Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood

July 31, 2019

Dublin, Ireland

I’m not entirely sure what the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats meant by the above line when he wrote it in his 1931 poem Coole Park and Ballylee. But here and now in the Irish capital, it feels like a great metaphor for this nation in contemporary times.

Dublin has changed dramatically since last I was here in 1986. At that time, the city was a charming European backwater, the provincial capital of a country mired in economic doldrums with a high unemployment rate. It was also the whitest big city that I’ve ever seen. Almost everyone was white, and almost everyone was either a local or a tourist. There were no immigrants because there were no jobs to be had; in fact, Irish people had been emigrating to the U.S., Britain, and elsewhere for generations in order to find work. The vast majority of the buildings were brick or stone structures leftover from British colonial rule.

When I arrived here three days ago, I was immediately struck by the cosmopolitan appearance of the city. Instead of the one black man that I saw in 1986, I observed scores of Africans, numerous Asian faces, and a number of women wearing the Muslim hijab. I heard a wide variety of languages, including Spanish, Polish, French, Arabic, and Asian and African tongues. Modern buildings abound, with construction cranes everywhere, adding economic vitality to the old Georgian and Victorian architecture.

What happened?

The short answer is that Ireland opened to the world. It opened to change.

For centuries Ireland had been dominated by London and Rome. Its British colonial masters had kept the island isolated from the rest of the world, and the Roman Catholic Church had kept the people captive to religious dogma and control. Even after independence from Britain was achieved in 1922, it took time for the Irish psyche to break free from the bonds of dependence upon their former overlords. But joining the European Union broadened Irish horizons both economically and psychologically, as did the decision, circa 1990, to invite foreign investment on a large scale with significant tax breaks.

The result? An economic boom, known as the Celtic Tiger, that lasted from about 1990 to 2008, until the global recession burst the local real estate bubble and temporarily wrecked the economy. Now the economy is growing rapidly again, and is once more attracting temporary workers and permanent immigrants from all over the world. Meanwhile, major scandals involving pedophile priests and abusive nuns have rocked the Catholic Church and badly damaged its standing in this former bastion of Catholicism, leading to increasing secularization, gay rights, and abortion rights.

But the impending departure of Britain from the European Union, known as Brexit, could deal a serious blow to the Irish economy. Britain is still a major Irish trading partner, and if the British economy suffers as expected from leaving the European common market, that would have significant repercussions for Irish exports to Britain.

Great change, both economic and social, has come to this country in the last 33 years. For now, the Emerald Isle is thriving. Prosperity, materialism, and demographic diversity have enriched the island and its culture. But beneath the graceful Irish swan is a darkening flood of economic uncertainty, climate change, tribalism, and world turmoil.

The time may come when the swan will have to find another river.