Michael Scanlon, an English lecturer, is the son of Irish emigrants and grew up in the Bronx, New York. Now aged 65, he has published a book on his life growing up in Irish America. “Rolling Up the Rug: An American-Irish Story” is available on Amazon.

This is the first chapter of his tale:

The fall of 1961. I am with my father. He has returned to his homeland for the first time after 35 years in America. The two of us stand silently under a sullen Irish sky in the high, dry grass among the fallen stones of the old country farmhouse in County Sligo where he was born and raised. He is quiet for a long time. As he leads me down a deserted dirt road, he shakes his head slowly, "You see that crossroads, Mick?” He points, “Oh, the life that used to be had there of a Sunday morning after Mass, the boys and girls, the laughter, the flipping of coins, and the gambling, and my own father among them. Those good times — all gone."

Good times — but not good enough to keep my father from leaving the land of his birth. In 1928, a year before the depression, at age 22, he boarded the USS California at the port of County Derry and landed in New York City where he spent the rest of his life. The woman he married, my mother, Mamie Gallagher, had arrived in New York one year before him. At age 16, she was the oldest of five children when she left her family's small farm in County Leitrim. She said good-bye forever. She never saw her parents again.

My father was an Irish fiddler. My mother sang songs in a lilting, operatic voice. They were the life of every gathering, and they threw many a party themselves. When I think back to my parents and the apartment where they raised my brother, sister and me all those years ago, I think first about the parties.

A Saturday morning in the early 1950s. Mom and Pop begin moving the couch, chairs and tables from the living room into the kids’ bedroom. Getting down on their knees in the living room, they begin the ritual that truly signals a night of music and dancing: rolling up the rug. With grunts and pushes and lots of, "Easy does it there!" they hoist the big well-worn, maroon patterned rug and banish it to the bedroom for the night. They then rim the bare living room with bridge chairs rented for the occasion — and the room transforms into a tiny dance hall.

Later, my mother shops for a big ham, cold cuts, potato and macaroni salads and coleslaw from the German delicatessen. At the Jewish bakery, she buys several loaves of seeded rye bread, marble cake, and macaroon cookies. The local beer distributor delivers a keg of beer that is hauled up the five flights of stairs and set up on its side in the kitchen sink with a spigot attached for the pouring. Bottles of Four Roses and Canadian Club whiskey stand ready on the kitchen table to be mixed later with ginger ale for "high balls."

By evening the men and women arrive decked out in their best. Most of the Irish who lived in and around our neighborhood of Highbridge had come to America in the 1920’s in a wave of immigration after Ireland gained independence. Like, my mother and father, they were mostly from the farms in the west of Ireland from counties Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Clare, Leitrim, Donegal, Roscommon, Longford, Cavan, Cork, and Kerry.

The women come bustling into our little apartment all perfumed, powdered and corseted into dresses dotted with rhinestones. The men in starched white shirts with wide ties tightly knotted, their faces shiny, clean-shaven and smiling. Their big, ham-fisted-laboring-man-hands extend in greeting, often crushing a dollar bill into the little hand of the boy who carries their coats and fedoras off to the bedroom.

My Uncle John, the bartender at Leo Sullivan's Saloon, serves the drinks and before long my father, with his red and yellow bow tie, takes his seat next to Mike Ryan, the accordionist, and they strike up the first dance of the evening. It is always the same lilting melody: "The Stack of Barley" — the original Irish tune that gave birth to America's "Turkey in the Straw." At once, men and women are up on the little-improvised dance floor swinging each other, laughing, dancing and whooping. They stomp the bare floor of our little living room while others stand around clapping their hands, tapping their feet, shouting encouragement. My father's elbow gyrates madly on the fiddle, his left foot tapping the floor to the driving rhythm of the music. Highland flings lead into an Irish hopped-up version of the "Verse of Vienna," followed by set dances and old time waltzes. And one special night, as the fiddle and accordion music floats out our window onto the steamy summer night air, my Aunt Margaret – in a pink satin dress, her curly blond hair piled high on her head – leads the entire crowd around every room of the apartment in a Conga line that goes on forever.

Later in the evening, they settle down to sing. Happily crammed together into our little Bronx apartment, these country people – now transformed into hard-working New Yorkers – begin to recall the quiet beauties of the land they left behind. They sing of the valleys, streams, and meadows of their youth:

Come by the hills to the land where fancy is free,

And stand where the peaks reach the sky

And the rocks meet the sea.

Then my mother sings:

Last night I had a pleasant dream,

I woke up with a smile.

I dreamt that I was home again

In dear old Erin's Isle.

For most of those people in the room, going home again to Ireland remained only a dream.

They sing funny songs too about Eliza's two big feet and of Paddy McGinty's Goat – famous for eating up all of Kate's "folderols" on her wedding night. And then, always towards the end, my mother and father sing "their" song together. She in her chair, her hands in her lap, a big, white smile on her face, him standing beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder, the roomful of friends in rapt attention, knowing well the song about to be sung:

When you and I were seventeen,

Life was but a dream

The world was just a field of green

And you my charming queen

Oh, do you recall

When love was all

And we were seventeen.

In the glow of such moments, my ten-year-old self wishes that nobody will go home, the lights will never go out, nothing will ever change, and nobody will ever die.

* “Rolling Up the Rug: An American-Irish Story” is available here.

** Originally published in February 2015. 

Imagine spending your entire life as an only child, then one day, 85 years later, finding out you had a brother.

Unbelievable? Well, this actually happened to Canadian Gerry Cooper and his United Kingdom-born brother Norman, now living in Florida.

Their incredible story will make your day. Eighty-five years apart gives new meaning to the term long-lost brothers.

The average life expectancy is only about 80 years. So, to begin with, Norman and Gerry both had to beat those odds to even make their meeting possible!

This might be even more incredible: despite literally a lifetime having gone apart, they felt an instant bond.

Reflecting on their first meeting, Gerry remarked “When it was time to go, we gave each other a big hug, and I could tell at that time, after 85 years, that we were brothers. And it’s been the most amazing feeling you can have in this world.”

When Gerry’s son, Ian, started researching on Ancestry, he simply wanted to find out more about a grandfather he’d never met.

He never imagined that those records would come to life in such a real, and life-changing, way.

Norman and Gerry’s experience may seem like one in a million, but we all have fascinating family stories waiting for us.

* There are many paths to finding your family story. Whichever way you choose—tracing your family generations back with a family tree or uncovering your ethnicity with AncestryDNA—Ancestry be here to help you. For more visit www.ancestry.com.

For over a century she was vilified as the woman whose actions burnt down the Windy City, left 300 dead and 100,000 homeless.

Catherine O’Leary was an Irish immigrant who was born some time in the 1820’s. Until the fateful events of the night of October 8, 1871 her life had passed without note and without the events of that night it’s likely not even her descendants would remember her today.

Chicago at that time was still a new city. Founded a mere 30 years earlier, it was reckoned to be the fastest growing city in the entire world. Most of it had been constructed in haste – and poorly at that – almost everything was made of wood and tightly packed together.

The summer of 1871 had been a scorcher and with winter approaching most of the city’s barns were packed with fuel and animal feed. Strong winds were rattling through the city and at around 9pm Daniel “Pegleg” Sullivan spotted flames dancing up and down the O’Leary family’s barn.

It took 20 minutes for fire engines to arrive and by then the flames had already engulfed the street and the strong winds were fanning the blaze towards the city's center at an alarming speed.

As the Great Fire spread the wind whipped it into a “fire whirl,” which is best described as a tornado of flames. The hopes of helpless residents that the Chicago River would act as a firebreak were cruelly dashed when the oil on the polluted waterway helped the flames to cross unhindered to the north side.

Prisoners were sprung from the local jail and the mayor sent pleading messages to nearby towns, begging them for urgent help.

Valiantly, the city’s firefighters continued to battle the gluttonous fire, but it was not until the evening of the 9th that the wildfire began to die down.

But it was days before the burning cinders had cooled to ashes and only then could local officials begin to survey the damage. In total, the fire had ripped through an area of the city four miles long and three quarters of a mile deep, leaving only scorched black ashes in its wake. An estimated $222 million ($4 billion) worth of property had been destroyed.

But the heartbreak and the damage were never going to deflect intrigue – even temporarily – as to who started the fire, and no sooner had panicked Chicagoans been raised from their beds did rumors begin to swirl about the origin of the blaze. It was not long before the finger of blame was pointed at Catherine O’Leary.

O’Leary, it was alleged, had been milking her cow in the barn when the animal had kicked over a lantern, engulfing the building in flames. Despite the distraught woman’s protests that she had been in bed the whole time, the rumor was believed by many and the event was famously depicted in cartoons.

O’Leary was in many ways the perfect scapegoat: she was poor and Irish – a much maligned social group at that time. So ingrained was anti-Irish prejudice at the time that many newspapers even reported that she had been passed out drunk when her barn caught fire.

Other theories are that “Pegleg” Sullivan caused the blaze himself and blamed the O’Learys to avoid the finger of suspicion being pointed at himself. In later years a local journalist admitted that the story had been fabricated and in 1942 a wealthy local business man confessed on his deathbed that the fire had broken out when he and a few teenage friends had been playing cards in the O’Leary barn.

O’Leary died – “heartbroken” and unexonerated” – in 1895 but her descendants never gave up the fight to clear her name.

126 years after the Great Fire of Chicago a number of O’Leary’s relatives – watched by curious journalists – gathered before the city’s Committee on Police and Fire to hear her officially cleared of all guilt.

Testifying alongside historians, her great-great-granddaughter Nancy Knight Connolly put across the family’s version of events that night. The panel concluded that actions of “Pegleg” Sullivan should have been further examined.

"We always knew that she was innocent," a thrilled Nancy Knight Connolly enthused afterwards. "But everybody else thought they did it. So now we'll be exonerated."

It was a case of justice delayed but ultimately not denied.

H/T: Irish Times/Chicago Tribune.

Following angry comments by the largest Irish American group, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and others the White House hurriedly issued the annual statement of respect and regard for all that the Irish have done for the United States.

The AOH protest followed IrishCentral's noting that there had been no proclamation. The AOH issued a statement from anti-defamation chairman Neil Cosgrove.

It stated, in part:

'For 26 years, American Presidents of both Parties have proclaimed March as “Irish American Heritage Month” and called upon “all Americans to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs”.  We sadly note that as of today, March 1st, President Trump as yet to issue an Irish American Heritage Month Proclamation.  We call upon President Trump to continue the tradition of recognizing the countless contributions that Irish Americans have made to our nation’s greatness by proclaiming March as Irish American Heritage Month.'

The statement was soon followed by a tweet from press secretary Sean Spicer that a statement was indeed about to be issued. It reads:

IRISH-AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH, 2017

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Irish Americans have made an indelible mark on the United States.  From Dublin, California, to Limerick, Maine, from Emerald Isle, North Carolina, to Shamrock, Texas, we are reminded of the more than 35 million Americans of Irish descent who contribute every day to all facets of life in the United States.  Over generations, millions of Irish have crossed the ocean in search of the American Dream, and their contributions continue to enrich our country today.

From our four Irish-born Founding Fathers to Thomas Francis Meagher, the Irish revolutionary who became an American hero after leading the Irish Brigade during the Civil War, Irish immigrants have shaped our history in enduring ways.  Throughout the centuries, hard-working Irish Americans have contributed to America's innovation and prosperity -- tilling the farms of Appalachia, working the looms of New England textile mills, and building transcontinental railroads -- often overcoming poverty and discrimination and inspiring Americans from all walks of life with their indomitable and entrepreneurial spirit in the process.  From these early beginnings rose generations of Irish Americans who continue to lead our cities, drive our economy, and protect and defend the land they embrace as their own.

American culture carries an unmistakably Irish-American imprint.  Our literature, cinema, music, dance, sports, and visual arts are filled with the names and influence of great Irish Americans.

Irish Americans should be proud of the deep cultural, historical, and familial ties that have contributed to the strength of our vibrant transatlantic relationship with Ireland.  As we honor the past during Irish-American Heritage Month, we also celebrate a bright future of friendship and cooperation for generations to come.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2017 as Irish-American Heritage Month.  I call upon all Americans to celebrate the achievements and contributions of Irish Americans to our Nation with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand seventeen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-first.

Read more:Trump confuses friend and foe after shock immigration turnabout

St. Patrick’s Day is associated withmany things: wearing green, breaking Lent, making an attempt to try out your cúpla focal (few words of Gaelic/Irish), going to a parade and, of course, drowning the shamrock. There is no other day in the year in which the drunken Irish stereotype is more pronounced and used as an excuse by some to enjoy themselves a bit too much than on March 17.

You may be surprised to learn that, in Ireland, this hasn’t always been the case. March 17 marks the fifth-century death of our beloved patron saint and, for over a thousand years, has been celebrated as a religious feast day.

In fact, up until the 1970s, Irish law prohibited pubs opening on March 17 as a mark of respect for this religious day. It was feared that leaving the pubs open would be too tempting for some during Lent and would lead to a disrespectful amount of drunkenness on this most solemn day.

According to history, St. Patrick was a missionary to Ireland. If we look back to his writings, we find that he believed his enslavement in Ireland was a result of his lack of faith during his younger years and his return to Ireland following his escape from slavery came from a compulsion to spread the word of God to Ireland and repent for these sins. He stature grew until he was adored by the Irish as the person who brought Christianity to the Emerald Isle.

In times gone by, canonizations were carried out on a regional level, meaning that Patrick has never officially been canonized by a Pope, although he is included in the list of saints. The feast day was only officially placed on the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar in the early 1600s, thanks to Waterford-born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding. Since then it has been a holy day of obligation for Ireland's Catholics (obliged to 'hear Mass'). Until the 1700s, St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated predominantly in Ireland, where it was a somber religious occasion spent mainly in prayer.

From the 18th century onward, as a result of the Penal Laws in Ireland, some Irish people began to use St. Patrick’s Day as a means of promoting Irish culture and tradition. So as to show their Irish Christian pride, the tradition of wearing of shamrocks began, but the day still revolved around the Catholic rites.

St. Patrick’s Day didn’t become an official Irish public holiday until 1903 with the introduction of the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act 1903. This act was introduced by Irish Member of Parliament James O’Mara, who was also responsible for the law that required the closing of pubs on March 17.

In Ireland, the typical St. Patrick's Day celebration before the '70s and the lifting of the ban on the sale of alcohol were very different from the party atmosphere associated with the day now. As St. Patrick’s Day falls in the Christian season of Lent, a mass was attended in the morning with the afternoon set aside for celebrations. {If St Patrick's Day fell on a Friday the Lenten prohibition against meat was lifted for the day.} Families sang and danced and celebrated, which represented a break during the normally somber time of Lent.

Before the drinking ban was repealed, there was only one place in Ireland where one could buy a drink on March 17: The Royal Dublin Dog Show. The Dog Show would see a wide attendance, with not just dog lovers attending but also writers and politicians and anybody else who wanted to do more than eat chocolate and sweets on this one cheat day during Lent.

As MaeveBinchy wrote in a 2001 article for the New York Times, “Dublin was the dullest place on earth to spend St. Patrick's Day.” Binchy recalls how her family and she would watch with amazement as they saw Irish people in other parts of the world indulging heavily in the festivities while the homeland suffered through a day of thirst.

The evolution of St. Patrick’s Day into the ruckus it is now associated with may, in fact, have been an Irish-American construct. Despite the fact that the feast day has been observed in Ireland since the 9th or 10th century, it was in New York City that the first parade took place when in 1762 Irish soldiers serving with the British army marched through Manhattan to a local tavern. Patriotism among Irish immigrants in America continued to grow with the New York Irish Aid societies holding the first official parade in 1848 – the world’s oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States. The first parade in the Irish Free State did not take place until 1931.

The promotion of Paddy’s Day in Ireland truly began in 1995 when the Irish Government realized the potential tourism benefits of celebrating the day 'properly.' They realized that St Patrick's Day represented a golden opportunity for the country to sell its culture and sights to the rest of the world. This resulted in the creation of the St. Patrick’s Day Festival – the multi-day celebration that we now have in Dublin in which approximately one million people take part annually.

There are still certain religious links evident in our adoration of St. Patrick. Each year, 5.5 million people visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and there are over 450 churches across America named after Ireland’s patron saint. Almost 650,000 babies in the US have been named Patrick in the past 100 years. In recent years, St. Patrick's Day spending has grown to almost $4.14 billion annually with nearly 122 million Americans (or 39% of the population) celebrating the occasion.

There have been calls by some to bring back the old pre-70s traditions and to return to the religious feast day. In 2007, theologian Fr. Vincent Twomey argued for this return to religion in an article for The Word magazine. Fr. Twomey claimed that the day needed to be reclaimed as a Church festival and taken back from the secular and vulgar festival that it had become.

Within the Church itself, there are certain traditions that are still retained, although they may go unnoticed among those attending the larger corporate events. As St. Patrick’s Day sometimes falls during Holy Week, and the church avoids holding feast days during certain solemnities such as Lent, there have been times when the feast day has moved to a different day. This happened last in 2008 when St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated by the Church on March 14, although the separate secular events continued on the national holiday. This will not happen again until 2160.

St. Patrick’s Day, whether you drink or not, has become synonymous with many people’s Irish culture and identity. In the past, this meant a strong link with Irish Catholic tradition and, perhaps as a representation of the Irish population’s own relationship with the Catholic Church, has subsequently become more of a patriotic symbol that represents Ireland and it’s culture worldwide separate to the religious feast day.

Should pubs be closed on St. Patrick’s Day? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

*Originally published in March 2015. 

More than four out five Irish Americans surveyed think very favorably about taking a vacation in Ireland, an exclusive survey shows in what is good news for Irish tourism authorities and airlines.

Meanwhile, in terms of things they fear about Ireland and what they are concerned about for relatives there, unemployment, financial strain and Brexit are the three biggest challenges.

The most important things that draw them to their heritage are Irish history (86%), genealogy (78%), culture (75%) and music (71%). At the other end of the scale, only one percent follow Irish sport.

IrishCentral, NYU Glucksman Ireland House, and University College Dublin Clinton Institute surveyed 3,100 Irish American readers of IrishCentral using Amárach, Ireland's leading polling research firm. The online poll featured 52 questions and took approximately 15 minutes to complete. Readers were sampled over three days.

Below are some preliminary results with more to come next week:

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means  an unfavorable feeling and 10 is a very favorable feeling; and 5 means either/or, How do you feel towards the following;

What are your biggest 3 concerns about Ireland and your friends or family living in Ireland?

Would you ever consider studying in Ireland or sending a son or daughter to Ireland to study?

Would you ever consider sending a son or daughter to Ireland to study?

If yes, why would you consider education in Ireland for them?

Are you an Irish speaker?

Have you ever attended Irish speaking classes while in America, in order to learn, improve your Irish or out of interest.

Which, if any, of the following aspects of your Irish identity are you most interested in? Tick all that apply.

Have you or either of your parents ever participated in Irish/step dancing while in America? Tick all that apply. 

Do you consider yourself to be:

Would you agree with these findings? Let us know your thought in the comments section. 

Winston Churchill expressed a strong desire for a united Ireland in 1946 in a meeting with Irish Ambassador to Britain John W Dulanty.

This was despite Churchill being infuriated by Ireland’s neutral stance during the Second World War and his hostility towards Irish leader EamondeValera.

Dulanty’s note on the conversation has just been made public in The Irish Times.

Winston Churchill told him, “I still hope for a united Ireland. You must get those fellows in the North in, though, you can’t do it by force.”

In a confidential report to the secretary of the Department of External Affairs Dulanty stated he was approached by Churchill, after the Remembrance event to say how happy he was to see him there.

Churchill then went on: “I said a few words in parliament the other day about your country because I still hope for a united Ireland. You must get those fellows in the North in, though; you can’t do it by force.”

Churchill told Dulanty: “There is not, and never was, any bitterness in my heart towards your country.”

Five years later, in May 1951, Churchill had a conversation about Ireland with Frederick Boland, who had succeeded Dulanty as ambassador. They met at a Buckingham Palace reception and Churchill told him he had wanted to come to Ireland to see a horse of his run in the Irish Derby, but the horse had dropped dead.

Churchill went on: “I’m sorry. I would have liked to have gone over and I’m sure the people would have given me a good reception – particularly if my horse had won. The Irish are a sporting people.

“You know I have had many invitations to visit Ulster, but I have refused them all. I don’t want to go there at all, I would much rather go to southern Ireland. Maybe I’ll buy another horse with an entry in the Irish Derby.”

Churchill lived for a time in Ireland in what is now Áras an Uachtaráin, home of the Irish president, where his father Randolph acted as private secretary to his grandfather the Duke of Marlborough, lord lieutenant of Ireland from 1876 to 1880.

*Originally published in October 2014. 

My grandfather Allie Gorman often spoke of the Protectory or “the orphanage” where he spent time as a teen. It seems no one thought to ask, “If your father and stepmother were alive at the time, why were you in an orphanage?”

Born in 1902 in lower Manhattan, near Battery Park, Alexander “Allie” Gorman grew up in Brooklyn. The child of an immigrant—his father was from County Monaghan, Ireland—Allie lived in poverty, survived epidemics, fire and an alcoholic, abusive father.

Death was a constant companion. When Allie was three years old his two-year-old sister, Lizzie, died of malnutrition; that same year his eight-year-old brother, George, died of spinal meningitis during a citywide epidemic, and three siblings died before they were a year old. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was four.

When Allie was six, he and his younger brother, Willie, were horribly burned in a fire. I remember watching my grandfather shave when I was a young boy and noticing the huge amorphous slab of skin that extended along the entire side of his body. I asked him what that was. “It’s a scar, Charles,” he said. “My brother Willie and I were playing with matches and Willie caught on fire. I tried to put the fire out. This is what happened.” Allie’s father, George, and his stepmother had left the two young boys alone for the day.

A few years ago I found an article in a 1908 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle, which described the fire and its aftermath. The words “blazing garments” and “little sufferers” summoned up vivid images of my grandfather’s wounds and moments I spent staring at them, imagining, as only a young boy could, the fright and horror of the fire. How had that fire shaped the way he viewed the world and how had it influenced his life? I was reminded of my father’s comment about his father-in-law: “Your grandfather Allie was the most fearless man I ever met.” How much of his fearlessness was borne of this incident; I could only guess.

But the “Protectory,” and why my grandfather was there remained a mystery. I began researching the events of my grandfather’s life and learned that the Catholic Protectory was an institution organized on April 14, 1863, which worked with impoverished and abandoned children, many of them orphans, who were running wild through the New York slums. The children were taught discipline and structure. Academic and vocational courses, which trained children for various trades and prepared others for college, also helped build each child’s self-esteem.

I learned that the Christian Brothers ministered to the boys. I contacted the organization and they confirmed they had tended to the boys at the Protectory. They suggested I contact the Church of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, which has an extensive Family Research Center, to determine if the Protectory’s records were available. I called the church and they referred me to one of their local genealogical centers not far from my home. They had the records on microfilm; I found the Protectory my grandfather had talked about. The identification card was a revelation.

One hundred years after my grandfather’s stay at the Protectory, I knew the truth: The Protectory was not only an orphanage, but also a detention center for children who had violated the law. At the age of fourteen, Allie began a thirteen-month stay at the Protectory for stealing wood and assaulting a watchman.

My grandfather told stories of playing baseball and soccer at the Protectory; however, he also told stories that suggested cruelty bordering on sadistic. When my grandfather smiled I’d notice that he was missing a tooth. My mother told me why. One morning he was leaning over a sink, washing his face, when a Brother came up from behind him and grabbed his side. My grandfather, still suffering residual pain from the burns he had sustained in the fire, wheeled around and punched the Brother in his mouth. His punishment? According to my grandfather, they took him to the infirmary and pulled out one of his teeth: there was no Novocain, no painkiller.

Soon, I learned of others who were at the Protectory with my grandfather. One was John Henson, age 15, who was convicted of manslaughter. Henson poisoned a man with a pesticide used to kill rats. And then there were the so-called “colorful characters” who spent time at the Protectory with my grandfather: Jimmy “The Shiv” DeStefano, who would become a crony of the notorious gangster Al Capone and a member of The Five Points Gang, eventually landed in Sing Sing and became known as the Death House Barber. He gave men and one woman, Ruth Snyder, their final haircut before they were strapped into the electric chair.

Joe Valachi, who would become a convicted felon and infamous Mafia informant, was sent to the Protectory for hitting a teacher in the eye with a rock. Valachi was quoted in Peter Maas’ book The Valachi Papers. “As far as the brothers at the Protectory were concerned, some of them were okay and some were real bad. You wouldn’t believe what some of them were like with the young boys…I won’t go into that,” Valachi said.

Many of the era’s gangsters came from broken homes and spent a portion of their youth in reform schools similar to the Protectory. Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, who was raised at times by his sister and at times by anyone who would take him, found trouble at an early age, bouncing from one Catholic reform school to another. A ruthless killer and kidnapper, Coll was gunned down, gangland style, in a phone booth on West 23rd St. in Manhattan.

A lifetime of crime and imprisonment was often the fate of those who passed through the Protectory and other reform schools. As for my grandfather, he left the Protectory and joined the Merchant Marines; he traveled the world, returned and married my grandmother Florence. They had five daughters, including my mother Dorothy.

He worked hard, first delivering coal, and then in his thirties he became a union representative. He met with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1940 to help settle a coal strike during a stretch of cold weather. A compassionate man, my grandfather told the mayor that the temporary shutdown of coal delivery was an “outrageous piece of cruelty.”

Grandpa Allie became a loving father and I could not have had a more loving grandfather. But what enabled my grandfather—the victim of a cruel childhood, poverty, an alcoholic father, his mother’s death when he was four, a horrific fire, the deaths of six siblings, thirteen months in reform school, and a variety of physical, verbal and emotional abuse—to lead a life filled with good deeds and healthy relationships, and to become a productive member of society, while others are left broken and isolated? Given a cruel childhood how does anyone function psychologically at a far greater level than his or her experience might predict?

I’m not sure I can answer those questions, but I do know I’ve learned that within my grandfather’s stories there exists a wellspring of knowledge that I can access: From his suffering I’ve learned compassion; from his struggles I’ve developed empathy; from his pain I draw strength. That is my grandfather’s legacy.

---

Charles R. Hale was born, raised and educated in New York. He is a former partner of a NYC based consulting firm Hale, Borenstein Ltd. Charles, along with Niamh Hyland, is a cofounder of Artists Without Walls an organization purposed to inspire, uplift and unite people and communities of diverse cultures through the pursuit of artistic achievement. His film “Walls: We Are Not Forgotten,” about the life of singer Judy Collins, was presented at the 2012 Eugene O’Neill Award ceremony honoring Ms. Collins. In 2013 the City University of New York honored Charles for ”Outstanding Service to New York and Irish America.”

*Originally published in March 2015. 

It was the Irish immigrants, for the most part, who built the Erie Canal and then settled the area of Tipperary Hill, in Syracuse, NY, but it seems what the Irish are really known for in the area are the Stone Throwers and an inverted traffic light known as “Green over Red.”

Tipperary Hill, the district that takes up half the Far Westside neighborhood in Syracuse was settled by Irish immigrants. The Irish were the chief laborers on the Erie Canal's construction from Albany to Buffalo and Syracuse is smack bang in the middle of this route. The town became the epicenter of this endeavor and, once the canal was finished, many of the Irish laborers simply settled there.



In 1860 the section of Far Westside south of West Genesee Street was officially called Tipperary Hill. The neighborhood’s name came from the fact that a large number of the families working at the local steel mills at the time were from County Tipperary.

In 1925 the first traffic signal light was installed in Tipp Hill and it’s still a local attraction.

The light was erected on the corner of Tompkins Street and Milton Avenue. Some Irish youths, who came to be known as the Stone Throwers, objected to the fact that the “British” red appeared above the “Irish” green on the light and threw stones, which they called "Irish confetti," to break the red bulb.

The kids aged 11 to 17, included John "Jacko" Behan, Richard "Richie" Britt, James M. "Duke" Coffey, Kenneth "Kenny" Davis, George Dorsey, Gerald "Mikis" Murphy, Francis "Stubbs" Shortt, and Eugene Thompson.

A former Onondaga County Sheriff, Patrick "Packy" Corbett, was also named as one of the Stone Throwers, but he would never acknowledge his involvement.

John "Huckle" Ryan, then alderman of the Tipperary Hill section, requested that the traffic signal be hung with the green bulb above the red to placate the Irish residents. They did it.

However, New York State stepped in and had this reversed to avoid confusing the color blind. It was reversed and again the red lights were broken, again and again.

Eventually the Tipperary Hill Protective Association addressed the town rulers. On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1928, Commissioner Bradley met with Tipp Hill residents. They told him that the light would continue to be vandalized. The city leaders relented, and green was again above the red light. And so the "Green over Red" traffic light was born and remains there today.



By simply casting an eye over a list of local businesses it’s clear to see that the Irish population is still thriving in Tipp Hill. There's Casey's Fish Market, Hennigan's, Michael Callahan's Funeral Home, as well as Callahan-Hanley Mooney Funeral Home. Then there’s the James Kernan Theater, Corbett's Hardware Store, Shanahan's Grocery Store, Dennis O'Riley's Ice Cream Parlor, the Shamrock Grill and so on.

To recognize the Irish heritage in the community, in 1997, a neighborhood group convinced the city to build a small park called Tipperary Hill Memorial Park and erect a statue which is known as the Tipperary Hill Heritage Memorial or the Stone Throwers on the corner at the “Green over Red” traffic light.

The memorial is dedicated to those very Irish men who stood up to City Hall to win the traffic light battle. It features bronze, life-size figures of a 1930s Irish immigrant family and was sculpted by Dexter Benedict of Penn Yan, NY. The father is pointing out the traffic light to his wife, daughter and son, who has a sling shot in his back pocket, hinting that he might know a little bit of the history of the light.



* Originally published in 2015.

A book mapping Irish literary legend Oscar Wilde’s tour through America claims this audacious unknown invented the idea of the modern celebrity. Like Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Honey Boo Boo, Wilde, years before he wrote “The Importance of Being Earnest” or “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, set out to make himself famous.

If fact it was Wilde’s haters who gave him the opportunity to become a star.

In “Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity” David. M Friedman says Wilde’s cleverly constructed quotes were not spontaneous but rather a well laid plan to become infamous for casual repartee. His famous quotes, such as “I can resist everything except temptation,” were created according to a formula.

Friedman writes, “To ensure he kept getting [invited to parties], he perfected a verbal trick: replacing a word in a sentence with its unexpected opposite.”

More importantly, it was his mother, Lady Jane Wilde, who taught him the importance of creating one’s own self. Lady Wilde claimed to be descended from Dante and taught her son that in conversation “epigrams are always better than argument” and “paradox is the very essence of social wit.”

According to Friedman, “It was from Lady Wilde that Oscar learned that identity is a kind of fiction, and that being oneself is a form of playacting.

“It was from her that Oscar learned that the most important act of creativity is the creation of one’s own image.”

At Oxford University John Ruskin, a professor of fine art, became Wilde’s mentor. In his lectures he focused on “the power and meaning of beauty” and the aesthetic movement, which placed beauty above the pragmatic. It declared that beauty was “evidence of God’s presence on Earth.”

“He would become the self-anointed leader of Oxford’s student aesthetes, preaching to his classmates the Divine Gospel of Beauty and the superiority of decorative handmade goods to ugly manufactured ones,” Friedman wrote.

The first public display of this created persona was in 1877 at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery. Wilde was just 22 when he made his London debut. He knew the opening would attract guests such as the Prince of Wales and that it was a perfect opportunity for “an unforgettable act of peacockery.”

He “strut[ed] about the Grosvenor in an evening jacket specially tailored, shaped, decorated and tinted so that, when viewed from the rear, it transformed its wearer into a walking, talking musical instrument: a cello. In a room lined with works of art, Wilde stole the show by wearing one,” said Friedman.

The press and ladies in society began to take notice of Wilde as did his detractors.

W.S. Gilbert, of Gilbert & Sullivan fame, thought Wilde pretentious and awful. He wrote a mocking libretto about two rival aesthetes. However, when the opera, “Patience,” premiered in 1881, the public quickly favored the character of Bunthorne, modeled on Wilde.

Wilde attended opening night and attracted as much attention as the play.

The promoter for “Patience” wanted to send the show to America but feared that the aesthetic movement might not translate. They sent Wilde to do a series of lectures on the subject while dressed in outfits like that of the character Bunthorne.

Wilde grabbed the chance.

The promoters sent on information to high society and the press giving the impression that Wilde was the founder of the aesthetic movement and was famous in England.

In truth he was barely out of college.

On his arrival he was greeted by the press and was inundated with invitations to parties, many of them in his honor. He was feted by the mayor of New York, a New York Supreme Court justice, the pastors of Grace and Trinity churches, among other society heads.

And he did not disappoint arriving in “a black velvet Prince Albert coat and billowing white shirt with a large collar, accessorized by a robin’s-egg-blue scarf.”

He attended a performance of “Patience”, along with his entourage. When Bunthorne hit the stage the audience’s eyes were on Wilde. A Tribune reporter among his entourage noted that he quipped, “This is the compliment that mediocrity pays to those who are not mediocre.”

At a party on January 8, at the home of the former US Ambassador to France Wilde managed to upstage Louisa May Alcott, the author of “Little Women.” Wilde arrived late and drew off part of the crowd.

Alcott’s friend, poet Emma Lazarus wrote that Wilde was “beneath contempt” and “for the very reason that he is not a fool, and knows what he is about, I think he is the more to be despised and shunned by all sensible people for making such a consummate ass of himself.”

People were talking about Wilde and this was even before his first lecture.

His first lecture, given at the last minute to a 1,250-seat auditorium near Union Square was sold out.

It was reported that when Wilde walked on stage “the audience gasped...staring, many with mouths open, at a 6-foot-3 man wearing a snug black velvet coat with lavender satin piping and a frill of white lace at the wrists, black satin breeches...and patent-leather pumps with lustrous silver buckles.”

The American audience expected a buffoon to appear on stage, however Wilde delivered an intelligent speech on the origins of aesthetics and its impact on the world’s great thinkers. He succeed in establishing himself as a fashion icon and intellectual. London heard of his success.

Photographs of celebrities were beginning to become popular collector’s items and Wilde took advantage immediately. He set up a shoot with Napoleon Sarony and his photos showed his outrageous outfits. They became big sellers for the next 12 months.

By the end of that year Wilde was “one of the most recognized figures in the United States.”

He became so well known that advertisers used his photos to sell products, including cigars and kitchen stoves.

Friedman writes that the popularity of his photos made Wilde “the first modern marketed celebrity in our culture.”

Wilde traveled extensively, lecturing all along the east coast, throughout the old deep south and out west in California and elsewhere. He sat for interviews, had private meeting with Walt Whitman, Confederate president Jefferson Davis (who was not a fan), and former President Ulysses S. Grant, among others.

By the end of his tour he was a household name. He was fast becoming “the most written-about Briton in the United States.”

He went on to write classic novels and a classic play. However, his self-promotion would also be his downfall.

From 1895 to 1897 he was imprisoned for “gross indecency” following an affair with the son of the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde had sued the Marquess after he made the knowledge of his displeasure public. If he had not he might avoided his prison sentence.

Friedman wrote, “The man who had so presciently devised a winning – and lasting – formula for how to become a modern celebrity had failed to see a crucial pitfall of the new culture of self-promotion: the danger of believing the hype, especially your own.

“Wilde thought he was too famous to fail – which is precisely why he did.”

While in prison he fell and ruptured his eardrum. In 1900 he died of cerebral meningitis, aged 46.

* “Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity” by David Friedman is available here.

* Originally published in 2014.

Bones of Irish children, aged seven to 12, were found 170 years after they died on a 'coffin ship.'

Several years ago, Frank Snellings, with his wife, US Senator Mary Landrieu, traveled to Ireland on a personal journey to learn more about his birth mother. Remarkably, he found a brother he never knew existed.

According to the Irish Times, the couple’s decision to travel to Ireland came at the end of several grueling years. In 1995, Landrieu,  a Democrat, ran, unsuccessfully, for governor of Louisiana.

The following year, she was elected to the senate in a close race.  Her opponent claimed her victory was the result of election fraud. It wasn’t until October 1997 after an investigation that the US Senate confirmed her victory. She lost her seat in 2011.

Snellings says that after they had cleared the debts created from the fight for the senate, he decided it was time to take a journey to the place where he had been adopted from in 1954, when he was five-years-old.

“I looked up and said, ‘Well, it’s time I went to Ireland. ’ That is when this whole chapter began,” Snellings, 64,  told the Irish Times.

Snellings had spent his early years in in Dún Laoghaire at the Cottage Home for Little Children, on Tivoli Road. He says he still remembers the kind woman who looked after them, Ms Eccles, who was also known as Matron. On the day his new family came to pick him up, she told him: "Your mother and father and brother and sister are here from America, and they are here to take you home.”

Snelling was adopted by George Marion Snellings, an attorney, and his wife Marie Louise Wilcox. The couple, from Monroe, LA, had traveled to Ireland after a Church of Ireland minister passing through Louisiana told them about the children available for adoption in Ireland. The couple already had two children but wanted a third, and Mary Louise couldn’t have any more children.

When the Snellings adopted Frank, the home told the couple to throw away his Irish paperwork. His adoptive mother had refused, thinking it was wrong. He says his parents were always honest about his roots.

“They told me from the get-go I was adopted,” Snellings says. 

Because his parents were open about his past, Snellings found it easier than most to find his birth mother. His 1954 Irish passport has his birth name, Ernest Dukelow, scratched out with“Frank Snellings” written above it.  His father gave him a file of his records when he turned 18, but Snellings says he decided not to search for his Irish family while his adoptive parents were still alive.

“It would just be too awkward,” he says.

Snellings had always imagined that his birth mother was very young when she had him and that he would have plenty of time to find her, but on his trip to Ireland in 1998, Snellings learned his mother,Suzanne Dukelow, from Durrus, in west Cork, had him in her late 30s or early 40s and had died in the 1970s. Dukelow was single and poor. Somehow, she ended up living in Dublin and Snelling’s birth certificate shows that he was born in Castleknock.

On the trip, Snellings traveled to Durrus and the local Church of Ireland chapel.“I find this local priest, and I start this little story and tell him what I have been trying to do,” he says. “He looks at me and says, ‘We have been expecting you.’ It just takes my breath away.”

Through cousins, Snellings learned that he had an older brother,Percival Dukelow,  born in 1947, who had also been placed in an orphanage.

During the time of Snellings search, Dukelow worked for Joe Costello, a Labour Party senator. According to the Irish Times, it was a chance visit that Dukelow and Costello made to Drewstown House shortly before Snellings went looking for his family that helped make the connection between the brothers. One of Snellings’s Irish cousins knew that Dukelow had lived at Drewstown House and had heard of Dukelow and Costello’s visit. He told Snellings, who rang Costello. It was the senator who arranged for Dukelow and Snellings to speak initially on the phone. 

“He is my right-hand man on constituency work,” says Costello, of Dukelow. “They had a long chat,” he says. “He was in floods of tears.”

The brothers met in person for the first time at Buswells Hotel, opposite Leinster House.

“I knew he was my brother by the look of him,” says Dukelow.

“It was emotional and awkward,” Snellings says. “This is a guy who is a piece of you, and you are a piece of him.”

Snellings says his brother was a wonderful fellow who had a “hard, hard life.”

Unlike Snellings, Dukelow was never adopted. He was brought up by the Protestant Orphan Society and sent to several different foster families. 

It was not uncommon for siblings to be separated at that time.

“The birth mother may have accessed two different services,” says Patricia Carey, chief executive of the Adoption Authority of Ireland. “She may not have revealed that she had a first child or wanted to say that this was her second. That would be quite common.”

Percy Dukelow, now 67, lived for at time at Drewstown House, a home for children near Kells, in Co Meath. He was sent off to make his own way when he turned 17. He lived in London for 20 years and worked in the building industry. He returned to Ireland and became involved in a trade union and then in the Labour Party, where he met Costello, who he has worked with for 23 years.

Now Snellings and Dukelow call each other every St Patrick’s Day and Christmas Day. 

“It is one of those strange tales that has the chance element in it all,” says Costello. “It’s a tale of two brothers and that great divide between the States and Ireland that reaches back into what Ireland was like all those days ago.”

*Originally published in August 2015

Discovering your Irish ancestors has been made more accessible and affordable than ever in recent years, with the availability of millions of Irish records online. If however, you’re more of a traditionalist who still likes to consult a book, we’ve put together a list 5 titles that will have you uncovering your Irish roots in no time.

1. Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, by John Grenham

Now in its 4th edition, John Grenham’s book is an essential guide for deciding what Irish records to look at, where they are and what they mean. He highlights both offline and online sources worth consulting and includes county-by-county reference lists, ideal if you know the area in Ireland you want to focus on.

2. Surnames of Ireland, by Edward MacLysaght

If you’ve ever wondered about the origin of your Irish surname then this is the book for you. It lists more than 4,000 Gaelic, Norman and Anglo-Irish surnames, revealing their origins and the areas of the country most commonly associated with the name. The clues in here could prove vital for your Irish genealogical research.

3. Tracing your [County] Ancestors series, by various authors

Published by Flyleaf Press, Ireland’s specialist family history publishers, these handy how-to guides provide all the detail you need about your family’s Irish county of origin. There are currently titles available for researchers exploring their roots in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Kildare, Sligo, Westmeath, Donegal, Kerry, Mayo, Roscommon and Clare.

4. A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland, by Brian Mitchell

County Derry genealogist Brian Mitchell’s book addresses the somewhat confusing issue of Irish placenames, parishes, townlands, baronies and registration districts that researchers often encounter. It contains detailed maps and is essential for narrowing down the possible locations in Ireland your ancestors came from, allowing you to focus your research. Mitchell has also published guides on Irish parish registers, churches and graveyards.

5. Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, by Chris Paton

As mentioned, bringing your search for your Irish roots online can save you time and money. Chris Paton examines the different sources available on the internet including the largest collection of Irish records available online at Findmypast. How to get most out of the records is explained through fascinating case studies and the author also explores how social media can be useful for your Irish family history research.

Any of these titles, or a combination of them, can prove to be a great starting point for discovering your Irish ancestors. Once you’ve read up on the best course of action to take and what records to look for, delve into over 90 million Irish records on Findmypast and see what you can unearth.

For more stories on tracing your Irish heritage from Findmypast click here.

I hope you have a bottle of good strong Irish whiskey stashed away all ready to fortify you for the St. Patrick's Day parade and for the ritual drowning of the shamrock through the big day.

If so, then my advice to you is to take a good shot from the bottle here and now before you read the rest of this quite shocking story. You will need it. Okay?

You're back with me and feeling stronger. That's good because this article is as difficult to write as it is to read.

Until I did a little bit of research, you see, I always believed that the beautiful green shamrock only grew in Ireland. That is what I was taught when growing up.

And I was also taught the shamrock is so special to us as a symbol of the Irish because St. Patrick used a fistful of shamrock on the Hill of Tara to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity to the pagans around him at that historic site. Take another shot from the bottle... The facts are that the first four letters of the word shamrock are brutally and cruelly accurate.

The facts are that there is no evidence at all that St. Patrick used the delicate little plant as a conversion tool at Tara or anywhere else for that matter.

The facts are that he never mentioned shamrock in his many writings about his conversion campaign at that time. The facts are that any link between the good saint and shamrock did not appear until English writers and botanists began mentioning the myth as hearsay about 1571.

The facts are that the Druids that St. Patrick displaced and shattered did have some respect for the shamrock as an edible and healing herb, but there is no hard evidence at all to substantiate the story. Take another shot from that bottle... There is no such botanical plant as the shamrock. It is wrong to think that shamrock only grows in the Emerald Isle.

The plant or plants that we call shamrock grow all over Europe and beyond – even in Mother England – and are frequently treated as weeds!

Even Irish botanists of great lore and learning cannot accurately identify a shamrock to this very day! The cruel reality is that the original Gaelic word seamróg, Anglicized to shamrock, means "young clover" and that is where the problem begins.

Even here in Ireland, different species of clover (and even other related plants) are pinned to our breasts on St. Patrick's Day.

As recently as 1988, the learned botanist Charles Jolson, then director of the famed Botanic Gardens in Dublin, attempted to solve the shamrock issue by asking folk from all over the country to send him in their shamrocks.

It seemed a good idea at the time, but I'm sad to say that you now need another shot from that bottle! You see, what happened was that not alone did he receive totally different species of clovers from all over the land, he also received alleged shamrocks which were not even clovers.

Rakes of them! I could blind you with botanical names here but, since you are already feeling delicate, I will simply say that a clover called trefolium dubium was the most common shamrock selection across the land, but there was also a strong showing of hardy trefolium repens, trefolium pratense and various other mutations, and even a strong showing of three-leaved plants which were not clovers at all. A fair percentage of the specimens he received were actually of wood sorrel!

So even when the bands play and the parades begin through the home towns and villages of Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, there are many separate species of clovers being paraded. And not a genuine mythical shamrock amongst them.

(At this point please forgive me because I need to take a healing shot from my own bottle because I fear I've worn sorrel on my bosom more than once
in the past. I'll be back with ye in a moment…)

It is customary for our political leaders to travel in numbers over to the USA for St. Patrick's Day and to present your President with a basket of luxurious alleged shamrock. What will Enda Kenny, bring with him to the White House? Will it even be a clover at all?

That 1988 astonishing survey apparently revealed that a good number of Mayo folk actually wear wood sorrel on their hardy breasts. 

If it is indeed wood sorrel which is traditionally presented by the Taoiseach of Ireland to the President of the United States. I hope he will be informed that, though it has a bitter taste, it also has considerable medicinal properties. The old Druids swore by it.

Incidentally, we might have lost the trademark use of the shamrock altogether about 30 years ago were it not for the intervention of another famous Mayo-born leader of the country, none other than the frequently maligned late Charlie Haughey.

The Irish government had long registered the shamrock as a national trademark, but this was successfully challenged in the German courts in the 1980s by a company which, I understand, wished to emblazon our shamrock on their fleet of refuse trucks and bulldozers. Haughey, however – fair play to him – saw to it that the case was powerfully appealed to the German Supreme Court in 1985. We won, and the (alleged) shamrock has been safe as our trademark ever since. 

We don't have exclusive rights though. The shamrock is still the official symbol of the Danish town of Viborg and a range of other towns and cities which include the German city of Furth. It is also attached to the flags and banners of many sporting clubs both in the USA and right across the world. 

Regiments in many armies march behind images of the shamrock. It is central to leading soccer club Panathinaikos in Greece, has been inscribed on the walls of Buckingham Palace since the Act of Union in 1801 (as a trefolium dubium beside the leek, thistle and rose) in the Royal Coat of Arms, and, in general, English writers down the centuries have been intrigued by the clovery connection between the Irish and the trefoils. 

Time to take another swig out of that bottle. We ritually drown whatever species of clover we have worn on the big day and, as we all know, some of us drown it more thoroughly than others. However, that is only half the story.

The English writers Edmund Spencer and Edmund Campion were amazed to report in the 16th century that the Irish were actually devouring large quantities of shamrocks, especially (they said) poorer Irish living through hard times.

There is the possibility, given the botanical confusion involved, that they were actually seeing folk eating the aforementioned wood sorrel.

That is an interesting factor because, forgetting our patron saint's work altogether, the wise old Druids often advised the Irishmen of their time to consume wood sorrel because it would make them strong and speedy in battle. I kid you not.

Sorry for smashing a few fables, but I know well you will have a mighty day anyway no matter which species of clover adorns your person
during the marching hours in question. In the end it does not matter at all.

And in conclusion, I would like to send special greetings to all the surviving residents of the small town of Shamrock in Texas and add the suggestion that they consider renaming it Trefoil or Oxalis before this time next year.

* Originally published March 2014.

DEAR St. Patrick,

Greetings from the west of your Ireland on a fine spring day. This is a very belated thank you note from Cormac MacConnell, who today realized for the very first time that he owes his total existence entirely to you.

That realization, dear Patrick, struck me like a bolt of lightning when I was walking my dogs on the shores of the Lough Derg on the Shannon from which I live only yards away these times as you well know. I stopped in my tracks!

Truly, were it not for the continuing powerful reality of your St. Patrick's Purgatory island in the center of the other Lough Derg away above in Donegal I would not be here. Thanks again.

I have had a long and happy life so far because of your intervention in a lateral fashion in the lives and love of my parents away back in the thirties of the last century when the Catholic Church you left behind here in Ireland was in its full pomp and power and ruled its people with an iron hand.

Anyway Patrick, as again you know well, there was no way in that Ireland that a young, decent courting couple like Sandy MacConnell the grocer and Mary Bannon the local teacher could go away together for a whole weekend un-chaperoned without it being the scandal of the parish for the next month at least. But, the Lord be praised, there was one loophole of a penitential nature and that was your Purgatory island in Lough Derg outside the village of Pettigo in Donegal. A couple could go there for the weekend because it was an extremely harsh pilgrimage featuring starvation, bare feet on rocky ground, deprivation of sleep for 48 hours and totally separated sleeping quarters in the men's hostel and the women's hostel when a few hours sleep was finally permitted. I did it myself as a teenager, and surely your Purgatory is tough.

Well, when Mary was a widow with Sandy in heaven before her many years later she and I had a brief holiday together in Sligo and Mayo, and she told me about that trip with a big smile on her face. She said that the second day, after being up all night praying, eating only toast and drinking black tea, your feet bleeding, and it raining heavily too, that the greatest penance for her altogether was that she was nearly eaten alive by the swarms of midges (little flies) over the stone circle-shaped beds around which you have to stumble as you pray.

Each of those sessions was and is called a station, as you well know Patrick, and when she had completed one of them with great difficulty in the rain the bold Sandy approached her and instantly proposed marriage.  She said that Sandy stated she would never look more miserable ever again than she looked that minute with her hair hanging down her head in wet streels (ringlets), her feet bleeding, her face covered with insect bites and her eyes glazed with the want of sleep.

Sandy said she was not a pretty sight but he'd marry her anyway if she agreed. And she agreed at once of course. A spark of romance on your island of pain and suffering.

So they got back home after that truly dirty weekend, announced their engagement to the parish, married a year or so later and enthusiastically began the biological bliss that resulted in their five children, of whom I was the second to arrive in this world one January safe and well and (there are photos to prove it!) very beautiful indeed.

I believe none of that might have occurred were it not for the existence to this day of your Purgatory on Lough Derg. Because Mary was being hotly pursued by other potential husbands at the time and Sandy probably was just in the right place at the right time.

Thanks again for that, and I will raise a glass to both yourself and my parents next month when your big day arrives again.

Keep well in the meantime,

Cormac

PS: I am truly very grateful but no way will I ever go near your Purgatory in Donegal ever again. You can count on that!

An ancient shipwreck on the Mayo shoreline has reappeared thanks to coastal erosion.

The wreck close to Killary Harbor on Tallaghbaun beach was almost entirely submerged below the sand until recent winter winds and tides re exposed it.

Archaeologist Michael Gibbon told the Irish Times he believed the ill-fated ship could have been sunk as long ago as the Middle Ages.

There are 300 known wrecks of the coast of Ireland and west is replete with them on account of its often-treacherous seas.

Ancient Shipwreck Exposed by Wind and Tide on South Mayo Coast pic.twitter.com/jVwOXjEjNQ

— viswa_mfame_guru (@mfame_guru) February 16, 2017

The most famous ship with an Irish connection to ever sink was of course the doomed RMS Titanic but possibly the most consequential was the Lusitania. The Lusitania was sunk in 1915 11 miles of the coast of Cork by a German U-boat - killing 128 out of the ship’s 139 passengers. The incident very nearly brought the United States into the war two years early but - much to Britain’s dismay - Washington decided to let the incident go.

The deaths of 19 members of a 20-man crew off the coast of Arranmore Island, County Donegal is a tragedy remembered and commemorated to this very day by locals. The boat was carrying several returning emigrants who’d been in Scotland picking potatoes hit the rocks shortly after leaving the harbor in mainland Donegal. 12 of the casualties were under the age of 30.

Other wrecks have less tragic histories associated with them and have even become local tourist attractions. MV Plassy was caught up in a terrible storm off the Galway’s coast in 1940. She ran aground Inisheer island and all members of her crew survived. Today the wreck can still be seen and is considered an important part of the island’s heritage. 

H/T: Irish Times.

As the first country in Europe and one of the first countries in the world to start the use of surnames, Irish last names have a long and interesting history with many changes in the way we have treated our family names.

From the complete dropping of the “O’” prefix in the Irish surname Murphy to the all-out ban on the surname O’Neill in the 1500s, there’s a great deal about Irish last names to be explored with evidence of the use of surnames in Ireland first appearing as far back as 916 AD.  

You can find loads of information on surnames in IrishCentral’s explanation of the Top 300 Irish family names but to get you started, John Cunningham from Claddagh Rings, a company that sells Claddagh jewelry handmade in Ireland, has put together this handy infographic chronicling the evolution of Irish last names and how Irish surnames have changed through the centuries.

For example, did you know that the Irish tend to be more adventurous when they’re naming baby girls or that there is no difference between the prefix Mc and Mac (both coming from the Irish word “mac” meaning “son of”.) All of this and more is covered as we look back over a millennium of Irish family names.

Read more: Top 300 Irish surnames explained

You can find more on Claddagh Rings and their products at their website www.claddaghrings.com.

A 97-year-old veteran of World War II who saved the life of future President John F. Kennedy has died. William "Bud" Liebenow served in the Navy and led a rescue party to find Kennedy after his patrol torpedo (PT) boat had been attacked by Japanese.

The pair stayed in intermittent touch over the years and a still grateful JFK invited Liebenow to attend his Inauguration as President in 1961.

Initially the young Jack Kennedy looked set to sit out the Second World War behind as desk, in a uniform but still pushing paper for the United States Navy. His father Joseph was having none of that. How could Jack expect to be a politician, let alone Commander-in-Chief, if he did not see action? He had to look bereaved mothers, grieving widows and wounded warriors in the eyes when he asked for their votes and he if he spent the conflict behind a desk many would ask what had he sacrificed for his country?

So despite his constant problems with his back he volunteered to serve on PT boats in the Pacific. For a rich kid from New England who sailed on summer holidays he expected the job to be right up his street. His fellow recruits took to him but nicknamed him “shafty” after he complained of being “shafted” after he wasn’t chosen for one mission.

Eventually given the all clear to command a PT with a crew of a dozen men off the coast of the Solomon Islands. One routine patrol turned to tragedy when a Japanese left two members of Kennedy’s crew dead and the remaining ten panicking for their lives.  “There's nothing in the book about a situation like this. A lot of you men have families and some of you have children. What do you want to do? I have nothing to lose."

The crew decided not to surrender, fought on and made it to an island some three miles away. It was there they were rescued by William "Bud" Liebenow.

Liebenow was a Virginia man who had been at Pearl Harbor when attacked by the Japanese. He died in Mount Airy, North Carolina this Sunday following a bout of pneumonia. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

Read more stories about The Kennedys here

H/T: WGRZ.com.

Our guide has told the same story perhaps a thousand times yet still it brought a lump to her throat.

“People around here recall that in 1849 folks living in my home town of Louisborough in Co Mayo - around 600 in total and including women and children - were starving as a result of the potato famine and a rumor went around that, if they walked to Delphi Lodge where the landlord and council of guardians were, then they’d be given food,” she said.

“It’s about 15 miles and a very beautiful walk today by the shores of the Killary and Doolough lakes. But it was bleak and freezing when those people set out on that night on their journey to meet their landlord.

“So they set out and walked anyway in atrocious conditions and literally died on the way back of weakness and starvation. Later, people found corpses by the side of the road where you’re standing with grass in their mouths that they had been eating for want of food.

“When the people had eventually got to Delphi Lodge , they were told that the guardians could not be disturbed while they were taking their lunch. When they finally did see them, the people were sent away empty-handed and most of them died on the journey back.”

We all went quiet for a moment.

Then our guide continued: “It makes me very sad and very angry.”

The Great Hunger - An Gorta Mor - is the biggest tragedy to have hit Ireland. Between 1845 and 1850 an estimated one million people died there when the staple potato crop failed. If you add forced emigration to the USA, Canada and elsewhere to that figure which followed as a result, Ireland’s total population was cut by around a quarter as a direct cause of the Famine.

There are a number of versions of the Doolough Famine Walk of 1849, as it has become known, in which the numbers of people and the circumstances of their deaths vary tremendously. We rely on a letter published in the Mayo Constitution of April 10 1849, signed by ‘A Ratepayer’, which first blew the whistle on the case.

It describes how in late March of that year, a Colonel Hogrove,  a member of the Board of Guardians (who administered the Poor Relief), and a Captain Primrose, the local Poor Law inspector, arrived in Louisborough to inspect those claiming relief.

People came to the town from all around only to find that the two men had headed south to Delphi, where at that time stood on the shores of Doolough lake the hunting lodge of the Marquess of Sligo. It’s thought the two men had gone to Delphi to go hunting. They gave instructions for people to gather there for the inspection instead, or face being struck off the poor relief register.

The letter writer went on to call for an inquiry into the ‘melancholy affair’.

Louisborough today is a small friendly town. Four miles away is Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s holiest pilgrimage site, at the foot of which is Ireland’s National Famine Memorial. It’s a sad metal structure of a three-masted ship, the sort that took people to the New World back then. They became known as coffin ships. Around the structure skeletal figures of the starving stand pleading.

And then we continued our journey onwards to Delphi in the footsteps of our ancestors as we walked our way through history.

The inky waters of Doolough came into view and then three hills in the distance upon one of which you could still make out the scant edges of the old potato fields. Two memorials marked the spot where disaster happened. One a plain stone cross engraved with the words ‘Doolough Tragedy 1849’. The other carried another inscription: “To commemorate the hungry poor who walked here in 1849 and who walk the Third World today.

Every year since 1988 there has been a walk along this route in memory of the Doolough dead and to highlight the starvation of the world’s poor still today. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has done it, the children of Chernobyl have done it. So has the Cellist of Sarajevo, Vedran Smailovic who played daily in his city despite sniper fire in the 1990s while it was under siege. And Kim Phuc - the woman who was made famous in photographs of her as a girl running naked and burned by napalm in Vietnam - she has done it too.

As have Native American Indians. When they learnt of the tragedy in 1849, members of the Choctaw tribe raised $710 which they donated to Irish famine relief. They did so because the story reminded them of their own plight when, 18 years earlier, they were forcibly removed from their land by the white man to make way for modern day Oklahoma. Their march was some 500 miles and they lost lives along the way. The Indians’ march became known as the Trail of Tears.

In 1992 a group of Irish people returned the Choctaw Indians’ kindness by walking the Trail of Tears, raising a huge $710,000 which they donated to famine relief in Africa.

The annual commemoration of those events of March 1849 leading to the Doolough Tragedy ensure the people’s sacrifice in these parts will never be forgotten.

* Originally pubished in 2016.

St. Patrick was a slave when he was first taken to Ireland, but he didn’t starve but rather he survived on foods that today are prized as premium-price health fare.

That’s according to Regina Sexton, food and culinary historian at University College, Cork, who released research on a study into Ireland’s diet in the fifth century as it made the transition from a Pagan to a Christian society.

She says record-keepers in ancient monasteries show that while obesity was not a problem in Patrick’s days, the fare was seasonal, wholesome and modest.

Dairy produce and cereals were everyday staples. St. Patrick would have consumed lots of fresh milk, sour milk, thickened milk, colostrum, curds, flavored curd mixtures, butter and soft and hard cheeses.

There was oats and barley, and a little rye together with more prestigious and high-ranking wheat. Flat breads and leavened wheat loaves were on offer.

Various wet preparations such as porridge, gruel, meal pastes and pottages as well as cereal milk and fruit-nut combinations were also being eaten on the island when the young Patrick arrived.

There was a wide range of wild foods, notably watercress and wild garlic, nature’s way of garnishing the delights of the countryside.

Sexton says, “If this didn’t whet his appetite, there were hen and goose eggs, honey, fish, butter, curds, seaweeds, apples and dairy as well as several varieties of soft and hard cheeses. The rivers were flush with salmon, trout and eel, and hard-cured pork as well as other meats, were to be had too.

“This was neither a throw-away nor a take-away society, and people took good care to preserve and conserve for future use, foods that could not be consumed immediately.”

She adds, “Little wonder then that even after his daring escape from Ireland, Patrick returned to become the island’s patron saint. He did it for the good of his health!”

* Originally published in 2016.