27 Handel’s Messiah in Dublin, 13 April 1742

Posted by on Dec 22, 2014 in Ireland | 5 comments A few days ago I revived my annual Christmas ritual of playing Handel’s Messiah at full volume while I work at my desk or around the house, a practice that is exhilarating but that can also make me nostalgic and weepy—familiar Christmas emotions for many. Truth be told, I sometimes do this at other times of the year, particularly when I need a blast of energy or inspiration to get a project going. My love of vocal music, Handel’s soaring melodies (especially those of the Messiah), and his choice of English as the language for his many of his libretti—he lived in London from 1710 to his death in 1759—have long drawn me to his work. For the most part, European musical tradition did not recognize English as a hospitable language for opera or oratorios until the nineteenth century or later. Whether he made the choice for economic, political, or musical reasons, Handel was an innovator in using English. Here in Ireland I have the version of Messiah by the Academy of St. Martin’s in the Fields with Neville Mariner (1976), a combination that is always a good bet for baroque music. When I’m alone, I turn up the volume and sing out loud, taking the alto part or finding my place in a higher or lower octave for the rest. Let me make clear that I don’t sing well, but I do sing enthusiastically and in tune. At home in Atlanta I have about a dozen more of Handel’s oratorios and operas set up to play consecutively starting with Acis and Galatea, which I recently learned was performed by Handel while he was visiting Dublin and incorporates an Irish jig. In certain moods I allow myself a full day of Handel blasting through all the downstairs rooms. Last December I had the great pleasure of hearing the Messiah live for the first time with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. Ron and I were sitting in the back row in two seats set apart from others, so my silent mouthing of the words and rhythmic swaying and bobbing didn’t bother anyone but Ron, who is used to my Messiah antics. At least I didn’t sing out loud or hum. It was a magnificent performance, easily the highlight of our five day culture fest in the city. The soloists were perfect, the choir brilliant, the orchestra beyond compare. I quickly...
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26 Eddie Doherty Handwoven Tweed

Posted by on Dec 15, 2014 in Ireland | 4 comments I love wool in all its forms—on the hoof, on the spinning wheel, on the loom, as knitting or crocheting yarn, or made up as garments or throws. I sometimes wonder if Ireland drew me to wool or the other way around. In yarn stores I can be found wandering from section to section touching the different types and brands or sniffing the lanolin in skeins of wool that have not been overly processed. I’m afraid I have a lot more yarn at home than I’ll ever get around to knitting up, but buying yarn always seems to be such a great way to take a little bit of Ireland back home with me. Wool has amazing qualities that are not always recognized: it’s flame retardant, resistant to dust mites, and only extremely rarely allergenic, though most of us need a layer of cotton or some other fabric between our skin and the wool. Cool in the summer, warm in the winter, wool “draws moisture away from the body in the heat and maintains a layer of dry air around the body when the air is cool and damp” (see previous link). Long before I started actually coming to Ireland, I learned to love the subtly multicolored wool made in Scotland and Ireland known as tweed, though I didn’t own anything made from it. Some sources connect the word “tweed” to the River Tweed in Scotland, but a more likely origin is a modified version, probably resulting from mistakes, of the fabric type “twill.” Authentic tweed comes mainly from Lewis, Harris, and Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland or from County Donegal in Ireland, and the colors are all made with natural dyes. If you examine a piece of tweed or a strand of tweed yarn closely, you’ll see how complex the fibres are, with different colors of yarn woven together to support and deepen the overall color of the fabric, the so-called “heather” effect. Donegal tweed is particularly distinctive because of the small particles of color along the thread that add another dimension to the unmistakable “tweedy” look, the “Donegal” effect. I’ve knitted seven or eight sweaters with Donegal tweed; the colors come across differently with each stitch and make the project continually interesting, something a knitter always craves. You only have to look around you at the landscape of Ireland or Scotland to understand the inspiration for this compelling way...
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25 Divided by a Common Language Redux

Posted by on Dec 8, 2014 in Ireland | 2 comments Here are some more language stories collected by an American surrounded by—and rapidly learning—Irish English. For the first installment of “Divided by a Common Language” see post number 17 under “Past Posts.” The other day an Irish friend asked me if I was enjoying my “doss” year. Luckily she asked this in an email, because I had to do some research before answering her. In UK and Irish slang, “doss” actually means “sleep rough” as in “she’s dossing at a friend’s house after the concert,” etc. “Doss” can also be a noun: “Did he find a doss for the night?” Another definition online mentioned that the word can be extended to mean “a situation giving the opportunity for being extremely idle.” While I’m certain that the Professional Development Committee and the powers that be at Agnes Scott College do not think of sabbaticals as “doss” semesters or years, I am ready to own this description of my sabbatical. And yes, thank you very much, I am really enjoying my doss year! In fact, I’m having a grand time in my doss year! I’m not sure why “grand” beats out “great” in Ireland, as the two words are very close in meaning and origin. This is one of those words that’s said so often, I can’t help but say it myself, though I frequently get tangled up at the “grrr…” part, not sure which way I’m heading. One interesting use of “grand” that is a bit outside the scope of “great” occurs when you say something along the lines of “I don’t want to trouble you,” or “Is it okay if I sit here?” or “Is there anything I can do to help?” and the response is “Ah, you’re grand!” That means that there’s no problem, whatever you are doing is fine, you don’t need to do anything else. I find this very heartwarming, and it makes me very well-disposed to whomever I’m talking to. Ah, you’re grand! Here’s a side note that will, perhaps, only be appreciated by my brothers Jeff, Todd, and Mike. Our mother Barbara had a language of her own that combined baby talk with arcane references to what she called “boarding school books,” other elements of the culture of the twenties through the forties, and her own family oddities. Someday I’ll have to put together the complete lexicon. For example, whenever she encountered a baby she would...
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24 November in Ireland / Mí na Samhna in Éirinn

Posted by on Dec 1, 2014 in Ireland | 1 comment Anyone who has stumbled upon the spot pictured above, Doolough (Black Lake) in County Mayo, knows how beautiful it is at any time of the year. This photo—taken on Tuesday, November 18, 2014—speaks to everything that needs to be said about Ireland in the month of November, Mí na Samhna. The bracken has turned to brown, the heather to unnamable dark shades, the peat-infused water to even more impenetrable black. The green that lingers glows greener than ever. Most of the flowers are gone, yet the color palette has expanded. The hills are coated in warm brown velvet—mole-colored when in shadow—that seems creased and draped with artistry. Shadows are longer, colors have more depth and darkness. And there’s no one—not a tourist, not a sheepherder, not a hiker—in sight. As in other Gaelic languages, the word for Halloween, Oíche Shamhna (oíche means “night”), is also the word for November, testifying to the importance of the season in Celtic culture: Mí na Samhna means the “month of Samhain.” The root word Samhain [SOW-en] means “the end of summer” and is the name for one of four festivals marking the seasons of the year: Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasa are the others. Samhain and Beltane [BELL-ta-nuh] (May) were the most important and were considered to be times when the barriers between our world and the world of the spirits became porous, so-called “thin” times allowing movement and communication back and forth. That certainly is the mood of November in the many cultures where the Halloween tradition has developed. Before coming for this twelve-month residence, I had never spent even a day of either February or November in Ireland. I don’t yet know what February will bring, but November is fast becoming my favorite month here. For one thing, a lot happens in November as far as the look and feel of the day. Remember that Ireland is very far north, at roughly the same latitude as the middle of Hudson Bay. Every day makes a radical move towards darkness. With daylight saving time marking the month (this year DST actually began on October 26, a week before it started in the US), we are suddenly measuring the rapidly diminishing daylight so that we can get everything we can out of it. When we arrived in June, it stayed light until almost 11 p.m. and the sun was up a few hours later. Because our bedroom blinds...
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23 Culture Shock and Awe

Posted by on Nov 24, 2014 in Ireland | 13 comments Last month I was exchanging emails about this blog and other things with Craig Okino, a dear friend from college, when he learned I was returning from Dublin to Atlanta for six days to attend a wedding on November 1. “I’m curious to hear if you experience a little ‘culture shock’ upon your return to the US,” Craig wrote, “…the subject of your next blog, perhaps?” And in a subsequent message, “I’m very interested to hear what happens when you guys return to your old lives.” Living in Hawaii and visiting the mainland every year, Craig knows a lot about culture shock. But while I said I’d give it a try, I wasn’t really sure I’d have enough to say when I got back to Dublin. I’ve only been living in Ireland for four months. No big deal. And I travel a fair amount, so I know there are always adjustments, big and small, when crossing borders, even local ones. I’ve been going back and forth to Ireland regularly for almost thirty years, so there won’t be any surprises, right? Not so fast! Four months in residence is no two-week vacation, I soon realized. From the moment we landed in Atlanta, I felt caught between my two worlds—the sabbatical bubble in Dublin and the hive of activity surrounding my life in Atlanta. Remember the episode of Star Trek in which some of characters are in a speeded up universe, while the rest are in a parallel but slowed down one? To the slow people, the fast ones are only a buzz in the air, while the fast ones see the others moving almost imperceptibly in slow motion around them. Over that long weekend in Atlanta, I seemed to be negotiating both universes at the same time. Committing to live somewhere for a year means you will open yourself more to life in that place than you might during a brief stay with the vacation spirit about it. To prepare for the year away, I made sure that I got out or rotated off of everything I was doing at home: the department chair’s job, committees, my seventeen year journal editorship, volunteer work at the kids’ former school, visiting lecturer gigs, and more. I traded a house in Atlanta for a small rental apartment in Dublin with minimal furnishings, where when something goes wrong, the landlord fixes it. I devised...
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