Ireland History

"History," wrote Dublin's foremost artistic son, James Joyce, "is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." For Joyce, the Ireland of 100 years ago was so steeped in bitterness, defeatism and religious narrowness born of too much tragic history that he had to escape. He decamped to the Continent and wrote in obsessive detail of the homeland he had left.

"Nobody writes like the Irish," my father, a native Dubliner, says whenever we discuss literature. Naming great Irish writers of the past and present--Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, Synge, Heaney--he identifies the sufferings, personal and cultural, that have fueled the work. He sighs when he comes to Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" to add an afterthought: "Sure, nobody suffers like the Irish." Suffering and Irish writing, he intimates, are hopelessly intertwined.

The story goes that any 18th-Century worshiper who snored during the sermon at St. Patrick's Cathedral here was in peril of waking to find Jonathan Swift looming above him in his pulpit. It's a legend worthy of the author of "Gulliver's Travels," and may well be true. The pulpit, mounted on wheels, is still in the cathedral. So is Swift. Swift is buried beneath the floor near the southwest porch, where everyone goes in and out, many of them drawn to Swift.

"History," wrote Dublin's foremost artistic son, James Joyce, "is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." For Joyce, the Ireland of 100 years ago was so steeped in bitterness, defeatism and religious narrowness born of too much tragic history that he had to escape. He decamped to the Continent and wrote in obsessive detail of the homeland he had left.

"The bad times." That's how Chieftains leader Paddy Moloney first remembers hearing his mother and other adults in Ireland refer to the great potato famine that decimated the Emerald Isle 150 years ago. To this day, half a century since Moloney was a tyke knocking about the Slieve Bloom Mountains of central Ireland, the phrase still strikes him as something used to mask a family secret.

"Michael Collins" may have more than Oscar potential written all over it. Neil Jordan's sweeping, devoted testament to the Irish freedom fighter--whom the British saw as a terrorist--has become something of a metaphor for the troubled times in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It's also become a film requiring special handling after the Irish Republican Army's bombing in February of the London financial district that killed two and last month's outbreak of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

The Great Hunger that devastated Ireland between 1845 and 1851 was, in the words of historian James Donnelly, "the defining event in Irish history." Last weekend, almost 150 years after potatoes began to rot in fields all over Ireland, scholars and other interested people gathered at Loyola Marymount University to consider the ramifications of the event that changed not only Ireland but the United States as well.

On a quiet Sunday afternoon at W.J. South's pub--all mahogany, frosted glass, marble and mirrors--an old fellow at the bar was contentedly sinking a pint of Guinness when a photographer's flash whitened the room. "I don't like my picture taken," the man snapped, glaring. Assured that he hadn't been included in the shot, he turned away, still angry. Asked his name, he said "Martin, and that's all I'm givin'. The worst thing to happen to Limerick was that book.

"Nobody writes like the Irish," my father, a native Dubliner, says whenever we discuss literature. Naming great Irish writers of the past and present--Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, Synge, Heaney--he identifies the sufferings, personal and cultural, that have fueled the work. He sighs when he comes to Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" to add an afterthought: "Sure, nobody suffers like the Irish." Suffering and Irish writing, he intimates, are hopelessly intertwined.

Given the subject matter of Neil Jordan's film "Michael Collins," it was inevitable that its opening Friday in Britain and Ireland would arouse fierce passions. And indeed a heated debate about the Warner Bros. film, and its accuracy in portraying a particular slice of Irish history, has been raging in the media here. Historians, political commentators and film critics have entered the fray, offering a wide spectrum of views.

On a quiet Sunday afternoon at W.J. South's pub--all mahogany, frosted glass, marble and mirrors--an old fellow at the bar was contentedly sinking a pint of Guinness when a photographer's flash whitened the room. "I don't like my picture taken," the man snapped, glaring. Assured that he hadn't been included in the shot, he turned away, still angry. Asked his name, he said "Martin, and that's all I'm givin'. The worst thing to happen to Limerick was that book.

Old notions of Ireland's independence crash hard against the craggy cliffs of Drumanagh. It is here, 20 miles north of Dublin, that Roman adventurers in the 1st to 5th centuries may have built a fort, traded and perhaps launched armed expeditions deep into the island. The claim, made by Ireland's two senior Iron Age archeologists--but ridiculed by some colleagues--would shatter the long-accepted notion of an old Gaelic Ireland sealed from foreign aggression.

Given the subject matter of Neil Jordan's film "Michael Collins," it was inevitable that its opening Friday in Britain and Ireland would arouse fierce passions. And indeed a heated debate about the Warner Bros. film, and its accuracy in portraying a particular slice of Irish history, has been raging in the media here. Historians, political commentators and film critics have entered the fray, offering a wide spectrum of views.

"Michael Collins" may have more than Oscar potential written all over it. Neil Jordan's sweeping, devoted testament to the Irish freedom fighter--whom the British saw as a terrorist--has become something of a metaphor for the troubled times in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It's also become a film requiring special handling after the Irish Republican Army's bombing in February of the London financial district that killed two and last month's outbreak of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

"The bad times." That's how Chieftains leader Paddy Moloney first remembers hearing his mother and other adults in Ireland refer to the great potato famine that decimated the Emerald Isle 150 years ago. To this day, half a century since Moloney was a tyke knocking about the Slieve Bloom Mountains of central Ireland, the phrase still strikes him as something used to mask a family secret.

The Great Hunger that devastated Ireland between 1845 and 1851 was, in the words of historian James Donnelly, "the defining event in Irish history." Last weekend, almost 150 years after potatoes began to rot in fields all over Ireland, scholars and other interested people gathered at Loyola Marymount University to consider the ramifications of the event that changed not only Ireland but the United States as well.

Old notions of Ireland's independence crash hard against the craggy cliffs of Drumanagh. It is here, 20 miles north of Dublin, that Roman adventurers in the 1st to 5th centuries may have built a fort, traded and perhaps launched armed expeditions deep into the island. The claim, made by Ireland's two senior Iron Age archeologists--but ridiculed by some colleagues--would shatter the long-accepted notion of an old Gaelic Ireland sealed from foreign aggression.

The man accused of heading an outlawed group responsible for the deadliest bomb attack in Northern Ireland's history was ordered held without bail Friday on a terrorism charge. Detectives escorted Mickey McKevitt, 51, the alleged leader of the Real IRA group, to court. He was charged with "directing terrorism" that claimed 29 lives in 1998.

The story goes that any 18th-Century worshiper who snored during the sermon at St. Patrick's Cathedral here was in peril of waking to find Jonathan Swift looming above him in his pulpit. It's a legend worthy of the author of "Gulliver's Travels," and may well be true. The pulpit, mounted on wheels, is still in the cathedral. So is Swift. Swift is buried beneath the floor near the southwest porch, where everyone goes in and out, many of them drawn to Swift.