Travel, Law and Life Considered

The seat of the English government of Dublin was the Castle which was built in the early 13^th century. It retained that position after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1800–1922) replaced the Kingdom of Ireland.  After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December of 1921, the Castle was handed over to the newly formed Provisional Government of Ireland. Most of what exists today of the Castle dates from its 18^th century renovation. The State Apartments  which are attached to the Castle were built in 1680-1830 and served as the residential and ceremonial quarters of the Viceroy who was the Deputy of the Monarch in Ireland and the Viceregal Court. The Apartments were the center of fashionable social life then, and today they are the most important ceremonial rooms in Ireland. Across their Courtyard is BedfordTower , considered to be “one of the most beautiful architectural composition in Dublin.” The Tower is flanked by the two Gates of Fortitude and Justice  , erected in 1750.

Another English Architectural legacy in Dublin is the National Museum of Ireland-Archeology, established in 1890, with its domed entrance rotunda surrounded with classical columns and decorated with motifs recalling the civilization of Greece and Rome. The Museum’s   “special exhibits” on the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Cyprus are incongruous with “Irish archeology,” but they are explicable as relevant to an Ireland that was part of Great Britain. The same is true about the selection of the luminaries whose  marble busts were placed -beginning in 1793- on either side of  the Long Room, the main chamber of the Old Library in Dublin’s Trinity College.  These are busts of the great philosophers and writers of the Western world: Socrates, Plato , Aristotle , Demosthenes and Cicero. The few Irish so memorialized here are the likes of Edmund Burke  and Jonathan Swift , both “Anglicized” alumni of Trinity College.

Trinity College

Dublin’s Trinity College is itself a symbol of Anglicized Ireland. Founded in 1592, it was a part of the plan to solidify the rule of the Tudor monarchs in Ireland. It has been the university of the Protestant Ascendancy. That was the social, economic, and political domination of Ireland form the 17^th century to the beginning of the 20^th century by an elite consisting of great landowners, clergy, and professionals who were all members of the Protestant Church of England or Church of Ireland. Those two Churches joined into the United Church of England and Ireland in 1801. The Ascendancy excluded the followers of all other churches, especially the Roman Catholics, and thus the majority of the population in Dublin as well as the rest of Ireland. Trinity College did not admit Catholics until 1793, and even thereafter denied them scholarships and professorships until 1970. The Catholic Church, on its part, prevented its followers from attending Trinity without special permission from their bishops. Dublin prides itself for producing more winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature than any other town in the world. All three of them, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) were born into the establishment Ascendancy. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was not just an Ascendancy writer (Gulliver’s Travels, etc.); he was a cleric who, in the 18^th century, was the Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral. Like Swift and Beckett, other Irish literary luminaries, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker (1847 – 1912), were Ascendancy Dubliners who graduated from Trinity Colleges. Yeats did not go to Trinity but his father, John , was a graduate. Indeed, John Butler was a member of the elite University Philosophical Society, the oldest such student society in the world, with a roster that has included Stoker, Wilde and Beckett.

On the campus of Trinity College, my student guide pointed out the Graduates Memorial Building which now houses The Phil, as the Philosophical Society is commonly known.  The guide was wearing the academic gown which had been obligatory until the 1970s. “Now only some professors wear it,” he said. That was not the only change in Trinity College.  In 1904 it began admitting women. Its conservative incumbent Provost (President) George Salmon  was “famous for opposing the admission of women,” the guide said.  When Salmon signed “the order permitting women students, he said it was ‘not by my heart.’” Now “63% of the students are women.” As we passed by the Campanile  -the version built in 1853 of the original bell tower of the monastery of All Hallows which in 1591 became Trinity College-, our guide related a college tradition: “Students believe that if you pass under the Campanile when its bells toll you will fail the exams; so some never attempt that until they finish college.”  He added, sometimes you hear it said that “the Campanile does not toll unless a virgin walks under it: and it has not in 500 years.” That bad joke is often said after a meal at the school’s Old Dining Hall “where you are always given a free glass of Guinness beer with the food.” He pointed to the Dining Hall building to the north of Campanile.

The Chamber Room of the Graduates Memorial Building which is used for debating by student members of The Phil is an auditorium with a high ceiling and carved balcony. The guide said: “We have had some important world figures speaking there in my time.  Many came to see former President Bill Clinton when he was here, but many more crowded the Chamber Room to hear the American singer Courtney Love who is very popular among the Trinity students!” Trinity has some 12,000 undergraduate and another 5,000 graduate students. “By law, at least 13% of students have to be international, but nowadays they constitute 15% of the student body,” the guide said. International students have to pay tuition but Trinity is free for the Irish. As another measure of ecumenism “In 1963, the school’s Chapel was consecrated so that all four Irish Christian denomination churches can worship there.”

All these Trinity College buildings which we had just seen were in one main quad called the Library Square. The quad’s central landscaping was the grassy College Green which this summer looked quite brown because of the unusually dry year. The Green was dominated by two big Oregon Maple trees from the 18^th century.  The main Trinity College library used by students is around the corner. A stunning modernist building reflecting Le Corbusier’s principles in its use of materials, the library is ironically named after Bishop George Berkeley (1687-1753) , a graduate of Trinity who became a lecturer in Greek there. He is remembered as a philosopher of “immaterialism” who posited the theory of “subjective idealism” which argues that objects exist only as ideas in the mind of the perceiver.

Berkeley spent considerable time in the United States and left a great impact there through the teaching of Samuel Johnson -the future first president of Columbia University in New York- who incorporated Berkeley’s ideas in his own philosophy called American Practical Idealism. Johnson dedicated his Elementa Philosophica, the first American philosophy textbook -published by Benjamin Franklin in 1752-, to Berkeley. Johnson’s influence is considered a foundation of the “American Mind” as he was the mentor to many contributors to the American Declaration of Independence. Berkeley’s contribution to Trinity College libraries is not noticeable, but his donation of about 1000 volumes to Yale University in 1731 was considered huge at the time, increasing its library’s holdings by fifty percent. “Your university of Berkeley is named after our Bishop Berkeley which we pronounce Barkeley,” our guide at Trinity said, recalling his connection to yet a third famous American university. The guide was right because, as he directed us to an entry in Wikipedia, the city of Berkeley, California (the namesake of the university), was named after Bishop Berkeley at the suggestion of Frederick Billings. The latter was a trustee of the then College of California who was inspired by this stanza from Berkeley’s Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America: “Westward the course of empire takes its way; The first four Acts already past, A fifth shall close the Drama with the day; Time’s noblest offspring is the last.”

Our guide said “Trinity students can still use the Old Library but they don’t.” The Old Library which was built in 1712-1732 is the oldest surviving building on the Trinity campus. Its Long Room which was once the main college reading room now has a long showcase in the middle where some of Trinity’s prized manuscripts are displayed under glass. Among them, I noticed a small book, En attendant Godot, a copy of the first edition of the Play Waiting for Godot. On the cover in the playwright Samuel Beckett’s handwriting it was marked “Prompt Copy 1953.” This was the copy Beckett used to insert changes in the play during the rehearsal for its original production in Paris on January 5, 1953. Beckett’s additional handwriting, of a later date, said “For John and Bettina with much love and gratitude from Sam. London, 31.12.64.”  John and Bettina Calder were Beckett’s friends in London; John was the publisher of Beckett’s works in Britain after Godot was produced there in 1955. Later, Trinity College honored Beckett by opening the Samuel Beckett Theatre on the campus in 1992 where the works of students as well as Ireland’s leading theater artists are performed.

Expatriates

Beckett’s roots in France were deep. His ancestors, the Becquetts, are buried in Dublin’s small Huguenot Cemetery, near St. Stephen’s Green. The protestant Huguenots had fled persecution in France following the 1693 revocation of the Edict of Nantes which had guaranteed religious freedom. Samuel Beckett (now a member of the Anglican Church of Ireland) studied French at Trinity and later took the position of lecteur d’anglais in the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 1931 he published Proust, a critical study of the French writer Marcel Proust. While Beckett taught briefly at Trinity College and also at Campbell College in Belfast, he spent much more time in Paris, London and other parts of Europe. In that Beckett was not alone among Irish writers. In fact, it was in Paris that he first met James Joyce in 1928. Joyce, who had emigrated from Ireland to continental Europe in his early twenties, spent most of his adult life abroad, in Paris, Trieste and Zurich. Earlier, Jonathan Swift had spent 10 years and Bram Stoker had spent 27 years working in London. George Bernard Shaw went to London in 1876 when he was 20 and spent the rest of the 94 years of his life there, becoming active in its politics. Oscar Wilde also settled in London where he became one of its most popular playwrights in the early 1890s.

Of all these illustrious writers from Dublin, only James Joyce devoted himself to portraying the Dubliners. His fictional characters are based mostly on friends and enemies from Dublin. His masterpiece, Ulysses, in 1922 drew a universe parallel to the Odyssey of Homer where figures from Joyce’s earlier Dubliners roam alleyways and streets of Dublin.  Joyce explained this focus: “I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”

Joyce’s Dubliners are people from his childhood neighborhood of Northside, the rough part of town separated by the Liffey River from the Southside which was considered posh.  Joyce went to Jesuit schools and then to University College Dublin, the Catholic institution founded in 1854 which is Ireland’s largest university. Joyce’s milieu as he grew up was the cultural home of the nationalist movement which gathered momentum in the late 1890s. Nationalists supported Irish home rule and cultural independence from English influence. They stood in contrast to the Anglicization, Unionist politics and Protestantism symbolized by Trinity College.

Yet, it was not Joyce who became active in the Nationalist politics; instead it was William Butler Yeats, a member of the Protestant Ascendancy who, contemporaneously, grew up in these changing times with a crisis of identity. Yeats demonstrated support for the changes in Ireland which directly disadvantaged his privileged heritage and made the Catholics become prominent.  Beginning in 1922, Yeats would serve two terms as a Senator in the Irish Free State. Political developments would profoundly affect Yeats poetry which in exploring Irish identity became a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival.  But as a young poet who came from the establishment class, even Yeats recoiled from engaging in the Easter Rising of 1916.

Easter Rising

On April 24, 1916, a schoolteacher and barrister named Patrick Pearse stood in front of the General Post Office in Dublin and read aloud a proclamation by the “The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland.” It was Easter Monday, and the reading of this Proclamation of the Irish Republic started what has been called the Easter Rising. I saw one of the few remaining copies of the Proclamation on exhibit in Trinity College Library’s Long Room. The Rising was organized by seven members of the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.  Some 1,600 participated in the uprising. They seized several key positions in Dublin. Their rebellion lasted six days. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland against British rule since the rebellion of 1798 -there were other notable ones in 1803, 1848 and 1867. The authorities acted swiftly and ended the Rising violently. Three of the first killed fell at the Cork Hill Gate of the Castle. The total of casualties exceeded 2,000 dead or injured.

Thirteen of the leaders of the Rising were executed between the 3^rd and 12^th of May 1916 in Dublin’s Kilmainham Jail. Today a plaque marks the place in the prison-yard where the execution of twelve of them took place. James Connolly whose injuries did not allow him to be standing was shot nearby on a chair.  The Kilmainham Jail is now a museum, and the guide who was telling us the story of the 1916 Rising took us to see the landing where the 1916 leaders were held briefly before their execution. Signs with their names identified each one’s cell. The cells were small. The Kilmainham Jail’s capacity for separate confinements, however, was considered an example of its features as a model modern Victorian prison; another example was the replacement of corridors with catwalks in a vaulted space surrounded by a skylight. The colorful history of this unique prison -which held the leaders of the four prior Irish rebellions since the end of the 18^th century and a few after 1916- also included its use as a shelter for the poor during the Great Famine in a program under the 1847 Vagrant Act to clear the streets from their unsightly presence.

In one of the cells of the Kilmainham Jail I noticed this writing on the wall: “Beware of the Risen People.”  Next to the marker of the site of the 1916 executions now stands the flag of Independent Ireland high on a pole [92]. The Rising was not popular with the people of Dublin at first but the executions caused a change in the public’s opinion; the Rising’s executed leaders gradually came to be regarded as heroes.  Today, a sculpture outside the Kilmainham Jail depicts the executed leaders, 12 standing men and one empty chair in the middle. Dubliners would soon resume the struggle for independence, now joined by people from the rest of the country that had hardly played a role in the 1916 Rising. In the new phase close relatives of the executed leaders would take up their mantle. A striking example was Grace Gifford, the wife of Joseph Plunkett whose cell is marked in the Kilmainham where she was jailed in 1923.

Women were, of course, active in the 1916 Rising too. Seventy of them were taken to the Kilmainham. One was deemed high enough to be condemned to death, but her sentence was commuted to life in the prison “on account of the prisoner’s sex.” She was Constance Georgine Markievicz, born Eva Gore-Booth, who had become Countess Markievicz upon marrying her Polish husband. The death sentence of one male leader of the 1916 Rising was also commuted to life imprisonment because of his American birth: Eamon de Valera. Born in New York City to a Spanish father and an Irish mother, de Valera had been sent to Ireland to live with his mother’s family at the age of two upon the death of his father. In 1913, Eamon joined the Irish Volunteers, a secret organization which became the principal group in the Rising. I visited his cell in the Kilmainham Jail. De Valera would survive to become the most enduring and dominant Irish leader of his generation.

His story mirrors the history of the rest of Ireland’s fight for independence. Released under a general amnesty in 1917, Eamon de Valera a year later was president of the Sinn Fein Party that won an Irish national election for the first Irish parliament (Dail). The Dail promptly declared the independence of the Irish Republic, thus making de Valera the unofficial leader of Ireland. In 1932 he was Prime Minister as the head of a new party, Fianna Fail, which had gained control of the Dail. He held that office for 16 years, and then intermittently until 1959 when he resigned and was elected President of Ireland.  De Valera lasted in that position until 1973 when he retired as the world’s oldest statesman at the age of 90.

Civil War

The declaration of independence by Dail, in 1918, started the Irish War of Independence which, in turn, would lead to the Irish Civil War because of the dispute over the 1922 peace agreement signed with Britain. The agreement called for the partition of Ireland with the six northern counties of Ireland remaining in the United Kingdom while the south with its 26 counties would be given autonomy. The Irish signatory of the agreement was Michael Collins, the incumbent President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who was dispatched by Eamon de Valera to negotiate the agreement. De Valera rejected the agreement saying that Collins had failed to consult with him on the final terms. When the Dail narrowly approved this 1922 Anglo-Irish Treaty over de Valera’s objection, he resigned as President. He challenged the right of the Dail to approve the Treaty as a violation of their oath to the Irish Republic. Many Irish Republican Army (IRA) officers were also against the Treaty and repudiated the authority of the Dail to accept the Treaty.  Michael Collins, now as the Chairman of the Provisional Government, responded by holding an election which he won. He formed a government for the new Free State of Ireland which was declared in December 1922. Collins also led the armed forces that supported the Treaty, while the Republican opposition continued to see the Treaty as a betrayal of the Irish Republic, constituted during the War of Independence.

Fighting broke out on June 28, 1922 when the Provisional Government tried to assert its authority over the Anti-Treaty IRA units by attacking those who had occupied the Four Courts in Dublin since April. This was the vast building complex  in the center of town which has continued to house three of Ireland main courts  – the fourth (Central Criminal Court) having since been moved elsewhere.  Collins bombarded the Four Courts’ IRA garrison into surrender. Thereupon, he was appointed the Commander-in-Chief of the National Army. Just two months later, however, he was assassinated. Michael Collins was only 32 years old. He had been an Irish nationalist revolutionary since 1909 when he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He played a minor part in the 1916 Rising. Collins cut a swashbuckling figure. His picture is still a best seller in the souvenir shops of Dublin.

Michael Collins left the Free State government firmly in control of Dublin. The anti-Treaty forces were now dispersed mainly to the south and west of Ireland where, after losing the major towns, they resorted to guerrilla warfare. In October 1922, Eamon de Valera and the anti-Treaty politicians formed their own “Republican government” and called for a cease fire as the pro-Treaty forces gained increasing grounds. The military leaders of the IRA refused as they, indeed, considered Republican authority vested in themselves. The heavy losses among the military officers eventually led to an order by the IRA Chief of Staff to call a halt to what had become clearly a futile fight. In May 24, 1923 he ordered the IRA volunteers to dump arms rather than continue. There was no formal peace agreement in this Civil War. Instead, the Free State government enacted an Emergency Powers Act on July 2 and followed it by a General Election in which its supporters won with about 40% of the votes. The Republicans won about 27% of the votes, while many of their candidates and supporters were still imprisoned by the Free State.

Personal Politics

The legacy of the Civil War has continued to influence Irish politics. The two main political parties of Ireland have been Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, the descendants, respectively, of the pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty groups of 1922. Fianna Fail first took power in the 1930s. However, the renegade IRA -maintaining that its Army Council was the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic of 1918- did not renounce military attack on the southern Irish State until 1949 when it became the Republic of Ireland. Thereafter, the IRA focused on ending British rule in Northern Ireland.

As I read the Irish newspapers during my visit to Dublin in July 2013, I was struck by the continued importance of the personal in politics. Some 90 years after the Civil War, Irish leaders were echoing the mutual disappointments that marred the relations between Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins. Today’s news abounded with tales of contemporary politicians’ sensitivity to personal slights and insults. The headline of a major article in Irish Independent on July 19 was an example:  “Senator wants apology over ‘insulting’ remark on Special Olympics.”  Two days earlier, in the same main newspaper of Ireland’s capital, another article on a different incident was titled: “We’re supposed to craft laws, not shout personal insults.”  Still other stories were about apologies demanded in parliamentary discourse relating to the use of “Regina Monologue,” a derogatory description deployed by a prominent Senator in criticizing comments on an important issue by a woman politician, Regina. She was offended by the sexist connotation in the intended reference to the well-known performance piece “Vagina Monologue.”

When I discussed these stories with Denis O’Brien, he nodded and then said: “You know, one President of Ireland actually resigned when the Prime Minister would not retract a comment by a Minister who called the President’s description of a Bill ‘a disgrace’.”  He was Cearbhall O Dálaigh, President from 1974 to 1976. Denis O’Brien was the presiding concierge at the Shelbourne Hotel. The Hotel had several concierges, but he was clearly the choice of regular guests who knew him as being far more helpful. Denis O’Brien sat high on a chair dominating the reception lobby of the hotel.  But he would gladly move his considerable heft to seek you in other chambers of the vast lobby with urgent information related to your request. Mr. O’Brien showed me the crossed gold keys on his lapel: “These are Les Clefs d’Or. I am the only Irishman who has been the President of the world-wide Concierges Association or UICH (Union Internationale des Concierges d’Hôtels).” He added a note of modesty: “As we say in Ireland ‘the habit does not make a monk’.”

Denis O’Brien had been a concierge in Dublin for thirty years, the last 6 in the Shelbourne.  He had seen a lot; he was knowledgeable. He invited me to his periodic lecture in the Hotel on the history of the venerable Shelbourne. “The Irish Constitution of the 1922 was drafter here,” O’Brien said. That was the Constitution of the Irish Free State, or the second constitution of the independent Irish state. This was the work of a committee set up by Michael Collins. Later, however, the Shelbourne would also host “President Eamon D. Valera.” A video screen in the lobby showed de Valera’s picture and the number of his room, among those of many other celebrities who had stayed here over the years. Denis O’Brien had met many of them and knew many important persons in Ireland, including the current President, Michael D. Higgins. “He comes here for his haircut sometimes. He is academic, meaning a scholar, and very open; you can just walk in his office and see him.”  I told Denis O’Brien that he should write his memoirs. I mentioned a comment by certain critics of The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman that he got much of his information about foreign countries from taxi-drivers and concierges. I offered, “One could do much worse than talking to you.” O’Brien responded that many others had made “the same suggestion,” but he “respected others’ privacy.” He chuckled: “Their wives will find out about their men.” I could not tell whether he was joking.

Pubs

Denis O’Brien had said: “The church, the undertaker’s and the pub have been the three gathering places for the Irish.” He had added: “The undertaker and the pub owner were often the same.” Obviously, I needed to spend some time in the pubs (public-houses). Tour guides tell you that Dublin has “over 1,000 pubs, and 600 churches.” Some of the pubs have had connections with the Church. Brannigan’s is in the annex of an old convent. It still has the pews where the customers can sit.  O’Neill’s has kept the “special nook for girls,” set aside on the order of the Church so that “girls would not be able to corrupt the drinking men,” as my bar mate explained in half-jest. He scoffed: “But, of course, Irish men would walk over 10 naked women to get to the beer!”

The 300 year old O’Neill’s is mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses, as is another pub with centuries old pedigree, the Dukes ; although Joyce was more of a regular visitor to another pub on the same street as the Duke’s, the Davy Byrnes, which also appears in Ulysses. The area called Temple Bar with its narrow cobbled streets had many pubs and was very lively at night. However, as an Irish woman advised me: “Temple Bar is where the tourists go and not the Irish, so when I am in a pub there I find myself as the only Irish. We go to the pubs elsewhere.” It was paradoxical that while the hotel rooms in the Shelbourne were occupied mostly by out of town guests, its bar was full with well-off Dubliners. Here, I had a chance to find out what were the current topics of their conversation.

My conversation with them, naturally, began with reference to the weather. Dublin had been experiencing an unusual stretch of warm days. “The last time it was like this was in 1986,” a man said. His friend continued: “Last year, in comparison, we only  had two sunny weekends between May and September.” This heat had had no special impact on agricultural crops, they told me. I asked them if the issue of Climate Change was an important one in public discussions. Their response was: “People here are aware of the Climate Change debate but are not concerned.”  A woman said: “Abortion is the hot issue.” She showed me the July 19 copy of Irish Independent which she had been reading. The main article on the front page was about what Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny had just said in an interview with that newspaper after his Government passed the country’s first abortion legislation: ‘I’m a Catholic. Not the best, but a Catholic nonetheless.”

Kenny is from the Fine Gael party which has been in power since 2011. Our bar conversation now turned toward politics.  “Current government is from the right now, but before it the left had ruled for many years,” someone informed me. Another man said: “Next election is two years from now and the right is likely to lose.” Nobody offered to disagree. I asked about the “Time of the Tiger,” the few years before 2008, when Ireland awed the world with its fast rate of economic growth. The woman in the group said : “ It was a great time while it lasted. People felt high and optimistic and took out loans and did not think about how they were going to pay back. Now we are left with big houses and big cars and nobody is able to pay for them.” Her friend agreed: “Now property taxes and water charges which did not exist are being imposed by government.” Bankers were the ones mostly blamed for the problems.  “Recession is bad for everybody but we are getting out of it,” the woman concluded. She also added that there were safety nets: “Everyone 65 and older receives 200 Euros per week. There is nationalized health care for all. Private medical practice exists but it is very expensive. The perception is that they take better care, but not many believe that.”

The role of American companies in Ireland’s economic recovery was highlighted in the statistics published while I was in Dublin. According to the Irish Exporters Association’s annual top 250 survey, Microsoft was clearly the busiest firm in Ireland in 2012, sending goods and services worth 13.7 billion Euros overseas during the year. That was one billion Euros more than the amount exported by the second ranking Goggle. Information technology firms dominated the list, with five of the top 10, and nine of the top 20, ranks overall. Dell was fourth, exporting 9.9 billion Euros worth of goods and services. Pharmaceutical and life sciences were by far the second biggest sector in exporting from Ireland, with seven of the top 20 ranks. The American firm Johnston & Johnston was the third biggest exporter in Ireland at 10.5 billion Euros in the year. The Exporters Association’s list, full of foreign multinationals, showed few indigenous Irish firms high up. Packaging firm Smurfit Kappa Group was the biggest native-Irish exporter, with the sales of goods and services worth 7.4 billion Euros for the year, placing 5^th overall. The next ranking Irish companies placed 8^th and 17^th on the list of highest exporters.

It was not just American companies that were prominent. Dublin was attuned to the news about Irish-Americans in general. Newspapers covered the story of “the Irishwoman Samantha Powers” as the just-nominated U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. was referred to. Also covered was “the Irish lawyer” who defended George Zimmerman in his trial for killing Trayvon Martin. Then, of course, there was the deluge of American tourists in Dublin.

Music

I joined those tourists in the rite that is called the Dublin Music Pub Crawl. In our group of about 40, all but five were from the U.S. I even ran into several from my own San Francisco Bay Area. In the routine that is now 20 years old we were taken on the Crawl to four pubs by two musicians who also served as our “musicologists.” One of them played the “Irish fiddle” which he described as “not that different from violin,” while the other played a guitar and sang as well. They said the “original Irish instruments” were the harp “which is smaller than the standup and sits on the knee and in the past had metal strings,” the bodhran “which was originally from goat skin and not calf skin,” and the pipe “which is different from the Scottish bagpipe that was originally used to scare the enemy by pretending that there were many people on the attack.”  They added: “In Ireland we also play something which is like the Greek bouzouki.”

The Pub Crawl musicians told us that “60 years ago in Ireland music was played only to dance with, now we also play just to listen to it.” The musicians played a few old Irish tunes and sang some songs, including the obligatory “Sweet Molly Mellon”. Then they played the Scottish folk ballad “Caledonia” for the couple from Scotland in our group,  and the Canadian song “The Mary Ellen Carter” for the three Canadians among us. They joked that they would not sing any Johnny Cash songs for the Americans as they could hear those all over Dublin in other pubs. “He is not even Irish; his people come from Scotland,” they said. They mentioned the names of several pubs where we could find “real Irish music, played in sessions which begin after 10 in the evening.”

I saw the oldest extant Irish harp, dating from the 15^th century, on my visit to the Trinity College’s Long Room. It was constructed from oak and willow with brass strings. Deemed an emblem of the country’s early bardic society, this harp appears on Irish coins. I also saw traditional Irish stepdance, with its rapid leg movements while body and arms are kept largely stationary . On the streets of Dublin, this was performed for the tourists by an elder itinerant dancer wearing hard shoes and colorful costumes .  On Sunday July 21, Dublin was the scene of the Riverdance, a public event at which many joined in stepdancing. I noticed several women and men on the Trinity College campus who were getting ready to go and participate. A few wore a black T-shirt with this quote from Samuel Beckett: “Dance first. Think later.” One of them who said she was a student of Beckett’s works laughed while informing me that the famous quote from the playwright’s Godot was somewhat of a mistranslation: “The text in the original French was in the rhetorical: Il pourrait peut-etre danser d’abord et penser ensuite?, which Beckett himself correctly rendered in the English version as ‘Perhaps he could dance first and think afterwards.” Regardless, that day she with the other 1693 dancers from 44 countries would break the world record for the Longest Riverdance Line on the Samuel Beckett Bridge which is over the Liffey – as I later read in the newspapers.

For “real Irish music,” as I was told, I went to O’Donoghue’s Pub. It had an outdoors area with several tables, but the music and the bar were inside. There were eight men, all playing guitar-like string instruments, and one woman who played the drum-like bodhran. The music that this jamming produced was superb. The musicians played for themselves, expecting no pay. We were all attentive, ignoring an inebriated man who suddenly jumped on a chair behind the bar  and started belting out an incoherent song.