When you return home from a holiday in Ireland, it's the people that you'll remember. Photo / Getty Images
When you return home from a holiday in Ireland, it's the people that you'll remember. Photo / Getty Images
The most memorable thing about Ireland? It’s the Irish, writes Pamela Wade
It's the sights that make you want to travel to a place, but afterwards? It's the people you remember best. They stick in your mind far longer than random castles, cliffs and cathedrals; and few places can beas rich in memorable characters as Ireland.
"My grandmother walked barefoot down that road for 100 miles to find work." As we stood in the draughty ruins of a tiny cottage that once housed 15 people and four cows, Gerald Mangan brought the realities of the potato famine to life. Without his vivid personal testimony, the Deserted Village near Slievemore would have been just another cluster of crumbling walls.
That night in Westport, sitting in the Yard Bar of Matt Molloy's pub, with the Chieftans flautist himself in the audience, we listened as an excited performer told us about his trip the next day to seek his fortune in New York. It's a well-trodden path for the Irish, and the session musicians in the main bar sang one song after another about emigration, as fiddlers came and went, and a noisy drinker was invited to sing along: "It'll stop you talking".
The other side of that story is told at opulent Strokestown Park House, Roscommon, where the resident landed gentry evicted their poor tenant farmers in their thousands, sending them on coffin ships to Canada. Life for the privileged Mahon family wasn't without its own difficulties, though: "Anyone here left-handed?" asked Aidan, pointing to the desk in the schoolroom, its attached chair deliberately offset so that only right-handed writing was possible.
Bantry Harbour, on the coast of West Cork, Ireland. Photo / Pamela Wade
There was more school cruelty in Bantry, we learned on a tour of the town with local man Teddy. As a boy, he admitted, he'd been "a bit of a messer". Even so, his teacher punishing him by making him stand on his own hands for 20 minutes sounded awful. "We hated school," he said, and we couldn't blame him, though his enthusiasm for his pretty and historic little town was catching.
Enthusiasm is a pale word to use for the crowds at the All-Ireland Football Final at Croke Park in Dublin. "To be sure, you're lucky to have tickets — they're like gold dust!" we'd been told, several times; and when we joined the 82,000 eager spectators, we understood. "Who are you for?" asked the woman in the next seat, who had sung the national anthem in a soaring soprano and then spent the match hollering instructions at her team. Wearing red, I chose Cork. Kerry won, but it didn't matter: it was a mighty craic.
Michael, an Irishman who rowed Pamela Wade across Killarney's Upper Lake. Photo / Supplied
And that was how Colleen described the annual Matchmaking Festival in Lisdoonvarna in County Clare, where bunting hung from the lamp-posts, music swelled in the street and Willie Daly sat behind his fat and battered ledger. It proudly records more than a century's-worth of successful pairings and includes thank you letters from many happy couples. Willie himself is divorced, but that hasn't dampened his optimism about romance: "Love is there for everyone, it's just waiting to be found".
"Yur fookin' hoortin' mae! Yur fookin' hoortin' mae!" The shoplifter held down on the cobbles in Kilkenny by two burly security guards would rather not have been found, as the Garda van came screeching alongside, and the off-licence owner reclaimed his big bottle of vodka.
There was less drama in the streets of nearby Waterford but, according to Jack Burtchaill, they have certainly seen their share. Famously guiding visitors around the city up to six times a day for 25 years, Jack could be forgiven for sounding a little jaded, but his enthusiasm for Waterford's lively history is undimmed. With a thousand years of it to pick through, there's always going to be something fresh to talk about: and the combination of digs at the British, sex, violence and the drink will always yield entertainment.
No visit to Ireland is complete without a pint of the black stuff. Photo / Pamela Wade
Ah, the drink! Whether it's a hot toddy on a chilly day (all Irish pubs have kettles behind the bar), a pint of Magners cider or, of course, a glass of velvety stout, it's never far away in Ireland.
Visitors to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin wind their way dutifully past the displays of brewing equipment and heaps of barley and hops, their pace quickening as they get closer to the Gravity bar on the top level. Here, practised barmaids recite, "It'll take two minutes. They'll be the longest two minutes of your life — but it'll be worth it," before finally swirling a shamrock into the foam of your complimentary pint. Some visitors sip and recoil, while others down theirs and shamelessly pounce on rejected glasses.
And old Michael, who rowed us across Upper Lake in Killarney? He was lovely and so chatty, but to this day I haven't the faintest idea what he said.
DETAILS For more things to see and do, go to ireland.com
