The Irish are a gregarious people. They cannot bear to be left alone. They must always be talking to their friends. This is a courtesy, or botheration, which is extended also to perfect strangers so that it is in fact impossible to remain a foreigner in Ireland for longer than it takes to notice that the grass is green or that the airport tarmac is awash in a couple of inches of rainwater.
This is to the taste of some, but not all. Ireland is no place for a man or a woman with a secret, unless it is a secret which is begging to be told. And it is a certain truth that the Irish expect strangers to have tongues in their mouths for purposes other than drinking and ears so firmly attached to their skulls that they will not be blown away by the gales of talk.
It is not, this land of ours, a place for the seeker after privacy. This notably generous people are mean with only one commodity, and that is solitude. If you are in search of solitude, you'll need a nimble pair of legs on you and a fair skip to your step. You must take yourself to the top of Mount Brandon in a blizzard (I do not recommend it), or out into the Atlantic on a dark night to Skellig Rock, but in either place and under any circumstance you would most likely find some member of the Irish nation had got there before you and was hoping for a little conversation.
The whole of our national life is organized on this principle - that every last thing shall be arranged so as to afford the maximun opportunity for meeting and talking. This is so much characteristic of us, that it might as well be written into the constitution. ...
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