I've been back for two months now, and already I've enjoyed two rounds of a baffling local sport. It's best played loudly and in all-Irish company. The rules of the game are unknown by all and stand to change at any time depending on the players and mood of the group.
It's called 'How Irish Are You?'
I already know that I am never to be the victor in a match of HIAY, and I accept that in good grace. My nationality is not a relative value: I have two, and I don't define either of them in terms of the opinions of my fellow citizens. Legally, culturally and in blood, I am American and I am Irish. Irish and American. Or, more specifically, if we must, Irish and Irish-American. I don't have a lot of trouble understanding this, but the Irish of no other nationality often do.
I describe myself as Irish or as American as it suits me. I can vote in two countries and work in twenty-eight. I always stand in the short queue at the airport, I travel on a neutral passport past smiling border guards and can be repatriated by a hated superpower should their city burn down tomorrow.
But these are rarely the factors at play in a match of HIAY; the scores are older, less relevant and more divisive. HIAY offers a glimpse at how the Irish view themselves, earning points as they go. Catholic or Protestant? Irish-speaker or just an cúpla focal? UCD or TCD? Northsider? Southsider? Dubliner? Down the country? The Rebel County? The West? Hurling or rugby? Farmer or banker? Traveller?
As a lifelong participant in HIAY and now permanent resident, I might suggest that we update the criteria to reflect the new players. White? Black? Asian? Mixed race? English-speaker? European? Born here? Born again? Buddhist? Asylum seeker? Refugee status?
I'll lose all the same – to the four-year-old Chinese girl toddling into Scoil Lorcáin. I hear they have quite the waiting list.
A four-year-old Irish girl, so – no?
6 comments:
here! here! or is it hear hear!
hm, well, either way as a fellow loser of that particular game i can only agree.
to be fair, i've found that most europeans with only 1 nationality seem to have a hard time understanding how a person can have 2 and feel them both as equally.
don't even get me started on playing How Spanish Are You? eye roll.
C'mon lassies,
Ye can't have it both ways.
Well ya can, but you can't expect people to like it.
Sample conversation-
Storm from X-men: hey, I can control the weather
Irish bus driver: eh, I can erm count from 1-10 in a language you can't
Storm: I can fly
Bus driver: I can name all previous Irish winners of the Eurovision
Storm: that language is kinda mine too and I support Ireland in the Eurovision
Bus driver, now thinking 'crap I can't fly or control the weather and now they're saying they are as Irish as me too': eh, no you're not
I'm not justifying it, just saying I understand the other side.
Oh, I understand it just fine. I suspect that they don't.
We can and we do have it both ways. There IS no yardstick of Irishness; that people dislike the fact that I have two nationalities doesn't make me any less Irish, so the joke's on them.
It's the nastiness that bothers me, and as I say, it has inherent in it a very limited concept of what it means to be Irish.
I'm with you on this one, parkbench. Some people just don't have a clue.
I'm Irish born and bred, and lest anyone doubt it, fiercely proud of this (or at least, as proud as anyone should be about a random accident of birth!). But there are those who consider me "lacking" because I fail the HIAY test abysmally, every time! Frankly I'm happy to do so, as the alternative seems to be a teeny tiny worldview and a thumping big inferiority complex :D
I want to cringe when I sense someone gearing up for the HIAY game. (And the cultural snobbery that surrounds the cúpla focal is horrible!) It's even worse overseas - the whole sizing-up thing that happens when two expat Irish people meet has to be seen to be believed ::rolls eyes::
Let's call it for what it is: overcompensating. For what exactly, I don't care - can we just PLEASE grow out of it?!
Great call on something I've long noticed, but not been able to put my finger on!
Thanks, sarahd! I live in fear of learning Irish (next on the skids for me) for exactly that reason, but feck them anyway.
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