Ireland and France: A Story of Saints, Soldiers and St. Patrick’s Spirit | EUROtoday

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, France begins to show slightly greener – and never simply in its store home windows or pub facades. The ties between Ireland and France run deep, stretching again greater than 1,500 years. Theirs is a relationship formed by saints and students, troopers and statesmen, music and migration – and, after all, the occasional wonderful pint. It might look, on the floor, like an excuse for a energetic night time out. But behind the Guinness faucets and inexperienced bunting lies a remarkably wealthy shared historical past.

Long earlier than shamrocks turned world symbols, Saint Patrick himself had French connections. Tradition holds that earlier than returning to Ireland as a missionary, Patrick studied in Gaul, seemingly in Auxerre. Those early religious hyperlinks had been strengthened within the centuries that adopted as Irish monks traveled to France, founding monasteries and contributing to the preservation of studying in medieval Europe. In some ways, the Franco-Irish story begins not with political alliances, however with pilgrimage.

Centuries later, the bond deepened by exile. After the 1691 Treaty of Limerick, 1000’s of Irish troopers left their homeland for France in what turned often called the Flight of the Wild Geese. They fashioned Irish brigades throughout the French military and fought with distinction for his or her adopted nation.

As the Irish authorities itself displays on their web site, “the Ireland-France relationship evokes memories of our shared Norman, Huguenot and Celtic heritage, the Flight of the Wild Geese at the end of the 17th century and the spirit of the French Revolution a hundred years later which so captured the imagination of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen”. Their loyalty to France by no means eroded their Irish identification; as an alternative, it wove the 2 collectively.

One descendant of that custom would rise to the very high of French public life. Patrice de MacMahon, born right into a household of Irish Jacobite the Aristocracy, turned a Marshal of France and later President of the Republic (1873–1879). An Irish identify on the Élysée Palace is maybe probably the most hanging image of how totally Irish heritage turned a part of the French story.

Culture, too, has lengthy flowed between the 2 shores. Sharing a Celtic heritage binds Ireland particularly to Brittany, the closest EU area to Ireland.

Brittany’s music, mythology, bagadou pipe bands and historic standing stones echo Ireland’s personal traditions. Standing on the Breton coast, watching Atlantic waves roll in, it is simple to think about the centuries of journey and alternate throughout that slender stretch of sea. More and extra, Irish modern tradition, from cinema and style to new music, continues to interrupt by to French audiences, constructing on foundations laid by giants equivalent to James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and Eileen Gray, whose imprint on France stays indelible.

Today, the beating coronary heart of that cultural alternate is the Center Culturel Irlandais, housed within the historic Irish College on Rue Irlandais in Paris’ Latin Quarter.

Far from being a once-a-year celebration, the Center presents exhibitions, literary talks, dwell music nights, Irish language meet-ups and stand-up comedy. This March thirteenth, for instance, the well-known comic Dylan Moran takes to the stage – exhibiting you do not have to cross the ocean to expertise Ireland at its most inventive and irreverent! Around St. Patrick’s Day, its courtyard overflows with limitless celebration.

Even in darker moments of historical past, Irish touches seem. In 1939, as struggle loomed over Europe, Guinness was provided to British and Allied troops stationed in France. A pint of stout turned greater than a easy drink, it offered troopers with consolation, familiarity and, I’m certain, boosted morale. Today, that very same stout flows ever-so freely throughout France each March seventeenth – bars lined with rows of black-and-cream pints ready to be claimed.

And then there are these pubs. Anyone who has lived in Paris is aware of the reality: an evening in an Irish bar is an evening of assured enjoyable. I bear in mind evenings the place the cabinets had been stacked excessive with Guinness glasses, the room buzzing with accents from Dublin to Donegal (and from Bordeaux to Belleville) and, simply earlier than closing time, one final request ringing out: “Zombie!” When The Cranberries blasted by the audio system and your entire bar sang alongside, it felt much less like a Paris night time out and extra like one thing shared between all. Music spilling into the road, strangers changing into associates by closing time – these are small however highly effective examples of connection.

Sport, too, tells its personal story of rivalry and respect. France and Ireland’s rugby historical past dates again to 1909. Since then, the 2 nations have performed 105 check matches: France leads the collection with 61 wins to Ireland’s 37, with seven attracts. Every Six Nations conflict carries not simply factors however fierce competitors underpinned by deep mutual regard.

St. Patrick’s Day in France is joyful. Pint glasses are raised, bagpipes play, and monuments glow inexperienced. But it isn’t merely an excuse for an evening of consuming. It is a celebration layered with centuries of historical past – of wandering saints and exiled troopers, of revolutionary beliefs and literary brilliance, of Celtic kinship and sporting rivalry, of cultural facilities and crowded pubs.

A relationship that started with pilgrimage, handed by regiments and presidencies, echoed in Breton bagpipes, roared throughout rugby pitches, and nonetheless resounds every time an Irish bar belts out one final music earlier than the lights come up.

Sláinte – and lengthy dwell Franco-Irish friendship!

Lead photograph credit score: Giants Causeway, Ireland Photo: Shutterstock ©