Outside the national or, if you like, the home circle, Irish people are often regarded as being the most fascinating conversationalists.

This is especially true of the view taken of us by the English and Americans; a fact that is natural enough when you reflect how few of any other peoples know a thing about us and who, because of those linguistic differences that naturally causes stumbling-blocks to appear in conversational matters, frequently believe us to be Dutch.

So that really, as far as conversation is concerned, when we think of foreigners we are generally thinking of the English and Americans, who are so astonished to learn they are considered foreign that they find themselves either bereft of speech or forced into argument. And this may form the subject-matter of your first conversation with them.

Then, very soon, you will discover that, like most generalisations, the idea you have always had that certain countries produce first-rate conversationalists and others perfectly frightful ones is an illusion; that some Englishmen and some Americans are superb at this most subtle of social arts and that others are altogether appalling.

The same applies, of course, to Irishmen, and indeed to Irishwomen, for the restless, decorative, assertive sex produces just as many scintillating talkers as the more sober, non-committal and reposeful male, and far more entertaining letter-writers.

Among the Irish you will find, if you listen long enough, some of the world’s most brilliant talkers and also some of the dullest. I have said “if you listen long enough” and this, if you are a conversationalist, you will do. You will do it even if you are Irish.

For although one of the greatest talkers who ever lived, a Dubliner, once said, “If one could get the English to talk and the Irish to listen, society in London would be quite civilised”, the art of conversation goes hand in hand with an ability to listen. It is, in fact, when a man is incapable of listening that he is recognised, with an instantaneous lowering of the spirits, not as a conversationalist at all but as a monologist.

It is true that many of the world’s best conversationalists have been in reality adept in the art of monologue. But the truly great among them have kept this a secret. Indeed, one might say that one of the first essentials of monologue is that it should remain a secret. The listeners should never become sharply aware that a certain person is holding the stage; as soon as this happens, the person has ceased to hold it.

We all have met the man who “talks too much”. We know him by his loud, monotonous, un-inspired gabble on those loud, monotonous, un-inspired topics of which he appears to possess so unlimited a store, and during the infliction of which he appears never to pause for breath. Personally I feel we misname him. He is not the man who talks too much; he is the man who has nothing to say and is determined at all costs to say it; he is also the man who has never learned even to pretend that he is capable of listening.

He merely waits – if forced by a pair of more powerful lungs than his own – for the tail-end of his rival’s speech; he waits, so to speak, for his next cue; and lo! he is joyously off again, unaware of the constipated expression slowly stealing over the faces of his hearers or of the leaden glaze of utter loathing in the "yes" of his powerful-lunged rival.

Now if, even with the most hypocritical smile of him who pretends to concentrate on any conversation but his own, he could have put up some small pretence of being for one moment an audience, all would have been well. For to appear to listen to other people, especially if this be accompanied by a seemingly rapt attention, is one of the finest shades in the art of the true conversationalist.

In Ireland this delicate tribute is frequently paid to the speaker of the moment. As long, that is, as the moment repeats itself only for a reasonable number of times and holds no threat of Eternity. For the talker with a Subject, a Thesis, a Message for the Age – or at least for the dinner table – is bound to exhaust his hearers long before he has exhausted his subject. This, to do conversation in Ireland justice, is a rare enough figure.

For one thing, such an ominous creature is bound to meet his match: not merely individually but collectively. And the Irish method with a bore is apt to be kindly but determined, and to lead him firmly towards the more general topics than the Border or Bord na Móna or whatever it is. In fact, like Titiania, we are included, however much we may like the Ass’s Head, to whisper among ourselves: “Tie up my love’s tongue: lead him softly.”

When I was a little boy and was living for a few, brief, pastoral years in Cork, I would watch with awe-struck admiration the knots of women, usually portly and wrapped in shawls, as they talked together at street corners or by the parapets of some elderly grey bridge. I would mark how the speaker almost invariably held the forefinger of her right hand to her lips as she delivered the latest scandal or her own convictions on this theory or that; and when she had had her say, some other woman would launch forth and would faithfully reproduce the gesture.

It was impressive, for not only did it suggest with the minimum effort the speaker’s courteous insistence on the attention of her listeners, but it lent to her a kind of mysterious power. She became a sort of symbol, a messenger from some remote, important place, and the conversation, as it passed from one finger-sheltered mouth to another, took on the quality of a fascinating conspiracy.

What secrets were they not sharing, I would wonder, these garrulous, pious, benevolent witches; what charms, what spells were not being forever ruined? I still wonder, for they are doing it to this day in Cork, though less and less.

Certainly one can say that the art of conversation is respected in Ireland. Much will be forgiven to the adept. “Ah yes, he’s a desperate old bowsy in many ways, but he’s a grand talker” is a phrase frequently heard in the most and least elite of circles; and when anybody is described as “marvellous company” you may be sure that this refers to his or her conversation.

The Irish language itself, of course, is essentially a language for conversation. It is “talkative” and “swift-mouthed”. From it indeed come, in literal, though often unconscious, translation into the more sedate though equally eloquent English tongue, the colloquial preambule to some startling piece of news. “Wait till I tell you, you’ll die when you hear!” And from it, too, comes the rural warning bell of “Whisper! Do you know what I’m going to tell you?” From Irish come also the images of the praise of eloquence: the sweet-tongued Diarmuid and Niamh of the honeyed mouth: a woman who would coax the birds from the branch with her talk.

“Not a word out of him” is one of the most depressing descriptions one Irishman can give of another, and to talk too little is almost as bad, if not a great deal worse, than talking too much. Silence may be golden but it may also be deeply suspect. And suspicion of the deepest and darkest description dyes frequently the thought, both silent and spoken, of the Irish mental process. This is probably due to historical as much as racial reasons.

Indeed, those characteristics that make up national traits are traceable to geography and history, or to the influences of the weather on the one hand, and, on the other, to the tracks left on the mind by the tragic and comical events of the nation’s story more often than to some strain in the blood. So it is natural that a nation like the Irish, whose very existence was for so long in question, as far as its conquerors were concerned and became almost a question, at certain moments, in its own mind, should develop a passion for talk.

“To be or not to be” became a serious matter of speculation. And what richer or more imaginative subject for good talk could good talkers hope for than the problem of whether or not they actually existed?

A nation whose culture, language and way of life was, for so many centuries “on the run” while another more powerful, insistent culture and language flourished and was so largely accepted in the end as inevitable by many of the Irish themselves, took refuge, inevitably, in discussion.

It is natural that a nation that has endured the longest resistance known to Europe, and has yet lost so many of the principles for which the resistance was being fought, should have developed certain characteristics; those, for instance, of a wry sort of wariness, of an ironic humour, of a passion for intrigue, of a talent for dealing with poverty and danger, with stormy weather, with failing crops and with a continual draining away of their more adventurous and ambitious minds to more remunerative and congenial surroundings.

It is natural, I repeat, that people living in such circumstances should gather like conspirators about their turf or electric fires to talk things over; to whisper, half-terrified, half-mocking, about the present; to speculate about the future or to dream about the past; and where such gatherings take place a lively conversational talent is likely to be the outcome. Or at any rate it should be.

From The Word, March 1970