As a child, I first encountered Ireland through its music. One of my favorite songs on my mother’s Kingston Trio CD was “Roddy McCorley,” the song about the 1798 revolutionary who was hanged on the bridge of Toome. This meant that practically the first thing I ever learned about Ireland, ahead of the shamrocks and the leprechauns and the Guinness, was that they were an unrestful country: “In Ireland,” the recording begins, “in all of their many revolutions, they always found someone to use as a hero.” It would be many years before I learned what exactly they were revolting about, but those two early associations would remain: music and an unquiet existence.
Continue reading “Poor Old Erin’s Isle”
Much That Is Fair 