I haven’t gone in much for homesickness. Or more accurately, I haven’t been feeling what the French call mal du pays. I miss family and friends, but I haven’t been missing Ireland. I’ve been too busy sampling the delights Australia has to offer while I’m here.
But I confess to a pang when I saw that the Rose of Tralee had been crowned on Tuesday night. It’s very hard to explain the Rose of Tralee to anyone who hasn’t grown up with it. A beauty pageant that’s about inner beauty and cailíní deasa? Where grown women deliver party pieces and there’s a singalong at the end? The fact that, with no intention of ever entering the competition, I was still devastated when I discovered that I was officially too old to be eligible? Nice as the people are here, that stuff can’t be translated.
So I’m just going to sit here and sing along with the Count. You can sing too: The pale moon was rising above the green mountain… Sniffle.
The pale moon was rising upon biddy reilly as the mountains of mourne swept down to the sea...
ReplyDelete...where mary the rose of dungloe sat in banbridge town in the county down...
ReplyDeleteone morning in july, when Michael was right and the train got there before the night as it might now . . . so it might!
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