At the Edge of Ireland Read Online Free PDF

necessary rigorous attention his plays need, I still sense fundamental truths, humor, and deep eternal perceptions floating by, tantalizingly just out of reach. Or certainly my reach, and certainty, or the lack of it, seems to be the elusive essence of many of his works. As one of the Waiting for Godot characters exclaims: “To have lived is not enough for them…They have to talk about it…To be dead is not enough for them.”
    With all the frenzied forelock-tugging of the metropolitan literatae and Habling-bling bloated reverential piety about Beckett mushing around the city, it was refreshing to read one critic who wrote that “the centenary celebrations are almost enough to put most off literature for life.” Nevertheless, a Beckettian spirit was definitely flowing through downtown Dublin that Easter week (you could hardly escape posters and banners of his tumultuously wrinkled and time-worn face), characterized by sequences of bizarre non sequiturs.
    First came flurries of little girls frolicking by in neon pink, meticulously embroidered costumes and heavily made up, carrying skirt-shaped bags for all their inordinately expensive outfits. They were here for some important Irish step dancing contest (now thanks to Riverdance and clones, an international passion) and accompanied by proud and occasionally stressed-out parents who seemed far more nervous than their tiny, decked-up offspring.
    And then came one of Ireland’s oddest ball games. I’d seen Irish football before and rather liked its odd, rugby-soccer-basketball maneuvers and speedy flow. So different from the lumbering, tough guys’ scrums and touchline tumbles of the traditional rugby games I used to be involved in. But I’d never seen a hurling match before and sat fixated by the TV in our room, which showed one of the fastest, most bizarre, and seemingly most dangerous games I’ve ever experienced. Harry Potter would love it. Fifteen men a side hurtled by and into one another in seemingly total Hogwartian disarray, flailing long cáman paddle-sticks on which they carried—yes, carried—a small white leather ball ( sliotar )—although in the truly wild days when the game first emerged I heard it was often a human skull. And then, while running pell-mell, they tossed the ball off the tip of the stick and whacked it with all the force of a top-flight tennis player to another team player fifty yards or more down the field or, if they could, over the posts at the far end of the field to score points.
    In minutes I was hooked. The constant frantic pace and ability of the players to avoid regular decapitation by swirling sticks and supersonic-speed sliotars amazed me and left me utterly exhausted by the end of the first half. As a result of watching the game, I fully understood the remark of an elderly gentleman in another of Dublin’s fine Irish pubs, Ryan’s, on Park Gate Street, when he chortled: “Ah well, this game and our other ancient village game of ‘road bowling’ explains it all, d’y’see. You English play cricket, which is a waspocracy gentleman’s game of patience and fair play, and we do the hurling, which is an ancient bogman’s game of pure unrestrained, skull-crushing passion. No wonder we didn’t get along with you lot for centuries!”
    â€œWell—thanks for explaining that…”
    â€œ Tá fáilte romhat —you’re very welcome, good sir!”
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    F INALLY, WE DROVE SOUTH out of Dublin, leaving behind the tortuously tangled one-way traffic systems; the glorious pure-Irish pubs, and the earthy redolence of fresh-poured pints of thick black stout; the pedestrianized people-powered streets full of music and mirth; the sudden passing vehemence of a tanked-up local calling the whole world “ya feckin’ eejits”; the cultivated calm of the St. Steven’s Green gardens; and all the big burly-pillared and porticoed