The Irish

I know a little something about the Irish. I've been married to the same Irish-American woman for nearly 37 years. I've spent a lot of happy times with her slightly madcap, colorful family, and have even toured Ireland for two weeks, even if it was a long time ago. I was once telling a good friend of mine the names of bosses I've had over the years: O'Keefe, Cantwell, McGinley, McCall, and Sweeney. And I didn't even work for the phone company. He remarked, "Gee, you can't get away from us." His last name was McGrane.

I also love short poetic descriptions of things. Take Colum McCann's piece, 'The Long Way Home' in the recently released book 'Damn Yankees,' a baseball anthology of essays about the New York Yankees (more in the next post).

Colum, perhaps as only an Irishman would, blends in his memories of Arsenal soccer and his grandfather in Ireland when thinking of baseball. He lovingly describes a boyhood visit with his own father, visiting his father in a nursing home after an Arsenal tie game, bringing a bonus of Players cigarettes and Powers whiskey to a man the young Colum remembers from stories to be a certain character--"a man given to the Irish trinity of drink, song and exile."

Then we have another nugget. Joseph O'Connor reviews a biography of James Joyce by Gordon Bowker in Saturday's WSJ. I will confess to little exposure to James Joyce. During our tour of Ireland so many years ago we spent some quality lunch time in Davy Byrne's Moral pub in Dublin, apparently a stop made by Leopold Bloom made in the Joyce book, 'Ulysses' when he ordered cheese and wine.

Well, we ordered plenty of Guiness, and were very annoyed when 2 PM rolled around and they stopped serving and tried to clear the place till 5 PM. "Ladies and Gentleman please..." How the Irish ever got a reputation for drinking eluded me during that visit. They always seemed to be stopping. Maybe they just waited till they got to America.

Regardless, Mr. O'Connor sneaks a beautiful line in in the midst of his book review:  "The Irish were the only oppressed people in the world who could foment insurrection in iambic pentameter."

No one can describe the Irish better than the Irish themselves. I can only repeat it.

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