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Overview
Cycling around Ireland in search of traditional music, David Wilson follows the coastline from Presbyterian Islandmagee to Gaelic Cape Clear and back up north from Dublin to Belfast. Ireland, a Bicycle, and a Tin Whistle takes us on a journey across wild open spaces and through crowded pubs and festivals that pulse with energy and life. This is the Ireland of fiddles, harps, and flutes, butterflies on bog roads, Country-and-Irish songs, Ulster Fries, storytelling, yarnspinning, and jigs and reels to the crack of dawn. As he travels through the North, Wilson gets beneath the surface to portray both the tragedy and comedy of everyday life inside the Protestant and Catholic communities. Aware of the polarized image that each side has of the other, he emphasizes the importance of finding common ground and asserting the middle against the extremes. Just as traditional Irish music is characterized by ornamentations and elaborations on a melodic theme, Ireland, a Bicycle, and a Tin Whistle is full of variations and wanderings on the theme of the trip itself. And just as traditional Irish musicians will follow a sad slow air with a lively foot-tapping reel, Wilson's mood ranges from the nostalgic and reflective to the irreverent and mischievous. If there is a lament in one ear, there is always a song in the other.Synopsis
Cycling around Ireland in search of traditional music, a tin whistle in his saddlebag, David Wilson follows the coastline from Presbyterian Islandmagee to Gaelic Cape Clear and back up north from Dublin to Belfast. Ireland, a Bicycle, and a Tin Whistle takes us on a journey across wild open spaces and through crowded pubs and festivals that pulse with energy and life. This is the Ireland of fiddles, harps and flutes, butterflies on bog roads, Country-and-Irish songs, Ulster Fries, storytelling, yarn spinning, and jigs and reels to the crack of dawn.
Publishers Weekly
Wilson, who was born in Ireland and is now an assistant professor of Celtic studies at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, starts his ramble near the old Belfast homestead armed only with his bicycle and tin whistle in order ``to be closer to the spirit of the place... [and] the piece.'' His venture with music turns rough as drunken Orangemen with a bent for John Denver music insist he must know ``Country Road.'' It's on to Cushendall and Johnny Joe's Pub where the session is jammed and only the magic of his tin whistle gains him entrance through a side window. As he wheels into Donegal, he begins to suffer from the dreaded ``Penile Numbness Syndrome,'' a disease well-known to the avid male cycler. Here Wilson supplies a basic, albeit hilarious, Gaelic lesson on finding the right bathroom (fir for men; mna for women). A life full of B&Bs leaves him immune to the Ulster Fry``a veritable festival of cholesterol''and he survives food poisoning and flat tires on his swing through the southwest. The author's comments on Irish music are delightful and erudite. Unfortunately, the book is marred by the litany of hangovers (he admits he ``travelled from Cork to Dublin in an alcoholic fog, remembering nothing'') and his incessant comments on Irish politicsparticularly his sanitized version of the faminewhich are simplistic with a definitive Orange bias. (Oct.)