Emigrants are more Irish than the Irish themselves

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

There are lads I went to school with who, back in the day, listened to the Jam and the Police and Thin Lizzy like the rest of us – but these days it’s the best of folk and trad…and even a little bit of Country & Irish thrown in for good measure.

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that because music isn’t good or bad, it’s just a matter of taste – but the point is that they never really showed anything more than a passing interest in Irish culture until they left Ireland.

They’d run a million miles from a pub with a session going on – now they’ll cross London or New York to get a small taste of home.

The fact it’s not actually a taste of what they once knew as home seems to be largely irrelevant – it’s about hanging on to their identity in a part of the world where it means nothing to most of the rest.

There was a survey a few weeks back about the foods and treats that our emigrants most miss after they leave – and none of the top choices would come as a surprise to anyone.

Top of the list were Tayto crisps, Denny’s sausages, Kerrygold, Dairy Milk chocolate (which isn’t Irish at all really) and all things that taste of home. They might as well have thrown in red lemonade (or Tanora for Cork people), Kimberley biscuits and Clonakilty black pudding.

It’s presumably why Pat McDonagh has opened Supermacs in Australia – not because they don’t have burgers and chips down there…they’re just not the ones you had at home during your wild young years.

But it’s not just those who have left these shores who get all sentimental for the tastes of home.

You only have to hear the opening line of that Barry’s Tea ad on the radio to get all nostalgic about Christmas – you know the one about the Granddad remembering his old childhood and that train with the choo choo engine.

And when he remembers running into his parents’ bedroom on Christmas morning to break the great news on what Santa had left – and his father exclaims “well doesn’t that bate Banagher” – you’re almost back there with him.

You forget it’s an ad to sell tea and you overlook the fact that these aren’t your memories at all because you never got a train set and your father didn’t even know where Banagher was – it’s about painting pictures of the past, even if it’s done by an advertising agency.

Think also of the ad for the guy walking along Dublin’s quays at midnight on Christmas Eve as the clock strikes twelve and – right on cue – the snowflakes begin to fall.

This, in all fairness, has never happened and walking alone along the Customs House Quays at midnight is not to be recommended at the best of times for pensioners – but it’s creating a memory of something that never existed.

So too – with all due respect – with Country & Western or old rebel songs; you’re clinging to someone else’s idea of home, but it will do when there’s nothing much else to cling to.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.