Nothing says Irish better than humor, storytelling, and drinking. The next picture well captures the essence of having ancestral connections with the Emerald Isle. And I must say, I eagerly embrace most of my presumed Celtic gifts except for that drinking part. I did inherit that particular Celtic curse from my father. Fortunately, I kicked it with some difficulty almost four decades ago when I realized I had already consumed my lifetime allotment of spirits. Still, despite this failing, and a couple of others, you have to admit the Irish are a devilishly charming lot.

I’m thinking on such matters (as I laugh out loud at this truly awful joke) since I am soon off in a few days to the old sod for a short trip … mostly Dublin and Northern Ireland. Truth be told, I have never been to the six counties that remained attached to Britain after the Republic began to separate from English domination in the ealry 1920s. For that matter, I haven’t been in Dublin for over a half a century. How foolishly I wasted my life on things like work of all things … a classic four letter word I suggest others avoid if they can.

Dublin, an original Viking settlement and the city of James Joyce (Ulysses), will tug at my heart strings. It did in 1969 when I stopped on my way back from India. I am certain of that. I am sure to visit the old Central Post Office which was the heart of the Easter Rising of 1916. Patrick Pearse and other idealistic dreamers thought that the opportunity to break away was there, since the British were bogged down in Flanders and elsewhere on the Eastern Front in France. But the rebels soon were surrounded in their Post Office citadel by British regulars armed with cannons. While resisting bravely, they were pummeled into eventual surender. Some 16 of the leaders were quickly executed though the iconic Michael Collins would be spared (because of his young age) to lead a more successful fight for freedom after the war, only to be assassinated by those of his own tribe for signing an agreement with the Brits that left Northern Ireland separated from the rest of the country. Irish politics are complicated and, like most sectarian conflicts, can be unforgiving.

What has been less complicated is how the Irish feel toward the ‘old country’ and the history of oppression suffered by their tribe. I had my first lesson at a very young age. I was a toddler at the time when someone asked me ‘what are you?’ In Massachusetts, that meant I was to identify my ethnic origins, a way of communicating where one stood on the complex hierarchy of status which seemed imortant back then, and foolish now. But I was too young to even get the question fully. I recall thinking that I spoke English so maybe that was the answer to this strange query. [You could sense the budding academic in me even then.] Out it came … I’m English!

Bad move on my part. My very Irish father, born and raised early on in South Boston (an Irish Ghetto), was standing next to me. To say the least, he was not amused. I got my first lecture on being Irish AND why we hated the Brits. We were not far removed from WWII at the time. I would learn of stories where British sailors docked in Boston Harbor were told to avoid certain parts of the city. The so-called ‘Limeys’ would risk life and limb in Beantown … they would be safer visiting Berlin during the war.

Several hundred years of English domination had left its mark. It didn’t help that Oliver Cromwell made a serious stab at genocidal savagery. He surely attempted to wipe out the dominant culture based in a fervant form of Catholicism. Gaelic was prohibited, local peasants weref forced into a form of serfdom to British landlords, and great pressure was put on locals to convert to Anglicanism though that merely drove the country people deeper into their ancient customs and religion.

In the great potato famine of the mid 19th century, the Brits behaved with cavalier disregard for the native population. As a million starved to death, and well more than a million emigrated in a desperate move to survive, British landlords (often absentee) took harvests from their Irish estates and shipped them to other countries for profit. When starving peasants petitioned for soup and bread to survive, it might be offered but only on condition that they leave their Catholic amd Popish religion and swear allegiance to the Anglican Church of Ireland. Those who did were known as ‘soupers’ and were ostracized from their communities … another form of death.

It is not hard to see where relgious animosity in Ireland originated. Those ancient conflicts were never more evident than in Northern Ireland where a Protestant majority asserted dominance over the Catholic minority. For several decades in the 20th century, an uneasy peace held as tensions simmered underneath. The Republic of Ireland eventually found complete independence even as the North remained within the British fold. In Derry, Northern Ireland, a city west of Belfast, a Catholic majority bridled under minorty Protestant rule (unlike the rest of Ulster where the Protestants were a majority).

An ‘Orange Protestant’ contingent (after Willian of Orange who defeated the forces of Catholic James to guarantee British aegis early in the 17th century) annually would march through Catholic neighborhoods to taunt their ancient enemy and rivals. In 1969, allegedly inspired by the American civil rights movement, a Catholic mob attacked these enemy marchers. That is considered the begining of three decades of conflict, killings, and mahyem commonly known as ‘the troubles.’

During ‘the troubles,’ the two sides, along with British troops who generally sided with the Protestant majority, went at each other. This semi-civil war sometimes was fought with unconscionable brutality. Over three decades, some 3,500 people were killed, of whom about half were civilians and a third were members of British security forces. Only one-in-eight of those killed were members of paramilitary forces … either the Catholic IRA (Irish Republican Army) or the Protestant loyalists (the Unionists). The IRA is believed responsible for 60 percent of all deaths, the Union Loyalists 30 percent, and British Security Forces the remaining 10 percent.

At times, the carnage reached beyond the borders of Ulster with bombings of businesses, buses and subways in London itself and with the assassination of famous individuals like Louis Mountbatten, member of the Royal Family and the last Viceroy to India. The IRA came very close to assassinating PM Margaret Thatcher when they exploded a device which killed several and injured many at a Tory Annual political gathering at a seaside resort in the early 1980s. Names like Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley, and Bernadette Devlin became internationally recognizable during these years. Other actions caught the attention of the world as 10 IRA prisoners went on a hunger strike, demanding to be treated as prisoners of war as opposed to mere criminals. The ‘iron lady,’ P.M. Thatcher, refused to budge and all 10 starved to death.

BY the 1990s, people were getting fatigued by the killings and the fear that violence would continue indefinitely to no productive end. After prolonged peace talks faciltated by U.S. Senator George Mitchell, the Good Friday peace accords were signed in 1998. All sides agreed to lay down their alms. Belfast had become a divided city. Walls separated Irish and protestant neighborhoods, some taller and more formidable than those erected during the Cold War or being planned for our Southern border by Trump and his minions. Apparently, colorful murals remain on walls depicting events and heroes of those troubled days … a kind of living memorial to lost and futile dreams.

I am anxious to visit Belfast and Derry (Londonderry to the Protestants). I want to get a feel for these places where so much hate festered for so long. I am told that a newer secularism has taken hold. I hope so. While religious devotion sparks positive sentiments in some, it is just as likely to generate the worst hatreds and atrocities in others. Few hate with as much virulence as those who act in the name of their gods.

I am told that hope has replaced hate. I fervantly wish that is true. I will let you know what I discover. But remember this! There are only two types of people in the world … those who ARE Irish and those who WANT to be.

Erin go braugh!