Ireland, an Old Flame Revisited(Charles E.J. Moulton) Foreword by Charles E.J. Moulton

It is the story that life itself wrote: my father's love for his ancestor's native home of Ireland and how it influenced his life. Often, he would speak of the green pastures, the funloving temper of the Irish, the Guinness, the music, his work as an actor on the countless stages in and around Dublin, his work as a film actor on the Green Isle, his many tours and concerts in Wicklow, his chance meetings with ghosts and fairies and his visits within the ruins of our aristocratic family's two palatial mansions.

Ireland was a part of my father's soul and still is a part of who he was and is. This article was written by him for an Irish magazine six months before I was born (I was conceived during the tour he speaks of here, between concerts and after delicious meals to a backdrop of green fields).

This article takes you with on that journey. It is a journey that doesn't end. For when I'm gone I too shall be part of the history of that grand ancestry that once hosted kings and barons, royal musicians and farmers alike.

Sit back and enjoy the ride.

God save the Irish!


IRELAND, THE OLD FLAME REVISITED

By the late, great Herbert Eyre Moulton (1927-2005)

"I love this dear old Dublin; I doubt if I'd be so happy living anywhere else ..."

This was how, in an earlier edition of this same Irish journal you are reading now, written five or six years back, I ended a sort of Valentine to my favorite adopted town. Ironically enough I was to leave Ireland soon for the Continent, not to return for any length of time until last fall for a short, hectic and madly successful concert-tour with my Swedish opera-singer wife, the well-known mezzo-soprano Gun Kronzell, and our sympathetic and competent accompanist Karl Bergemann, who was a close friend from Hamburg.

For both of them it was a long awaited introduction to Ireland; for me, as always, it was Homecoming.

"Ah, ye've come a long way from Baggot Street," my old Dublin cronies would allow whilst tuning their fiddles, meaning the bachelor-pad which I as a displaced Yank had breezily called home for half-a-decade. "Tell us, how's the little fella?" usually came next, a reference to Fred, our celebrated white Irish Shaggy-Dog, holding down the fortress back in Graz, Austria. Fred had been a needy, love-hungry little doggie when I found him, homeless and lost, on his way down a country road. I took care of him and fed him and he became my alter ego. So much so that people soon referred to me as the fella who came along with Fred. "Ah, all them plays and concerts ye've performed," my Irish friends crooned upon my return, "they've certainly paid off, ye old Irish self appearin' on TV and all with that splendid darling wife o' yer's. Aren't ye great to be able to do that?" And then the inevitable, "Ah, well, me bold man, you're very welcome but."

As a matter of happy fact, it takes only about a quarter of an hour to feel not only very-welcome-but, but right at home in Ireland --- the miniature charms of Dun Laoghaire harbour coming up fresh in the early light, the sleepy good humor of the people as they wait for their gear to descend from Heaven in a crane, Dublin accents all around you, good-natured joshling of the porters ("Cigarette me, Mick!") with memories of my visits at the local pub dancing in me head where someone always brought out a tin whistle, a guitar, a couple of spoons and sported a loud, happy voice ("Hey, anyone in the pub know 'Whiskey in the Jar'?"). Add to that the charm of Irish family-life and you have what can only be described as a magic mix. In the mornings, the little families collecting themselves and their parcels and their prams. And you know that nothing ever bothers them for long, and that nothing should be allowed to get at you, either, not really, for as long as you're in Ireland. And you feel the months and years dropping off your shoulders like so many layers of unwanted clothes, and begin to relax for the first time since --- well, since the last time you were here.

Then around the Bay (I almost said there "around the bend"!) and nipping across Westland Row into a hotel dining-room for the first of many prodigious Irish breakfasts. ("Now are you positive you'll not have more sausages and rashers? Another big pot of tea? More brown bread and butter surely? You must be destroyed from all the travel!")

Next to strike out on foot for our destination in Ballsbridge --- wild sunshine and the sights of Merrion Square ("Holles Street? Wunderbar, Ulysses!"), and trying not to notice the sudden crush of early morning traffic --- our first Dublin pub, just to get in out of the hubbub, you understand, and next to the usual Black Baby on the bar (Guinness, the Queen of the Irish Dry Stout), a collection-jar enjoining us to HELP RESTORE THE FAITH TO WALES. We've made it, we're in Ireland.

We're in Ireland, all right, and what to remark on first? Well, all those changes, naturally, and if one must curse the universal scourge traffic, one must, in the next breath, praise whatever powers there be for the sudden, stunning upsurge of prosperity everywhere in evidence. The face of dear old Dublin may change, unfortunately, like everywhere else, but the people do not change, and when you say that, you say it all. Dublin, like Ireland itself, remains the most human, the most human-scaled place on Earth. And not the least of its many charms is the fact that still only about 35 minutes from the madding crowds of O'Connell Street is not only the sea, but the countryside itself --- and by that I mean real country, Irish country.

So out we got, as often as our overloaded schedule would permit, and into a countryside looking better than it ever did, more prosperous, more spruced up. Maybe it was because I was now seeing Ireland through the eyes of two bemused newcomers to a scene long familiar to me, but I don't remember ever noticing so many thatched cottages before, or how much life and variety there is even in the remotest country places --- how funny and self-contained all the dogs in Ireland are, for example, how they all seem to get along, whether foregathered on a suburban streetcorner or out on the boggy wastes. Another thing I'd forgotten, and which my wife was first to point out, is how farm animals of every kind --- sheep, cattle, handsome rosy porkers, goats and horses, aimiably supervised by the occasional Fred-like dog --- all graze peacefully in the same fields, taking no notice of one another.

I know for a fact that never before in these islands have I stopped at so many excellent hotels --- a genuine welcome, inimitable service, sensible rates, central heating --- if anything, overheated. And what was really cause for celebration --- no matter where we went, or in what town large or small, we never failed to have ourselves a splendid slap-up meal. It got so (the towns themselves being practically interchangeable) we were marking places off in memory solely by grubstakes ...

"That wonderful garlicky salad to the steak in --- where was it? Waterford?" my wife might ask.
"No, honey, that was Birr, I think --- Dooly's, where we had the gorgeous champignons and the baked potatoes and the onion rings ---"
"Bist Du aber sicher, Mensch," Karl Bergemann would answer, "could it not have been Cashel?"
"Nein, Charley," I would respond, "Cashel was Rockwell College and the Hotel-Trainees."
"And that fantastic hot apple tart with the ice-cream ---" my wife would muse.
"Ah, yes. Herrlich. Wunderbar!"

Anyway, it's a comfort to know that, unlike the situation a few years ago, you can now steak-and-mushroom as well as porter your way across the land, certain of a first class feed in almost every town you hit. You will be able to tickle the ebonies and ivories on the piano with many an Irishman, dwell in deep conversation about James Joyce and laugh with a fun gang of revellers over a pint of Guinness while the dogs play hide and seek with the cattle out on the farmyard. Ah, sweet bliss!

Ireland, there's no place like it. If there is a Heaven on Earth, it's here.

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