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Rebels & Monarchs. The Irish have written some of the tenderest love lyrics in English literature, but in their actual contact with the opposite sex, Irishmen sometimes resemble Colombia's Kogi Indians, who, despising women, spend all their time discussing philosophy with other males and chewing cocoa leaves to cool off the sexual urges. An acid axiom among Irish girls runs: "Put an Irish feller in a room with a girl and two bottles of stout, and he'll pick the stout any time." Many explanations have been offered for his seeming misogyny: the epic suspicion that war and the gods are more important than mere love; the relentless emotional dominance of Irish mothers over Irish sons; the oddly puritanical streak in Irish Catholicism; above all, the heritage of hardship that gives the Irish a mortal terror of insecurity and encourages them to stay celibate.
At least some of these factors are changing, and the relations between the sexes seem less self-conscious and at times downright friendly. The Irish now wed younger; the average marriage age dropped from nearly 35 for men in 1929 to just over 30, from 29 for women to just under 27. For the young, one of the most joyous innovations in recent years has been a proliferation of dance halls, which have reached scores of small communities, and a burgeoning of "show bands"—200 in all—that keep the Ould Sod jumping with hippety-hoppety jazz and carry such intriguing names as Rebels, Jets, Monarchs. Unlike the old days, when the local priest would often disperse a country ceilidh at sundown, dance-hall hours are regulated by magistrates, who tend to be more liberal. And, as always, the Western World has its Playboys. In London, where one in eight births is illegitimate, authorities report that a disproportionate number of unwed Pegeens come over to have their babies free on Britain's National Health Service.
The most conspicuous vice of the Irish in times past has been "the drink." Today, though the pubs keep longer hours and most Irishmen can afford to drink more, public drunkenness is no longer the common spectacle it used to be, and barefoot boys no longer trot through city streets bearing jugs of foaming stout or bottles of brandy home to dad. The younger generation seems to be more sober than its parents. Also, alcoholic habits are changing: more drinking is done at home nowadays; cocktails and hard liquor are cutting into beer consumption; and many pubs, which had long been jealously guarded male preserves, have opened "singing lounges" where an Irishman can take his wife or girl. The image of the boozy, belligerent Irishman—condemned as sheer hostile propaganda by Sean Lemass—dies hard, nonetheless. Indeed, drunk or sober, few people on earth can raise a glass (or two) with greater gusto or style.
Radiant Goals. Ireland faces many more urgent problems. The country is still critically short of modern housing; hundreds of once elegant Georgian mansions in Dublin have for years held some of Europe's most squalid slums.