英语听力：探索发现 2012-07-18 爱尔兰的故事 Story Of Ireland—2

 Here they constructed a memorial which celebrated¹ revolution, faith and an idealized ancient world. At its center, this sculpture of the mythical² Children of Lir condemned³ by an evil stepmother to wander the oceans as swans until the coming of Christianity sets them free.

 

It was intended as a symbol of national resurrection but also to say to my generation and those that followed that we belonged to an unbroken line stretching back into a glorious Celtic past.

 

Our leader stressed our difference to the departed British. The idea of an ancient people of one faith was central to our identity. The real Irish were Gaelic and Catholic. 

 

In the Ireland of the mid⁴ 1960s, I knew little of an outside world or of the Ulster Protestants with their British identity. They seemed to me an alien tribe, marching to what the poet Louis MacNeice called “the voodoo of the Orange drums”. But a decade later, in the mid 1970s, the story of Ireland I was being taught had changed. School was no longer an echo chamber⁵ of the like-minded. In the shadow of the northern Troubles, the old certainties would not do. We were being asked to imagine a more complex set of Irish identities. 

 

-The idea of Irishness, of what it meant to be an Irishman that you grew up with and that I grew up with was pretty simple, wasn't it?

 

-I suppose it was a standard version. It was a republican tradition. And you didn't see outside that. We all marched to that song and to that drum, you know. It took a long time to change it.

 

-When you came in here to teach people like me, did you have a sense, a feeling that you had to broaden our minds?

 

-I suppose what I was trying to do was to show that there were other ways of looking at maybe the same thing. I always remember giving an essay, you know,  “Carson, Irish Patriot”.

 

-The great Unionist loyalist leader in the North?

 

-I left it at that.

1 celebrated   

adj.有名的，声誉卓著的

参考例句：

• He was soon one of the most celebrated young painters in England.不久他就成了英格兰最负盛名的年轻画家之一。
• The celebrated violinist was mobbed by the audience.观众团团围住了这位著名的小提琴演奏家。

2 mythical   

adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的

参考例句：

• Undeniably,he is a man of mythical status.不可否认，他是一个神话般的人物。
• Their wealth is merely mythical.他们的财富完全是虚构的。

3 condemned   

adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He condemned the hypocrisy of those politicians who do one thing and say another. 他谴责了那些说一套做一套的政客的虚伪。
• The policy has been condemned as a regressive step. 这项政策被认为是一种倒退而受到谴责。

4 mid   

adj.中央的，中间的

参考例句：

• Our mid-term exam is pending.我们就要期中考试了。
• He switched over to teaching in mid-career.他在而立之年转入教学工作。

5 chamber   

n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所

参考例句：

• For many,the dentist's surgery remains a torture chamber.对许多人来说，牙医的治疗室一直是间受刑室。
• The chamber was ablaze with light.会议厅里灯火辉煌。