I NEED SOME HELP IN UNDERSTANDING PADDIES

Well, infantry officers (I have once been the one) have quite a good command of compass and map, so I knew what was the meaning of West-North-West. It is 292°30' point . So, I shall use this azimuth in order to locate the Ireland, following the advise of Steve.

Setanta
Setanta, if you want to know everything about "Paddies" you will have to ask Asherman to persuade his wife, Natalie, to give you a course in Celtic history and myth, on which she is an expert.

BumbleBeeBoogie

My god, the things I learn while reading topics. That interlude with the Flying Cloud was awesome, Setanta. That you find these bits of remarkable educational flotsam is amazing and equally impressive is you retain them to bring forth for our benefit. (And then your crew don't even mention it -- wot?) I liked it.

Memory like a sponge, darlin' . . . i read something, someone says something, and thousand images unbidden and undeniable of entry flood my mind . . . can't help it, Boss . . .

...'tis a gift, that's for sure. Maybe it's your Irish heritage -- weren't the ancient Gaelic stories told from memory? Those bards that were traveling about, telling tales and singing songs of long ago for their keep. In another age you'd have found your calling and been a hero in your own time.

------
ahem, not that you aren't now. :wink:

My mother's side of the family is all from Kerry, Gramps from Cahercruttera and Nana from Dingle. Growing up we learned words for imp, a bad cut, and your bottom. I still know how to say them but I've never known how to spell them.

I have my grandfather's Missal (book of liturgy for the Mass) in Gaelic.

When I see a map of where the Gaelic speakers were in 1700 compared to where they were in 1800 I am reminded of those maps which show how the vast range of the American timberwolf shrank into tiny islands of survival. The Irish speakers now are left on little tongues of land on the western edges of the Ireland.

And which language is used by the Irish parliament, government, public schools (in American, and not British meaning of the term), TV, radio, Army?

Erse is taught in the public schools, and anyone can choose to require government to deal with them in Erse, though that is unlikely to occur outside the Gaeltacht . . .

About 15 years ago, when Ireland was much poorer than it now is, and people seemed to walk everywhere, I was driving around in Kerry. Some miles out of any town, I saw an elderly lady walking along, with difficulty, beside the road. I pulled up, gave the name of the next town I was going to, and she hopped in.

This woman talked, nineteen to the dozen, non-stop, for the 10 or 15 minutes it took to get to the next town. Not a single word did I understand! I have no idea what language she spoke, but she sure could speak it! When we reached the next town, I stopped, she grinned and got out of the car. I sat there, scratching my head, and then moved on. It wasn't in a particularly identified Gaeltacht area, but I suppose that
she was speaking Erse.

A similar thing happened to me in Dingle - when I was doing the usual Margo thing in the northern hemisphere - getting lost. I asked for directions, and this fellow answered, with great detail, in a language I couldn't understand. I drove around, still lost, until I saw a man, obviously a walker, who gave me directions to a main road. He was English, and had a map. He also pointed out that the direction signs were in Irish, but that many of them had been turned around anyway

Do you know the story of how the kangaroo got its name? When the English reached Austalia they asked what the animals name was. The aborigine ansered kangaroo which apparently means I don't understand in their language.

bobsmyth - it figures!

Some years ago, in France, I needed a haircut, and the tourist office referred me to a hairdresser. The only thing he knew about Australia was kangaroo - le kangaru. He kept repeating it - and the rest of his conversation defeated my meagre French. But, it was just about the best haircut I've had in my life. Perhaps I should try it with my current hairdresser!

I cannot say anything about haircut, but if I were you I would get offended. It is impossible to reduce the whole country to one of its exotic animal species. Australia is not exclusively the land of cangaroos, it is a modern techologically developed democratic country with strong mining industries, the country that hosted Olympic Games several times, the country that sent soldiers to liberate Europe (including France, by the way) during the WWII.

There's lots of nonsense like that out there, Boss . . . i had heard that one about kangaroo . . . then there were Coronado's boys, travelling in the southwest, and they asked the first Indians they met where they were. They solemnly answered "Teeheese" (or something which sounded to that effect). The Spaniards, using their understanding of the Roman alphabet wrote down "Tixis." This was later corrupted to "Texas," although in modern Spanish, the same progression would have yielded "Tejas." Monks who came in a few years later determined that the Spaniards had been talking to Payute, and them boys warn't from around there. So when the Spaniards had signed for: "What is the name of this place?", the Payute had answered Teeheese, "this place."

When Champlain was standing in the meadows at the top of the bluff upon which Québec stands today, he gestured broadly to indicate the expanse of the entire continent, and asked what this place is called. The Algonquian guide he had at that time was clueless about what the white boy was askin', but he dimmly got it, and looking around to know what the guy could possibly mean, his eyes alighted upon the few hovels of the summer fishing village which sat upon the rocky strand where Lower Town is today located. He then brightened, and said "Kah-nah-dah." And so it is that the name of a very humble little village was applied by the French to the entire continent: Canada. I don t believe our current neighbors have such gradiose ambitions, however.

Hey Set, I think they used that story on one of those CBC "Our Heritage" moments....

Similar story here at Lake Tahoe, CA: The first settlers were coming across the desert from Salt Lake, to the Sierra mountains near Lake Tahoe. As they camped in the foothills, they observed a native on a horse on the hill. Panic ensued, as they didn't know the Indians intentions. But he raised his hand to reassure them and said "Tro-kay", meaning "everything's okay" or "it's alright".

The settlers applied their own culture to the situation, and assumed he was saying his name. So they named him Chief Truckee, and after the friendly Paiute led them to a river and guided them up the mountains, both the river and a town were named after him. It's alright. Everything's okay.

That's the way I heard it, but there's a few variations:
http://www.ncgold.com/History/TrckeHis.html
http://truckeehistory.tripod.com/history4.htm
What was his real name? Well, native residents don't write our history books, do they?



What does this have to do with Paddies? Uh... some of the settlers were Irish? Yeah, that must be it. Say, why IS it you can find the Irish absolutely everywhere?

Love this topic and I am only to page three. Especially like Visitor's explanation of Irish Alzheimer's. I'll be quiet now, maybe, until I catch up to the end, except to whine that I cannot respond to the poll, an applicable choice is not there for me, for me.

Cool. I had always thought the name "Texas" came from the Spanish word "Tejas", which means tiles. I just thought the Spaniards saw houses with tiles and thus gave the name.

OK, I am on page 5 now. I almost started my last post with begorrah, but I don't really know what it means, so I didn't.

On maneuvers to maintain virginity, hmmm. I know not of irish lasses' ways in Ireland, nor of Spanish. I do know that there is a certain repute for catholic girls being more fun in America, but that was probably centered on various rebellious behavior from 50's irish catholic girls and I think those ways were not always motivated by efforts to maintain virginity. Anecdotal data only, huh.

I suppose that I should explain that I am 15/16 irish, an american born in LA, and not raised in an irish american community...raised in a strange cultural place with many and varied striving immigrants, only a small fraction with irish background.

Steissd, my friend - what's the use of being offended.

There's a huge amount of ignorance out there about Australia, and certainly not restricted to French provincial hairdressers. Australia is all those things you say. It has a land mass roughly the same size as mainland USA, (but less than 20 million people). It's not a "cute little country".

A very large percentage of the population is descended from the Irish - but when I mentioned this on jjorge's Irish poetry thread, no-one knew - and found it hard to believe.

On this board, I (and the other Aussies) do our bit to enlighten others about our country, but - ignorance is all around us. We're a pragmatic lot - we learn to live with it. (and occasionally rise up and bite someone!)

i can't help myself...

'pragmatic lot' Margo?

you mean as in exiled Irish horse thieves, no?