Word: gaelic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...anything like "approximating the Irish character, "but that really doesn't matter since, in any case, The Hostage is a play which refuses to be judged by any consistent set of standards. If it must be genre-ized, it would probably come fairly close to being a bawdy, Gaelic Kaufman and Hart with a bit of Brecht thrown in--a description which however enticing it might look as a publicity blurb, still ignores the fundamental fact that this play is basically an extended music hall entertainment...
...Gaelic folk legend is a long chain of deceptions and false appearances-gods turning into dwarfs, dwarfs turning into cats and, above all, beautiful women turning into death-dealing hags. The outcome of these tales was that the gods were usually razzed, the lowly were usually razzed too, and sex was made to look grotesque. Not so different from other people's legends perhaps, except in their very high quotient of mockery; but Ireland's history, or rather the lack of it, has decreed a strange long life to them. The gods turned eventually into English landlords...
Irony is the first resort of the oporessed. Operating out of two languages, Gaelic and English, the lads found they could shoot up a smoke screen of Irish bulls and blarney that no colonial officer could penetrate. Forbidden to write patriotic songs, they wrote love poems to a girl that sounded suspiciously like Eire, hate poems couched as hymns and generally got things so snarled up that they even have to watch each other. (The best Irish talkers have eyes like terriers'.) Gulliver's Travels, the Anglo-Irish classic, is the high point of the two traditions...
...cursed the English and they cursed themselves-to the point where cursing itself became a distinct Irish art form. "May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may the High King of Glory permit her to get the mange" is a comparatively mild one. The old Gaelic word for satire (der) also meant a spell that caused facial disfigurement and even death. To this day, the Irish play their satire for keeps. Dublin is the backbiting capital of the world. ("If you want an entertaining evening, tell your hosts who you had dinner with the night before...
...South, settlers were more likely to be Church of Englanders, casual, snotty, talented. Out of them was spun the raffish-gentleman type: Congreve, Sheridan, Wilde. They too stayed as aloof from the Gaelic Irish as space permitted, and the freedom they fought for was their own, not their servants'. Yet compromise came easier to them. To this day, they have no trouble feeling superior even in a minority setup. Such religious passions as they had, in any case, cooled a long time ago. Southera Protestants have shown no manifest sympathy with their hot-under-the-clerical-collar colleagues...