Getting to know the Irish

You'll find out more about the Irish if you visit their "locals" - the corner pubs that toast their sociable nature.

By ROBERT N. JENKINS, Times Travel editor

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 2, 2000

[Times photos: Robert N. Jenkins] Schoolboys on a lunch break stroll past a pub in Tullow as kegs of recently delivered beer are wheeled inside.

Touring Ireland means casting a wide net to guarantee you experience this country beyond the obvious stops:

The ruined castles and monasteries, certainly. Jammed but jolly seaside towns such as Youghal and Kinsale are made for tourists, Irish and otherwise. Woolen mills, the Waterford crystal factory and Jameson's whiskey distillery welcome busloads of visitors. Land's end villages such as Ballycotton and Dunmore East are filled with people whose daily lives do not match them with tourists.

But you must also go to the pubs, and not just for a drink. In the pubs -- the meeting halls/social institutions so unlike most American bars -- the bartender with some spare moments or the fellow on the next stool is apt to start a conversation or share a joke and down a pint with a stranger.

Afternoons can find mothers bringing their elementary schoolchildren in for a snack while the adults share a smoke and conversation.

Evenings, the local, as each customer's favored pub is known, comes alive. This is the place to nurse a jar -- a pint of beer -- for 30 or 40 minutes while the gossip flows. Debate circles widen to admit the late arrivals, and another round is ordered.

The noise level

A sign proclaiming "live music" is the weekly invitation to listen, to sing along or even to take the microphone, no matter your talent level

Irish idyll Southern Ireland has many charms among its craggy shorelines and rolling terrain, not the least of which is its people. 'All the seasons in one day' There's more to Cork than its capricious weather. Which way do you go? In Ireland, the signposts won't help much, even if you're driving on the correct side of the road. Be prepared to be confused by them -- if you can even see them. Getting to know the Irish You'll find out more about the Irish if you visit their "locals" -- the corner pubs that toast their sociable nature. Quiet stones tell a story Ireland's ancient past whispers from its ruins, fallen remnants of war and religion, fragments of communities that flourished centuries ago. Riding an economic boom Unemployment is down and incomes are up as industry invades Ireland. Drinking in the culture A personal pilgrimage to the pubs of Dublin.

As Brian Roberts of Graiguenamanagh noted one night listening to a neighbor warble, "If they were shooting singers, he'd die an innocent man."

That moment took place in O'Brien's, one of 12 pubs in that town of about 1,600 residents. On this particular Monday night at 9:30, there were 11 customers, all but two of them watching a soccer match on TV. The other two were setting up the speakers for the music to come.

"Not before the end of the match!" one of the TV watchers sharply cautioned the men with the speakers.

But shortly, three locals formed the combo that began playing at 10. By 11:05 there were 31 people crowded into the front room of the pub, joining in as 80-something Paddy Kelly took the mike to sing Slievenamon, about a fabled mountain in County Tipperary.

Despite this singalong, there were five conversations being shouted simultaneously around me.

Live music in a pub can range from a combo -- two electric guitars, a fiddle and the traditional bodhran, sort of a goatskin tambourine that is held with one hand and tapped with a knobbed stick -- to a cocktail-lounge pianist accompanying customers on Broadway tunes. In between are the groups with a tin-whistle player and someone on a small accordion.

Beneath the familiar painting of a pint of Guinness is a slogan in Irish; in an unscientific survey, none of the nine Irish citizens shown the wording could translate it.

The best voice I heard was that of Liam O'Riordan, half of the duet Trad Routes. O'Riordan, 20 years a police officer in Blarney, handled most of the vocals with a sweet, pure voice that his barrel-shaped body did not prophesy. He accompanied himself and partner Sam O'Brien on acoustic guitar, while O'Brien played the banjo or mandolin.

Listening to Trad Routes amid the crowd in a Kinsale pub one night were Carolyn and Bill Ohlmeyer of Sugarmill Woods, near Homosassa. They were spending three weeks driving themselves through Ireland and were finding "Everyone is real nice."

O'Riordan proved them right as the duo finished for the night. Having already heard live music in three other pubs on this trip, I went up to ask him why I still had not heard the sad, traditional Danny Boy.

"My father taught me that that is a serious song, and to be serious whenever I might sing it," O'Riordan explained. "The crowds (in the pubs) can be noisy and don't always pay attention, so I don't play Danny Boy unless it is requested."

As I nodded, I started to turn away when the singer said, "Wait a minute" and dug into a battered leather bag. He pulled out an audiocassette and handed it to me. It was Trad Routes singing songs and playing jigs, and of course, it was O'Riordan crooning Danny Boy. He wouldn't take any money for the tape, though the beefy cop kept singing to me for days, first from my rental car's tape deck, and now from the tape player at home.

What are you having?

The idea of "last call" at a pub, typically announced between 11 and midnight in Ireland, is to sell each customer his or her final drink of the night. But at 1:45 a.m. in that Graiguenamanagh pub, I was with almost a dozen other customers in the back room, by the pool table, still chatting and still being served beers

In another town one night, the publican actually pulled down the window shades and dimmed the lights at his 11:30 last call, but his customers were still there when I left after midnight.

Where a pub is attached to a restaurant, children sometimes accompany adults from the meal table to the drinking areas. In Dunmore East, I saw a girl of 9 or 10 carefully carry a pint glass of beer to her parents' table.

They were busy chatting with neighbors, and the child idly dipped a finger into the beige foam crested atop the glass of Guinness. She stirred it ever so slightly, then took that finger and placed it in her mouth. From the look on her face, it was not her first taste of the stout brew glorified as "the black stuff."

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