IRELAND AND WALES: PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING

"For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." - James Joyce

“The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.” -Dylan Thomas (referring to Wales), Adam

Cobh, Ireland

My first visit to Ireland, many years ago, was before the advent of the euro, so Ireland still had its own currency. Upon acquiring a bit of that currency, my initial reaction was that you have to love a country that puts pictures of writers on all its money. Not soldiers, not political leaders; writers. That poetic currency is long gone, but the love of words remains.

And so does an openness that you see few other places in the world. Looking a bit confused? The woman standing next to you at the corner will ask how she can help. Admiring a scenic view? The fellow walking by will, without prompting, explain to you the history of the sights below. Looking a bit blue? Prepare to hear a corny joke from a passerby. And if asked where else you’ve visited on your trip, your response will engender some point of view. If England was in your response, you will get a perspective on English/Irish relations, historic or current, with or without a view about Northern Ireland thrown in.

“The British wanted us to join them in Brexit. Why would we do that? Five hundred years of British rule brought Ireland nothing but pain and trouble. Twenty to thirty years of EU, and we are thriving,” said one Irish gentleman.

Or a take on the Irish potato famine more detailed and nuanced that what we generally know (and was one man’s perspective, so be aware that this is his gloss, and one I have not confirmed elsewhere). Yes, we are aware that, starting around 1845, a blight overtook the potato crop that created widespread starvation, including the deaths of some one million people, and generated massive migration to North America and elsewhere. This blight, or at least this particularly severe one, lasted some five years.

But did you ever wonder why they did not turn to other crops, or catch fish or hunt fowl? Per this one gentleman, only 8% of Irish land was owned by Irishmen. The rest was owned by English aristocracy, who forbade the Irish from hunting or fishing, or from planting any crops that were being sent to England to sell in the cities of the industrial revolution. Which left to the Irish pretty much only potatoes, and at that only one particular breed of potato. And, if disease hits a crop, it will spread most readily through a single breed. With the failure of this crop came the failure of the whole structure of life in Ireland.

While there were attempts at relief, they were inadequate to the need. And it was far too much later that land use reforms came about. Ireland was changed forever, and resentment of the English, already strong, became somewhat a part of the national character, particularly when joined with Catholic/Protestant warfare, which formed so much of the history of these islands for so many centuries.

View of Dublin from atop the Guinness Storehouse

That resentment of the English also peaks through in Wales, where we paid a visit to Caernarfon Castle. Built in the 1280s as the grandest of a series of castles erected around Wales by the British King Edward I, Caernarfon is where Edward insisted his wife travel late in her pregnancy so that his eldest could be born in Wales. The king felt he needed to solidify his hold on Wales by declaring that his child, a son who would succeed him as king, was Welsh-born and therefore a son of Wales. Thus was the first Prince of Wales, who as such became “entitled” to the tax revenues raised from that territory.

Thereafter, every eldest son of the British monarch became the Prince of Wales. While investiture of the Prince generally was not a tradition in Britain, in 1911, the future King Edward VIII was invested at Caernarfon Castle at the urging of David Lloyd George, a son of Welsh parents who at the time was Chancellor of the Exchequer and later became Prime Minister. More recently, Prince Charles was invested here in 1969. That ceremony was both celebrated and protested by the Welsh, who were said to be about evenly split on whether they liked or despised being part of the British Empire.

Interior of Caernarfon Castle
The slate platform in the middle is where Charles
was invested as Prince of Wales

So, with visits to Holyhead and Caernarfon in Wales, and Waterford, Cobh, and Dublin in Ireland, we depart the British Isles for now and are sailing toward continental Europe. But we will be back to those islands—though not Ireland or Wales—later in this voyage.