I make no apologies about returning today to the tortured business of national identity. Notwithstanding the Celtic Tiger, we will never get anywhere if we don't know who we are and where we are coming from. There is a great deal of confusion on the issue and things appear to be getting worse rather than better.
But at least we are not alone. The novelist James Hawes recently told a British newspaper that he is concerned about "visions" of himself. The man says that there seems to be no model in England of success as a man of letters that doesn't involve tweed jackets and Labradors and marrying into the gentry and having your Aga: "Tom Stoppard and Pinter and David Hare - they all do it; whereas in Ireland, there is nothing bizarre at all about saying, `He's a small farmer, and a great poet'. "
Hawes is right. The bizarre thing in Ireland would be to be a large farmer and a great poet, at least at the same time. Most of our great poets (146, according to the latest CSO figures) could easily afford large farms but not the time or the energy to run them. Being a poet is an all-consuming business, and a great poet does not have a minute to call his own. It is like being a diplomat: you are never really off duty.
However, we are wandering from the point.
Regarding identity, and the plans of certain Irish counties to exclude "blow-ins" from building houses, my colleague John Waters recently asked two questions: Is there no longer any merit in belonging to a place? Surely belonging is the core principle on which the cohesion of human society is based?
A cynic might answer that these days, the core principle on which the cohesion of human society seems to be based, at least in Ireland, is not belonging but belongings. There certainly appears to be a lot of merit in having a place belonging to you, rather than the other way round. And with regard to Wicklow and Clare and their exclusion policies, location, location and location may well continue to be the important factors regarding where you hail from as well as where you happen to be settled.
Meanwhile, an interview with playwright Marina Carr the other day noted: "Contrary to popular opinion, there is more to Ireland than Dublin, the mythical west, the North and Kerry." However, little evidence was adduced to refute popular opinion in this regard. What more is there to Ireland? The midlands, it seems. Well, yes, in theory. But in reality nobody knows very much about the midlands and many people would be hard put to name one midland county. And non-recognition means non-existence. The only common knowledge is that the midlands are those flat bits with nondescript towns and pointless "traffic-calming" zones which slow up your journey from Dublin (the glittering capital) to the real Ireland. The new designation, the ironic (as opposed to iconic) "BMW", only accentuates the region's reputation as the anonymous bit in the middle between the Border and the west.
But it was good to see the west finally given due media recognition in the Carr interview as an entirely mythical area. Even those of us who grew up there knew that it wasn't entirely real, and that it existed principally, if not entirely, as a sort of wild Valhalla to be apotheosised by literary and artistic types, from Padraic Colum and Paul Henry onwards, whenever they tired of the frenetic pace of life elsewhere.
It didn't mean they actually had to move there, of course.
The interview also told us that landscape is "another character." It is too. Ireland is full of these landscape characters. In north Kerry, for example, Laurence, or "Landscape Larry" as he is better known, is more real than most of his neighbours, who appear only to be imitating genuine north Kerry people. Larry is endlessly chatty and more revealing than you would expect from a Kerryman. He can tell stories to put your hair on end.
The landscape of Mayo, Micko Robinson, is another classic Irish character who loves to lead people astray and keep them up late at night with wild carousings. "Landscape Longford" on the other hand, as anyone who has met him will tell you, is a quare-looking character with rheumy eyes, a pronounced limp (that's li-m-p, limp) and a bad habit of forgetting his round.