Queen Elizabeth I of England once remarked that her only true Irish friend was whiskey. The word “whiskey” comes from the Gaelic words uisce beatha, which mean “water of life.” The origins of whiskey are lost in the mists of time; some historians think the distilling technology was developed in the Far East and brought to Scotland and Ireland by traveling Celts. By 1000 C.E. people in both Scotland and Ireland were fermenting grains, distilling the brew, and aging the final product in wooden barrels.
Modern Irish whiskey is similar to Scotch whisky, but it’s distilled three times instead of two, it’s slightly sweeter, has less peat flavor, and it’s spelled with an “e” — Scotch is spelled “whisky.” Although Scotch whisky enjoys a far larger market today, in the nineteenth century Irish whiskey was the more popular drink. It was the liquor of choice in Victorian England, but in the period from 1910 to 1945 the Irish whiskey industry hit on hard times when the combination of Irish independence, American Prohibition, trade disputes with England, and World War II effectively ruined the export market.
Nevertheless, the domestic Irish market managed to keep a few distillers alive. The Bushmill’s distillery in the North continued to produce Bushmill’s malt whiskey, and the Midleton distillery near Cork produced the Jameson, Powers, and Midleton whiskies.
In recent years, Ireland’s tourist boom has encouraged entrepreneurs to revive old Irish brands and distilleries. Today, there are dozens of Irish whiskey brands on the market, like Paddy, Kilbeggan, Locke’s, Tullamore Dew, Redbreast, and Greenore.
A discussion of Irish distilled beverages would not be complete without a mention of poteen, poitín (po-CHEEN) in Irish Gaelic, an extremely strong grain alcohol made in unlicensed stills in the country — like moonshine. It’s said that farmers used to give poitín to cows in labor. Supposedly, you can still find it in remote rural areas, but we don’t recommend that you drink it; the ethyl alcohol in bad batches can be poisonous.
For better or worse, alcohol is an important part of Irish life. Irish beer and whiskey provide jobs for thousands of people, they pump export money into the economy, and they help create the boisterous pub atmosphere that is such a big part of Irish life. The unfortunate side effect of this success is the high rate of alcoholism in the Irish population. Ireland has consistently had one of the highest alcohol consumption rates in Europe; in 2000, the average Irish person consumed 12.3 liters of pure alcohol. This tradition of excess has taken its toll in lost productivity, lives cut short, and a reputation for drunkenness that has been hard to shake.
The stereotype of the drunken Irishman has a complicated history. Some aspects of Irish culture have tended to promote alcohol consumption: the long-standing heritage in producing beer and whiskey, the desire to escape from continuing poverty and oppression, and the relatively benign view that the Catholic Church has tended to take on alcohol. But while the stereotype has probably been backed up by elements of truth, it is also true that it was often perpetuated by politicians who wanted to suppress Irish political power. Anti-Irish and anti-Catholic politicians in England and the United States frequently evoked the image of the drunken Irishman to stir up animosity against the Irish.
The Republic of Ireland has fought to bring down alcoholism and the stereotype that goes with it. Government actions have increased the penalties for drunk driving, limited the hours that pubs can be open, and mandated that pubs must serve nonalcoholic beverages. Public education campaigns have helped reduce some of the worst consequences of drinking, but the overall rate of consumption is still high. How Ireland will deal with this issue in the future remains to be seen.
100 { Irish Contributions to Literature and Art
Irish writers have made extraordinary contributions to English literature, and include four Nobel Prize winners. Although many of Ireland’s greatest writers left their island to work in other countries, their work demonstrates the love of wit and poetry that has characterized the Irish people for centuries.
The full story of Irish literature begins long before the English ever arrived in Ireland. The Celtic epics described earlier, such as the Taín Bó Cuailnge, represent one of the great oral literary traditions in world history. In the Middle Ages, Irish bards were famous for the originality of their poetry. It is very unfortunate that relatively little of that poetry survives today.
Few Irish writers stood out during the years of English domination. After all, most of the Irish were uneducated farmers who had little opportunity to express themselves in writing. Moreover, the most talented writers went to England to pursue the greater opportunities there. This trend of writers leaving the country has continued into the modern day, but within the last 150 years the growth of Irish consciousness has created a greater distinction between the cultures of Ireland and England, in the minds of both the Irish and the rest of the world. This distinction has allowed people to talk about a body of Irish literature that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the literature of England or the United States.
Irish writers often receive literary awards for which they compete with writers from all over the world. In the last century, four Irish writers won the Nobel Prize in literature:
William Butler Yeats, 1923
George Bernard Shaw, 1925
Samuel Beckett, 1969
Seamus Heaney, 1995
JONATHAN SWIFT (1667–1745)
Ireland’s first great contributor to English literature was Jonathan Swift. Born in Dublin to Protestant English parents, Swift faced financial challenges after his father’s early death. After an education at Trinity College, he moved to London to serve as secretary to Sir William Temple. With Temple’s help, Swift obtained appointments with the Church of England in both England and Ireland. In 1713 he became the dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, where he remained for the rest of his life; when historians of the Protestant Ascendancy refer to “the dean,” they are talking about Swift.
OSCAR WILDE (1854–1900)
Oscar Wilde was born into a house where his creativity could reign free: his father was a famously eccentric surgeon, while his mother, “Speranza” Wilde, was a well-known socialite and writer of nationalist poetry. With his privileged background, Wilde was able to study at Oxford, where he became a disciple of Walter Pater and led the aesthetic movement, in which he advocated the idea of “art for art’s sake.”
Unfortunately, tragedy brought him down. Wilde was a homosexual, and he had carried on an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas for some time. Douglas’s father, the marquis of Queensberry, accused Wilde of committing sodomy, a crime in Victorian England. Wilde sued the marquis for libel, but after a sensational trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labor. His incarceration left him physically, financially, and spiritually ruined. He fled to Paris, where he died, broken and penniless, in 1900.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865–1939)
W. B. Yeats is widely considered to be one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. He was born in Dublin in 1865 to an Anglo-Irish landowning family. His father, John Butler Yeats, was a well-known painter. Yeats spent much of his childhood in County Sligo, in West Ireland. He pursued painting as a young man, but he soon decided that his true passion was poetry.
The first inspirations for Yeats’s poetry were the landscape, language, and mythology of Sligo. The folktales he heard from the local people led him to develop a fascination with Celtic stories and mysticism that influenced his work throughout his life. In the 1880s he became one of the leading voices promoting the study of Irish language and folklore. His poems, such as “The Wanderings of Oisin” (1889) and “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (1893), communicated his love of Celtic myth to a wider audience. Yeats was a prolific and versatile writer throughout his career. His work in drama, folklore, and essays would each independently have made him a luminary of Irish literature. His true genius, however, came out in his poetry. In 1923, the year the Irish Free State was declared, Yeats won the Nobel Prize in literature “for his a
lways inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”
JAMES JOYCE (1882–1941)
Joyce revolutionized the novel, the short story, and modern literature as we know it. He was born in Dublin, the first of ten children in a Catholic family. His father was a civil servant whose poor financial judgment left the family impoverished for much of Joyce’s youth. Joyce attended Dublin’s fine Jesuit schools, which gave him a firm grounding in theology and classical languages — subjects that repeatedly appeared in his later work. The story of his early life and his intellectual rebellion against Catholicism and Irish Nationalism are told in the largely autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), originally published in 1904 as Stephen Hero.
Joyce spent seven years working on Ulysses (1922); once he finished writing it, he almost couldn’t find anyone to publish it. Once it was published, Ireland and the United States immediately banned it as obscene, and most people who located copies found the writing nearly incomprehensible. Despite these obstacles, Ulysses has come to be generally recognized as the most influential English novel of the twentieth century.
SAMUEL BECKETT (1906–1989)
Beckett was born in Dublin to a middle-class Protestant family. After an education at Trinity College, he moved to Paris, where he befriended James Joyce and became involved in the Parisian literary scene. Beckett experimented with various styles during this period, producing poems, novels, and short stories that were popular in French critical circles. During World War II, Beckett stayed in France and was active in the Resistance.
In the postwar years, Beckett began to find true success by evolving his own style and writing primarily in French (he usually translated the English versions himself). He wrote a critically acclaimed trilogy of novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable. His greatest successes were his plays, particularly Waiting for Godot and Endgame. In 1969 Beckett received the Nobel Prize in literature “for his writing, which — in new forms for the novel and drama — in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation” (in other words, for inventing absurdist drama). He produced a number of plays in the 1970s and 1980s, which were widely read but less original than his earlier works. He died in Paris in 1989.
SEAMUS HEANEY: POET OF THE TROUBLES (1939– )
The American poet Robert Lowell said that Seamus Heaney is the greatest Irish poet since Yeats: Oddly, he was born in the year of Yeats’s death. Heaney was the oldest of nine children in a Catholic farming family in County Derry, Northern Ireland. At St. Columb’s College in Derry and Queens University in Belfast, Heaney received a grounding in Latin, Irish, and Anglo-Saxon that has enriched the language of his poetry. The themes of his poems arose from the tensions of the land in which he lived: Ulster’s industrial present versus its rural past; English roots versus Gaelic; and the rising conflict between Northern Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants.
Heaney has produced a number of vibrant poetry collections: Death of a Naturalist (1966), North (1975), Station Island (1984), and Seeing Things (1991). In addition, he has written plays, essays, and a bestselling translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf (1999). Heaney received the 1995 Nobel Prize in literature “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.”
101 { Tracing Your Roots
The world is full of descendants of Irish emigrants. In the United States alone, some 42 million people are descended from Irish Catholic or Protestant immigrants. Most of these descendants know little more about their Irish roots than the names of their family and the county they came from. But more and more people are taking an interest in learning about Irish heritage, tracing their family histories, and even reaffirming ties to relatives back in the old country.
There are a number of family names that are widely known to be Irish. Some of them are very old indeed, dating back to the Celtic peoples who controlled the island many centuries ago. Other names were added later, as waves of invaders gradually merged with the Irish population. Thus, Irish surnames include Old Gaelic (O’Brien, O’Neill), Norman (FitzGerald, Butler), Scots (Hamilton), as well as a plethora of English names (White, Williamson).
About 10 percent of Irish surnames come from the Anglo-Normans of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — the French, English, Welsh, and Flemish. A large proportion of surnames in the North come from Scotland, due to the Ulster Plantation in the 1600s. Furthermore, the English government Anglicized many old Irish surnames.
The prefix “O” means “descended from.” Thus, someone named O’Grady is descended from an ancestor named Grady. Names beginning with this prefix are a dead giveaway that someone is of Irish descent. Sometimes the “O” gets dropped; if you want to look up a surname, check listings both with and without it — for example, when looking up the name O’Reilly, also check for “Reilly.”
O’Brien is an illustrious name; this name supposedly comes in a direct line from Brian Boru, the great king of the eleventh century. Not all O’Briens are descendants of Brian Boru; some versions of the name are a corruption of O’Byrne or derive from the Norman surname Bryan. Many O’Briens come from County Clare or the town of Killaloe, where Brian Boru had a palace.
The name O’Connor also has a long history; it’s a very old Gaelic surname. The O’Connors descended from King Conchobar of Connacht, who died in the tenth century. Roderick O’Connor was the last high king of Ireland. O’Connors became lords of Counties Mayo and Clare.
The O’Connors from County Offaly trace their descent to a king of Ireland from the second century C.E.; they fought hard against English rule in the 1500s and as a result were more or less destroyed as a wealthy dynasty, although the name did survive. O’Connors were a dominant family in County Sligo from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, but lost all of their possessions after Cromwell.
The O’Donnells were prominent in County Donegal in the fourteenth century. One of their members, Red Hugh O’Donnell, was famous for his bravery fighting the English under Queen Elizabeth I. After Cromwell, the O’Donnells spread through Counties Mayo and Leitrim, and there are still many of them there, as well as in west Donegal. Many O’Donnells emigrated to the United States and Australia.
The O’Malleys were a famous seafaring family who controlled most of the west coast of Ireland from their base at Clew Bay in County Mayo. The name is still common in County Mayo. It was sometimes Anglicized to Melia.
O’Neill is one of the most common surnames in Ireland; it’s among the ten most common names in Counties Antrim, Derry, and Tyrone. The O’Neills are descended from medieval kings of Ulster, who ruled the northern province for four centuries before being put down by the English. They controlled a number of other clans, but had the hardest time keeping their own rival factions of O’Neills living harmoniously. Hugh O’Neill was their last chief; in 1603, the English general Mountjoy destroyed the O’Neills coronation chair at Tullaghoge. Many O’Neills fled to Europe, especially Spain, where they flourished as statesmen and soldiers.
O’Reilly is another very common name, especially in the north; it’s the most common name in Counties Cavan and Longford. In Irish it means “descendant of Raghallach” (one of the kings of Connacht). The O’Reillys were a warlike group known for their skill with cavalry. They were also successful medieval traders and produced a number of archbishops and bishops. They traced their descent to the fourth-century king Uí Briúin Breifne. They lost most of their property under Cromwell.
The name O’Rourke comes from “O’Ruairc,” which means “descendant of Ruarc”; Ruarc comes from the Norse word hrothekr, or “famous king,” a tenth-century king of Breifne. Variants on the name include O’Rorke, Rourke, Roark, and Rooke. The O’Rourkes also trace their ancestry to Brian, the fourth-century king of Connacht. The O’Rourkes fought the O’Connors for control of Connacht until the twelfth century, when the O’Connors won. They also fought with the O’Reillys. Their stronghold w
as in County Leitrim. Many O’Rourkes went to Europe after Cromwell confiscated their property, where they thrived in church and state; many of their descendants became important people in Poland and Russia.
Sullivan, or O’Sullivan, is another extremely common Irish surname. The name comes from the Gaelic Ó Suileabháin, which might mean “black-eyed,” “hawk-eyed,” or “one-eyed” — no one knows for sure. It is the most common surname in Munster, especially concentrated in Counties Cork and Kerry. The O’Sullivans were one of the most powerful families of the Eóghanacht in Munster. Most Irish Sullivans today have returned to the older form of O’Sullivan.
Many people are deeply curious about their family backgrounds. They want to know who their ancestors were, whether they did anything famous or infamous, and whether they were noble or peasant. Researching genealogy has long been a popular pastime. It’s easier than ever to find ancestors now that the Internet and e-mail have made it possible to find documents or contact relatives with a click of a button.
Irish heritage can be a wonderful thing. Descendants of Irish emigrants can assure themselves that their ancestors came from a beautiful land with a vibrant culture and strong people. If your ancestors left their homeland under dire circumstances, you can assure yourself that they were tough enough to survive and carry on their names.
The Myths, Legends, and Lore of Ireland Page 19