There was a time when my mother used to dress me in something green, put a pin or sticker on me and send me to school.
I wasn’t sure what this all meant at first, but eventually it came to me: I was Irish. Okay, not entirely Irish. With a name like Martin you can hardly claim to have come directly from the Old Sod, unless you had changed your name to get work back in the early part of the century or something.
Anyway, most of me was Irish, though I am not sure how you measure that out in terms of percentages, despite having taken Ms. Bassett’s biology class in high school.
That was where we had to draw out all those Xs an Os and chromosomes to figure out whether or not the cat would have two heads or pink fur or whatever or the black guppy would have a polka-dotted brother.
As I was saying, the story goes like this: my grandmother, a Murphy, was born in Ireland, as were some of my grandfather’s ancestors, as well, although there appears to be some confusion about this part, since no one kept very good track on my grandfather’s side of who was being born to whom and when back then.
To add to the confusion, the Irish were not too pleased with the lack of potatoes and other miscellaneous luxuries on the Emerald Isle and were hot footing it in various directions, mostly to America, in search of better spud territory.
Who went where was sometime lost in the process, like one great uncle who once claimed to be an Anglo-Irish Italian of Scandinavian descent, whatever that means.
Of course, even then you could recognize the Irish, as my friend the late John Ford would say “by their mugs.” Although the Irish are famous for mugs of a different variety, having practiced their hand at turning them in the direction of their mouths for a good many years in most cases, they are also easily identified.
I always attributed that to their good nature, fondness for storytelling and sense of humor. Ford, an Irishman through and through, took a trip to Ireland to check it out for himself, returning to announce his findings: “The Irish have great mugs!” That, of course, included his own, which was stuck in a number of pubs in the name of research.
His conclusion was that you can tell an Irishman by his mug, a point, or pint, which could hardly be argued in Irish society. He added that he was also genuinely interested in returning to collect more data by the pint, or point. Whatever.
That, in part, led to some of my own research on the subject, returning to the Emerald Isle, not once, but twice over the years with my mother. She had looked back in records and found where her mother had been born, and though we never quite made the final connection to relatives there, we were close enough to send shivers up my spine. Once there is Irish blood in your veins, it is there forever.
I even ventured into several pubs myself to get the true flavor of the area, particularly in Dublin and Killarney, where I spent numerous hours pouring, or rather poring, over local mugs. All in the name of research, of course.
I arrived at several conclusions worth noting. One, the Irish love Americans. Two, the Irish love America. Three, the Irish love beer. Four, there are more Irish in America than in Ireland. Five, mugs are always worth investigating. Six, Guinness is practically a saint in Ireland. Who but he would have his statue prominently displayed in a church yard? Hmmm – would that be the patron saint of beer perhaps?
The first two conclusions were more than evident in the way we were treated throughout our stay, including queries as to what it was like in America and questions about Irish who had moved to the states, like “Ya live near Boston, do ye? Ya might know me brother Jack who moved to Boston several years ago?” Apparently, the Irish don’t have a clue when it comes to how big everything is here and how many people inhabit New England alone.
The facts that the Irish love beer and that there are more Irish in America than in the homeland were provided by an unquestionable source: a pub owner, who had spent his entire life gathering data on his own in the region of Killarney. He also added that the name Kennedy was still spoken in reverent tones there. What I didn’t know was that the U.S. was the first country to recognize the Irish Republic, and that, yes, in fact, there were more Irish living in America than in Ireland.
Americans, given the nature of America, being a melting pot and all, have the unique luxury of having two nationalities for which they can be proud, being American and having those ancestral ties to other cultures and countries, as well.
Though there is no doubt that my father was a Swamp Yankee, I’m sure if I followed the ancestral trail back far enough, it would lead to another part of the globe eventually.
Why we don’t celebrate Swamp Yankee day once a year is another question worth pondering. Maybe it is because there is no St. Yankee who drove the snakes out of New England. Besides, how would we dress for the occasion, with little rocks around our necks, commemorating the New England soil and a penchant for building stone walls?
Meanwhile, I will continue to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and the “wearin’ of the green.”
Perhaps it is time, in fact, to do a little more in depth research on the subject of mugs… Erin go bragh!
The above is an excerpt from the book Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sanity… by Dick Martin, a Glocester resident, former Burrillville High School teacher and contributor for NRI NOW.
Martin can be contacted at [email protected].
