Romantic Ireland's dead and gone? Not a bit of it. It lives on, strikingly in our tourist propaganda abroad. Not crudely, but with a little panache. First there is the lady in black, top hat and all, riding her white horse along the strand; then there is the invitation to stay in castles "which bring you back to the distant past"; and photographs of cliff after cliff looking out to the thousands of miles of Atlantic ocean, reminding the literary tourists gently of Ultima Thule, without saying it. And there is even - more prosaically - a man standing up in a boat where, rod in hand, he is bound to hook a few.
The text in most cases repeats the slogan that Ireland will make a new person of you, all stress and strain left behind. And why not? Germans have fine scenery, too, but not the edge-of-the-world attraction of Ireland, especially the west.
There is also the other way of selling Ireland, which may not reach so many: it is in the magazine Ireland of the Welcomes. Selling, but through normal intelligent curiosity. For their range of subjects, with brilliant photographs, includes, in the current issue, the making of hurleys. It's in an interview by Tom Humphries with Jimmy Ryan, a master of the art. You don't have to know one thing about the game to feel the love of wood which Jimmy expresses. "An awful lot of what makes a good hurley is in the mind," he says. The tree (ash, of course), should be 25 years old.
Some striking pictures in the same issue of Inishbofin by John Carlos, with text, too - part of a work in progress. "In the last century 10,000 fishermen congregated each season to fish the island in the area. The waters of Inishbofin, Inishark, Inishturk and Clare Island had the world's best harvest, sadly since depleted by the foreign factory ships . . ." A big spread on the famous Rosse telescope by Christopher Moriarty. And one or two other articles to come back to.
But, as tourist bait, what of this? A letter to the editor by a visitor from California. Jogging in the rain near Dunloe Castle, he meets an angler who has just caught some trout in the Laune River. The angler insists on giving the visitor a couple of good trout: "The chef at the hotel would be glad to fix them for breakfast." He was and he did. "Unforgettable" brief encounter, the writer says.