They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which means I just stumbled onto 15,000 words from Life Magazine on 'old Ireland'. Life's web site has a collection of 15 pictures, mostly black and white from the 1940s. They're all great photographs.
These days we're all so familiar with those pictures of Ireland's beauty in full color that the black and white take a little getting used to. Colleen Bawn Rock in Killarney looks exactly the same today, but Life's 1946 black and white picture manages to make it look alive, if menacing, when compared with a color shot from today.
There are a number of rural scenes depicted, however I prefer the urban scenes to the rural, nature shots. Those shots more clearly show the changes in Ireland over the past 50 years.
There's a picture of a barge sailing down the Liffey, carrying "freshly sealed" casks of Guinness. That's a scene you don't see these days as Guinness leaves the brewery on trucks now. Another picture - in color - shows boys playing hurling on the streets of Dublin. You'll still see boys playing on the streets, but the clothes have certainly changed.
However, there are two in particular that interest me. The first is of O'Connell Street in Dublin on January 1, 1943. The picture was taken from the top of Nelson's Pillar, which has been gone since 1966. I wonder what sort of impact that picture made on America at the time. Compared with just about every other major European city, Dublin in the picture appears so tranquil and undamaged. By way of contrast, London was half way to becoming a ruin by this time and 90 miles north, Belfast endured more losses in the spring of 1941 than it did during the entire 30 years of the troubles.
And then there's my favorite - a picture of a vast throng of people in the center of Dublin at midnight on Easter Sunday 1949. The crowd is just tremendous. They're all there to celebrate Ireland finally becoming a republic, which was declared effective Easter Monday 1949, 33 years after the Easter Rising.
I've read about that moment before and I've even wondered if the decision to declare a republic was popular at the time. Based on this picture, I have my answer.
If you'd like to see the full collection, click here.
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