I was in Cork last month. Of a Thursday. (Philadelphia comedian WC Fields, who (allegedly) hated the city once said “I was in Philadelphia of a Tuesday. It was closed.” Another time he claimed he “once spent a year in Philadelphia. It was a Sunday”. Yet, he decided his gravestone should read: “I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” It doesn’t.)
Anyhow, I was in Cork city last month. So many white people. Such a strange language. It took me time to realise it was a form of English which is not so much spoken as sung at an octave above the rest of us. At once charming and embarrassing.
The power of speech left me as, whenever I had to talk, my flat Rossie accent drew an appalled fascination and unwelcome attention from Corkonians in the vicinity.
This was not helped at a coffee shop on Grand Parade where a young Polish woman was having a loud, lilting conversation on her phone in that rare mix of Eastern European English and Corkese which had me stuck to my seat.
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Across from us, black crows were bathing vigorously in a city centre fountain. To my mind fountains make a city, urban. Maybe I’ve been to Rome too much, were that possible. Fountains give a city that “grand” feel, whatever its name for major streets. Dublin lacks such fountains, to its detriment as a cityscape.
I’ve always liked Cork. Then, I’ve a weakness for cities built on hills. But it intrigues, even puzzles me how our second largest city just doesn’t have as great a presence in the national consciousness as smaller places like Galway and Limerick, for example. Okay, our present Taoiseach is from Cork, but he is something of an exception that proves the rule.
Then last June, figures were published which showed that, in the year prior to the 2022 census, Cork people were the least likely in Ireland to leave their county (18 per cent). The penny dropped.
Cork people believe they have it so good they are not bothered about making an impact on the national consciousness at all. To them, clearly, Cork is all. Nothing compares.
That is hardly a revelation, but it was something to experience on the holy ground itself. Even if speechless as Zachary for much of the time.
Cork, from Corcaigh, Irish for “marsh”.
