The Real Ireland...

There's Irish and then there's Irish...

Decent Irish music is played in dubious 'pubs down back alleys...nothing happens until twelve at night and then the musicians come through the back door...half-cut already...carrying battered fiddle cases and stained bodhrans they lurch towards the bar and demand a glass of the black stuff with a chaser...

You sit and wait...feet already tapping in anticipation...

Dressed in dirty blue jeans with unfashionably long hair and straggly beards, the man with the penny whistle begins...there is a hush as he plays plaintive airs and the chap with the bodhran joins in...eyes closed, his fingers move nimbly across the goatskin...drawing out the sad tales of evictions and songs of rebellion...there is a stirring in your soul when the vocalist sings of the old IRA and ambushes...feet begin to tap on the wooden floor and the chorus is sung and then the fiddle player...hastily downing his glass, joins in...such stories they tell as the night wears on of forced emigration and heroes and villains...highway men and soldiers...ancient songs written down by the travelling story tellers, passed down from family to family...remembered now in this little 'pub way up in the mountains...the landlord will bring out plates of thick cut bread and cheese...jars of pickles and slices of home cured ham...he'll draw the curtains against the night and not answer the door should a Guard call by on his way off shift...

Irish theme 'pubs have singers who croon Danny Boy while wearing a jacket covered in sequins...out of tune, they sound like a poor version of an inner city karaoke bar...you can eat a plateful of bacon and cabbage followed by Black Forest Gateau and drink your glass of Guinness and pretend you are in the real Ireland.

Real Ireland is the quiet lanes shrouded in swathes of Queen Anne's Lace...elderly donkeys standing by a gate, waiting patiently for someone to go by with ginger biscuits in their pocket...their big ears twitching and soft mouths dribbling.

It is watching while one man walks slowly back and forth on a small field of hay...tossing it into the air with a pitch fork...stopping a while to gaze at the distant mountains...the heavy scent of gorse...and a ginger cat sitting on a wall in the late afternoon sun...

Small children who wave as you pass by...grinning from ear to ear...holding a wriggling puppy under their arm, they'd sell to you in a flash.

Real Ireland is silent rivers filled with fish for the taking...frantic little Moorhens and stately Swans gliding by...a plop in the water reveals the head of an Otter...cattle stop and stare...

Derelict cottages...broken windows and tumble down barns...fat Blackberries and rusted ploughs...Swallows that swoop over head and the distant plaintive cry of the Curlew...

Real Ireland is hedge banks smothered in tiny Sweet Violets...the hum of bees...families out turning the turf...it's that sweet evocative smell coming from the hearths on an Autumn afternoon...smoke curling up into a darkening sky...the lights in front rooms going on...family gathering for the supper.

The real Ireland isn't about shopping for 'genuine Aran sweaters made in China' or queuing for the Blarney stone...it isn't about hoping your holiday cottage has an internet connection or grumbling because the shops don't open until ten...muttering because the musicians haven't arrived by eleven...it's about taking photographs of the Honeysuckle wound around a Hawthorn hedge...marvelling at the wanton display of early Orchids...talking to that old Priest with his Collie dog...seeing if you are going to be the lucky one who catches a glimpse of the elusive Otter...

It's about lighting a turf fire and getting up early to watch the old Badger stomping carefully down the road...

And never singing Danny Boy.