Ireland, past and present side by side

Dewi Anggraeni ,  Melbourne, Australia   |  Mon, 11/23/2009 11:28 AM  |  Features

Historical center: Buildings in Dublin’s CBD, Ireland’s capital, a burgeoning cosmopolitan city with 1.2-million inhabitants, and with everything residents and visitors alike are likely to want. JP/Dewi Anggraeni

Ireland evokes different images for different people.

Literary lovers will remember James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Daphne du Maurier, to name a few. Sports aficionados may visualize hurling, Gaelic football and rugby. Film buffs may think of Sean Connery, Peter Finch, Lawrence Olivier and Peter O’Toole.

In the international dance community, many would surely know of the beautifully energetic Irish dancing. Those who study global migration history may think of the millions of Irish who emigrated to the USA, Britain and Australia in the 19th and 20th century.

Many more, unfortunately, will only remember what they gleaned from the media until just over a decade ago: the violence and terror involving the IRA, the Irish Republican Army.

Visiting the island today, you will have to look hard to see the remnants of the turbulent past. It is a place where people go about their business every day, the universities are populated with students and academics, infrastructure works as expected, people are generally happy to help, multiculturalism is visibly developing, and everywhere you look, it is green, lush and beautiful.

Only when you begin to probe into its history will you learn about Ireland’s bloody past fraught with social, political and sectarian conflicts. So you cannot help admiring their tenaciousness, for having surfaced into the present with relative success.

In the last 10 years or so, Ireland has turned itself from a country of emigrants to one that fast absorbs immigrants from various parts of the world, attracted to its steadily growing economy. 

Despite the fact that Irish emigrants and their descendants have been successful and prospered in their new countries — the late John F. Kennedy and his ancestors being a prominent example — the Irish emigrant’s image still reflects the land’s difficult times.

This may have to do with the long-ago deep trauma that has remained in the population’s collective psyche, manifested in its literature for generations. One of the sources of trauma that saw Ireland losing more than 2.5 million of its population to death and mass emigration was the potato famine, caused by repeated failed harvests, lasting from 1845 to 1851.

Cobh, in county Cork, south of the island, was one of the emigrants’ departure ports. A museum has been founded there, dedicated to their memory. Inside the museum, apart from items or replicas illustrating and commemorating the events, there is a continuous multi-media showing, giving the visitors a feel of what it was like to be driven by starvation into taking dangerously long oceanic voyages on mostly overcrowded ships. The emigrants braved rough seas and fierce weather, and lost many loved ones before finally landing.

After a long and difficult period of conflicts and struggle for a home rule — from Britain — the island was partitioned on May 3, 1921, into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, both being parts of the UK. And less than two years later on December 6, 1922, the entire island became the Irish Free State, a dominion in the British Commonwealth. This arrangement only lasted one day however. Now Northern Ireland is still part of the UK and the rest of the island is a sovereign state, known as the Republic of Ireland, or simply Ireland.

In 1973 Ireland joined the EU and in January, was one of the first countries to adopt the euro. Its economy picked up and grew into the current prosperity.

Standing tall: Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, founded in 1191, is also known as The National Cathedral and Collegiate Church of Saint Patrick.

Now Dublin, Ireland’s capital, is a burgeoning cosmopolitan city with 1.2-million inhabitants, and with everything residents and visitors alike are likely to want. Interesting CBD, wonderful parks, plentiful shops, lively learning institutions, well-attended theatres, arts centers, and enough restaurants and cafés to cater for hungry diners. River Liffey runs through the city like an artery, providing more than mere fresh water to the Dubliners and visitors.

And Cork City, the second-largest city with population of 119,000, once a rebel city, is now a busy centre that lies on an island in the River Lee. If not as big as Dublin, it is no less pretty, and has a number of advantages over the capital. To begin with, it is less expensive, and life in general is less demanding. Though there is more than one bridge you need to cross during the day, everything seems accessible. To travel from the surrounding suburbs to the CBD takes less than half an hour.

Each county is dotted with scenic towns and villages that emanate history and mystery, where residents look after their houses with incredible pride.

In Northern Ireland, people will remember that it was in its capital Belfast — once a center of enormous sectarian violence — where the Titanic was built in its former shipbuilding yard, known as the Titanic Quarter, which is being rebuilt near the Odyssey Complex, a gigantic sporting and entertainment centre, within walking distance from the city center.

Northern Ireland cities are unquestioningly worth visiting, one being Londonderry, locally known as Derry. It was once a walled city subject to siege, and the 17th century walls are still intact though the city has grown outside them as well. A visitor can learn its history by walking around the walls and a tour of the Bogside murals.

From Derry it is an easy driving distance to the Giant’s Causeway, a vast cluster of basalt outcrops that to people’s eyes, seems to have been built by giants. The natural phenomenon is stunning, beautiful and eerie all at once.

Eeriness is present throughout all Irish countryside, though framed in magnificently spectacular views. In some areas, it even spills into the urban environment.  In Galway, a Western coastal city, even my no-nonsense husband had the “heeby-jeebies” when in our guesthouse, we seemed to be the only guests, yet each night the doors were opened and shut several times, and the stairs frequently creaked.

After all, this is an island that is still steeped in superstition, with visible evidence of Druidic tradition and beliefs of the distant past, despite the physical presence of Roman Catholicism, the Church of Ireland, and Presbyterianism.

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