“Not Your Mother’s Ireland Anymore”
Forty years ago today, I arrived in Ireland for the first time.
My family was taking one of those pilgrimages that Irish-American families take, or took at the time. Along with so many Irish people, over the course of 60 years in the 19th Century, my great-grandfather and all known ancestors of six other of my great-grandparents had left Ireland for the United States. My father grew up in a working class city outside of Philly that had an Irish Church, an Italian Church, and a Polish Church — as my relatives tell it, everyone was Catholic — with social halls and other civil society to match. It remained, even in my teenage years, the kind of place where Irish-Americans got jobs as cops. So he was raised and so we were raised investing a lot in that Irish-American identity.
We arrived in Ireland, with the names of distant cousins in hand, to see what this place called Ireland was really like.
I remember three things about that pilgrimage most vividly.
First, the night before we left, we went to the Medieval banquet at the Bunratty Castle, a totally schlocky tourist show, now just 20 minutes up the road from where I live. They’ve been doing the banquets ever since, and have expanded into Victorian culture tourism. I recall they gave you just a knife with which to eat your steak. Maybe I was permitted to drink mead.
My family did visit one of those distant cousins, in a 4-room house where a bunch of kids had been raised. The cousin of the same generation as my parents wanted to get out of the too-small house, so we walked down the street to the local pub at a bend in the road. The pub had a thatched roof. There was a fox hunt going on, so there were horses tied up outside the pub. I once believed, but was probably wrong, that that pub was just a half hour from where my now-spouse had lived all his life. My spouse and I have spent decades looking for that thatched roof pub, with no success. It provides a nice excuse to keep looking, anyway.
My family departed from Shannon, but we arrived in Dublin and so were in the Capitol on St. Patrick’s Day. It was quiet and much was closed on account of the bank holiday. One after another person asked us, with puzzlement, why anyone would come from New York to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day, because New York and Chicago were where it was at on St. Patrick’s Day.
It’s a bigger deal in Ireland now than it was when my family wandered the famous heart of Dublin on a bank holiday so many years ago (but then, so is Halloween, to my spouse’s chagrin). We’ve got parades and everything is lit up green and oh by the way the Irish team won the Six Nations Championship in rugby, again, yesterday.
But so much of what we know as St. Patrick’s Day is about celebrating an American identity, the descendants of the Irish diaspora living in big cities with Irish-American political machines. And so much of that — a white, urban, working class identity — was consciously part of constructing race in America. So much of that was constructed as a way to reinforce conflict between freed slaves and cheap immigrant labor, starting in the 19th century, but still very real today.
I’m thinking of that manufactured conflict this year, as Trump tries to ride it back to the White House.
I’m thinking of that manufactured conflict this year, as outsiders seek to stoke the same conflict within Ireland. In the last year, the American far right had close ties to those stoking arson attacks and the Dublin riot, targeting migrants.
Since my spouse and I have moved back, we have a saying, “It’s not your mother’s Ireland.” For example, I used that line the first time I came back from a local Dunnes store location, the big Irish-owned grocery and department store chain. On one of my earliest visits to my in-laws, years ago, my mother-in-law and I went to the town center to the Dunnes store. I remember thinking it was slightly dingy with very little selection. Since then, Dunnes built a new location on the outside of that town, and Tesco built an even bigger store. Still, for over a year after I moved to Ireland, I avoided Dunnes because of my memory of that dingy, poorly-stocked store I visited with my mother-in-law years ago. So when I came back from the location on the outskirts of Limerick, I couldn’t wait to tell my spouse. This was like a Wegmans. Along with a reasonably stocked normal supermarket, it had a health food outlet, a Sheridan’s cheese counter, a high end bakery, a high end butcher counter, and a passable fishmonger. To this day, we call that supermarket “Not your mother’s Dunnes.”
Then there are the freeways, built with EU investment. We routinely drive on the freeway that didn’t exist when my father-in-law first took me to his home town outside of Galway and the freeway that didn’t exist when my spouse’s parents picked us up from Shannon on our first trip after we married, the one that now features a Barack Obama rest stop. Many of the roads in Ireland still suck — narrow lanes that require pull-offs for passing traffic. There aren’t a lot of roads I’m comfortable cycling on. But those freeways are totally new since my spouse and I got married, to say nothing of that pilgrimage 40 years ago.
But it’s the diversity that has really changed Ireland. Partly that’s being part of Europe. I joke, even still, that if I adopted a Czech or Spanish accent I might be recognized as an immigrant rather than perceived as a tourist, since so many recent arrivals came from Spain or Poland; people aren’t used to Americans coming to stay. In the last two years, there have been places in Clare County where I couldn’t figure out whether local colors were a Clare flag, or a Ukrainian one. Ireland remains more accessible to outsiders than some other parts of Europe; I hear a lot of Brazilian Portuguese on the streets, often students taking advantage of favorable student visas to learn English. There are immigrants from all over the world working in jobs at tech companies, many of the American multinationals. Most notably, though, are the number of migrants Ireland has welcomed, many (though not all) refugees from one or another war America has fought. Most families in Ireland have family members who’ve been welcomed in America, whether for a few years to work or, like my family, for six plus generations. It is only natural that Ireland return the favor.
And so, this year, rather than use Ireland’s privileged face time with the American President in advance of St. Patricks Day to discuss peace in Ireland or the fate of Ireland’s children in America, the Taoiseach pushed proud Irish-American Joe Biden to do something about his Gaza policy. Even the Irish, who take great pleasure in the long line of American Presidents it can claim, is peeved by America’s failures to do more about the Gaza crisis.
This time, Ireland is trying to teach America, not vice versa.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.
It’s not your mother’s Ireland anymore.
But if the American far right had its way — those who’ve fought to exacerbate centuries-old manufactured racism and with it fear — they would return Ireland to what it used to be.
Wonderful read! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and happy St. Pats…
Three quick reactions from an Englishman.
First, I’m glad you have been there long enough to be able to dismiss the “everything is the fault of the Brits” that we still occasionally encounter here in New Ireland – I mean Massachusetts.
How advanced of you to have a health foot store. We call them chiropodists.
Seriously – how many of those East European residents are immigrants not from East Europa, but recent refugees from UK. Multitudes of tradespeople and health care workers have vanished from England, where at least they learned a language useful in Eire.
“Everything” would be a stretch. But there is a long list; its Brexit cock-up is a recent addition.
And how do they say, “health food” store in Massachusetts?
Didn’t you have a “foot” typo in the first publication? I was just pulling your, err, leg. The nearest thing we have to health food is Dunkin’.
And congrats on the 6N win. I have to say, the closeness of so many games (that Marcus Smith drop goal! and the Italian missed penalty kick) and the performance of Italy have made it unmissable for all five sessions. Thank you, NBC/Peacock.
You might have to run out to Dorchester for the nearest food co-op.
In Massachusetts health food is called Dunkin Donuts. I spent most of my life in Boston and remember a few good Irish Pubs. And some bad ones.
For real health food in Mass., there’s the family-owned Donut Dip, in West Springfield.
In Cambridge, I’ve been to John Harvard’s and the Grafton Street Pub & Grill.
Hey! — careful what you say about Massachusetts!
You’ll have to talk to Carty and Brooks about that. But I can personally attest to the food quality at Donut Dip.
John Harvard’s Pub is no longer on Harvard Square, but the Grafton Street and many others are.
Took a family gathering of 9 (ages 74 to 7) to the Grafton Street after Christmas Revels. They handled us in the lounge without turning a hair and rounded off a truly special afternoon.
Off topic a little? Well, wifey’s grandparents, ancestor to all but two of us, came from Co Cork. And D-I-L is of the somewhat combustible Greek-Irish parentage.
“combustible Greek-Irish parentage”
Hey, I resemble that remark!
Because I speak some Spanish, my Mexican friends say I’m an honorary Puerto Rican. I call those friends, *pinche cabrónes*.
Sláinte, phílos!
I’m seriously thinking of moving there, Marcy. Don’t want to pick up and move again, and I’m not sure Ireland needs yet another medievalist, but in September we are expected to get a ‘blue’ (aka AfD) government here in Thüringen.
Now, they can screw up a lot of things at the ‘state’ level but nothing unconstitutional… yet. But since I am a dual EU-US citizen, I do have a “migrant” background which makes it a targeted category so far as even to revoke citizenship – first they’ll come for the migrants who don’t look like them, but they’ll eventually make their way around to people like me, especially if we’re “left”. We’ll see after the next federal election how much power the fascists can accumulate.
But I think there is a nice little town on the western coast that has a large artist community, I would enjoy something like that.
It is a nice place to be a medievalist, though.
Very true. It’s another reason Ireland is on my mind today. My undergrad seminar starts on the 4th and I’m teaching Arthur of the Green World, so Mabinogion, Gawain and the Green Knight, and Malory’s Sangrail – focus on the Welsh Arthurian Faerie and Otherworld stuff. And the students will get a healthy dose of Irish myth because all those figures can be traced both linguistically and in narrative patterns and functions to Cuchulainn, Cu Roi, Blathnat and several gods of the Tuatha de Danaan. So it’s not only St. Patrick’s Day but also a working weekend trying to get this seminar finished up. Thanks for the post on Ireland. Oh, and it was either Galway or Shannon that I was thinking of.
Not forgetting Mr Fergus mac Róich:
Who will go to drive with Fergus now
The Gardai took away his card?
How will he get to Allen’s Cross without
To drink and dance upon the sward?
Lift up your tender eyelids, dear,
Nor brood on manly privilege stale,
For now your turn to shift the gears
Has come, take courage, do not pale.
So, young man, lift up the bonnet, yes,
And check the oil, check the spark advance.
Tell the wife to give it plenty gas,
But dare not bump her from the bench
Nor turn aside and shed your tears upon
Life’s frequently unlucky stars.
Though Fergus pay the bank his loan
It’s Nessy rules the brazen cars.
(apologies to Yeast, WB)
*Yeats?
I thought that might get a rise out of someone.
I’m just a crusty ol’ so-n-so.
I really need to crack open my copy of his collected works someday. It’s sitting on my shelf but I never seem to be able to get to it.
It’s been 35 years since visiting Ireland. I can still see the standing stones of the Burren and O’Brian’s castle. We drove a lot of those narrow roads and had more fun when we were lost than when we knew where we were. We skipped Bunratty but did have a few pints at Durty Nellies.
I see some change in attitude from Trudeau and hope it has some influence, however small on Joe and Bibi.
I first visited the Ould Sod 50 years ago. I would never have expected that the people of Ireland would so quickly throw off the Church’s yoke! The exposure of the priestly pedophiles and the enslavement of women at the Laundries did the trick. That plus the EU, et voila!
They have Tescos; do they have Sainsbury’s? Always one of my favourite stores to shop at.
Nope. Tescos, Aldis, and Lidls.
and now i am back bombing along the narrow country lanes of Dingle peninsula riding three aside (comfortably) in the giant black van driven by my Scottish friend’s wild Czech friend, showing me the sights. aside from the land’s beauty, a highlight was his execution of his patented 12-point turns getting the van from the bottom of the beach parking back to the top.
Hi Marcy,
My people are from Ireland, both sides. My Dad’s side 2nd generation in Somerville, MA my mom’s people, immigrated from County Mayo. My mom was born in New Bedford, MA. I think my Dad’s peeps looked down on my mother’s family cuz they were 1st generation Irish-Americans. My mom and dad had 7 kids. Kennedy democrats, we as a collective group swallowed hook line and sinker the whole Camelot vibe. Anyway, my point I should get to is I sympathize with immigrants, I can understand their plight as my mother told me about her mother working as a maid for a rich family in Padanarum, MA. Both of my Nan’s were working women. They had to, to support the family.
I visited Ireland in 2006, and I thank God, my Nana had enough gumption at 18 years old to get on steamship and come to America, otherwise I suspect, I’d be a barmaid at the local pub with 10 children. (nothing wrong with that, if that’s your thing)
I don’t fault anyone that wants to come to the US. This is the land of opportunity. God Bless them all. This might not be on topic. Okay not to post. No hard feelings.
Ah! I remember well the elbow-to-elbow feast at Bunratty Castle. Singing and sweating, and one of Ireland’s many beautiful ancient cemeteries across the street.
But no knives with dinner, they emphatically gave is daggers. Daggers all around to stab your meat – and the mead was terrible.
I recall narrowly escaping death many times as our driver entered the traffic circles going the wrong way.
A favorite song cover from a favorite singer – From Clare to Here by Nanci Griffith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rchmQkRNr4k
Part of my ancestry is Irish, from Carlow and Laois, to where family members have made the pilgrimage. The Irish ancestors came to America just after the famine. I think of them being starved, but with someplace to go, when I read about Gaza.
I am grateful for Marcy’s Irish reaction reference to Biden and Gaza and for her observation about how the far right here would return us in America to times of Irish past. Thanks!
I also have deep roots in Carlow. “From Clare to Here” is indeed a great song and Nanci Griffith performs it beautifully.
Just wanted to note that it was written by the great English songwriter Ralph McTell, whose version is also worth a listen.
A decade ago, I traveled a lot for work, and our company had offices outside Dublin (favorable IP law). When I flew Aer Lingus to Paris, the Irish crew took up a collection for people starving someplace in Africa. While I don’t remember the specific cause, I remember thinking that the legacy of the potato famine had created empathy for others and a willingness to act in the face of inequality. It impressed me deeply.
Went to Ireland for the first time last November. Short visit, stayed in Dublin. The diversity was astoundingly broad and deep. Loved it. The National Museum of Archeology was stupendous.
“exacerbate centuries-old manufactured racism and with it fear”
Just my opinion, the world has changed dramatically because of a larger population. The powers that be have always targeted the younger generations to control the vote, thereby $. What’s interesting in this new, not your mothers world is how much the construct of popular music has changed. There are hundreds of known DJ’s spinning their take on a wide variety of styles of music. The DJ’s have songs & some sing that are just as popular as the pop singers & bands. There are numerous huge music festivals, all year long in warmer climates.
The younger generations are very social & go out on the town in droves. They went to school & are friends with people of color. The reason I mention all this is to explain my opinion about the music festival of peace, the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, where on Oct 7, 2024, almost one for every day in the year, 364 people, were viciously murdered, some mutilated, a good group of raped with numerous injured, was.
There isn’t a Gaza solution problem IMO. Sorry, I see this for what it is, another assault to control the mentality, of the younger generations. How numerous? I read the “Times of Israel” every day. I feel honored to read the equivalent of obituaries and their youthful outlook in goodness. Overwhelmed, it took days & days to find the bodies.
The problem we have now is how to awaken i.e. reverse this mind field of young peoples mental paralysis? Democrats must have the younger gens to win. They also must not have crossover votes. If I had the ability, I’d have a group of people on the roads to the festivals with signs & some flags. One of; Are You, Me Too? On a Beverly Hills main thoroughfare, park, they have a display of flags. What caught my eye is the display of other nations flags amongst the Israeli flags.
I’m Thankful to the good God we have an Irish heritage fighter as President. I think he’s doing a god damned good job. To hell with the MAGAt swarm.
P.S. Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Fintan O’Toole’s history/memoir “We Don’t Know Ourselves” of Ireland since the 1950s is tremendous. He’s a gifted writer and the book is great reading.
Until I read it, I really hadn’t grasped how pervasively oppressive the religious and conservative control of Irish government and life was in the 1950s and how much it was threatening the existence of the country. There were serious concerns that the population would collapse due to emigration. The economy was getting increasingly stagnant, and the education sytem was fossilized. Albania had TV before Ireland did.
Women in particular led the charge in the early 1970s as they demanded an end to repressive laws including, but not limited to reproductive health. Parents finally realized they didn’t have to tolerate an education system and church stocked with child abusers, predators, and sadists.
And it’s worth noting that the modernization continued despite the cyclical violence that lasted into the 1990s. Irish people had reasons to sink into surrender and self pity, but they didn’t. The church hierarchy and political traditionalists never stopped fighting back, but the country is seeing the benefits of people moving forward for over 60 years now.
My spouse and I listened to it together as we painted. He described knowing about half of it all, but not the other half (obviously, he left for decades).
This is similar: a story of women caught up as, basically, slaves of Opus Dei, a number of them Irish.
https://www.ft.com/content/53bbc8a8-1c5b-4c6e-8d50-8b7c00ffa5f8
One of the interesting points O’Toole made was that everyone knew the child abuse, sadism, and predatory behavior was pervasive in the church, many were victims in some way, but nobody felt like they could talk about it.
He was one of the reporters to cover the issue in a direct, unflinching way, and he’s written about the many people who told him about how much they suffered for decades because they had nowhere to go with their stories.
One of the grosser things about the press coverage of the E. Jean Carroll verdicts is how many outlets have refused to state what Carroll has repeatedly wanted public after she won – that Trump is a rapist.
The NY Times recently ran a long article about Trump opening himself to another defamation suit which pointedly avoided saying what the heart of the matter was. A casual reader could be excused for not knowing what out of the millions of awful things Trump has said this was even about, or what the merits were.
AG Sulzberger’s vision of “non-advocacy” is the opposite of what O’Toole’s journalism was about. The Times is helping to shut down victims’ voices, even after they’ve won in court.
This was just being discussed on DU. An archived/non-paywalled link is https://archive.li/96o0G.
I commented: Amazing how the House Speaker looks like Josemara Escriv
Growing up in Ireland in the 1980s, the Catholic Church was still far too powerful even then.
Last night on PBS we watched The Burren: Heart of Stone. Scenery was breathtakingly beautiful.
My father’s grandparents came to U.S. from Ireland. He visited Ireland in the late 1970s and loved it. He was a Repub for years but left the party after G.W. Bush. If he were alive he would be shocked at what MAGA has done to the party.
There’s a saying that everyone’s Irish on St. Paddy’s Day. It’s not a way to sell cards and green clothes, or bangers ‘n mash and green beer. At least not exclusively. It’s a way to say that, in America, we’re all immigrants from somewhere, hoping to find a place where we are now, without having to pick up, leave, and start over again.
Marcy makes an elegant point. That hope has often been dashed by the powers that be, who have long pitted one immigrant group against the next, in order to dominate and keep them impoverished, and themselves wealthy and in control. Trump and the Republicans have just freshened up an old trick. Divide, conquer, and distract. The Brits were good at it. The attitude survives in many of their former colonies. But it’s not an Anglo-Saxon monopoly.
Employment ads that read, “No … need apply,” and signs at the entrance to public parks that said, “No dogs or … allowed” were, in effect, fill-in-the-blank forms that targeted the most recent immigrant or new religion of the day: German, Irish, Italian, Slav, Chinese, Catholic, Jew. They were among the visible forms of derision and discrimination, like signs for separate, but not equal, water fountains.
We can be better than that, but it’s an aspiration, not an accomplishment, and it can slip away like the sand in a storm on a Massachusetts beachfront.
So, Marcy, I guess this was back before you were even a twinkle in anyone’s eye:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiKvYBbppZk
Charles Mingus featuring Eric Dolphy, “When irish eyes are smiling”, live in New York, 1964
Denise Olvier Velez does a deep dive into Black music every Sunday at Dailykos. She also posted this tune as part of a piece on the music of “Finian’s Rainbow” and how it has been interpreted by great musicians.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/17/2229594/-Black-Music-Sunday-A-St-Patrick-s-Day-celebration-of-Finian-s-Rainbow
The moderators have criticized me for including a link to Dkos before as it’s not an edited source so I will include the notice on every contribution by community members there: “This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.”
I repeat: “This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.” Just to be sure.
So take it with a grain of salt as it’s not a “reputable” source like, um, the NYTimes.
My contribution to the music discussion there may be of interest here as well. A short video of Irish dance meeting Ugandan drums at https://twitter.com/IEAmbUganda/status/1767918378407084261
May I not have broken any of the unspoken rules that seem to govern these conversations. If I have, I apologize for my error(s).
Oh my, I thought I knew all the late Mingus/Dolphy/Byard stuff before Dolphy died, just a couple months after this date, in June of ’64. Thanks!
If it’s music of the topic of the day you’re wanting you’re sure to enjoy this tune, from some fine artists recommended to me by the landlord of a shebeen I’ve been partial to for a number of years now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=849FkMduwU0
Friend sent a cartoon depicting St Patrick seated with a glass of wine across from his blind date, Medussa, who reaches her hand to her now bald head. “Sorry,” says St Pat.
Excellent
My great grandparents emigrated from Belfast in the late 1800’s, prior to the partition. Although we are technically Irish, I’ve always felt like a mutt when I mention where our roots were. The popularity of St. Patrick’s Day increases the divide because of our non-Catholic background.
It isn’t easy to turn orange blood green.
Interesting. My great-grandfather brought his family (including my grandfather) to Canada in 1894. They were Ulster Scot Dissenters (Presbyterian) from the Lower Ards – about 20 miles east of Belfast. That part of Ulster was not part of the Elizabethan Plantation, having been purchased from Conn O’Neill by a couple of Scots. My lot certainly thought of themselves as Irish – my grandfather’s billy club is adorned with shamrocks and my great-uncles grave marker in Victoria bears the harp and shamrock “logo” from the flag of the United Irishmen of the 1798 Rebellion.
Presbyterians in Down and Antrim played a big part in that theatre of The ’98. In spite of the losses and English suppression, sympathy for the rebels obviously remained strong, Wars and Troubles put paid to that in the 20th century.
Guy Beiner has written at length about the process of apparent “forgetting” in the face of suppression and folk memories diverging from the official narrative. One sample is “Severed Heads and Floggings The Undermining of Oblivion in Ulster in the Aftermath of 1798” I can’t get the link to reproduce here, but a search will find it on Research Gate. There is a ongoing renewal of sorts – “The Ghost Limb: Alternative
Protestants and the Spirit of 1798” by Claire Mitchell available on Amazon and the Sinn Féin Online Shop.
I’m an Irish citizen, jus sanguinis, but I wouldn’t call myself an Irishman either.
I have to say that drinking pub-pulled Guinness, less than 24-hours old, is a delight, as is a half ‘n half with Harp.
Michigan connection here and a funny story. So a few years ago I stopped in for a rare visit to the Conklin MI Irish theme bar on a Saturday afternoon, almost nobody there. Ordered a burger and a beer. On the wall was a hurling stick so I chatted up bartender about a story of an early 1970’s Wide World of Sports airing of the All Ireland Championship. Some star player who I recall was Alec Murphey, but maybe not, had scored many points and his team was going to win. The other team assaulted and bloodied him near the very end of the game. It was shocking and really criminal, whaling on him with their sticks, or is it bats.
So I’m telling the tale and I said I thought the teams were Limerick and Leeds. OMG! Leeds is an English city and suddenly this odd little bar near Grand Rapids was a Republican hotbed. He didn’t go off but he was visibly upset I put a hurling team in England.
The Irish have sold the bar but they had the parade today. Too cold for me. Limerick has won 4 or 5 straight championships.
End of day deep discounts on green bagels to be had at Broadway Bagels on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
A splendid piece Marcy.
.After the Brexit debacle I thought of acquiring Irish citizenship (ancestor from Ballymoney, I know it’s in the North but it does count).
Turns out I missed by a generation as it was my great-grandmother who came to the West of Scotland where I grew up.
You are not quite fair to Irish roads, it was not just the motorways. The journey from Galway to Clifden went from four to two hours in the 90s (yes, EU money).
I passed by your town last autumn but it was on the night of one of the named storms and it was VERY wet. The rest of the trip was wonderful and it was great to be spending Euros again, as I was in Ireland on the day the Euro started.The Guinness was good too, but mixing it with Harp!!!!!
Half ‘n half, as you know, or Black and Tan, which carries connotations I would not choose to elicit in a pub in Ireland. Harp works well for me, it’s also made by Guinness, but Bass, an ale not a lager, was more traditional for the lower half.
Bass was, because Frankenstein conglomerate “Anheuser-Busch InBev Salisbury” discontinued it. It’s hell to be a craft beer without an “internal champion” inside a behemoth conglomerate. Molson Coors, another modern conglomerate doing business under old names, apparently acquired the name, but lord knows what’s in the bottle.
Back in NJ during the ’70s, we’d mix Guinness with Budweiser to make the Irish-American concoction we called “Muds & Buds.”
I must add my favorite Irish bard Phil Lynott to the conversation, a proud Irishman ’til the end…
“Down from the glen came the marching men
With their shields and their swords
To fight the fight they believed to be right
Overthrow the overlords…”
(From the song “Emerald” off the Thin Lizzy album “Roisin Dubh (Black Rose)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi74n-LCW3o
I visited Ireland for the first time several years before Covid hit. I’m descended from a line of Fitzgeralds, related to JFK if you go back far enough, but my Fitzgerald ancestor who departed Ireland left Ireland for the North American colonies 250 years ago. If I ever felt compelled to leave the US, it would be a coin flip between Ireland and Oz as to where I would go.
An interesting book that discusses Irish (and other) immigrants to the US is A Renegade History of the United States, by Thaddeus Russell.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/17/longing-for-home-letters-of-irish-emigrants-to-us-reveal-400-years-of-trials-and-triumphs
The IMIRCE project referenced in The Guardian is at https://imirce.universityofgalway.ie/p/ms?pageTitle=Home+-+University+of+Galway+Digital+Collections
but it doesn’t seem to have a full readable collection of all the letters, yet.
The full book may be available via sites such as:
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3024592M/Emigrants_and_exiles
Fascinating history.
Here’s a story with some Irish-Americans:
In the 20+ years I worked in the public library system here, there were 5 rotations of leadership. And, perhaps due to my Irish heritage, I managed to get on the wrong side of most of them.
Once, I went to the office of one of them and asked if I might have 5 minutes to talk. But I was brusquely denied. Subsequently, several of my coworkers confided in me that this person never spoke to them in the elevator, or even visually acknowledged them. They thought it might be because they were black.
Some years after we retired, we both were invited to the same very small social event. When she entered, she looked directly at me but refused to say hello. Later, in the course of conversation, I asked if her name was Irish. She became quite animated in denying that it was. So, I suggested that she might be surprised if she researched it.
Then the hostess moved the conversation on to inquire about another social event I had attended. It was a private event in an intimate setting that very dear friends (one with Irish heritage) had invited me to. Barack Obama and John Kerry were also there.
As the luck of the Irish would have it, I was awkwardly strolling around among other guests when I became aware that I was blocking a path on which someone was rapidly approaching. I looked up to see who it was and there was POTUS.
The only thing I could think to do was to stick my hand out to shake his and thank him. We had all just been outside on a friggin cold night and his hand was like ice. I almost tried to warm it with my other hand but thought that probably wasn’t a good idea.
So, I told him I was going to miss him and I also asked him to tell Michelle that she had made us so proud. He bent down toward me and said, “I will.” He was so close that I noticed that he had a few freckles. Then he was gone. And not long after that, he was really gone.
But the woman at the small party where I was relaying this story just couldn’t contain herself. She had to loudly complain about the traffic being blocked by that event, and claimed her car couldn’t get through. Two of the other guests snickered at her. Like Joe Biden says, we notice those snickers…
Great post. And comments.
I’d like to thank Ireland for Muireann Bradley, who I just discovered a few nights ago.
1920’s Mississippi blues. Notes as crisp as Minnesota’s Leo Kottke played back in the day, if not yet as fast or wide ranging.
It’s early for her. 17 years old.
Examples:
singing, still a kid’s voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mw8lTNq440
acoustic, the crispness shines here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-Vz4YPI1OA
Good call! I’ve been listening to Muireann Bradley for a few months now.
Her voice is absolutely wonderful, and her fingerpicking skills are razor-sharp. What a magnificently talented young lassie!
Let’s not forget the Dubliners, Chieftains, and the more eclectic, Nightnoise.
Or Flogging Molly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_oUS5dnjc8
They’re American, but quite a good Celtic-Punk band.
I was extremely pleased to see the Taoiseach take Biden on head to head about Gaza. I have also seen a couple of postings on IG recently that gave me hope . One was a group of people in an Irish graveyard with a message for President Biden, pushing him to call for a ceasefire and to discontinue providing weaponry to Israel.
There is another IG post with a beautiful sculpture of eagle feathers standing in a circle, probably 15 feet high and artfully lit, which commemorates the 1847 donation by the Native American Choctaw People to Irish famine relief during the Great Hunger. The Choctaws, who had only recently survived the “trail of tears and death” to what is now Oklahoma, took up a donation and collected over $5,000 (in today’s money) to support the Irish during the Potato Famine.
We shouldn’t need to be encouraged to do the right thing.
We all need encouragement to do the right thing. It’s the hardest thing most of us will ever do.
St. Patrick’s Day, like a plethora of other special days for emigrants across America, is an expression of community, of shared and familiar food and memories, and of hope that the place they were now in, after a painful and dangerous emigration, would be a place in which they could stay and prosper.
It’s never been easy, the journey always starts at the bottom. So, having made it to another St. Paddy’s day is a good reason to celebrate.
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/03/irish-were-unwanted-immigrants-too
Celebrating tonight with half a shot of Jameson’s in my [decaf] green tea.
(Most of my Irish were Quakers from the north. As I tend to look at it, an excellent place to be a Quaker *from*, thought they were 18th-century immigrants. (I can, however, claim both Dermot and the Earl, if I go back a few more centuries.)
I live on the Clare side of the river in Limerick. It used to be Clare! But then a bunch of merchants colonized it building big mansions, it became safer to add bridges, and so now it’s Limerick.
But in the neighborhood I live in, a number of those early merchant mansions were owned by Quakers. I had never realized there were Quakers in Ireland. But there they were, making a killing off of imports!
Thank you for the trip down memory lane. 41 years since I had a long adventure in Tralee, Moher’s Cliffs and Dublin. Personnel carriers buzzed around the Northern border of Sligo. Not Mom’s Ireland anymore, indeed.
For some unknown reason I’d waited, but eventually applied for and granted Irish citizenship because of my grandfather’s birth in Corktown. This is my first Paddy’s day as a real Irishman. It’s a good feeling and the EU membership ain’t bad either.
I’ll return next summer and observe the changes you’ve mentioned and discover any new ones that arrive.
Thanks, Marcie
Congrats! Did they make you do a naturalization ceremony? They added some requirements since I signed up.
I love your St. Patrick’s Day note, and each of the many comments. Thank you. I grew up an “Irish Catholic” in the 50’s San Francisco Bay Area believing almost all my ancestors were from the Old Sod. 65 years later I retired, moved to England and became interested in Ancestry.com to learn that within 4 generations only my “German Great Great Grandmother” was Irish born. And that most every other ancestor was English or Welsh. This the guy who grew up listening to Tommy Makem and the Clancy Bros. I’m my own enemy! This realization confirms in me your fundamental tenant: that one’s race, tribe, what have you, is largely if not entirely manufactured and learned. We do indeed get to (and must!) choose who we love, who we are. Cheers!
What you learned is that it’s very easy for colonizer/occupier to obliterate and erase the original culture it has overtaken, or co-opt it in order to hide.
Think about what you’ve said — one’s race, tribe, what have you, is largely if not entirely manufactured and learned — and how that can be an excuse for removing a minority culture’s language from schools, or for taking possession of children and forcing them into dominant culture schools to un-manufacture and relearn.
And that’s before capitalism action on cultures, stripping away what’s real and replacing it with manufactured consumption opportunities.
Conqueror’s lament, applied to more than unruly 13th century Scots: “If we can’t get them out, we’ll breed them out.”
Thank you, Ms. Wheeler, for sharing your Irish background and experiences with us, We never really know a person until we understand their childhood and the experiences that shape them as a human being. My wife and I intend to go on an extended vacation there next year, after she retires even though I do not have a drop of Irish blood in me. I have always fancied Ireland as a magical place. Quick note regarding Gaza – 100% agree. The U.S. has leverage over Israel because of Iron Dome and Biden should use that leverage! Can you imagine the carnage if Trump had been president when October 7th occurred? A U.S. president could have been complicit in carpet-bombing a civilian population. Thanks again for the wonderful stories about Ireland!
Iron Dome was invented by and initially funded by the Israeli defense industry. The technology is shared with the US and the US now supplies interceptors. If you understandably want to apply leverage against Israel, there are better choices than a shared hi-tech defense system used to protect civilians.
Thank you for your story. “How the Irish Saved Civilization” is the story of St. Patrick and Ireland. It is one of my top reads ever. If you have not read it, I recommend it. On my short list of books that provide a lot of food for thought.
The 1916 Irish ProclaEverytimemation (Declaration of Independence) cites the support of it’s exiled children in America.
I get a sinking feeling everytime I see an Irish (or Italian) name prominent in the trump cult. The GOP successfully used race as a wedge to separate hyphenated Catholics from the their traditional Democratic roots, that coupled with Dixiecrats fused into trump’s malignant force. These Catholics forget that they were the target of last century’s Know-Nothings. trump’s current vicious xenophobes focus on brown & black immigrants, it’s an easier, more focused great hate.
Irish national sports matches with British teams still get the juices flowing. The Irish have probably mastered forgiving but certainly not the forgetting part. I can only imagine what future relations will be like between Ukrainians and Russians as Russia continues it’s 2 years+ criminal war on Ukrainian people (after planned mass starvation in 1920’s). (At least Britain avoided large scale military attacks of Irish civilians except for the shelling of Dublin).
If Russia forces Ukraine back into USSR Lite at bayonet point it will lead to mayhem forever, the seeds of self determination have been too deeply planted.
Euro talk of boots on the ground are interesting, Poland feels threatened and is armed up and may feel compelled to act. “Hang together or hang seperately” time.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the Irish pressed Biden over Gaza as they have their own bitter history of oppression by colonists.
Lovely writing, Marcy. Thank you!
Joyce Carol Oates was writing about her Irish heritage on her Twitter today, “Though the Irish side of my grandmother’s family caused much heartbreak as soon as I first visited Ireland years ago I felt an immediate emotional kinship there— now, just to hear an Irish accent is overwhelming. Who can comprehend such things?”
For my part I am one generation out of the piney woods of Southwest Georgia on my mother’s side. I am likely to put my feet on the table if I forget myself, and I have a better understanding of the depth of racism is in America, for sure, with this background, because the corner where Alabama, Georgia and Florida meet I think is the Southernest of all the South in terms of who’s great grandfathers would have been out with an axe handle and whose great great great grandfathers were overseers. My own great great great grandfather was an overseer on a Dupont plantation they say, which is how my family got the land that got passed down and divided until in the branch of my family for my grandfather and his brothers eked out the Depression on sixty acres each.
Methodism is the only thing that might have saved the white people in this part of America from total barbarity. In my family we always told ourselves we were Scottish and English, but, jeez, I learned from a family member who did the genetic the four or five families comingling for a half dozen generations down there are Irish. That’s where I get my poetry from. Hell yeah!!! I’m half Irish. And half cajun. There you go. My wife and kids are direct descendants of Harry Houdini’s brother which is braggable.
Thank you, wetzel, for another wonderful story!
I’ve enjoyed your references to Ireland in the past. This one makes be long for a home outside of the US. I even started looking at descendent citizenship in Italy.
My two small takeaways are:
I was thrilled that you used Wegmans as a basis for food markets. Being in Upstate NY, we live and breathe Wegmans, and enjoy hearing the stories when others get a Wegmans in their city.
I did some business travel to Ireland about a decade ago. I had to make my own travel arrangements, even though I didn’t know too much about the country (except that English is usually understood). I was in a meeting in Monahan and mentioned I had a visit to make in Limerick the next day. I had a rental car and it looked like about a 6-hour drive to me. My client looked at me and said it would take closer to 10 hours since there are no freeways going that way. He wound up making me a reservation on RyanAir that night and all was well, but even now, I think of myself driving back-roads for 10 hours in the dark, with only a TomTom to guide me. Oh, and driving on the left side of the road with a standard shift car.
Thanks for the lovely post.
Years ago i wandered into a faux Irish Pub in Manotick , Ontario. I got a pint and listened to the Irish music. They played the Pogues, Van Morrison ans U2 on one tape. I got another Guiness and asked the barmanif many people got the joke. Not many he said.
Driving into New Orleans on I-10 from the west, just after crossing the Jefferson/Orleans parish line, you will be elevated but still driving through a large Irish graveyard few know about. To your left is a very large grassy neutral ground (median) that extends to the yacht harbor and Lake Ponchatrain which is the rest of the Irish graveyard. There is no list of names, nor does anyone know how many were buried. This site was the New Basin Canal which was filled in by 1950s. It was dug mostly through a swamp entirely by hand by Irish immigrants. Yellow fever, cholera, malaria and other diseases were rampant among the laborers. Slaves were not used because they had market value so were too valuable. The Irish were disposable. It seems at least 8000, and some estimates as high as 30,000, died during the project, 1832 – 1838. They are buried in the walls or under the adjacent shell access road of the now filled in canal.
The Irish immigrant diggers disembarked and settled into an area that is known as the Irish Channel in uptown New Orleans.
Ironically it was earlier Irish immigrants, who had become prosperous businessmen, who led the company that built, and were major financiers for, the project.
It wasn’t until 1990 that a small memorial was erected on the neutral ground near the yacht harbor. Now a small memorial park also exists on the neutral ground.
Niece has a lot of Irish on her tree – many around Portsmouth, VA, and some died in the 1855 yellow fever epidemic.
I’m a 5th generation Irish-American, originally from Philadelphia. As best I can figure out my earliest ancestors came to Philadelphia in the 1850s. Philadelphia in the 1840s and ‘50s was not terribly welcoming to the Irish and their Catholicism. That’s a fairly common story for the times. They were able to get past whatever difficulties they initially faced and made decent lives for themselves. Sadly I find a number of members of my extended family have forgotten that our ancestors were once the outsiders and feel all too free to say some pretty vile things about immigrants today. I’ve never felt that way and have spent a decent chunk of my career as an attorney trying to help immigrants stay in this country.
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In Chicago we dye our river green for St. Patrick’s day, with a parade to follow. We were out for the river dye along with thousands of German Irish Americans, Italian Irish Americans, Black Irish Americans, Thai Irish Americans, Pakistani Irish Americans and even a few, like me, Irish Americans. I heard some people speaking Polish I’m pretty sure, and heard a bunch of other languages I couldn’t recognize. Everyone was wearing green somethings, from oversized overalls and hats to springy shamrocks on hair thingies.
In Chicago, we love to celebrate the holidays and special days of our fellow citizens. I’m looking forward to being an Irish Black American on Juneteenth!
So weird, Marcy, as your Twitter account picture has you posing in an elementary school pic with the background and coloring the same as one of mine, wearing what looks to be a handsown shirt that is made from the same fabric my mom made a handsown sKirt. The only thing different is you are not wearing a silver chain with large peace sign ‘pendant’ (at least as far as I can tell in that tiny pic). I think you look a grade younger — for me it was 2nd or 3rd grade.
And, you’ve posted before about living in Ireland permanently now, but I don’t recall you mentioning this girlhood 40-year-old trip. I LIVED in Ireland 40 years ago — but in the East, County Kildare — for a full year as a college sophmore 1985 -1986, well before the highways or creation of tech jobs, when 50 percent of working age men were on the dole. I was too poor to reflect on grocery store sizes, but can never forget the bakery fresh bread sold in waxy paper that emerged from the sweaty handled plastic grocery bag after my from my 2-mile walk home from the grocer with oil stains on the outer layer of the paper — likely a loaf that had been hand-kneeded and baked that morning.
I’ll look through my pictures of trips I made west, to see if I can, by random chance, spot a picture (in the background) of your pub — a favorite backdrop to pose in front of along with my Gen X peers. Feel free to further describe the roof or other features (freestanding or nestled among a few other establishments?).
Given your hints about your age above, I can infer I guessed wrong that you were in the same elementary school as me, but a grade younger, and, of course, reading from the coveted ‘highest level’ purple books for advanced new readers, while ‘genius’ me — inexplicably — could never progress beyond the green series, 4 levels down.
Prior to engaging with this blog, I always wondered if anyone on planet earth could truly read “the 10 books you must read in the month of February” that Vanity Fair (Esquire?) recommends each month — a feat to me that seemed UNFATHOMABLE. (10 books a YEAR would be a huge achievement for me!) But now I think those purple-level-reading-first graders who begged to be called on to read aloud (show off!) during Shared Reading Day with the 2nd graders are probably capable of this.
While I now know I’ve mis-aged you, Marcy, and must drop this false memory, I’m choosing to keep you in this purple group. THIS is because your writings on this blog have made me realize why God created those exceptional, inference-drawing, 1st grade, show-off, purple readers: our society — our democracy — needs to learn the observations only the purples can make, and that you, Marcy, do make and do publish.
Thanks for posting this. It’s fun to reflect on experiences that shape us and any commonalities we have among us. You have allowed me to stop resenting those purple readers, and instead come to value them and their gifts, while still hating the color green.
The humanity of this connectedness and the personal thoughts and emotions they arouse, our society should contemplate more.
Married Irish, changed my name, learned All the lyrics to the Unicorn song, loved and laughed in a strong Canada/Irish family and just finished the left-over Shepherd’s pie & Guinness from yesterday while I read this post. Hope it’s not too late to post my thanks and deep appreciation for your insights, thoughts and all yer lovely charts, dear Marcy. :)
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