Understanding Irish culture necessitates cracking open the history books or, better yet, listening to the Irish themselves tell about their nations fragmented and divisive past.
To have a clue about what’s going on at all in James Joyce’s novels, you have to either have an accompanying primer or know your history. Yeats’ poems on The Easter Rising and the Irish Republican Brotherhood provided personal reflection on some of the state’s most bloody conflicts — events he frequently had close friends involved in.
Culture, history, language and many other facets of all things Irish came together at the Irish Cultural Festival last weekend in an academic-yet-approachable way.
The complexity of a nation taken hostage by England, religious divisions and ethnic squabbles can’t be encapsulated or celebrated in a weekend, but an extremely comprehensive overview of many different cultural dynamics were touched on during the festival.
“We try to focus on more than just one area,” event director Peggy Hinsman said. “If you’re a musician and play guitar, tin whistle, things like that, or if you like to sing, we have workshops on those things.”
These workshops took the helm as the main attraction for the festival and provided hands on courses in music, history, language, dance, hurling, and even trades such as basket weaving. Irish linguist Ger Killeen from Portland’s Marylhurst University taught several workshops on the Irish language, one quickly fading into extinction.
“There’s been a huge revitalization of the Irish language over the past 10 or 20 years and so we have four different workshops on the Irish language,” Hinsman said.
Workshops covered Ogham (the Irish alphabet), the transfer of the Irish language from a spoken to a written language, how the Irish almost lost their language and the revitalization of that language. The focus on an interactive component, not traditionally seen in the festival world, stimulated festival-goers in a much different way than your traditional performance-based festival.
“The first two years there wasn’t really much of that (interactive) focus, and what I love about Eugene is that people are pretty academic here, but still fun and so it’s a relaxed academic environment,” Hinsman said. “It gives an opportunity to ask whatever questions you want.”
On an entirely different interactive level, festival-goers had the opportunity to indulge in amazingly hearty Irish cuisine, a particularly apt sort of winter fare. Specialties like colcannon (mashed potatoes and kale) were served, and the offerings only began to scratch the surface on an amazingly rich and sumptuous culinary history.
One of the more awesome aspects of Irish cuisine that’s beginning to see a resurgence is artisan cheese-making.
The lush pastures of County Cork in South Ireland have long been grazed by Jersey cattle, but only since the past three decades or so has there been a shifting back of the focus from industrial cheese production toward artisan production.
Rich cheeses such as Adrahan, a soft, washed rind (brushed over its aging period with brine), once considered normal in their production by farmers, have come back to cheese shops across Ireland and many other international countries, such as the U.S.
Irish culture is one that has been developed by amazing individuals on a land comparable in lushness to that of our own Willamette Valley.
The crossover from Ireland to Oregon shouldn’t be too surprising, as both cultures share many cultural similarities and both were appropriately and accurately put on display for Oregonians — Irish or not — to relish in.
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Irish festival provides deeper cultural understanding through historical activities
Daily Emerald
March 13, 2011
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