Tag Archives: Ireland

A tale of two visits: Obama and the Queen in Ireland

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, President Obama and his wife Michelle visited Ireland. Last week, Queen Elizabeth II was in Ireland. All in all, a pretty big week for the country.

Obama was there pay tribute to his lineage in Moneygall, which Mark Landler of The New York Times described as “a postage-stamp Irish hamlet of 300.” Obama hugged people, shook hands and — most importantly — had a Guinness.

The Queen’s visit was more somber, as she addressed — but came short of apologizing for — the history of violence between England and Ireland. There were several protestors, and the pictures of them are more striking than the photos of the Queen’s visit. To see photos from The Big Picture, click here.

The way the two visits were played in the press highlight the differences of the trips. The usually playful Irish Examiner had a clean, serious front for Elizabeth’s visit, but returned to its normal relaxed form with a scrapbook-y collage of Obama’s visit.

———

THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO IRELAND

The Irish Times focused on the conciliatory nature of the Queen’s visit, showing her with Irish president Mary McAleese laying wreaths in honor of the dead Irish at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin.

Miriam Lord writes:

This was the moment many thought they would never see.

The Queen of England, standing in the Garden of Remembrance, head bowed in a mark of respect for the men and women who fought and died for Irish freedom.

Here, in this revered shrine to republicanism, the strains of God Save the Queen swelled in the quiet of a Dublin afternoon, played with the full blessing of the President of Ireland and the political establishment.

These electrifying minutes signalled the end of a long and very difficult journey, when two neighbouring heads of state finally stood together as equals in a display of friendship and reconciliation.

To read the rest of Lord’s story, go here.

The Irish Examiner showed several photos of the Queen’s visit, but the largest play went to the photo of Queen Elizabeth II signing the guestbook at Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the president of Ireland.

The importance of this was summed up in the main copy block under the photos:

At precisely 12:47 yesterday afternoon the course of Anglo-Irish relations changed forever when Queen Elizabeth II signed the visitors’ book at Aras an Uachtarain. It was a deeply psychological and symbolic moment, an acknowledgement by the British head of state that she was in Ireland as a visitor, a guest of the Irish head of state, President Mary McAleese. It was a meeting of equals, a coming together of the representatives of two neighboring nations in mutual respect, a moment of which the people of Ireland can rightly be proud.

To read Shaun Connolly’s story, go here.

———

OBAMA’S VISIT TO IRELAND

The Irish Times played the story the way it plays many of its centerpiece stories: with one main photo, one headline and one deckhead. The photos fascinated me, because I was trying to wrap my mind around the glass-looking partition thing from which Obama delivered his speech.

What the Irish Times front didn’t show, though, but did show on its website:

That photo was uncredited on the site. To see that photo (and to read the story by Stephen Collins and Mark Hennessy), go here.

That Guinness moment did make it on the Irish Examiner front, though:

Similarly to the front featuring Queen Elizabeth II, the importance of this event was summed up in the main copy block under the photos:

The visits of US presidents emphasise the importance of what is one of this country’s major resources — Irish descendants in the United States and, indeed, Irish descendants scattered throughout the world. We need to cultivate those resources wherever possible.

To read Paul O’Brien’s story, go here.

———

UPDATE

The Queen did NOT have a Guinness. Read about it here.

10 things you might not know about St. Patrick’s Day

Posted on by
Reply

March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day, a religious holiday in Ireland and a secular holiday everywhere else. For a guy named Patrick, it’s like a second birthday. But anyone can enjoy this holiday, whether you’re an Irishman, a descendant of one or a “little Chinese boy in the suburbs pretending to be Irish in the middle of March.”

I now present 10 things you might not have known about St. Patrick or his Feast Day. Don’t feel bad; I didn’t know a lot of these myself, and I’m named after the guy.

————

1. St. Patrick was not Irish.
He was from Britain, back when Britain was still a Roman colony. In the late 300s when the Irish began raiding Britain, he was abducted and brought back to Ireland, where he was a slave for the better part of a decade.

————

2. St. Patrick was not originally named Patrick.
He chose the name Patrick for himself when he was ordained as a Catholic priest. He was originally named Maewyn Succat. After his years as a slave, he returned to England, where he had a vision that the Irish needed him. When he became a priest, he took Patrick as his Christian name.

————

3. The original color associated with St. Patrick and his feast day was blue.
There was even a shade called St. Patrick blue. But the Emerald Isle is overwhelmingly lush, making green a more natural color with which the Irish could identify. Political groups later adopted the shamrock (and thus the color green), solidifying green as a part of Irish nationalism.

————

4. He did not literally “drive the snakes out of Ireland.”
Ireland never even had any snakes. The “banishing of the snakes” was a metaphor for the banishing of evil and St. Patrick’s hand in Ireland’s conversion to Christianity. Within 200 years of Patrick’s arrival, Ireland was completely Christianized.

————

5. The association between St. Patrick and the shamrock may be overstated.
It’s been said that the shamrock is associated with St. Patrick’s Day because St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Christian concept of the trinity: the Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit, each separate but the same. He might have used this metaphor, but it appears nowhere in any of his writings, which detail so much of his philosophies and teachings. If St. Patrick kept such fastidious notes about his work, how come he never mentioned this? So, according to the History Channel, this could be a myth, but we have no way of verifying.

The shamrock ended up being used by political groups in the last 300 years, though, in part because of the association with St. Patrick. But the national symbol of Ireland is not the shamrock; it’s the harp.

————

6. Corned beef and cabbage is not associated with the holiday in Ireland.
The traditional meal for St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland is bacon and potatoes. Bacon and pork in general have historically been a big part of the Irish diet. Corned beef was eaten in Ireland, too, but it’s been more emphasized by Irish Americans. When many Irish immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s, they found that their reputation for loving pork preceded them. Anti-Irish cartoons featured stereotypical Irishmen with pigs, saying, “Here comes Paddy with his pig!” Beyond the anti-pork Irish slurs, there’s a much simpler reason the Irish Americans turned to corned beef and cabbage: it was much more affordable than bacon and potatoes.

————

7. St. Paddy, not St. Patty
Patrick comes from the Irish name “Padraig.” The shortened form of that is Paddy. The name Patty is short for Patricia, the feminine form of the name. So, if you say St. Patty’s Day, you’re actually referring to the Feast Day of St. Patricia of Naples, which is August 25.

It’s easy to see how “Patty” and “Paddy” became confused in America. Americans enunciate the two words the same, whereas the Irish would pronounce a harder “T” sound, thus making the names distinguishable. An American would hear the Irish name Paddy and think it was Patty. It wouldn’t occur to people unfamiliar with the name Padraig that it should be Paddy. After all, Bobby works for the name Bob, so why wouldn’t Patty work for Pat?

But now you know. After years of mistakenly being called Patty, I’m reclaiming my masculinity. You can call me Patrick, Pat or Paddy, but not Patty.

————

8. Leprechauns were only recently associated with the holiday, by Americans.
The drunk, impish troublemakers who trick you and lead you to pots of gold are really a fabrication of Walt Disney’s “Darby O’Gill and The Little People” and the marketing geniuses behind Lucky Charms. Before those brands recast the leprechaun as benevolent tricksters, leprechauns weren’t associated with St. Patrick’s Day, because leprechauns were scary bastards. They were part of pagan tradition that predated St. Patrick’s arrival in Ireland by centuries. Leprechauns were a type of fairies who guarded areas and tried to scare you away. The modern version of leprechauns are based on anti-Irish cartoons that were based on derogatory stereotypes.

I remember middle school, when the “Leprechaun” movies first came out. These three kids in my English class would tell “yo mama” jokes, trying to outdo the other. Whenever someone busted out “Yo mama look like the ‘Leprechaun!,'” it was OVER. You can’t come back from that.

————

9. March 17 is believed to be the day St. Patrick died.
Many Feast Days for Catholic saints tend to be on the saint’s death date, or day associated with his or her death. St. Patrick is believed to have died on March 17, 461. For Catholics in Ireland, the day is a Holy Day of Obligation. In other words, a day on which attending Mass is mandatory.

————

1o. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade in America is believed to have been in Boston in 1737.
It’s not universally accepted, though, as there are those who say the first St. Patrick’s Day parade was in New York in 1762. Others say it was in Philadelphia in 1780.

March 17 is used to be a city holiday in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville and thus used to be a day off for school kids and anyone employed by the city. It’s technically not for St. Patrick’s Day, though, but Evacuation Day, the day the last of the British left the city. It’s convenient that it falls on St. Patrick’s Day, though.

UPDATE: Governor Deval Padraig Patrick signed a law requiring government offices in Suffolk County to open on Evacuation Day and Bunker Hill Day. Read more here.

UPDATE, AGAIN: To test your knowledge of the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade, take this Boston.com Your Town quiz.