Thar she blows, part the seventh
For stellanova




"Where are you from?"

"Ireland."

"Oh! Sure and begorrah!"

Let me just grind my teeth right down to the gumline for a moment.

"Hey! I like those houses! It's really neat how you folk make sure your housing projects keep a look of the traditional thatched cottages!"

Backs stiffen and heads turn all along the upper deck of the 77A.

"Excuse me? Could you tell me what that big church is?"

"Oh, yes! That's the Black Church. Local legend has it that if you run around it anti-clockwise at midnight you'll see the Devil. But it's not used anymore, it's closed."

"Oh, what a shame. Did the Protestants do that?"

Self, this is a nice little old lady. Take a deep breath.

What did all these people have in common (other than really and truly saying those things to me, I swear to God)? They believed that Ireland was inhabited by people who smoked their spuds by the light of a turf fire in a picturesque cottage while speaking like some fucking Darby O'Gill and the Little People extra while being oppressed by the Protestants. So that I don't have an aneurysm I won't go into the details of the people who kindly explained to me slowly and simply how to operate (a) a microwave and (b) a shower. Jaysus, us filthy peasants do be keepin' turf in the bath and a shower do be fierce strange to us. Shure, how will the pigs in the kitchen recognise us if we start smellin' of soap? These people were also all American - I have come across people of other nationalities who have the same views, but it does seem to be a particularly American thing. Even people who didn't say those sorts of things felt it, for some reason, appropriate to start talking in a bad approximation of The Quiet Man type accent when they learned I was from Ireland. (Amusingly, on one visit to the States I discovered my host's friends had worked out I had a non-local accent, but couldn't decide what it was. They decided it was snobby Bostonian, until the magic word "Ireland" was mentioned, whereupon my accent was no longer snobby Bostonian, but a "charming brogue". As other LJ-ers can attest, neither "Boston" nor "brogue" fits how I sound).

And when I get on the internet what do I find? Oh God, yet more Paddywhackery. From the internet I find that we all speak "Gaelic", we're all superconservative!Catholics, we're all pagans really, we all live in fear of the Catholic Church, we don't have contraception, there's a religious war on, we all drink Guinness all the time, we're all red-heads, we hate the British but we're pretty much the same as the Scottish and the Welsh (who aren't British, apparently), we have soft lilting accents, we live life at a slower more natural pace, we like getting into fights, we all support the IRA (unless we're self-hating West Brits), and, most importantly, we have no right to say any of this is incorrect. Try to point out - and I mean "point out" not "scream in incoherent rage" that the above list of stereotypes is incorrect and often insulting, that the name of one of the two official languages of this country is "Irish", that the name of the country is "Ireland", that in fact Ireland is a modern Western country and sit back astounded at the sheer hysterical insistence that you are wrong, wrong, WRONG, you know nothing about your country's history, culture, language or politics. How lucky us poor ignorant Paddies are, to have the denizens of the internet to put us right!

That internet resistance to hearing what Ireland is like, and the very real disappointment I've seen on tourists' faces when they realise the country they've come to visit doesn't exist outside of Hollywood stereotypes and the cynical playing upon them of the Irish Tourist Board makes me think that some people need us to be that set of stereotypes, for whatever reason. They need to be able to tell us we are what they say we are, because --well, why? What elements of fantasy-Ireland do they want so badly and what does it say about their own lives that they want them? Whatever it is, they won't find it here, because this is a real country with all the problems and pleasures that a real country with real inhabitants has. We're not what they're looking for, and maybe they should start looking closer to home.