Vir diegene wat van Ierse afkoms is

Barry Vosloo

Ek is baie partydig vir die Iere. Punt.

Dalk is die rede daarvoor dat ons oudste seun vir hom en sy gesin die afgelope elf jaar ‘n goeie bestaan in hierdie pragtige land losgewerk het. Dalk het 'n studie van die Ierse geskiedenis iets daarmee te doen. Dalk vloei daar meer as ‘n net blertsie Ierse bloed deur my are.

Maar, wat beteken dit om Iers te wees?

 

Mary McAleese

In haar toespraak by die Cork University College in Januarie 2006, het die voormalige Ierse president, Mary McAleese, daarop gewys dat die Iere “have often punched above their weight”. Dink maar aan die elf Nobelpryse wat al aan Iere toegeken is: vyf vir vrede twee vir fisika en vier vir letterkunde. Om nie te praat van ten minste twee Amerikaanse presidente wat familiebande met Ierland gehad het nie.

McAleese het voorts gesê: “With each passing year, post-Rising Ireland reveals itself, and we, who are of this strongly independent and high-achieving land, would do well to ponder the extent to which today’s freedoms, values, ambitions rest on [achieving] … the right of the Irish people to [take] ownership of Ireland …”

Die Britsgebore Ierse joernalis, Kevin Meyers, het egter onlangs in ‘n koerantartikel onder die opskrif A genetic condition could explain much of Irish history, daarop gewys dat DNA-ondersoeke daarop dui dat die wesenskenmerke van die Ierse nasionale karakter waarskynlik geneties bepaal is en oorgeërf is van die eerste setlaars wat volgens oorlewering in die verre verlede per boot vanaf Spanje daar aangeland het.

Hy skryf: “We know that schizophrenia and alcoholism are inherited traits. We also know that Ireland has higher rates of both illnesses than any other country in Europe.”

Hy beweer vervolgens dat “other genetically transmitted traits … that cause behavioural characteristics that were specific to Irish people … and have helped shape the culture of the Irish so that they become societal norms, thus affecting the behaviour of people who were themselves not inheritors of the genes. Nature and nurture are therefore intertwined … Possibly other genes caused a predisposition to disregard the future tense. Impetuosity, a refusal to plan, contempt for consequence, for whatever reason, would become common characteristics of the Irish people.

Gerry Adams, Irish republican politician

“We know about other characteristics: a gregariousness, a volubility, an affable charm, a clannishness, an amiable distinctiveness … and also a perpetual sense of victimhood … The golden thread of Irish republicanism, which can turn an affray in a farmyard into a ‘Rising’, takes much of its moral authenticity through a much-cherished sense of oppression.”

Maar wie ookal wat sê, die allermooiste elemente van Iersheid word myns insiens in die onderstaande gedig versgestalt:

In that dear land across the Irish sea.

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland,
Then maybe at the closing of your day,
You will sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh,
And see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

Just to hear again the ripple of the trout stream,
The women in the meadow making hay.
Just to sit beside a turf fire in the cabin,
And watch the barefoot gosoons at their play.

For the breezes blowin' o'er the sea from Ireland
Are perfumed by the heather as they blow
And the women in the uplands diggin' praties
Speak a language that the strangers do not know.

Yet the stangers came and tried to teach us their way.
They scorned us just for bein' what we are.
But they might as well go chasing after moon beams,
Or light a penny candle from a star.

And if there's is going to be a life hereafter,
And somehow I am sure there's going to be,
I will ask my God to let me make my heaven,
In that dear land across the Irish sea.