Across the Irish Sea

I wonder if I’m the only person a little freaked out to hear “God Save the Queen” at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin?

Queen Elizabeth II is making an historic visit to the Republic of Ireland, and all. And that’s a swell thing—first British monarch to set foot trip in 100 years (and when the last one, George V, did, there was no Republic); it’s very symbolic. Ireland, after all, was England’s first colony (courtesy of Henry II in the 12^th Century); until Ulster is reunited with the other three provinces of Ireland, it’ll be the last one.

Her Majesty is making a point of visiting Irish sites rural and urban, historical and aimed at the future. Naturally, given how she just loves those ponies, she’s going to have a poke round a couple of studs (that’s farms, not muffins). And there’s a state dinner.

But the huge significance comes from her paying official respects to the past, laying a wreath to the fallen at the Garden of Remembrance. The “fallen” in this case are the men and women who died in the fight to free Ireland from British rule, from the rebellion of 1798 to the civil war of 1919-21. For the reigning monarch of the UK to honor them is extraordinary.

(Iain Paisley is probably rolling over in his grave. Oh, wait—he’s not dead; he only resembles a corpse both physically and morally.)

And it can’t be all that easy for her given that she’s suffered personal losses in the ongoing struggle for the hearts and minds and territory. Her husband’s uncle Louis Mountbatten was assassinated by an IRA bomb just 32 years ago.

No, I give her major props for this.

It’s the British national anthem in that particular place that creeps me out. It just seems really wrong.

The Garden of Remembrance is rather like a cathedral. The statue before which the Queen laid the wreath is a representation of the Children of Lir. In Irish legend, the four children of a king; his wife, wracked by jealousy, turned the children into swans, in which form they remained for 900 years. The curse was finally broken by a Christian monk, and the children were returned to their human form. The bronze figures in the Garden of Remembrance are in the process of turning from swans into people.

Rather like the Irish themselves after nearly 900 years of living the British curse.

Well, it’s gracious of the Irish to play GSTQ, And gracious of HM to make the gesture. Now—is she going to Bewley’s for a coffee? It’s only a stone’s throw from the Book of Kells.