WE Irish are good at leaving. We have centuries of practice.
One of the saddest things I read recently was just a little vignette, but it brought a tear to my eye.
It was the account of a young man back in the 1950s.
Fintan O’Toole, in his exemplary and highly readable book We Don’t Know Ourselves, captures the moment with devastating clarity.
“Emigrants often left with virtually nothing,” he writes.
“The most resonant Irish object of the time was a small, cheap brown suitcase, often battered and tied with rope to keep it shut.
"Dónall MacAmhlaigh recalled the scene at the customs post in Holyhead when he first arrived in Britain.
"One emigrant put such a case on the counter and, when asked what it contained, replied, ‘Yerra, nothing at all.’
“The customs officer insisted he open it. He cut the rope.
‘The lid jumped up like a Jack-in-the-Box,’ wrote MacAmhlaigh, ‘and out leapt an old pair of Wellington boots… Devil the thing else was in the case.’
"A melancholy wintry little smile crossed the officer’s face as he waved him on.”
That young lad was good at leaving. Packing up and moving along.
Dónall Peadar MacAmhlaigh, by the way, was a Galway writer active during the 20th century.
He is best known for his Irish-language works about life as a labourer in the post–Second World War era, as part of the Irish diaspora in Britain.
Today, with the ease of travel, and the fact that we can keep in lightweight contact with our extended family via email, mobile phones, and the like, perhaps the parting is not so heart-rending.
But coming back to Britain never gets easier, even when you’ve been doing it for more than 20 years. You would think repetition would dull it, but it doesn’t.
The journey itself is always a strange limbo.
Irish Sea crossings in winter are not glamorous. Yet the ferries (and planes) are full of people like us, sitting quietly with that particular expression that says: I had a very good time, but now I have to go back to my other life.
See More: Diaspora, Emigration, Irish
