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March 17, 2008

B-SIDES: This St. Patrick’s Day column is ‘craic’

By Mark Bennett

TERRE HAUTE — I've never lived in Ireland.

So when a true Irishman recently began explaining the virtues of something that sounded like "crack," I worried about where that conversation was headed. Yet that's the beauty of "craic." It's a Gaelic word, meaning good, old Irish fun. To this fellow, good craic involves "frivolous talk about nothing," the guy explained. "It's entertainment."

Fittingly, craic has no English translation. In America, witty conversation requires a point. In Ireland, conversation is the point.

Tom Morgan, a native Terre Hautean, discovered that when he transplanted himself into The Old Sod for a three-year stretch in the 1980s. Barely a day after arriving, Morgan ventured out to find a post office. He asked a woman for directions. He wasn't in the mood for small talk, but that didn't matter to her. She persisted, asking where he'd come from. Exasperated, Morgan gave in and told her.

"So, you're a Yank then," the woman answered.

That's all it took. A lengthy conversation followed.

"I was kind of depressed when I went to Ireland, but I got over it very quickly," recalled Morgan. "And it wasn't the food, which is still very good. It was the people. You'd meet people through the day who want to be conversational and want to talk."

That Irish trait was a common thread in my conversations — which were, to me, quite craic — with Morgan, who now lives in Parke County, and a handful of other Wabash Valley residents who've also actually lived in Ireland.

The Emerald Isle, itself, is a hot topic in March, which includes St. Patrick's Day (today) and is Irish-American Heritage month.

The Irish love to tell Americans about their family members living in The States. "Every cab you get into, you'll have a driver who has a brother or a sister or a cousin who lives in America," said Julia Williams, a Rose-Hulman professor who attended Trinity College at Dublin in 1984 and '85.

Those cabbies have plenty of stories to tell. A whopping 36 million U.S. residents claim Irish ancestry, exceeding all but the Germans, according to the Census Bureau. And 6,300 of them live in Vigo County, which is 10.6 percent of the local population. A smaller number know the joys of calling Ireland "home."

Morgan's maternal grandmother emigrated from Ireland to the United States. Decades later, Morgan experienced her homeland first-hand when he moved from Indiana to Dun Laoshaire, Ireland. Three things, he discovered, make it unique, and that list doesn't include green beer, shamrocks, or corned beef and cabbage.

"It's the conversation, the landscape and the livestock," Morgan said.

Two of those qualities — the vistas and the animals — could be found together on Ireland's west coast, with the Cliffs of Moher, Donegal and Ring of Kerry. "I like the west coast for its breathtaking beauty," Morgan said. "For a livestock man, you get these great, rolling pastoral scenes."

Morgan didn't leave that appreciation in western Ireland when he returned to America. He now spends mornings tending to the sheep, goats, horses and mules on his Irish-style farm near Montezuma. Then in afternoons and evenings, Morgan — a 68-year-old graduate of Garfield High School and Indiana University — works as a psychotherapist.

Eastern Ireland is where Sister Mary Montgomery lived in autumn 2005 on a sabbatical from the Sisters of Providence at St. Mary-of-the-Woods. During her 10-week adventure, which involved studying the ecology and spirituality in caring for the earth, she resided in a rehabilitated, old boarding school in a Dublin suburb in County Wicklow. Set in the Wicklow Mountains, her bedroom faced the Irish Sea. The shore was just a 10-minute walk away.

"It was a good place to sit and be with friends, or be alone and think and pray," Montgomery said.

Friends weren't hard to find, Morgan said, and the Irish pubs were a prime spot to find them. Though the Irish have a reputation for drinking, "pubs are family-like places," he explained, where craic "is practiced as the highest art."

The St. Patrick's Day celebration in The States gives Americans a crack at some craic. "It's always a time to take off work and go meet friends," Morgan said.

Still, some of the Yankee traditions on St. Patrick's Day might seem a bit strange to folks back in Ireland.

"Corned beef and cabbage — they don't know what you're talking about," Morgan said.

"Many people in this country use [St. Patrick's Day] as an excuse to drink green beer," Williams said, "and the Irish wouldn't be caught dead drinking green beer. There's plenty of good beer around in Ireland without resorting to a drink with that nauseating color."

Indeed, Guinness — which originated in 18th-century Dublin — is ruby black, not green.

When Morgan thirsts for an Irish drink, he prefers Old Bushmills, a whiskey distilled in Northern Ireland since at least the 1600s. While living in Ireland, he learned many Irish order it by making a mea culpa sign over their hearts. "I still order Bushmills," Morgan said, "but I forget to do the mea culpa."

Ireland has changed some since Williams and Morgan lived there in the 1980s. Bushmills' birthplace, Northern Ireland, has seen more peaceful times since the 1998 Belfast Agreement quieted generations of violence between nationalist and unionist factions. As those accords were under way, Williams and her husband visited Belfast in 1995. Unlike the mid-1980s, "There were no searches on the trains," she said, "and there were no guards."

The country's economy also has grown. A nation once devastated by a potato famine in the mid-1800s now has the world's fourth-highest per-capita income, thanks to computer manufacturing facilities and software exporters. Dell, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and HP all have operations in Ireland.

"I didn't see a single computer when I was there," Morgan said.

As Williams put it, "It's so much more prosperous."

An English professor, Williams also teaches Irish literature at Rose-Hulman, and she plans to take a group of students to Ireland this fall. She wants them to tour the Irish theaters.

Ireland is a welcoming destination for Yanks.

"It's one of the last places on earth that likes Americans," Morgan said, "and if you have an Irish name, they want you to stay."

Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

Lucky numbers

• 1762 — Year of the world’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade, in New York City.

• 36,000,000 — The number of U.S. residents who claim Irish ancestry.

• 4,000,000 — Population of Ireland.

• 6,303 — Vigo County residents who claim Irish ancestry.

• 689 — Population of Dublin, Indiana.

• 15 — U.S. presidents with Irish ancestry. Current candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain are Scots-Irish, while Barack Obama’s great-great-great grandfather, Fulmuth Kearney, grew up in Moneygall, Ireland, before emigrating to New York in 1850.

• 42.1 billion — Pounds of beef produced in 2006 in the U.S.

• 2.6 billion — Pounds of cabbage produced in 2006 in the U.S.

Sources: Census Bureau, Washington Post

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