INTO the Irish Culture - Wednesday 10th July

Last night my two colleagues and I attended the Tunes in the Church concert and went to a pub for some more music. Today I have decided to treat myself with the unique experience of walking through Galway with a qualified cultural historian as a guide, Jonathan.

"Humanity" Dick loved animals and fought for animal rights :)

This tour has moved very much away from the beaten track and meandered back streets and lesser known locations including several theatre spaces. Starting from Tigh Neachtains on Quay St, one of the oldest houses in Galway owned by Richard Martin MP, we have visited Galway first theatre space on Kirwans Lane. Here the leading Irish nationalist and father of the Irish republicanism Wolfe Tone used to give vent to his artistic flare and skills by acting. He had moved to Galway to be the tutor of “Humanity” Dick Martin, the owner of the pub above and here he could start his acting career, which consisted in two performances only before turning to politics 😊

When we left the theatre we headed to the Spanish Arch and Wolfe Tone Bridge, next to the Galway City Museum. I had thought the Spanish Arch to be named after the very important business Galway had with Spain, Jonathan said that there were none. All the trades Galway used to have was with France and the biggest and most powerful families (the 14 tribes) were trading wine with the North of France. The Spanish Arch was a reinforced part of the city walls that was meant to make the Spanish Armada’s way into Ireland impossible. It was in fact where 8 cannons were placed waiting to fire if they saw any galleon approaching. The Spanish ships never landed in Galway on ground of this and sailed by to be met by foul weather and defeat, as we all know.

We then have visited the outside of Galway Arts Centre: home of Lady Augusta Gregory, an aristocratic lady who discovered the Irish language and toured the countryside with the poet W.B. Yeats to collect stories in Irish language and of the Irish folklore. She founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and she sparked the Irish Revival which was meant, by Yeats and Synge, to be the Celtic Twilight – the start of a new era – which Joyce renamed the Celtic Toilet hahaha.

After meeting Yeats and Augusta, we have popped in the front door of the house belonging to a woman who was bound to become the lifetime companion of an Irish rarity: James Joyce. Nora Barnacle lived in Galway for 17 years and here she was supposed to have met the Michael Joyce mentions in The Dead. He is buried at the local cemetery of Rahoon, was in love with Nora and died for her sake. The funny thing is that Joyce met Nora in Dublin, while she was stepping out of the hotel where she was working as a chambermaid. Jonathan underlines that this meeting is at the centre of the Irish history and literature as the place where they met is a crossroads of all the Irish must-read writers; the hotel was surrounded by Wilde’s father’s house. Beckett’s family’s offices and Yeats’s house too.

We have finally visited the other two institutions of Galway: the Irish National Language Theatre: an taibhdhearc and the home of the Druid Theatre Company, where also Martin McDonagh worked at the beginning of his career in 1996 with the Leenane Tragedy that launched him to Broadway and to his filming career, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri included.

The tour has lead us through the story of how a generation of radicals and writers created modern Ireland. Through a mixture of literature history and ideas Jonathan has made me understand the birth of modern Ireland and how Irish revolutionary theatre changed the world.

Truly a walking tour with a difference! Truth is stranger than fiction and Irish fiction sounds odd enough and quite indistinguishable from factual local history, anecdotes and lots of laughs!

PS one of the oddest stories Jonathan told us was about the window...yep, that window shane had mentioned to be related to the Lynch family...yep, that window I wrote about on Monday...It's all made up: no Lynch, no mayor, no son, no lover, no crime, just a window...which was build in the late 19th century to be the perfect tourist trap for those tourists flocking to Galway for some time off longing to hear stories of life and death and punishment. ha ha ha I had also believed the story of the word "Lynch".

But Jonathan made up for it with the origin of the word boycott, which is truly from a man living around that time in Galway (or near Galway...). this time the story is 100% true.