Scenic And Historic Glories Of Old Ireland

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 35, 10 February 1939, Page 3

Scenic And Historic Glories Of Old Ireland

including An Old Man Of Tralee

i humour, charm and generosity of the Irish are proverbial, and we have named our happiest inspiration in witty verse after one of Erin’s most picturesque and most ancient eities-Limerick. The type of humour character. istic of Ireland is summed up in the favourite example:There was an old man of Tralee Who was bothered to death by @ ; fiea, So he put out the light, Saying, "Now he can’t bite, For he'll never be able to see. If we could remember this side of the Irish, and we must; in the words of H. V. Morton, "forget hosts of prejudiced, and often ludicrous, ideas about her and her people, which have accumulated during many centuries of strife and misunderstanding, and she, let us hope, will some day achieve a sense of historical. perspective and live less in the unhappy past." When we visit the Emerald Isle what a host of "sights" I_eland has to offer! The wild rock coasts of Connemara, with the grey stone cropping through the surf and countless islands fiecking the deep blue sea. The Georgian squares of Dublin, the shabby city,that wears its grandeur like an old coat that still fits. . The summer glories of Ballsbridge and the Bloodstock Sales; the cream of the world’s horse-flesh, gathered together in an assemblage of men and women to whom horses are the only reaily vital thing in life.

The rugged coast of Donegal, where the Irish comes more casily than the English to the tongue, and the incredible beauty of Kerry, where the land. scape falls naturally into an uncanny series of picture-postcard views. The grass-grown quays of Galway, with its ruined warehouses still displaying the carved badges of the great merchant families of Spain. The melting loveliness of Killarney; the awesom> majesty of Giant’s Causeway. The great flat plain of Ireland, and the unexpected wildness of the Dublin mountains, and the cabined loveliness of Avoca. And then the Irish themselves! The thin-legged horse-dealers of Ballinasloe; the red-faced cattledrovers of Mullinger; the marketwomen of Galway, and the sturdy, | rather grim men of Ulster. Variety, thy name is Erin! in the "Ports of Call" series at 2YA on Saturday, February 18, listeners will be taken on "A | Visit to Ireland."