How to Be Irish
Uncovering the Curiosities of Irish Behaviour
David Slattery
Published by Orpen Press
Lonsdale House
Avoca Avenue
Blackrock
Co. Dublin
Ireland
e-mail: [email protected]
www.orpenpress.com
© David Slattery, 2011
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-871305-24-1
ePub ISBN: 978-1-871305-41-8
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-871305-42-5
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Preface
This is an anthropological guide to how to be Irish. You never know when such knowledge may be needed in an emergency. If you are daft enough to really want to be one of us, if you have lived abroad so long that you have forgotten how, if you are planning a holiday amongst us, or if you are already one of us and are just curious, you may find it useful, maybe even life saving.
The job of the anthropologist is to uncover the curiosities of behaviour by providing a lens through which the social and cultural characteristics of our shared behaviour can be seen. In general, I am interested in what we actually say and do, rather than in what we think we say and do or what we would like to say and do, but don’t. I am also interested in what we say we think, but usually don’t.
Any study of Irish behaviour has to pick and choose its subject matter. I have picked those aspects of life in Ireland that give me the most pride in being Irish: the things that make us different and the stuff that helps us moan.
Many visitors to Ireland think we speak English. Some even spend years here before they realise that we don’t. In this book you will come across several instances of Hiberno-English – the language we speak which is confusingly like English but is in fact entirely different. This vernacular, which has never been formally translated into English, makes understanding us difficult and becoming one of us very difficult.
Hiberno-English differs from English in several significant ways. First, it allows us to say one thing but mean something entirely different. While this linguistic effect causes us to appear hypocritical to outsiders, it actually makes us innately ironic. We resist committing ourselves in language because we are cagey about anyone knowing us, including outsiders. Our Hiberno-English dialect allows us to live and act in a sea of ambiguity that perfectly suits our collective purpose. Second, speaking Hiberno-English lets us look like we are absorbing English-based global culture. In fact it helps us to circumvent most of the outside world. In this way, we can appear urbane but remain fundamentally traditional. Third, Hiberno-English is closely related to the Irish language. Like Irish, it is a language of hyperbole, guilt and, perhaps most importantly, romanticised misery. By being forced to read Peig1 in Irish in school, we learn how to be miserable in two languages. I am not trying to explicitly contribute to our extensive canon of misery literature, but I often find myself adopting that mode because it is such fun.
It is practically impossible to define in one book what it means to be Irish. I asked an eight-year-old Irish girl what she thought being Irish meant. Typically, she was wearing an over-sized wig of traditional red ringlets and a highly decorated step-dancing costume with a billion sequins at the time. She told me without hesitation that Irishness was ‘cakes, biscuits and green’ – not everyone’s idea but as good as any in the circumstances. Few eight-year-olds know that our national colour is blue, but who cares? Green is nice too. For demographic balance, I asked an elderly woman, also wearing an equally unconvincing red wig, what she thought Irishness meant. She said, ‘saints and scholars and Tayto crisps…oh…and Cadbury’s chocolate’. I won’t try to provide a definition of Irishness, but I would like to add Denny’s sausages, Barry’s Tea, Kerrygold butter, Clonakilty Black Pudding, and Kimberly and Mikado biscuits to the list of the dietary definition of Irishness. Perhaps we are what we eat…
On approaching most of my informants for help with shedding light on Irish behaviours and habits, the first things most of them offered me were their ideas on what needed to be done urgently to save the country. I find it interesting that so many of us feel a need to fix or improve us. I am not one of these people because I can’t decide what is wrong with us or what a solution would look like. In any case, what you won’t get from an anthropologist is a solution to a problem. You won’t even get the problem, because anthropology is principally about describing and explaining behaviour rather than judging it. However, it does celebrate behaviour in all its diversity. It is my job as an anthropologist to describe us the way we are, rather than the way we should be. I leave the task of saving us to a higher authority than me.
Anthropology is the art of gathering and processing information. There are many techniques available for doing this. We take what is called a qualitative approach, which means that we will use any type of data except statistics, because we are not barefaced liars. Though many anthropologists wouldn’t admit to the complete repertoire, our methods include not just the standard participation and observation, but also impersonation, solicitation, stalking, fibbing, imagination, making stuff up to fill gaps, begging and exaggeration. Different methods produce different results and my anthropological approach is to use as many techniques as possible to highlight the complexity and wealth of Irish culture. I have begged, spied, hung out and participated, knocked down my house, got a job, attended funerals and weddings, joined a political party and drank in many pubs – all in the interest of science.
Anthropologists, like detectives, are very dependent on what we both call informants. Traditionally, we anthropologists trust our informants out of a professional respect for their co-operation and believe everything they tell us. It is not in the anthropological handbook to cross-examine one’s informants and demand, ‘Did that really happen?’ because that would be upsetting for the informant. It is a golden rule of anthropology not to upset anyone; as a profession, we are the acme of good manners. So in this book I am giving it to you just as I got it from my many very helpful sources. I believe that those narratives related to me in the pub are especially true.
Where Irish families are involved we need to seek professional help, so I consulted a psychiatrist. In Ireland it is handy to have easy access to a psychiatrist. Like most commentators, he blames Irish mammies for all of our ills. But much contemporary psychiatry is based on the theories of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian father of psychoanalysis. It may be the case that mammies are the root of all evil in Austria, I don’t know. But it is unfair to blame Irish mammies for everything when their only obvious failing is to love their sons a little bit too much. Thanks, Mammy!
I am grateful for the efforts of my informants and I would like to publicly thank them. However, it is also customary for anthropologists to change the names of their informants, following the mannerly principle of protecting their anonymity. But changing their names makes it difficult for me to properly thank everyone, so I have come up with a disclaimer: The names of all those who helped me may or may not refer to real people. Further, any resemblance to real people may o
r may not be intentional.
I am grateful to those who expired in a timely way to accommodate my attending funerals and for the forbearance of both undertakers and relatives; Rob and Victoria Heyland for blowing in to a great part of Ireland, and their dog Billie; everyone on the Dingle Peninsula who are too numerous to mention, but especially Sam, Lone, Antonio, Ursula, Chris and Helen O’Riordan; all those I worked with in the past and especially those who made my life in the office an interesting misery – you know who you are; Janice Gaffey for the wedding and for being cool; Austin O’Carroll, Declan Sheerin and their patients for the medical insights; everyone at Mountjoy St Family Practice and special thanks to Elaine; Phil Cahill, and Richie and his crew for the building; everyone in Ireland who still drinks in our pubs and smokes outside; my long-suffering relatives and in-laws for Christmas; Paschal, John and Ray for the politics; all those who are too cool to mention and all those who are mad into GAA. Thanks to Piotr Sadowski, Mark, Chiara, David, Steve, Catherine, Emma and Garret.
Special thanks to my editor Elizabeth Brennan for her consistent support and apposite suggestions.
For Mairead
Contents
1. Death: Is It too Hot to Bury Him in this Jumper?
2. In the Pub: Whose Round Is It Anyway?
3. Blow-Ins: Dingle, the Poor Plastic Paddy’s Schull
4. Marriage: Even the Gluten-Free People Had a Good Time
5. Health: Overheard in the Waiting Room
6. Business: Enough Cheek for Two Arses
7. Building: Have You Seen My Tec-7?
8. Christmas: Who’s Doing the Washing-Up?
9. Politics: She Doesn’t Have the Hair for High Office
10. Being Cool: Bono Who?
Glossary
Notes
About the Book
1
Death: Is It too Hot to Bury Him in this Jumper?
I could murder a pint.
(Common Irish saying)
Death and dying have been popular topics for anthropology since the origins of the discipline in the nineteenth century. The study of death can pose unique research challenges. On the one hand, anthropologists can become ghoulish from attending funerals. On the other hand, the anthropologist should not give the impression that funeral research is actually enjoyable. The anthropologist has a lot in common with most elderly Irish people, for whom attending funerals is an important recreation. Many of our senior citizens are delighted to have outlived their friends and go to funerals to high-five each other about the fact that it is not their turn yet. This funereal satisfaction is the Irish version of schadenfreude. For the anthropologist, the best research attitude lies somewhere between the imperturbable visage of the undertaker and the irrepressible grin of the major inheritor.
Behaving with élan at a wake is the hallmark of Irishness. In order to be comfortably Irish, you should learn the rules of attending funerals and, ultimately, the rules of dying an Irish death. If it is your own funeral you are attending, just lie still and look dignified. Whatever anyone says about you, don’t sit up in the coffin and roar abuse at them.
* * *
Funereal Rules
Traditionally in Ireland, we used to live amongst the dead, laying them out in our kitchens after death and burying them in hillside graveyards that overlooked our towns or villages. Because their resting place was visible from the town, they could be remembered by the living. Also, from their vantage point, the dead could follow the entire goings on of the living locals. The dead also contrived to live amongst us by haunting our houses and dark roads at night.
In more recent times, we have had less interest in the dead. We have sent them to nice funeral homes or, more precisely, if they are dead pretentious relatives, funeral parlours. These parlours are homes away from home, or motels, for our dead. Nowadays, cremation is acceptable but we tend not to leave the ashes on the mantelpiece at home. However, there is evidence of a small reversal in this trend of excluding the dead from our lives with a revival of the home wake. Maybe our departed will resume their habit of haunting us in gratitude for being allowed back into our houses.
The standard Irish funeral should take place at home. Traditionally, the deceased was laid out on the kitchen door supported on four chairs.2 However, nowadays the kitchen door doesn’t need to be removed and you are allowed a coffin. You can even be buried in a wicker basket. How cool is that?
The Rules of Dying
As a general Irish medical principle, no matter how dead you may feel, you are not dead in Ireland until your death notice appears in the Irish Independent newspaper. Even if you have witnessed a death firsthand, you should await the publication of the notice in the Indo before being absolutely certain. If you have hired an assassin to kill a rich relative, you should not hand over the final instalment of the fee until you read in the Indo that your relative has died ‘unexpectedly’. In short, you are not dead until the Indo says you are.
Deaths are reported in the Indo according to a very strict convention. A limited number of interchangeable euphemisms are predictably used to cover the inconveniently unpredictable and unlimited modes of expiring.
The most popular way of dying, as provided by the Indo, is peacefully. This usually occurs in a hospital or a nursing home following a long illness bravely borne. Someone may also die peacefully at home. If you are posh it will more likely occur in your residence. Peacefully also covers deaths involving screaming that you don’t want to go; clinging desperately to the bed-end shouting that you are still alive as they drag you away towards the morgue; throwing yourself through the hospital window to end the agony; begging for drugs to numb the pain; and running two miles down the street in a flapping hospital gown desperately seeking help from passing strangers who ignore you.
As an Irish person, you can also die unexpectedly. Unexpectedly, unlike peacefully, is where you go without having given any indication in advance that you were on the way out. In order to titillate the curiosity of the general reader, the phrase ‘following a tragic accident’ is allowed in conjunction with this description. You can also use the phrase ‘after a short illness’, which is used in the case of a botched operation. ‘After a long illness’, which can be used in conjunction with peacefully, is used in the case of a several botched operations in a row. Unexpectedly does not cover: fell out of tree while cutting the branch on which they were sitting; fell off the roof while adjusting the satellite dish; blown up while faking own suicide because they sparked up a fag while forgetting that the house was filling up with gas; spontaneous combustion; assassination; by appointment with a cannibal dentist; all of the above combined. These fall under the term suddenly. Irish people die suddenly by being hit by a meteor; assassination by an impatient relative; or choking on vomit after a drunken rampage. Both suddenly and peacefully sometimes appear in parenthesis, which emphasises their euphemistic meaning, indicating to the reader that a lurid imagining is permissible in this case.
To appreciate the subtle difference between suddenly and unexpectedly, think of your rich relations: a relative can die unexpectedly before you have had a chance to persuade them to include you in their will; they can die suddenly after they have agreed to make you a beneficiary. The subtle difference between peacefully and unexpectedly usually involves a passive or active medical intervention: the peacefully deceased may have throttled the doctor to get their hands on a lethal dose of painkillers, while the relatives may suspect that the doctor throttled the unexpectedly deceased to shut him up. Whether the death is described as peaceful or unexpected is a matter of family interpretation.
In the Indo notice it is also de rigueur to mention that the death is deeply regretted by the surviving family and relatives, in case there is the least doubt in the mind of the reader. The rules of death notices demand that we promote an untypical politeness free from any sordid detail. This is the opposite of what we do ordinarily.
You are not going to learn from the newspaper the details of what actuall
y happened. If you want to know that, you have to attend the funeral to get the gossip. That is why you need the details of the funeral arrangements, which are helpfully included in the death notice. At this stage in the process, you know from the paper both the identity of the deceased and that they are actually dead. You know you have to attend the funeral to find out exactly what happened. But before that you have to work out how much attending is going to cost you.
A Costly Death
If you are going to die in Ireland, and you have Irish friends and relatives living abroad, you should try to die during a flight sale because Irish people are reluctant to fly anywhere except at rock-bottom prices. Budget airlines are no longer enough; we want a sale. If you don’t die during a flight sale, don’t expect to see anyone from abroad at your funeral.
A traditional way of starting a conversation in Ireland is to ask the person beside you to have a guess. It can be a guess about anything: ‘Guess how long I have this coat,’ ‘Guess how much the barber charged me for this haircut’ or ‘Guess what I am thinking now’ are all popular guesses. If you do fly into Ireland for a funeral, you should participate in this guessing tradition by asking your fellow mourners to guess the price of your flight. In the graveyard, overcome any awkward moments with this game, in which as many players as you like can participate. The game goes like this: Player A (who starts) says: ‘Guess how much I paid to fly in here from Chicago, return. I’ll give you a clue. The taxi from the airport cost me more than the flight.’ Player A should now laugh smugly. Player B should try to guess something reasonable but cheapish. He shouldn’t guess one cent, for example. That would be a breach of the rules. Player B says: ‘Oh, I don’t know. Two hundred euro, return.’ Player C now joins in by under-guessing Player B: ‘One hundred and fifty.’ Player D: ‘One hundred and ten’, etc. Player A should stop the game before the guessing becomes accurately low, at which stage it may involve up to twenty mourners. Player A now responds with the answer: ‘Will you feck off with your two hundred euro.’ He should grin with conceited satisfaction. ‘Four euro, seventy-five cents.’ Pause for effect. ‘Return.’ Pause for more effect. ‘With bags.’ At this point, the mother of the deceased says: ‘Will you please shut up and show some respect while the coffin is being lowered.’
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