St Patrick’s Day

The next time you are in your local library look for a great book that explains everything you ever wanted to know about Ireland. It’s called “The Dictionary of Irish Phrase and Fable.”

The book has so much information in it I used only terms that started with the letter P.
There are hundreds of little Irish “letter P” facts, the first being, of course, Paddy. It’s short for Patrick, the name of the 4th century Saint who established Christianity in place of barbaric paganism. Paddy is also a fit of anger and a brand of Irish whiskey favored by traditionalist. March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day.

The Patriot Game, for example, is the title of a ballad written 50 years ago. Tom Clancy added an “s” and turned it into a novel. The ballad is about a young Republican named Fergal O’Hanlon killed in an IRA raid in 1957.

My name is O’Hanlon, I’m going on sixteen,
My home is in Monaghan, that’s where I was a wain.
I gave up my boyhood to drill and to train
And to play my part in the patriot game.

There are other ballads and many proverbs: “Praise young people and they will follow you. Scold young people and they will fall by the wayside,” and “A drink first and then a story.”

Solanum tuberosum is the Latin word for a staple of the Irish diet for two hundred years: the potato. Introduced to Ireland from America in the 17th Century it was consumed in great quantities (did adults really eat 14 lbs a day?) because it was easy to grow and cook. Supplemented by milk or herring the lowly vegetable provided a nutritious diet.

When the fungal infection hit the potato fields in 1845 the three million who depended on the potato for food had nothing to substitute for it. The Great Famine of 1854-1852 may have killed a million Irish men, women and children.

“The Plough and the Stars” is the title of a Sean O’Casey play that caused a riot when it was first produced in 1926. The events surround the 1916 Easter Rising in the slums of Dublin. The Irish Citizen Army, set up to protect workers and pickets from the Dublin Police features a plough and stars on their flag. A pub by that name serves a variety of ales and porters still thrives on Mass Ave in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are probably pubs in other cities by that name as well.

A “Pub Crawl” is “a pastime that requires a group to go from pub to pub, having one or more drinks in each establishment.” While doing the crawl they might recall the proverb “Company shortens the road” but in their mirth forget the Irish saying “A little tastes better that a lot.”

There are 25 other letters besides “P” that will give you food for thought on the subject of Ireland and the Irish in The Dictionary of Irish Phrase and Fable by Sean McMahon and Jo O’Donoghue. (427.9415)


Library Corner
By John Grimm
March 18, 2011