My Boyfriend Country.
By, Shannon O’Neill
Throughout my life, whenever I have been able to afford it/take the time off, traveling has been my drug of choice. The first time I ever went to another country (that wasn’t Canada), I was 14 and went to Ireland with my Mother and Grandmother on an ancestral trip with three generations of O’Neill women.
I was hooked from the instant I stepped onto a soil splashed in fifty shades of green and encountered more sheep and rain than I thought was physiologically possible! Since that first international experience, I have been all over the world and have had tremendous adventures.
Throughout my global voyages, I have gotten to see many things that run the gamut of the human experience: I have seen bodies burning on funeral pyres on the ghats of the Ganges River in Varanasi. I sailed through Norwegian fjords that looked like a waterway passage to Middle Earth. In my husband’s native country of Russia, I basked in the regal splendor of the summer palace of Peterhof, where the doomed Romanov family spent their warmer months before being massacred in a shabby little room tucked way far outside of St. Petersburg. I had a celebratory beer in Reykjavik, Iceland after watching 20 minutes of magical, dancing serpent-shaped green lights from the Aurora borealis zip across the night sky above myself and the harbor. I walked by buildings filled with bullet holes; violent vestiges from the Bosnian war in Mostrar. My adolescent eyes widened as we drove past barbed-wire fences and armed English soldiers in big boots carrying even bigger guns in Belfast; alongside IRA slogans spray-painted on the city’s walls shortly after the first Good Friday Agreement. I was one of the last tourists to be able to climb the steps of Chichen-Itza in Mexico before they were permanently roped off due to one too many small children falling off the top, something that occurred during my visit.
Yet of all the incredible places in the world I have been fortunate enough to see; the one I have consistently visited the most and loved the hardest was (and still is) Scotland. It isn’t the most exciting. It isn’t the most exotic (especially not the haggis!). It isn’t even all that “foreign” in terms of culture and language to me. I’m mostly made up of Celtic stock myself, so it doesn’t feel all that out of place to be among a cacophony of super-pale people with auburn hair who enjoy a pint and like to argue passionately!
However, what made Scotland stand out was that I met it at a very formative time in my life; that sealed its fate as my favorite place on Earth. More than any other place I had been to before or since, Alba is the country that welcomed me most heartily, most affectionately, and with absolutely zero pretense.
The first time I went there was when I was just 20, nearly a sophomore in college. I was engaged at the time to a genuine waste of living breath, I had the self-esteem of a blobfish, and I was still figuring out my academic and social footing in my college’s English program. My spirit was begging for a travel adventure! That summer there was a two-week trip to Ireland and Scotland being offered through my college that you could sign up for as part of a class you either took or audited.
I leapt at the chance. My mother had done a Gaelic language internship in the highlands of Scotland for about two months when I was a kid and she never stopped talking about how much she had fallen in love with the place. I knew I had to see it for myself.
Well, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, see Scotland I did! While I have been to the magical land of Whisky & Heather multiple times since then; nothing cracked my heart as wide open as the Great Glen as that inaugural sojourn did. Forget being engaged to an emotionally impaired jerk! In merely a week’s time, Scotland had turned into my permanent overseas boyfriend. It was love at first flight.
My fellow students and I painted the town blue and white, going to clubs and dancing all night, drinking a metric ton of “the water of life”. We spent hours flirting with some very game Scottish boys who deliberately wore kilts to all the clubs because they knew American girls would immediately talk to them. Back then you could smoke on the dance floor as well as drink. No one checked our ages because in Scotland the drinking age was 18.
While the Glaswegian accent is, to Americans, about as unintelligible as Lewis Carroll’s infamously weird poem ‘Jabberwocky’, it has a fantastic sound to it! (Hey, even famous native ‘Wegie James McAvoy teased his home country about it on SNL.). There is a clear, passionate poetry to the Scottish language. Just read anything by Robert Burns, the Poet Laureate of Scotland. If you’re a Scottish neophyte, you likely won’t understand anything in it, as it is all in Scots, a native dialect of the Scottish people, but it will still sound like fierce music to your ears. As almost all of my fellow students and I were English majors, we were also all writers with a keen ear for the rhythm and musicality of language. We thrilled to the distinctive melody of the way the Scots roll their Rrrr’s, dig into their L’s, and used the term “FER FUCK’S SAKE!” as if it were a majestic battle cry instead of just an emphatic curse. The Scots do everything with emphasis. It is not a country of covert implications, but of pure unbridled pronouncements.
Everyone we met was gregarious, funny as hell, and extremely welcoming. It didn’t matter if they didn’t agree with our American politics or understand our constant, admittedly quite obnoxious need to attempt to imitate their accents. It didn’t matter if we would start to drunkenly sing Amazing Grace (We would hear it quite often while wandering around Edinburgh; someone was always playing it on the bagpipes in the Old Town. That song has kind of become the unofficial anthem of Scotland.) Even if we cheekily asked some of the attractive Scottish fellows we’d meet on our adventure:“What’s under the kilt?”, or some other variation of the hundred other annoyingly American things we would do, every Scot we met was never less than a gracious, enthusiastic host to a country they were clearly fiercely proud of. The Scots have a genuine sense of humor about it all, and on this trip, I discovered that they mostly just heartily laughed with us (and at us, but never unkindly) at our messy, misguided attempts at enthusiasm. We were young at the time, and didn’t know how to properly show Scotland how deeply we were falling in love.
The overwhelmingly welcoming atmosphere in the Land of Cakes hasn’t felt as strong to me in many of the other places I have visited since then. Ireland in particular, can be very unwelcoming and snarky towards its visitors, most especially Irish-Americans, of which I am on both sides of my family. *Those of us who solidly identify as Irish-American due to our DNA/family history and have traveled to Ireland to connect to that part of ourselves are considered “Plastic Paddies” by the native Irish. I have absolutely been made to feel this resentment in all three visits I have made to my most ancestral homeland.
From the beautiful, towering hills, to soft green pastures, to orange, oat, and black colored Highland Cattle (the capybaras of Britain) grazing peacefully in valleys dotted with streams, Scotland’s natural beauty is beyond measure to me. Huge, gobsmacking Glens in the Highlands that clamber up into the sky(e), demanding fealty. Sprinkled throughout every crevice of the wild valleys in The Trossachs and up the Village of Glen Coe are little stone monuments that recall some clan who fought with some other clan who decided to kill someone’s sister’s uncle’s brother whose ancestors will never ever forget it (However, these same folks would gladly break bread with those ancient sworn blood enemies to shit on those colonizing wanker English!). At night in smaller towns up by the Isle of Skye you might be lulled to sleep by the haunting, sad sound of bagpipes playing somewhere at dusk on the weekends.
Even the cities in the country that picked a unicorn as its national animal, are jewels to love, like Edinburgh, which is considered one of the most lovely cities in Europe. With its gorgeous historic Old Town, its pristine castle, and its challenging green hill (that legend has it is actually a sleeping dragon) known as Arthur’s Seat where at the summit you can see the entire city and out towards Stirling Castle, you will never be bored or lonely.
That first trip to Scotland was such an eye-opening experience to travel that it ruined me for other countries. Back then, at 20 years old, I was barely in the nascent stages of my newfound adulthood: teetering on my first breakup, first real apartment, and first time fully engaging with the world around me. Scotland showed me who and what I could really be if I just let go of my inhibitions, anxiety, and crippling self-doubt. With a wry smile, Caledonia beckoned me to shed the Charlie Brown cloud perpetually hanging over me since childhood. It cried out for me to jump in with both feet to the ebullience of its glorious great craic (fun), and I have been heeding that heathered call ever since.
No matter what other countries I visit, no matter how incredible the sights, sounds and tastes of those many other places will be, no matter how sexy, trendy, or enticing, they cannot tempt me! I will always stay truest and most faithful to my Scottish boyfriend, the first true travel love I ever had and the best I ever will.
ADDENDUM: *An aside from the author about Ireland: Before you Ireland-lovers get the pitchforks out: yes, I have met many a person who has not found this to be true when they visited Ireland. I wish I could say I was one of them; but my first name is Shannon, which is not an actual first name in Ireland itself. It’s a dead giveaway that I am the child of Boston Red Sox-loving, “O Danny Boy”-singing, St. Patrick’s Day-celebrating Americans deeply proud of our Irish lineage. Believe me, the looks and sarcastic little bon mots I’d get all over Ireland as soon as they heard my name was enough to make me never want to visit it again, and still I’ve been there at least 3 times. You want to know how much Irish ancestry I have? 77%! Scotland? 11%. Go figure. It’s not like I was ever trying to squeeze green blood from a Union Jack stone.
I also know other fellow Irish-Americans who have had the same experience I have. So if you haven’t found this to be true when you have visited; I am very happy for you! Ireland needs the tourism dollars, so hopefully that continues to be more and more the case. Sadly this has never been the case for me. I have to scatter my Dad’s ashes there someday, as was his last request, so maybe the 4th time will be the charm. Watch out, Cork!
