poliphilo

Do I have Irish ancestry? Not that I'm aware of, not that my sister has been able to discover.

Pity, that...

But I was reading this very cogent reply to a question on Quora about the relationship between the English and the Irish which pointed out that the two nations have been taking in one another's washing all through recorded history. The medieval Irish used to raid Anglo-Saxon England to garner slaves and then the Normans- who were sort of English and sort of French and sort of Viking- invaded Ireland and afterwards the Tudors did the same and then a whole bunch of Scottish and English protestants got shipped across by Oliver Cromwell and bedded down in Ulster and Munster and then- in the centuries following- there was a lot of immigration the other way with Irish people of all classes seeking their fortunes in the bigger, richer island. Lotta Irish people in London, lotta Irish people in Liverpool, lotta Irish people in Manchester....

But, anyway, said the person on Quora, back around the end of the last Ice Age there weren't any nations and all the people of Western Europe were basically the same...

So I don't make a thing of St Patrick's Day. But then I don't make a thing of St George's Day either. I'm interested in the Sidhe- more than a little- but I think the imagery of little men in green hats sitting under rainbows quaffing pints of Guinness is a bit of a libel on them- and suspect a lot of Irish people feel the same...

Which reminds me how one of my favourite books growing up was a collection of Irish legends and folk tales by someone whose name I've now forgotten. For a while back then Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, was my hero of choice. I'd grown up on the Greek myths and legends but the Irish ones were wilder, weirder and bloodier. Later, but not all that much later, I discovered Yeats...