There wasn’t much festivity at our house this year. We had the traditional and very delicious corned beef and cabbage and I wore my County Sligo sweatshirt but that was about it. At the last minute, I thought to try and get the kids some greenery to wear. By the time I got around to going to the store, though, all of it was gone. All of it was probably gone the first week of March. Anyway, the kids didn’t wear green today – unless it was on their underwear.
Well, I thought to myself, we are American. I don’t think we’re hyphenated Americans anymore. Before I got married, I was very much an Irish American. My grandparents came to the United States from County Sligo sometime before WWI. The whole family could sing. Just about the whole family drank, which is not something I’m particularly proud of. We always had corned beef and cabbage for dinner and my father always wanted a toast. We’d click our glasses and he would try to say “Slainte.”
When I was 15, I happened to see the Scanlon family crest. It was really cool looking, with fierce looking anibeasts on the shield. I think they were crowned lions but it’s been a long time. Anyway, I made a template and used it as a design for my hooked rug project at school. I had the most fun working on it!
My father fell in love with it and decided he’d like to have a beach towel with the family crest. When it was shipped and he opened it, though, he was majorly pissed off. Instead of white and blue, it was something like orange and blue. He was madder than I’d ever seen. I asked my mother about it and she told me that orange was an English color, not an Irish color.
Huh?
So I did a bit of reading. I knew my family was mad at the English for some reason and that’s why they knew lots and lots of war songs. I read up on some Irish history and that’s when I got it. I especially got it when I read Leon Uris’ Trinity. I’d never heard of “the famine” before and boy did I get some education! Not only were the English gentry grabbing up the land, they also had a hand in the massive starvation during the years of “the blight”.
Irish families lived in these little cottages on small bits of land owned by an English lord or something. They had to pay their taxes in stock and grain. So what did the Irish people eat? Potatoes. Potatoes grew very well and could be prepared lots of different ways. Potatoes were filling although a man had to eat lotsa pounds to have the energy to go out and plow the fields.
One year, though, this nasty spore got into the potatoes and they all went bad. These spores could travel on the air from farm to farm so the destruction was wide spread. The farmers didn’t have anything to fall back on and now their staple was black mush. I read that the English could have put a moratorium on collecting stock and grain to pay taxes … but they didn’t. While all that stuff was shipped to England, the people in Ireland starved. Thousands of people died. So many thousands emigrated to the U.S. to escape the catastrophe left behind in Ireland.
My relatives did not emigrate during the Famine and I often wondered why. Well, it turns out that the landlord of Sligo County didn’t collect rents and taxes. He let the people keep the cows and the pigs and the grain so they could eat. Eventually the landlord was fined and maybe even thrown into jail. By then, I am guessing the worst of the plague was over. I felt kinda good knowing that some of these landlords had a conscience and I was glad to know Sligo’s was one of them.
Ireland was a predominantly Catholic country and the English landlords and gentry belonged to the Church of England. Most of the English settled in Northern Ireland but they controlled the whole country. The Irish natives just wanted to be free and to govern their own country, especially since the Protestants were so down on the Catholics.
So there were uprisings to try and get free of the British and to commit violence on the other religion. All in the name of God, I’m sure. Irish men killed during the uprisings became martyrs to the cause. The violence just kept on and on. In 1949, most of Ireland finally became independent of Great Britain. The British still held the counties in Northern Ireland and they do to this day. Some years are bloodier than others.
My aunts and uncles know the war songs. They are scary songs, full of blood and death. But they never learned the fun Irish songs or the ballads. I was shocked when I found myself teaching them words to “Molly Malone”. I had several albums of Irish folk songs and none were war songs. I was glad to teach them the fun songs because the others were so darn depressing.
Where did St. Patrick’s Day come from? There was a young man taken into slavery back in the 400s A.D. He escaped and made his way to France. He became a priest and renamed himself Patrick. When he was done with his training, he went back to Ireland to convert the pagans to Christianity. Yeah, we started out as pagans! Patrick went around the country building monasteries, churches and converting people. He died on … March 17.
Green is a symbol of St. Patrick’s Day because the color is associated with spring, new life. The shamrock is a symbol because of the 3 leaves. St. Patrick used them to demonstrate the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Ghost. The three become one entity/shamrock. A 4 leaf clover is very rare and that’s why it’s considered lucky.
Leprechauns – the little people – are supposed to be from a more ancient Irish race, one that was forced into hiding when the island was conquered by invaders.
Leprechauns aren’t the only little people, but they are the best known. The others live under fairy mounds. I’m not sure where the leprechauns live but they seem to interact with people more because they supposedly hoard gold. If people catch a leprechaun they can try to get the gold for themselves. Maybe that’s why the little people (2-3 feet tall with proportioned bodies) are so grumpy and anti-social.
Someday I want to visit Ireland. I don’t drink now but I’d like to visit the pubs and listen to the music. I still have Irish cousins. I’d like to look them up and learn as much as I can about Ireland. I fantasize sometimes about retiring there. It’s a nice dream to have.