Saturday was St Patrick’s Day. It seemed subdued this year. As if Irishness was no longer in fashion.
I have been reading Our Like Will Not Be There Again. It’s a fascinating collection of anecdotes, stories and folklore collected from the far west of Ireland by American writer Lawrence Millman. Millman’s ponderous personal comments occasionally intrude, but when he allows the ordinary voices to speak (recorded in a sort of verbatim style) it is a vivid evocation of a self-sufficient rural society in the tradition of Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou.
Millman wrote his book in 1970, and the Ireland he described has now almost entirely perished under pressure of urbanisation, escalating property prices and the relentless generic Oirishness promoted by the tourist industry.
1 comment:
Ooh, I wonder how hard it is to find a copy of that book?
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