The Irish and their everyday lives can make for a brilliant study of anthropology. Brilliant characters, great conversationalists, limitless appetites for well cooked food and well brewed ales and a general affinity towards the good arts, the highlight of my Irish getaway was its wonderful people. Unfortunately, like every popular thing in the world, there are certain stereotypes that have been formed about these good men in global circles. Here’s an attempt to lay bare some of these myths and give a first hand account of my experiences amidst traditional Irish lives.
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1. The Focal Point of Irish Social Lives
The focal point of traditional Irish social lives is the neighborhood pub. Fierce competition between pub-owners on the same street is unheard off in most small to mid-sized towns. Patrons are known to frequent multiple pubs in the same night and enjoy great rapport with regulars at all of them.
The Most Important Job in Ireland – The Bar-tender!
2. The Most Important Job in Irish Circles
As you may have probably imagined, the role of the man/woman behind the wooden bar of every single Irish pub is vital. The Irish bartender, besides being able to pour the perfect pint is a perfect example of a successful CRM system. What’s remarkable is the fact that all customer related information & nuances are stored in the bartender’s brain – he/she knows each regular patron’s favored drink and specific requirements, including how much height a particular gentleman prefers on top of his pint. As you can imagine, bar-tending is a very privileged profession in these parts of the world – a stark contrast to how we perceive it in India.
3. Myth Buster #1: All of Ireland DOESN’T drink Guinness
Irish Craft Beer
Stout is NOT the favored drink of all that are Irish – this is a massive myth buster. Guinness, Ireland’s greatest export ever, though a beverage of great taste and quality, is more of a marketing success story than anything else. Arthur Guinness was a visionary marketeer, besides being a great brewer. His success in portraying Guinness as Ireland’s signature drink is a brilliant branding case-study; but outside of the bigger cities (primarily Dublin), Guinness/stouts are not the most sought after drinks. Patrons love their local brews and are proud of them. Ales, lagers, ambers and wheat beers are enjoyed just as much if not more than a lot of stouts.
4. The Icebreaker
The favorite ice-breaker in Irish conversations is the ‘weather’ – I’ve never seen a singular topic appear with so much prominence anywhere else. In a land where you can easily experience 3-4 seasons in a day, it is understandable why the Irish love talking about their weather. Throw in a pinch of wit for good measure, and you’ll be quick to make a lot of Irish friends.
5. Confusing Phrases
Some commonly used phrases in Ireland can befuddle you. For instance, “Are you okay there?” is the traditional Irish phrase for “How may I help you?” It can be rather unsettling at first, when you just enter a pub and do not know most of the names on the beer list, nor the items on the food menu, and are greeted with this phrase; but all it really means is an offer of help/guidance from the smiling, gap-toothed bartender.
6. Fish & Chips FTW?
If you want such meals, be IN before 9 PM!
Kitchens in Ireland usually shut by 9 pm in the evening – this is a vital piece of information, especially in the summers, when the sun regularly sets post 10 pm. Travelers may be tempted to make use of the longer day and return indoors later than planned, but be sure to grab a bite sometime before 9 pm, unless you don’t mind frequenting fish & chip shops for dinner for the length of your stay – I know I grew sick of it by the end of my stay.
7. The Lost Art of Waving
The rural Irish are wavers – it’s amusing, very endearing and very beautiful to experience. My persistent insistence on unearthing virgin, non-touristy villages and towns, took us deep into rural country all throughout western Ireland. As we cruised on roads with grass growing between the tire tracks and broad enough to accommodate only one vehicle at a time, every human we crossed waved at us with genuine delight. Somehow, the image of a tiny old woman struggling to walk with her walking stick and the transformation she underwent on seeing our car, causing her entire face to light up and her arm to wave frantically, was amongst the most memorable sights from my journey.
8. Family Owned Business
Irish pubs are largely family businesses – it’s amusing, but so many of them Irish pubs are run by Ma, Pa, Son, Daughter and whoever else in the family they can get their hands upon.In many cases, even the husbands of daughters and their children happily take up jobs on the pub and run it ‘in-house’. I was fortunate enough to make friends with one such family and get a first hand account on the history of a pub that had been the cornerstone of the whole town for more than a century.
9. The Romanticism
John – Architect by Profession, Musician by Heart!
Every Irishman/woman is a poet, dancer, musician and an alcoholic in varying proportions – there’s a degree of over-dramatization involved in that statement, but it’s a necessary abrasion. The Irish are what I’d like to describe as the ‘romantics’. Pub-owners double up as musicians; poetry and story-telling sessions spring up extempore on any given evening; and noise levels progressively go higher as the consumption of the locally approved brew increases. The order of the day can quickly change from one form of art to the other, I suspect, sometimes even the locals do not know what’s in store for the evening.
10. The Self-Deprecating Modesty
The Irish are modest & self-deprecating to the point of becoming quite exasperating. Have you ever had that really hot friend who puts up pictures on social media, only for every post to end up becoming a ‘mutual admiration club’ with every person commenting on it calling the other ‘hotter’? This feels exactly like that! For someone quite as obviously in love with the country as I am, it can get quite frustrating when a local plays the “aah! it’s nothing; life MUST be better in your part of the world” card. For excellent conversationalists, modesty is a very highly appreciated value, advocated from early childhood – even the famous Irish humor is often characteristically self-deprecating & often starts with a pot-shot at something Irish.
Myth Buster #2, 3 & 4
i) The Irish are not stupid
ii) The Irish aren’t all redheads and
iii) They DO NOT BELIEVE in leprechauns any more than Indians believe in snake charmers and self-proclaimed babas!
The good-natured banter of the Irish, their affinity to crack jokes directed at themselves and their culture is probably responsible for a lot of these stupid myths doing the rounds all over the world. The Irish are generally smart though boisterous – most of them have a charm for talking, which is often almost poetic.
Have you been to Ireland? Were your experiences different than mine? Are you tempted to visit after reading this? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Also Read:
Ireland – 50 Shades of Green, Blue & Beer