In Ireland, especially outside Dublin people identify with their county. The extent to which they do depends on the county but especially in relation to All-Ireland GAA games there is a huge amount of county pride and the like. Do people in the UK (other than Northern Ireland) identify much with their county/shire?
Not really, although oi doo 'aaave wot you moight call a bit uv a 'aampshire accent.
County? Not at all, and I can’t think of anyone who ever has. Town rivalries are commonplace though. For example I hate cunts fae Forfar*
*This is total lies, not living anywhere near the place, and only ever having passed through that heinous shithole once. That bunch of cocknocking inbred fucks! But I guess that’s folk from Dundee for you. Ummm?
No, the country is physically too small for counties to have much of a distinct identity from their neighbours, except maybe Cornwall. And many of the big towns where people actually live are but a few miles from several other counties. I tend to think in terms of regions rather than counties.
[ETA]Althoug I guess NI is small too, and it has county rivalries, you say? Maybe if county cricket were bigger here, I’d be talking in disparaging terms about people from, I dunno, Sussex?
its all about perspective. All northerners gang up on southerners. If no southerners are present then yorkshire and lancashire have a barney if its just yorkshire in the room it’ll be town vs town. We ALL gang up on the french.
Yorkshire, maybe? I’ve only got a tiny bit of perspective on this but I’ve found Mancs and Scousers to be awfully different. More locally, Glasgow and Edinburgh are only forty-ish miles apart and the difference between the folks can be striking.
The Lancs vs. Yorks thing is an exception though, isn’t it? You don’t see people wearing “Berkshire and proud of it” T-shirts. I can’t think of an insulting stereotype about people from, say, Shropshire.
Probably the case, but as I grew up in Yorkshire, it was an ever present to me. Huge rivalry between one side o’ Pennines and t’other.
Yorkshire, yes, maybe you’re right. Didn’t they have a thing about only native-born Yorkshiremen playing for the county cricket team, many years ago? Mancs vs. Scousers is more city-based than county-, and of course they are historically in the same county.
In Scotland the whole county identity thing was messed up with local government re-organisation in 1975. They were very cavalier with boundaries and nowadays a lot of people would be unable to say with certainty which historic county they lived in. For example, West Lothian does have a fairly strong identity, but in 1975 its 2 historical coastal towns, South Queensferry and Bo’ness, were taken and put into other “districts”. In return West Lothian gained a large chunk of Midlothian. Many people in Edinburgh are confused when automatic addressing systems put Edinburgh in Midlothian, since the local authority area known as “Midlothian” does not include Edinburgh.
The only Scottish counties which have not had their boundaries changed are Fife, Orkney and Shetland. These all have strong identities, for historic and geographical reasons. Some other counties have been completely absorbed into larger local authority areas, especially in the Highlands and the Borders. I think people in places like Caithness, Sutherland and Ross-shire still think of themselves as belonging to those areas, and do feel friendly rivalry with each other.
I think as An Gadaí mentioned that the GAA have a huge amount to do with it. Gaelic football is the biggest spectator sport in Ireland and is based on a county level. It’s a great thing IMO. And leads to a lot of craic(fun) between people and a lot of good humoured slagging(playfull trash talking). Our county system is a UK invention but we took the ball and ran with it.