I can see the Aran Islands in the distance. Beautiful, off the coast near Galway. The overhead speaker is alternately in Gaelic and English. Eight hundred years after coming under the control of the English and / or the Normans, about 6% of the population still can communicate in Gaelic. Our taxi driver says there are pockets that speak only Gaelic primarily because their parents only spoke Gaelic. People aren’t conquered easily. And, it isn’t easy to force people to do what you want even if you kill their leaders . . or perhaps because you kill their leaders.
I think this is one of the great errors of the Civil War. So, we have at least 650 years before bigotry against black people is relegated to history in the South. Change comes slowly.
I took one last walk down through the village center this morning before packing for the trip. The tide had come in. What was a series of waterfalls into a large river was now tributaries of a large river. You could see that the Galwegians had engineered a series of tributaries upriver to allow many small tributaries to flow through the town. When the tide was low, it was a series of small rivers becoming waterfalls. When high, they became tributaries of the larger river. A very inventive and clever people!
My father felt strongly that he was Irish. It was difficult to know because the family record was obscured by an uncooperative father. As it turns out, he was right. In our family history is an ancestor from the British Isles named Jane Williams, half English and half Irish. My father would have been happy to know that the shamrock hats and four-leaf-clover handkerchiefs that he wore with pride were really a part of the heritage of the family. But, does it really matter? He was Irish and that was that. And, for my part that is that.
Well, I will say this. Even if I didn’t know for sure that I had Irish blood in me, I would be proud of this wonderful heritage.