Teaching the Troubles at NHA: "What's the Craic?"

David Joyce explains the history of discrimination against the Irish Travellers

Daibheid (David) Joyce is a human rights advocate and lawyer based in Dublin's Drumcondra neighborhood. He comes from an Irish Traveller background and grew up in Westmeath, which is the hapless hurling team he still supports. Hurling is the Irish national sport often called the fastest game on grass.

When we first contacted David through my friend Claude Cahn--who works in human rights at the UN and has a long history in the area of Roma rights in Eastern Europe--he offered to give us a walking tour of the Easter Rising. But we became fast friends, and he gave us much more than that.

The Travelers are Ireland's "gypsies" if such a word can be used anymore, and they are also known both matter-of-factly and pejoratively as "tinkers" due to their tradition as traveling workers. Unlike the Roma, they have no known links to India or any foreign place and they were long not considered a specific ethnic class. David says he comes from a Traveler "tradition" or "background." They are Irish Catholic, but they don't fit in with the mainstream Irish Catholics. They are outsiders in their own country. Discrimination against them has taken the form of legislation against their lifestyle (criminalization of vagrancy, tent-living and some of their traditional trades). They only achieved recognized ethnic status on March 1st of this year, and David was involved with those negotiations.

One of the issues around the Easter Rising was who really owns this history. Sinn Fein claims it, but it was really the work of several other groups: the Irish Republican Brotherhood; the Irish Volunteers; Connolly's Irish Citizen Army. David wondered aloud if he would have had the courage and the foolishness to join in the doomed uprising if he were around in 1916 and, if so, which of these groups he would have taken part in. "I would have been a Citizen Army," he decided. "Not a Fenian (Irish Republican Brotherhood). The Fenians were too romantic about it all." The Citizen Army were trade unionists, and socialist in orientation.

We made our way through the streets of the rebellion, and finally found ourselves at the National Museum of Ireland: Decorative Arts and History Branch at the old Collins military barracks. We walked around, but everything seemed to be locked up except the Cafe. David asked the counter-woman "What's the craic?" She replied that the museum would not be open until 2 PM today.

"Craic" is a frequently used expression of dubious origin. It's not truly gaelic, but has been adopted by the Irish as if it was. A web search reveals multiple hits that list its origin in the English word "crack" as in the expression "crackin' good time." Its spelling as craic is an affectation to make it seem as if it comes from traditional Irish Gaelic. Despite all this, it's a great word, used to both mean, "What's going on?" and to refer to the tradition of staying up late with good friends and music and, generally, some libations. Some sites will tell you its closest English equivalent is the word "fun," but I don't think "fun" is specific enough.

We left the Collins barracks and found our way to the Jameson distillery, the Easter Uprising monument, a monument to the Miami show band incident of the Troubles and other points of interest.

In the afternoon, we headed over to Croke Park to buy tickets for the Hurling semifinal match between Galway and Tipperary. Right near the stadium, we saw Brendan Behan's childhood home, Roddy Doyle's Fighting Words (a creative writing program for teens), and the Royal Canal (immortalized in Behan's song "The Auld Triangle"). We then had a few hours to kill, so we stopped by David's house near the stadium and he made us coffee and treated us to a restroom and good wifi.

The old Croke Park is famous for the 1920 Bloody Sunday, when British soldiers and Royal Irish Constabulary policemen opened fire on the crowd in retaliation for Michael Collins's Irish Republican Army's killing of British undercover agents earlier in the day. David showed how the British army had blocked off each side of the long narrow street outside.

Hurling is a fantastic spectator sport. balls in the goal count as three points, but most points scored are one-pointers achieved by hurling the ball, off your stick, between the uprights--at any height--above the crossbar. One pointers are relatively easily achieved by skilled players, so part of the strategy is deciding whether you want to risk firing a shot by the goalkeeper for a handful of points, or just going for the easier though smaller score above his head.

This particular game was close throughout. The teams were two of the best in the world, and very evenly matched. Galway pulled off a last minute 22-21 victory after never enjoying a truly comfortable lead throughout the entire 70+ minutes. My daughter's school color is also maroon so I had chosen Galway as my side, and all three of us decided to cheer for them. David Joyce happened to be wearing a maroon shirt, so a fan in blue shook his hand in a gesture of sportsmanship at the end of the contest. David smiled, and didn't bother to explain that he's a Westmeath man himself.

In the evening, David Senderoff and I headed out to the Cobblestone, a pub referenced by Patti Smith in her recent eulogy for Sam Shepard. I daresay we experienced a fair bit of the craic in that establishment. A constantly changing group of musicians played traditional music around a booth in the front corner while the crowd drank and talked freely about their lives with both friends and strangers. David Joyce joined us about an hour in, and he pointed out the owner to me, Tom. I went over to this big fellow and asked if he had seen Patti Smith's mention of the place. "Oh, yes," he said nonchalantly. "Nice lady. She hasn't been here for a few years. But Sam Shepard, he was great friends with a few of the musicians here tonight. They played music for one of his shows down at the Abbey Theatre." He was fairly blase about the whole thing, and was more interested in telling me about this strange theory that Oliver Cromwell was the father of Irish Republicanism and about the local author who had convinced him of it.

The bar was packed with Galway fans in maroon jerseys. We probably congratulated them all at some point before we got in a taxi and headed back home to our hotel. Good craic it was.