've been introduced to by my favorite thriller writer Tana French, along with the staggeringly good idiom "fair play to you"

fair play to here

her, ffs

Both work.

https://youtu.be/Z1vYs5LBC3c

silby what was it about the leaving cert that so intrigued

It does have a ring of the YA about it - Percy Jackson and the Leaving Certificate.

its the piece of paper that allows you to emigrate to 'mericawwww

silby what was it about the leaving cert that so intrigued

― deems of internment (darraghmac), Tuesday, December 3, 2019 9:23 AM (thirty-four minutes ago)

the mystery! What happens if you don't pass? Can you leave whenever you want? Where do you leave to? No way of knowing.

Well you can chuck it in anytime you like, but you can never leave

p much

Did anyone else watch the film How to Cheat in the Leaving Cert? Amazing that Willie O’Dea was so het up about it, lol.

its the piece of paper that allows you to emigrate to 'mericawwww

I am reliably assured that this is a classic of the LC Irish curriculum by people younger than me:

https://youtu.be/SW-tdaO2s9o

We never had anything so memorable, remember the children of Lir story and one about a drug addict. No films.

Lol u mean "gafa"

What a pile of nonsense! Did it actually end with a chainsaw decapitation?

I don’t remember that at all if so. Apparently it was still on the curriculum recently?

re: Heaney, did anyone catch the 'Seamus Heaney and the Music of What Happens' documentary on the bbc last week? I recorded it.

well I don't recall ever reading it all the way through, there were extracts in whatever textbook we used. But we did all have to go the see it at the Taidhbhearc and yes it definitely included that ending.

Plaxico that is extremely rtmi, why didn’t they teach us that bit? It was fairly dry as Gaeilge despite the subject matter.

LBI, I will look at that when I’m home!

A Derry woman who is challenging a requirement that she renounce her British citizenship before she can legally identify as Irish wants the Government to back her campaign.

Today Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he would take up the case with the next British prime minister after the election there on 12 December.

Emma DeSouza is challenging being automatically determined to be a British citizen under UK law rather than having a choice of Irish citizenship as provided for in the Good Friday Agreement.

She said there remains a responsibility on the Irish Government as a co-guarantor to uphold and protect the agreement.

The case of Bloody Sunday veteran Soldier F has been adjourned until the new year to give legal representatives time to co-ordinate the 25 civilian witnesses which will be called to give evidence.