Omagh

[nwhyte]

My one vaguely work-related commitment during this holiday has been to drive to Omagh, 85 km away, and talk to a group of local community activists who are involved in post-conflict reconciliation issues in County Fermanagh and western Tyrone, and are planning a fact-finding trip to Bosnia to see what future there might be for cooperation between

Comments

[rfmcdpei]

Out of curiosity, how connected do people in Northern Ireland feel to the United States, by and large? Does it differ from the situation in the Republic?

[nwhyte]

Hmm! Many young people of your and my type of background will have spent time in the US, from boht parts of Ireland and from both backgrounds in the North. Catholics tend to join in the Irish American thing; Protestants tend not to; but these boundaries blur much more easily when abroad than they do at home. That's my personal, vague, subjective and unscientific impression, anyway.

[rfmcdpei]

Do keep in mind that I'm of mixed background. I suspect that the McDonalds are a Scottish Catholic family, anyway. my only substantial Irish Catholic ancestry comes particularly from my maternal grandmother's family.

It's interesting that Irish Protestants don't form as cohesive a diaspora as the Irish Catholics, though that's arguably because, in huge parts of the States, the Ulster Scots are the dominant populations. Perhaps.

[nwhyte]

By "background" I meant that we are both from the sort of social background where we ended up with university degrees, rather than anything religious!!!

On migration - the Ulster Scots left fifty years befiore the Catholics; and many Irish Protestants who leave nowadays are getting away from the consequences of their communal identity rather than seeking to reinforce it.

[prosewitch]

Interesting--I'm actually reading an ethnography from the 1970s in Fermanagh County right now. One of my folklore professors at Indiana University, Henry Glassie, spent about a decade in the area known as Ballymenone, simply learning how the people there lived, worked, and related to one another. In navigating their differences (Catholic vs. Protestant) and charting their convergences, he documented their traditions and philosophies in a beautiful, stunning way. The book's called Passing the Time in Ballymenone if you're interested, and it does deal a lot with how political conflict affects people on a day-to-day level.

[nwhyte]

Cheers - will keep an eye out for it.