The Irish and the English: a disconnect
It's Ireland vs. England on Friday in Guyana in the Cricket World Cup, which means it's time to crank up the old Anglophobia. Yes, of course we should be friends, and never more so than now seeing that Tony Blair has managed to broker peace between the island peoples, something that eluded Gladstone, Churchill and Thatcher, to mention three of the greatest British Prime Ministers with whom Blair can now be measured, but…
…but despite this historic achievement, the Irish and the English belong to different worlds and are destined to remain apart, metaphysically, at least. How to explain the disconnect? Impossible without resorting to simplifications, which is unfair, but, broadly speaking, it cannot be denied that the Irish are liked and the English are disliked and very few people have a good word to say about the English today. Why is this? Well, that's what we'll be looking at here in greater detail here tomorrow and Friday. Meanwhile, we present a cultural artifact, courtesy of YouTube, the new museum of mankind, which illustrates an admirable attempt to bridge the gulf between the two sides.
It's 25 March 1980 at the Battersea Arts Centre and the great Liam O'Flynn, who studied his piping under masters such as Willie Clancy and Seamus Ennis, is playing for a group of young Londoners. Regardless of what you may think of the music, it represent something quintessentially Irish, and one gets the feeling when watching the faces of the audience that what they are witnessing is incomprehensible. By the way, many Irish people are ambivalent about O'Flynn's artistry, but enough of them respect what he represents to ensure that the tradition survives.
Note: Hints of the disconnect can be found in the titles of the two jigs, which exemplify the surreal nature of the Irish psyche: "I buried my wife and danced on top of her" is followed by "Tiocfaidh Tu Abhaile Liom (Will you come home with me?)". Enough said. Question: How did Tony Blair persist with the Irish for a decade without going mad?
