YOU’LL have heard the phrase blow-in. It’s used here in Ireland to describe those who move into an area. You know, those new to the parish.
It has been primarily used to describe those moving to a rural area for lifestyle reasons.
I would guess too that it is a phrase that has been around long before Ireland became a society of inward immigration. It’s nothing, after all, compared to what people are sometimes called now.
Moving into a small rural area does have certain characteristics.
When I first came here the fact that my family were from 30 miles up the road didn’t count for much.
Are rural areas with small populations tight knit? A little closed off? Of course they are. Families have lived in these hills and down these lanes for generations.
That they cling to that is a given.
Of course, too, is the fact that there are dislikes and feuds and petty resentments between neighbours that are impossible for ‘blow-ins’ to decipher.
Shortly after moving here we fell into the middle of a land dispute that embodied some kind of neighbourhood friction that I still don’t understand. It cost us a lot of money that we didn’t have but that’s a story for another day.
Do you remember The Field? It was like that but this field was about half of a corner of a field. Petty, vindictive, small- minded? Yes, for sure.
But, and this I think is the crux, I don’t think the biggest characteristic of rural Ireland is any of these things. Mainly, it’s acceptance, warmth, and a wonderful attitude of live and let live.
But when do you stop being a blow-in? My father is buried in a graveyard just down the road here and recently I was at his grave. My father’s grave. Next to him is a childhood friend of my son’s.
Opposite him is the mother of a childhood friend of my daughter. The years pass and things accumulate, even sad things. Are you rooted in a place when you know a lot of the dead?
Do you stop being a blow-in when you stop feeling like a blow-in? When we buried my father, on the subject of sad things, the turn out for the funeral certainly didn’t make me feel like a blow-in.
Are there people who will always see some as blow-ins? There are. But who’s problem is that?
My children, born and reared here, have already by-passed that. But if someone wants to cling to other, exclusive, things, to harbour the older resentments and hostilities, well, that’s up to them, isn’t it?
They’re welcome to that. As are those whose memories go back and whose links go way back and whose lives are entwined in a place for as long as anyone remembers.
I don’t resent them that for one minute. My lovely neighbour has lived on this lane all of his life and is embedded in these fields and hills. Why would I resent him any of that? If he played on a parish team with someone fifty years ago aren’t they welcome to that memory?
Somewhere here there are the worst of us throwing all of their hate and bigotry at immigrants. Spend a few minutes on the sewer of social media and you might think the place was full of these hate-filled individuals.
Now, I’m a white man so I can’t talk with any direct knowledge of that bigotry but I’ve worked and lived here and seen direct acts of kindness and acceptance to immigrants who aren’t white to make you realise it is far from all bad. There are good things and good people.
I’m not from here. I’m from the inner city streets of an English city. I’m from a big immigrant community infused with an Irishness that only exists in memory. My memories are not of here but of elsewhere.
Of English streets and pubs and old factories and being young under English skies.
I don’t pretend that is not the case. I don’t want to pretend it isn’t.
I am a blow-in to this particular place and that isn’t too bad and I couldn’t care less either way. I think what happened was that, as the child of immigrants, I always wanted to belong and then found that not belonging wasn’t too bad after all.
Joe Horgan posts on X at @JoeHorganwriter
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