Word: gaelicism
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...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...
...cannot return and the 20th century to which he cannot adapt. In a scene of lovely irony, he sits in a barber's chair fascinated by a U.S. western on TV, while, in the next room, a dying old man struggles to remember half-forgotten lines of Gaelic song...
Waterford is a spruce seaside town in southern Ireland known for its cut glass and warm hospitality. But even Gaelic graciousness has its bounds. In Chicago for St. Patrick's Day, Waterford's Mayor William Jones invited his counterpart, Richard Daley, to Ireland this summer and planned to offer him the keys to the city. All very nice, except that the Irish are not entirely sure that they want King Richard on the ould sod. Waterford's Labor Party termed the invitation "a shameful action," declaring: "We are not satisfied that Mayor Daley has cleared himself...