We actually watched the movie in high school, though I now can't for the life of me remember what class or why. (I'm guessing it was an English class and we'd read the story, but I'm not sure.)
I developed a minor strain of similar romanticism about Ireland in my teens by way of folk music, though being me my interest tended to stop quite a bit before the Boyne, let alone the Troubles. Thanks to Isaac Asimov, I knew about the importance of Celtic Christianity in Dark Age Europe long before How the Irish Saved Civilization hit the charts. I also got interested in the varied misfortunes surrounding the efforts of Elizabeth I's suitors and courtiers to do something impressive there, due to hearing "Follow Me Up to Carlow" and being introduced to the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney around the same time. And I got a smattering of myth, though I never managed to make it all the way through the translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge I took out of the library once or twice.
Not having any family connection to the subject (and growing up in an area with much less of an Irish-American presence than Chicago) I didn't know much about modern Ireland, but I also didn't absorb much in the way of "Danny Boy"/"Quiet Man" preconceptions about the Auld Sod. I do remember being more or less an adult before I twigged to how different actual speakers from Ireland sounded from stage/movie Irish accents.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2011-03-18 10:55 pm (UTC)I developed a minor strain of similar romanticism about Ireland in my teens by way of folk music, though being me my interest tended to stop quite a bit before the Boyne, let alone the Troubles. Thanks to Isaac Asimov, I knew about the importance of Celtic Christianity in Dark Age Europe long before How the Irish Saved Civilization hit the charts. I also got interested in the varied misfortunes surrounding the efforts of Elizabeth I's suitors and courtiers to do something impressive there, due to hearing "Follow Me Up to Carlow" and being introduced to the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney around the same time. And I got a smattering of myth, though I never managed to make it all the way through the translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge I took out of the library once or twice.
Not having any family connection to the subject (and growing up in an area with much less of an Irish-American presence than Chicago) I didn't know much about modern Ireland, but I also didn't absorb much in the way of "Danny Boy"/"Quiet Man" preconceptions about the Auld Sod. I do remember being more or less an adult before I twigged to how different actual speakers from Ireland sounded from stage/movie Irish accents.