Over the last two centuries, thousands of people left the Dingle Peninsula for Boston and other places, becoming the “foreigners” in those new lands. As the world spins furiously, with war and famine and a malevolent leader of the free world in the White House, life in Baile na nGall remains cool, calm, and collected. There’s a great tradition of Gaelic football here, and while all things of the Gael are in evidence, including the native language, any remnants of Anglophobia are well in the past.
One example of that is the new rugby pitch just below the home of T. P. Ó Conchúir, who at 82 remains the heart and soul of Baile na nGall.
Rugby is a foreign game that the Irish have gotten very good at, and people in the town of the foreigners are very keen on it. T. P.
Ó Conchúir, whose last name in English is O’Connor, is a modern-day seanchaí, a storyteller and historian who uses the ancient oral tradition to pass down local knowledge and folklore. T. P.
knows this part of the Dingle Peninsula like the back of his weathered hand. He is also a meteorologist of renown, possessing not a degree in science but an intimate understanding of local weather patterns, the way the land, the sky, and the sea interact. T.
P. can watch the basking sharks in the waters here and tell you what kind of summer it will be. Sometimes, however, there is no summer, because this is Ireland and every now and then summer simply forgets to show up.
But no one comes to Ireland for the weather. It’s usually for the scenery and the characters and the craic and the music, and you can find all of that and more at Tigh T. P.
, which means T. P. ’s House in Irish.
For some 30 years, Tigh T. P. , an oceanfront pub and restaurant, has been run by T.
P. ’s son, Seán, who is, not surprisingly, given his lineage, a great raconteur. On a recent Saturday, Seán left the bar in the capable hands of one of his employees and pulled up a stool to join a County Limerick man, Jack English, and English’s wife, Rachel, a nurse, to watch Munster play rugby against a South African team on TV.
Seán’s partner, Fiona Dowling, took a break from work to watch, too. My son and I joined them and I motioned the bar man over. We exchanged some pleasantries, at which point I said, “Oh, you’re American.
”The guy smiled, nervously, and replied, “Canadian. ”He walked over to the taps and I turned to Seán and said, “Your man doesn’t sound like a Canadian. ”Seán, his arms folded, as is his wont, didn’t miss a beat, saying, “That’s because he’s from Springfield.
”That would be Springfield, Mass. , which has a unique connection with one of the most remote parts of Ireland: the Blasket Islands off the tip of the Dingle Peninsula. In 1953, when the last two dozen residents were evacuated from Great Blasket after the government deemed it uninhabitable, many followed their neighbors and emigrated to Hungry Hill in Springfield.
The American bartender who says he’s Canadian married a woman who had relatives from the Blaskets and they moved here a couple of years ago. The bar man at Tigh T. P.
’s is not alone in his reluctance to acknowledge his nationality. In just one week, just about every American we met working in pubs, restaurants, and shops in Ireland, from Dublin to Dingle to Doolin, when asked, identified themselves as Canadian. When pressed, some laughed it off as an inside joke, acknowledging they were from Minnesota or Michigan or California, but a couple of them insisted on keeping up the facade, wary of what admitting to being American in Ireland might bring, including a guy in Dublin with a New Yawk accent that gave him away from a mile away.
The Irish people have a complicated relationship with America. Most are openly opposed to the policies of Donald Trump, and there can be no more telling statement on Trump 2. 0 than Americans in Ireland passing themselves off as Canadians.
That said, we did not encounter hostility in Ireland as much as widespread sympathy, along with incredulity, that, having watched Donald Trump in action during his first term, 77 million Americans had no problem voting for him again. They don’t hate us; they worry for us. Ireland and the United States are inextricably linked, through their people, culture, and business.
When America sneezes, people here catch a cold. Ireland has been wracked with protests and road blockades as Irish farmers and truckers and ordinary punters demand government relief from rising fuel prices caused by Trump’s undeclared war with Iran. The Irish economy, meanwhile, depends heavily on US technology and pharmaceutical companies; three US companies - Apple, Microsoft, and Eli Lilly - contribute nearly half of the corporate taxes in Ireland.
Trump is admired by some in Ireland who think the Irish government has allowed too many foreigners to settle in their country. But most Irish people are accepting and tolerant of foreigners, acknowledging their economy, especially its thriving tourism industry, would collapse without foreign labor.