Let grief be a fallen leaf1/8/2024 ![]() There you have it: delightful, post-millennial Ireland. Travel 10 miles up the road to Gort and you might wade into a celebration of Brazilian culture, staged by a transplanted community that is now an integral part of that old market town. But you may also walk around the corner and be served dinner by a young man with an Eastern European accent instead of a brogue. You may indeed hear a young Irish woman suddenly break into song in Kinvara. But to wander about, looking to bag with a digital camera some approximation of a time-faded Irish postcard, is to miss the complexities of a country that is thoroughly enjoying its wealth and adapting to its European Union membership while at the same time trying to preserve its dreamlike landscape and proud cultural heritage. Yes, you may even encounter a white clot of sheep blocking your rented car’s path, raising from musty memory some postcard caption about Irish Rush Hour. Yes, you can find a thatched cottage here and there, if you try. Was this the real Ireland? Or was it a rare dash of magic, sprinkled into Connolly’s to validate an antiquated sense of Ireland a sense rooted in the days when economic inequity between two countries allowed American tourists to spend as though Ireland were one sprawling duty-free shop? Though the country is now experiencing some economic uneasiness, you still cannot help but think: How times have changed. And I think to myself, now this would never happen where I’m from. (“And I said let grief be a fallen leaf/At the dawning of the day.”) As she sings, all talking stops: an entire pub, transported. Does she know it? Why yes, she does, and when her fingers finish their dance, leaving the man smiling, there suddenly rises from across the room the hesitant but clear voice of a young woman who has summoned the nerve to sing. Then a white-haired man mentions an old song from his childhood. When the inevitable call goes out, she obliges, her fingers skipping across the buttons like children playing frantic but sure-footed hopscotch. She is Mary Staunton, a musician known throughout the Irish west. ![]() ![]() My wife and I are hunched at a small table with friends when a smiling woman in a peasant skirt sits beside us, carrying a perfectly appropriate accessory in this corner of Ireland a button accordion. AN August night in the sea-scented village of Kinvara finds us at Connolly’s, a pub so permanent that if some codger were to tell you it was here before Galway Bay, lapping now just outside the door, you’d nod and buy him a pint.
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