I’ve noticed a weird typographical mark on old post boxes:
P indicates “post”and T “telegraph,” so obviously the mark in the middle means “and” —but why?
Today on reddit I learned that Roman politician Cicero employed a secretary, Tiro, who invented a form of shorthand that became known as Tironian. The ⁊ was his symbol for “et.” When the Latin writing system arrived in Ireland 450 years later, so did Tironian shorthand. Over the next 1500 years, Irish writers preserved the mark, which they would call “agus,” in Irish writing system.
According to wikipedia, on the continent, Tironian fell out of favor with the rise of witchcraft, to which it was associated.
In contrast to the corners of Latin letterforms, Tironian does look colloquial and mysterious.
As I’ve said before, nothing is as it seems in Ireland. I often sense something unsaid between Irish people, something tacitly understood and politely taboo. This unfamiliarity with local convention would be true if I moved anywhere outside the US, or even out of California.
But when it comes to The North, the unsaid-ness is stronger, like a sub-audible hum. I’m not the only one who is uncomfortable with The North. According to a recent survey there are few cross-border friendships.
Most people in the South have no friends or relations in Northern Ireland, have not crossed the Border in the past five years, have not taken an overnight trip there. The North has more contact with the South than vice versa, but not a whole heap more. The island is not just home to two political entities – there is a separation between the two societies that is clear from the data.
Perhaps not surprisingly, they found that people from a Catholic background in Northern Ireland were more likely to have strong cross-Border connections, and Catholics with such connections were more likely to be in favour of Irish unity. This correlation is much weaker for people from a Protestant background, suggesting that for many people from that community having good relations with the South is compatible with opposition to Irish unity.
“Not surprisingly” if you know people on another side of a wall, you feel more like doing stuff with them, and if you don’t know them, you defend the “good fences make good neighbors” position. Fences do make good neighbors, and they also define enemies. Both are true, which seems to be the key to understanding all Irish mysteries.
If you would like a 20 minute summary of Ireland, The Border, The Troubles, The Brexit, and The Northern Ireland Protocol, you can watch this. For an American, the youtuber gets most of it right; though he does fail to mention that a majority of Northern Irish people voted against Brexit.
Last week I needed to go to IKEA for a few kitchen things, and the nearest one is in Belfast. My neighbor also wanted to go, so we made a little holiday of it. She would visit friends, and I would see the sights, as this was my first opportunity since moving here.
I sometimes get asked about the future unification of Ireland. I say Ireland is already united in its effort to charge Yanks too much for breakfast.
Irish people are also united in support for Health Care strikers.
Since this was my first tour of Belfast, I chose a bus tour, rather than a sectarian Black Cab tour. I felt some anxiety as the tour began, the kind of feeling you might have on a jaunty tour of a house where someone was murdered by a relative. I was thankful for the anonymity of a bus, and relieved to first see Belfast from a perspective where everyone agrees to hate English football clubs. The driver’s humor was unspeakably bad, and put everyone at ease.
The tour started at the docks, where the Titanic was constructed. As they say, “She was alright when she left here.” The Titanic museum was closed, so that’s for next time. Also for next time is the Ulster Museum, the Botanic Garden, and nighttime music scene and weekend George’s Market. The Crown Bar is a pub so awesome it’s operated by the National Trust. (Too bad the MAH in Santa Cruz couldn’t save the Poet and Patriot.)
Then we drove to The Walls.
I did not want to see The Walls. I thought the walls were taken down after the Good Friday Agreement. Everyone agreed in 2013 that they would be down by 2023. They haven’t yet begun.
I think I heard the driver say The Walls divide neighborhoods from the urban center to the west for 13 miles—all the way to the mountains. I don’t even want to try to look that up. The walls, like low-key political violence everywhere, signify the victory of smug fence builders who consider themselves good neighbors but can’t remember your name.
Although you can drive down streets divided by walls, the gates shut for twelve hours every night.
The wall route is a canvas for political art, and our driver pointed out the tone shift as you cross from one community to the other.
The driver entertained us with nearly humourous stories whenever we stopped in traffic. But at one stop, in the Loyalist neighborhood, he recited this poem. It was the best part of the tour, and later I found the source.
Political partitions are a disaster at every level, everywhere, every time. We can live with “ourselves alone,” (sinn fein) and be good neighbors too, all without political borders, enjoying the messy imperfect compromises of democracy. Whenever I hear “good fences make good neighbors” I remember “Mending Walls” by Robert Frost.
Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
After the tour, I walked to the Cathedral Quarter to see someone I know. I wrote about her here. The bus driver had encouraged us to walk in that direction and to tour Protestant St. Anne’s. He didn’t mention the nearby Catholic St Patrick’s. Is that an example of something unsaid? Or is it that his company sells a £10 tour of St. Anne’s and Catholic St. Patrick’s is free? Perhaps both.
My favorite place to eat in downtown Santa Cruz is Rosie McCann’s. I remember when it opened, soon after the Earthquake. A pub! With food! And music! I loved the Poet nd Patriot more, but Rosie McCann’s had Irish nachos.
As you walk in, you see above the bar a picture of a sad beautiful woman. Most people assume she’s Rosie McCann herself, from “The Star of the County Down.”
It's Rosie McCann from the banks of the Bann, She's the star of the County Down
From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay and From Galway to Dublin Town, No maid I've seen like the brown colleen That I met in the County Down.
It’s such a fun song to sing, and the chorus takes your mind on a tour of the island, south to north, west to east.
But the painting above the bar is Portrait of Lady Lavery as Kathleen Ni Houlihan. Stop in and see the original at the National Gallery next time you’re in Dublin.
Kathleen Ni Houlihan is a pre-independence symbol of the nation of Ireland. It is she who sings of her Four Green Fields, and mourns the “one in bondage.” She is sometimes described as a “poor old woman,” but during the Celtic Revival, she began appearing as a young woman, rejuvenated by sacrifice, reborn in a new country.
In 1927 that new country commissioned Belfast-born, high-society London portrait painter, John Lavery, to provide the image on the new currency. He chose his wife Hazel as model, as he did for more than 400 other of his paintings. Honestly, who wouldn’t?
Just look at her.
For nearly 50 years, everybody in Ireland carried the Lady Lavery portrait in their wallets, the personification of their country: melancholy, gorgeous, and a myth that can never be accurately told.
She was born Hazel Martyn, in 1880, to a wealthy Chicago family. She married at 23, was widowed five months later, and bore a daughter. Beset by still more tragedies, she left America for Europe. She had already met the much-older John Lavery and they came to love each other. They had to wait until her mother died to finally marry. John was knighted because the British aristocracy loved his portraits of themselves, and Hazel became Lady Lavery.
Even her real life has its myths. People often say she had an affair with Michael Collins, but I don’t believe it. I prefer the story about how she taught Winston Churchill to paint, giving him a lifetime of artistic bliss that saved his sanity. She lived her amazing life, from nouveau riche heiress to the face of a new nation.
The Punt isn’t the only example of Lady Lavery appearing as allegory. There’s a John Lavery painting of her in Belfast I’ve long wanted to see, and last week I was able to visit. I walked to the church not too far from City Hall. I found the picture, and as usual was left with another mystery.
Just as the Great War ended, on the occasion of Hazel converting to Catholicism, John Lavery donated an altar and triptych to his family church, St. Patrick’s. He named the painting Madonna of the Lakes.
This is how I first saw it.
You can find a better image of it. The painting is behind glass, reflecting dozens of lamps and windows that spoil every picture
I walked closer. There is Kathleen Ni Houlihan: young and vital, stepping out from the Killarney lakes I know so well, the Macgillycuddy Reeks behind her.
It’s Hazel—unmistakable— but not so sad this time; she’s cautiously optimistic.
Her gown, not blue, but green and gold, like the mountains of Kerry.
The saints at her feet are Ireland’s saints, Patrick and Brigid. Not only did John depict these saints as children, but the models are their own children; his daughter Eileen and Hazel’s daughter Alice.
St. Patrick reaches for his mother, obviously saying, “Pick me up.”
St. Brigid, the elder of the two, bows in adoration of the land of Ireland, closing her arms in contemplation.
.
As religious and patriotic art goes, this is one of the best at doing its job while remaining an aesthetic joy to behold.
I was able to stay in the church by myself for as long as I wanted, absorbing the picture, rapt.
After some time, I realized there was no altar. A triptych like this is meant to rise behind a small altar along the nave. The bog oak cross in the middle is the sort of thing that would stand on a that altar.
I assumed that John donated his painting, but perhaps the altar was never completed, like so many things that didn’t happen around the time of the Great War.
It was only later that I learned that there was an altar, installed in this church at the same time as the painting. It was there as late as 1977 when an art historian mentioned it, but by 1995 when the church burned and this painting was saved, the altar was gone, and no one knows where it is.
Something happened. Someone knows. Nobody is talking about it. It disappeared too late to have been “Vatican II’d.” It wouldn’t have ended up in a skip. I’d bet it’s in a rich person’s private chapel and nobody is saying nothing to nobody.
This was the first time I’ve been able to walk around Belfast, and I even took the bus tour and saw the Peace Walls and the murals. Perhaps I am mistaken, but all day long I noticed signs that felt like something left unsaid. The obviously unsaid-thing is not uncommon in Ireland, but I noticed it more in the North, and I noticed it everywhere in Belfast.
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