Portadown to Poynzpass

Yesterday we cycled along the Newry canal from Portadown to Poynzpass and back. This was a MeetUp event with three other cyclists. Photo from internet:

Windy day--after 24 miles, I was quite happy to crawl into the car.

So Poynzpass is named for Charles Poynz, who was granted 500 acres by the king after fighting one of the Irish earls in the 1500s. In my early posts on this blog, you will find great indignation toward such men as Poynz, who brought people over from his estate in Gloucestershire to farm the fields of Ireland after displacing the natives. I have found that my views have softened during my two years here. Part of this is Portugal. I noticed there that the country had been conquered by (I’m making this up, but its roughly true): Romans, Celts, English, Dutch, Arabs, Germans, Spaniards, maybe a few others. It was kind of passed back and forth like a hot potato. If the Portugese spent time resenting who took land from whom, they wouldn’t get much done. It makes me think too of Jared Diamond--to those with the best army and weaponry (and food and horses) went the victory. Spending hundreds of years crying over the outcome, as we do here in Northern Ireland, doesn’t seem sporting.

Gross simplification, I know, but every picayune thing here is filtered through a sieve of resentment between those who feel their land and their place on it were usurped and those who feel they have been denied their rightful place in Ireland’s history many many many generations on from settling here. It gets tiresome. Of course, overlay the Troubles and that may explain why the battles of the 1500s and 1600s are still reference points. Then there’s the analysis that says it’s easier for working class Protestants, who have been left behind by a globalised economy, to vent at Catholics than to look to the leaders in London and Stormont who have created much of their misery.

In sum, my understanding of the politics and pressures in Northern Ireland is more nuanced than when I first moved here.
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