From: Jessica March
Subject: call for papers:LIMINAL BORDERLANDS: IRELAND PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

Hi Paddy,

Maybe this notice has already been circulated and I have missed it? If so,
Sorry!

Best, Jessica

FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS:

LIMINAL BORDERLANDS: IRELAND PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE Interdisciplinary
Conference in Irish Studies (12/15/03; Sweden,
4/22/04-4/24/04)

The 4th Biannual Conference of NISN (Nordic Irish Studies Network) will be
held at Dalarna University College, SWEDEN, from 22-24 April, 2004

Plenary Speakers:
Prof Emeritus, Bo Almqvist (Dept of Irish Folklore, University College
Dublin) Prof Richard Kearney (Dept of Philosophy, Boston College) Dr Anthony
Roche (Dept of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama, University College Dublin)

Readings by: Medbh McGuckian and Eilís Ní Dhuibhne

The conference theme is Liminal Boundaries: Ireland Past, Present and
Future. The conference will be interdisciplinary and we welcome submissions
for panels and papers in literature, language, drama, film, art, music,
history, politics, philosophy, cultural studies, folklore, and other
relevant academic disciplines that can relate the conference theme to the
subject of Irish Studies. Possible topics include, but are not limited to

* exile; hybridity; nomadism
* local/global communities; nationalism/postnationalism
* postcolonial subjectivity; migration studies; cultural/linguistic identity
* translation; language politics
* liminal bodies/spaces; threshold experiences; memory
* transgressive identities; cyborgs
* gender; queer theory

Please submit 250-word abstracts/panel proposals, including a short CV, by
15 December, 2003. Papers should be limited to 20 minutes in length.
Presenters of papers are required to be members of NISN (Nordic Irish
Studies Network) by March 04. For information on membership see the NISN
website on www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/nisn.

Those who wish to co-ordinate special interest sessions are very welcome to
do so and should notify the conference organiser of the topic and names of
participants. Topic proposals for round-table discussions are also welcome.

The following panel has been proposed: Negotiating Ethnicity and Identity in
Irish American Literature

What are the realities of being Irish AND American? How is it different from
being Irish OR American? Papers addressing questions of
subjectivity,identity and ethnicity, or any other other issues related to
Irish American literature, are welcome.

For this panel please send abstracts of 250 words no later than 31 January,
2004, to:
Dr Mats Tegmark
Assistant Professor of English
Dalarna University College
SE-79188 Falun, SWEDEN
mte[at]du.se


Address all other proposals and inquires to conference organiser:
Dr Irene Gilsenan Nordin
DUCIS (Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies) Dalarna University
College SE 791 88 Falun, SWEDEN

E-mail: ign[at]du.se; Phone: +46 23 77 8308; Fax +46 23 77 8080
http://www.du.se/ducis

************************
Dr. Irene Gilsenan Nordin Director of DUCIS
Senior Lecturer in English Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies
Dept. of Arts and Languages Phone: +46 23 778308
Dalarna University College Fax: +46 23 778080
SE 791 88 Falun, SWEDEN DUCIS web page: http://www.du.se/ducis



===============================================
From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP[at]english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin[at]english.upenn.edu
===============================================

From: John McGurk
jjnmcg[at]eircom.net
Subject: Tourmakeady Gaelic Summer Schools 1905-48


Paddy, Please circulate this request for information to the list.

The Tourmakeady Heritage group are collecting information, bibliographical,
folklorist, educational, etc., on the Gaelic Summer Schools which ran in
Tourmakeady from 1905-1948, teaching the Irish language, music and all
aspects of Irish culture. It may be that 'out there' there are 'hidden'
distinguished alumni or relatives of former students. The Tourmakeady
Heritage group committee would like to hear from anyone who can supply
information about the Summer Schools and the students - maybe many became
celebrated authors, musicians etc. Anyone with information is invited to
contact the group.

I can act as the corresponding agent. Thank you.

John McGurk
jjnmcg[at]eircom.net

From: Elizabeth Malcolm
Subject: News from Melbourne

Paddy,

Below are two pieces of information that I thought the Irish Diaspora list
might find of interest.

I have just put on line a website devoted to my chair of Irish Studies. It's
not complete yet, but I suspect members might still like to look at it as it
contains programmes and reading lists for all the courses I teach here. The
main section yet to be added is a searchable database of Irish sources in
Australian libraries and archives. The material for this has been collected
over the last 3 years, but getting the system operating properly is taking
time. I'll let you know when it is accessible. I'll also be putting on the
site next month further details of the 13th Irish-Australian Conference,
which will be held at Melbourne University at the end of Sept. 2004.

The website address is:
http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/irish/index.htm. I'd welcome comments,
corrections and suggestions.

Secondly, I also wanted to pass on the news that I and a colleague, Dr
Dianne Hall, have recently been awarded a large 4-year Australian government
research grant to undertake a study of violence, gender and the Irish from
the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. The grant includes a post-graduate
scholarship. So late next year we'll be advertising for someone interested
in doing a PhD thesis on the Irish, violence and gender in Australia. I'll
certainly alert you to the ad when it appears.

Finally, I'm just starting 6 months' study leave and am planning to spent
Feb. and March in Ireland, mainly in Dublin and Belfast. Hope I might see
some colleagues from the list then.

Seasons greetings to all.

Elizabeth

- --
Professor Elizabeth Malcolm
Gerry Higgins Professor of Irish Studies

Department of History
University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria, 3010
AUSTRALIA

Telephone: +61-3-8344 3924
Fax: +61-3-8344 7894
Email: e.malcolm[at]unimelb.edu.au
Website: http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/irish/index.htm

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

For information... The essay thought not to belong - see last paragraph -
is Susan Hood: The Significance of the Villages and Small Towns in Rural
Ireland during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

P.O'S.


Subject: REV: Patterson on Borsay and Proudfoot, _Provincial Towns in Early,
Modern England and Ireland_

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (December 2003)

Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot, eds. _Provincial Towns in Early Modern
England and Ireland: Change, Convergence, and Divergence_. Proceedings of
the British Academy Series. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2002. xviii + 278 pp. Illustrations, tables, maps, abstracts, index.
$65.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-19-726248-1.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Catherine Patterson , Department
of History, University of Houston

Economy and Civility in Early Modern Towns

Urban history in the British Isles is alive and well, as many recent books
in the field, including the one under review, demonstrate. Early modern
towns in Britain are receiving a good deal of attention from historians, and
the changing economy, society, culture, and politics of towns and cities
have been detailed in an increasing number of studies. _Provincial Towns in
Early Modern England and Ireland_ adds to that growing literature, providing
a rare comparative perspective. The eleven essays in the volume stemmed
from a symposium, jointly sponsored by the British Academy and the Royal
Irish Academy in 1998, which examined aspects of provincial urban life in
the early modern period. Contributions range from individual town studies
to analyses of market development to broader considerations of urban
culture; six of the essays focus exclusively on Ireland, three on England,
and two cross national lines. While the contributions are somewhat uneven
in scope and impact, together they provide a useful comparative framework
for understanding urban life and culture on either side of the Irish Sea.

It might seem obvious that of the "convergence and divergence" identified in
the volume's subtitle, divergence would be the major theme. And indeed,
these essays make clear the significant differences between Ireland and
England in terms of urban development. Ireland was much less urbanized than
England, even by the end of the early modern period, and very small Irish
towns might be characterized as urban centers in a way that a
similarly-sized English town might not be. Thus Susan Hood, in her essay on
villages and small towns in Ireland, can classify places with as few as 150
households as urban and displaying "formal planning intent" in the
eighteenth century. In addition, significant numbers of Irish towns
originated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of
plantation or of landlord "improvement." W. H. Crawford's essay on the
creation of small towns in Ulster explicitly analyzes this phenomenon,
arguing that urbanization in Ulster was primarily advanced by
entrepreneurial landlords after the government abandoned plans to develop a
network or corporate towns across the region. Several of the other essays
also analyze the impact of plantation and, especially, landlord impetus as
major factors in Irish urban development. In both Kilkenny and Kells (town
studies by John Bradley and Anngret Sims, respectively), sixteenth- and
early seventeenth-century town elites were displaced almost completely by
colonizing newcomers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This
pattern poses a strong contrast with England, where nearly all towns had
their origins long before the sixteenth century and where urban networks
were often well-developed by the seventeenth century.

English towns had long traditions of self-government, and, while landed
neighbors were a fact of urban life, gentle and noble landlords generally
did not dominate town development in England as they regularly did in
Ireland. This difference in background and development was made manifest in
the writing of town histories in England and Ireland in the eighteenth
century, according to Rosemary Sweet's essay on the subject. Most English
towns of any size had a long-standing urban culture and had produced at
least one memorialization the town's foundation and early significance.
While some Irish towns could boast of a cultural life on par with England in
the eighteenth century, very few had produced town histories. Those that
were written tended to suggest a cultural life derivative of London and
Dublin rather than emphasize local uniqueness.

While differences were clear, these essays also indicate some areas of
similarity between the English and Irish contexts. For instance, Peter
Borsay's piece on the rebuilding of Warwick after its great fire of 1694
indicates just how much influence a noble landlord could have on the
development of an English town. The fortunate survival of records from
Warwick's Fire Court, which directed the rebuilding efforts, allowed Borsay
to reconstruct the ways townsmen responded to the fire, how the town was
redeveloped to reinforce its role as a regional capital, and how the center
of town was transformed from a vernacular architectural idiom to a classical
one. It also shows the extent to which Lord Brooke, who owned property in
town, took a leading role in crafting the "new" town.

Borsay grants the exceptional circumstances that affected Warwick, noting
that few English towns in the late-seventeenth century had as active a noble
patron as Brooke. But his case study indicates that strict dichotomies
between English and Irish experience should not be quickly drawn. A similar
theme of commonality within a differing context is apparent throughout Toby
Barnard's essay, "The Cultures of Eighteenth-Century Irish Towns," perhaps
the most interesting contribution to the collection. Using a rich array of
anecdotes and examples, Barnard explores the many functions of towns--as
centers for political activity, recreation and leisure, marketing, and
sociability, among other things.
While travelers characterized some towns as "wretched" and "ill-built,"
others were described as "pretty" and "neat" (p. 196). Even quite minor
towns aspired to urban sophistication, providing inhabitants and visitors
with a variety of goods and services as well as such marks of genteel and
polite society as musical evenings and dancing rooms. Playing on themes
that have been increasingly important in English urban history, Barnard
traces matters such as civic ceremony and urban sociability in the Irish
context. While civic pride and unity can be found in Irish cities,
antagonisms based on sharp religious division as well as political and
social tensions are apparent. Barnard notes the importance of landlord
influence on Irish urban culture, but also cautions that this influence was
perhaps not completely dominant. Tenants also played an important role, a
theme sounded by several other contributors, as well.

As they spin out the variety of threads--built environment, economy, social
order, culture--that composed the urban fabric, the contributors to this
volume make clear that early modern provincial towns in both Ireland and
England were vibrant places. While some certainly faltered under the
changing economic scene across the period, most held their own and played an
important role in both market development and increased "civility".

Alan Dyer's essay on small towns in England goes so far as to argue that
these towns retained their social and economic significance, labeling the
period 1660-1800 as the "highest point of [their] development" (p. 54).
The volume offers a number of useful perspectives on urban life, though it
does not provide a real synthesis of the subject. Aside from the editors's
able introductory essay, only one contribution is directly comparative in
its approach. Themes of change, convergence, and divergence are discussed,
but it is difficult to say which predominated.
As noted above, the essays vary in interest, and some fit less firmly within
the topic than others. Does an essay on villages and small towns in rural
Ireland that focuses significantly on the nineteenth century really belong
here? Nevertheless the book provides much food for thought, and the
comparative framework has much to commend it. Scholarly readers will find
it a useful addition to the growing literature of the early modern town.

Copyright (c) 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

From: Brian Lambkin
Subject: FW: Research post in migration studies at QUB

Research Assistant/Fellow
Ref: 03/W100B
School of History/Centre for Migration Studies, Queens University Belfast

Applications are invited for a research post, to commence as soon as
possible and ending on 5 October 2005, based at Omagh and/or Belfast, to
work on a collaborative all-island project funded by the Higher Education
Authority (Dublin). The project is entitled 'Narratives of migration and
return in contemporary Ireland: an all-island research resource'.

Applicants must have at least an upper second class honours degree, or
equivalent, in Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, History, Folklore, or a
related discipline. Experience of qualitative research methods is also
essential. A PhD or Masters by research in one of the areas mentioned above
is desirable. Additional criteria are available in the further particulars
for the post, available from the Personnel Department, QUB (contact details
below).

Informal enquiries may be made to Dr Patrick Fitzgerald, Centre for
Migration Studies, Omagh, email patrick.fitzgerald[at]uafp.co.uk, tel 028 8225
6315

Salary scale: £18,267 - £22,191 per annum

Closing date: 5.00 pm Friday 9 January 2004

The University is committed to equal opportunity and selection on merit.
It therefore welcomes applications from all sections of society.

Applications should be addressed to the Personnel Manager, The Personnel
Department, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN. Tel: 028
90273044, Fax. 028 90911040, e-mail personnel[at]qub.ac.uk, www.qub.ac.uk/pers

Subject: O'Sullivan Beare
From: Eileen A Sullivan

Paddy,

Do you know Gareth A. Davies, Univ of Leeds?
His 14 page paper on the "Irish College at Santiago de Compostela" is
questioned by a Dublin friend.
Davies stated O'Sullivan Beare (Donal Cam) was killed in a duel in Madrid.
I have not read the paper, but will receive a copy in the New Year.

Eileen

Dr. Eileen A. Sullivan, Director
The Irish Educational Association, Inc.
Tel # (352) 332 3690
6412 NW 128th Street
E-Mail :
eolas1[at]juno.com
Gainesville, FL 32653

From Patrick O'Sullivan

This is the forthcoming H-Net review...

P.O'S.

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-Atlantic[at]h-net.msu.edu

_Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial
and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815_ . Written and Edited by Kerby A.
Miller, Arnold Schrier, Bruce D. Boling, and David N. Doyle. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2003. xxvii + 788 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography,
appendices, and index. $74.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-19-504513-0; $35.00 (paper),
ISBN 0-19-515489-4.

Reviewed for H-Atlantic by Patrick Griffin (griffinp[at]ohio.edu), Department
of History, Ohio University

An Essential Resource for Irish, Early American, and Atlantic History

_Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan_ is a remarkable piece of work.
Ostensibly, the editors intended to showcase a wonderful collection of
documents including letters, diary entries, and memoirs that illuminate the
experience of the earliest migrants from Ireland to America. Finding these
obscure documents, transcribing and contextualizing them are amazing
achievements in their own right. But the editors-and we should really call
them authors-have given us much more. Not only do they interpret each of
these documents ranging from the mid-seventeenth to the early-nineteenth
century, but they also provide penetrating explanations for the movement and
adaptation of more than 400,000 men and women from the Old World to the New.
By uncovering in rich detail the experiences of so many who animated early
modern Ireland, America, and a broader Atlantic world, the authors have
reclaimed a "lost" phase of Irish-American history. Through their efforts,
we can now appreciate the scope and scale of Irish migration during the
eighteenth century, as well as the human face of that movement. Moreover,
the authors suggest that the formative period of the Irish-American
experience took shape not during the years of famine migration but much
earlier, when Irishmen and women of all denominational stripes took
advantage of the pre-industrial linkages between Ireland and America to
better their lot. These men and women left Ireland and arrived in America
during arguably the most formative periods of each nation's past. And this
epic movement, often overshadowed by the millions who would sail the ocean a
few generations later, had great and lasting influences on both sending and
receiving societies.

_Irish Immigrants_ is the work of four writer/editors: Kerby Miller, Arnold
Schrier, Bruce Boling, and David Noel Doyle. While the scope of the book
reflects the broad Irish-American interests of David Doyle's work-in
particular his splendid book _Ireland, Irishmen, and Revolutionary America,
1760-1820_ (Dublin, 1981)-the interpretations offered are "the final
responsibility" (p. xii) of Kerby Miller, the author of the epic _Emigrants
and Exiles: Ireland, and the Irish Exodus to North America_ (New York,
1985). We see in _Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan_ many of the
sensibilities that animated Miller's earlier work. This book, like
_Emigrants and Exiles_, suggests that a transatlantic approach, one rooted
in the archives and literatures of both sides of the Atlantic, offers the
only meaningful way to recreate the experiences of those who lived lives in
both the Old and New World.

The book, therefore, charts the fortunes of men and women who migrated as a
single transatlantic sequence of experience. It covers who the migrants
were and why they left, how they adapted to a new environment, and the
effects these movements had on both sides of the ocean. The first two parts
of the collection explore the Irish side of the equation, detailing the
"causes" and "processes" of migration. The middle sections more firmly
rooted in America offer a glimpse of the multifaceted ways different types
of migrants struggled to make sense of the new societies and peoples they
encountered. The authors arrange these chapters along occupational lines,
examining the things migrants did to understand how they negotiated the New
World. Finally, the book focuses on the ways in which these men and women
shaped and were informed by the epic struggles of the late eighteenth
century-the American Revolution and the political tumults in Ireland in the
years thereafter-by illustrating how men and women settled in America viewed
their experiences through transatlantic lenses.

Each of these sections, which can stand alone, includes a number of letters
arranged in chronological order that contribute to the broader themes
discussed. The section on "farmers and planters," for example, begins with
a letter from John Blake who settled in the Caribbean in the seventeenth
century and concludes with a nineteenth-century letter from Pennsylvania to
Donegal written by James and Hannah Crockett, whose extended family
stretched from Ulster to New York City, New Jersey, and Tennessee. Although
the settings of the two vignettes are separated by thousands of miles and a
century a half, the similarities are striking. Blake and the Crocketts came
to terms with a New World by employing Old World ways, and each tenaciously
hung on to the transatlantic connections by which they defined themselves.
The use of letters such as these often written to close relations back
"home" gives the volume an intimate feel. Relying on private correspondence
to frame a transatlantic narrative humanizes the movement of so many
individuals whom we are all too accustomed to view as bits of demographic
data. The authors have encased each of these letters in brilliant little
essays that discuss what was going on in both sending and receiving regions
and that offer in-depth portraits of each of the subjects. Like these Irish
migrants, the authors have proven amazingly adaptive, ranging far and wide
over historiographical debates and demonstrating a familiarity with the
details of disparate times and places.

Through these snapshots a number of patterns of early Irish migration to
America emerge. For starters, we could call the men and women who left the
"up-rooted" and the "un-rooted." Flying in the face of many assumptions
about the Presbyterian character of eighteenth-century Irish migration, the
book argues that all migrants did not sail from Ulster. No doubt, most did.
But a small but viable stream of Catholics trickled over in the years before
1800. These people defy some of the enduring generalizations about early
modern Irish migration. Before they left, they were not linked to America
through the production of linen or through adherence to a reformed
Protestant faith. In the fluid world of America most would abandon their
Catholic faith and meld in with their Protestant neighbors. Many of the
Ulster Scots who left Ireland-the so-called Scots Irish-had a different
experience in the Atlantic world. Some had only spent as little as a
generation in Ireland, particularly in areas around Derry which had
witnessed a huge movement of Presbyterians from Scotland in the 1690s,
before coming to America. Yet this culture of movement-a distinct aspect of
a larger "world of motion" that Bernard Bailyn argues animated the whole
early modern Atlantic--did not preclude them from holding onto faith
traditions more tenaciously than their Catholic neighbors.

What emerges in this book, then, is a kaleidoscopic world of Presbyterians,
Quakers, Anglicans, and Catholics facing periods of uncertainty in the Old
World and betting their futures on a promising, yet just as uncertain, New
World. These various peoples came from a fluid early modern Irish
society-one, of course, defined along confessional lines, yet one caught in
the grips of profound demographic, economic, and political change. If there
was one constant, it was the viability of cultural and commercial bonds
between Ireland and America. In the seventeenth century, these links would
take the Irish, especially those from Munster, to places like Montserrat. A
century later, the chosen destination became the American region most
closely connected to Ulster: the Middle Colonies. Finally, in the
early-nineteenth century, growing numbers of Irish migrants immersed in a
burgeoning industrial Atlantic economy would people the growing American
cities in the East and the developing West.

The kaleidoscopic nature of the transatlantic experience prepared migrants
well-perhaps too well-for the challenges of the New World. At times they
found common cause with their Euro-American neighbors. All too often,
however, this ability to get along in a plural world came at the expense of
Indians. A number of documents dealing with the Scots Irish on the American
frontier illustrate the vexed relationship this group had with Indians. As
the title of the book suggests, America could be viewed as a new promised
land. But something else is at work with the use of the term "Canaan." At
times just as Protestants in Ireland could regard Catholics as beyond God's
reach-much like the Canaanites of the Old Testament-the Scots Irish could
also view America's natives. Just as the cursed Canaanites forfeited their
land to a chosen people, so too of course did Ireland's Catholics and
America's Indians. The men and women who traveled from Ireland to the New
World demonstrated an amazing adaptive capacity in re-fashioning older
cultural ways in a new context. However, Old World lenses at times could
prove resistant to change; indeed, some of the more pernicious
understandings of cultural difference that had flourished in Ireland-far
from softening-hardened in America.

In _Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan_, no stone goes unturned in
finding the smallest detail of the lives and experiences of each of the
subjects. Yet through this painstaking approach, a larger, vivid picture
emerges. And at the heart of this portrait-and the book for that matter-lay
the meaning of "Irishness." Out of the transatlantic experience of migrants
that reshaped Ireland and America, "emerged modern 'Irish' (and
'Scotch-Irish') ethnic and political identities on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean." These sensibilities would change, merge, and diverge over
time as they "not only reflected but even helped create the categories of
'Irish' identity that emerged in contemporary political discourse on both
sides of the Atlantic" (pp. 8-9).

_Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan_ is a monumental achievement.
Historians of early modern Ireland, colonial America, and the British
Atlantic world now have at their disposal a rich resource that they can dip
into time and time again to gain a more intimate understanding of what it
meant to navigate the difficult shoals between the Old and New Worlds.

Copyright by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution
and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full
and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication,
originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any
other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at
hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

From Patrick O'Sullivan

We are now seeing Reviews of Kerby Miller and merry band, IRISH IMMIGRANTS
IN THE LAND OF CANAAN...

This is the first to have reached us...

P.O'S.

Book Review 1

IRISH IMMIGRANTS IN THE LAND OF CANAAN: LETTERS AND MEMOIRS FROM COLONIAL
AND REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA, 1675-1815. Written and edited by Kerby A. Miller,
Arnold Schrier, Bruce D. Boling, and David N. Doyle. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003. xxvii + 788 pp.

This book, whose editors have enough material to continue with another
three or four volumes up to the twentieth century, is a major breakthrough
in the pursuit of that mission proclaimed in the seal of the American Irish
Historical Society: "That the world may know." What ought the world know? It
must know of the central role played by immigrants from Ireland in the
settlement of the British colonies in North America, in their socio-economic
and political development, in their assertion of independence from the
mother country, and in the formation of the new republic of the United
States of America. But the telling of the tale is scarcely a filio-pietistic
or Irish, Irish-American, or American nationalist exercise. Those who came
from Ireland were of diverse backgrounds and faiths and differed politically
on matters affecting both Ireland and America. Nonetheless, the issues that
concerned them were issues central to the historical evolution of both the
British Isles and America in the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and early
nineteenth centuries: religious establishments, tolerance, economic liberty,
and constitutionalism. While there was a decade or two when developments in
France were central to the thoughts of these transplanted Irish - either as
an example of what they wanted for Ireland and for America, or what they
feared might come to Ireland and to America - for the most part their
political preoccupations were within what might be called the Anglo-American
experience. Their role was so central that one could as validly talk of
"Anglo-Irish-American" in describing their political heritage.
The book consists of letters and/or journals of sixty-eight individuals who
had come to America between 1675 and 1815. There are brief, but insightful,
introductory and concluding essays by the editors for each of the
selections, placing them in a historical context. In addition, the
selections themselves are extensively annotated. The editors were able to
draw upon the assistance of numerous local and specialized libraries to
explain property holdings, contracts, and other items referred to in the
documents. They supplement the fine essays and annotations of each selection
with distinct bibliographies of the area in Ireland from where the
individuals came, their religion, the area in America where they settled,
and more general issues their experiences reflected. This astonishing volume
will be for decades a central reference source for future work on the
trans-Atlantic role of the Irish in the Age of Revolution.
The selections are organized according to a variety of categories, which
form the chapters of the book. They include: the reasons for emigration, how
emigration went about, the various pursuits of the immigrants, such as
farming, planting, craftsmen, laborers, servants, merchants, shopkeepers,
peddlers, clergy and schoolmasters, and, finally, the Irish immigrants in
politics and war. Although this book is an example of micro-history, that
is, the study of very specific and generally uncelebrated individuals, the
reader and, in fact, the editors are not able to avoid coming to some more
general conclusions about the phenomenon of Irish emigration to America in
the colonial and revolutionary period. The first theme that becomes very
obvious is that most were Protestants, many of whom had no more than one or
two generations of roots in Ireland, being part of the "New English" that
came to Ireland as part of the Tudor colonization in the sixteenth century
and, more likely, later, as part of the Ulster Plantation or in the wake of
the Cromwellian conquest, as did many English low-church Protestants,
especially Baptists and Quakers. Interestingly, among the things that drove
them to America was the triumph in Ireland of the Protestant Ascendancy,
which imposed disabilities, although scarcely as severe as the anti-Catholic
Penal Laws, on Protestants who were not members of the Church of Ireland.
Another pervasive theme is Presbyterian radicalism, a spirit animated by
annoyance at religious disabilities imposed at home by the Ascendancy, and
reinforced by economic sufferings consequent upon British mercantile
restrictions on Irish commerce. Those very grievances made many Ulster
Protestant immigrants in American foremost among the popular supporters of
the War of Independence. The same temperament, both among the settlers in
America and among many of the Ulster Presbyterians at home, drew them into
sympathy with the United Irishmen. Not surprisingly, a significant number of
the individuals whose writings are dealt with in this volume were United
Irishmen. Naturally, the most celebrated is Thomas Addis Emmet, a United
Irishmen leader who was able, after imprisonment, to gain the option of
exile, ultimately to America. The latter was delayed because of the anxiety
of many in the new republic about Irish radicals sympathetic to
revolutionary France flocking into America. Many did, but their political
zeal turned more to constitutional politics and law, as they became
stalwarts in the Jeffersonian Republican Party and, ultimately, but beyond
the scope of this book, the Jacksonian Democratic Party.
Catholics were a minority among these earlier Irish immigrants. Many of the
early Catholic immigrants had United Irishmen connections. However, in the
earlier stages the sectarian hostility common at home was not as strong. It
was only later, after the 1790s, when sectarian hostility had intensified in
Ireland with the appearance of the Orange Order and the emergence of
apprehensions about a paradoxical Catholic-Defender and French-Jacobin
threat, that distrust began to emerge. From this would emerge that attempt
to distinguish many of the Irish in America as "Scots-Irish" in contrast to
the Catholic Irish, a tendency which would be intensified later in the
nineteenth century with the mass emigration of Irish Catholics following the
Famine.
Interesting tidbits about early Catholic immigrants appear in the book. The
section about Bernard M'Kenna, who had left County Tyrone in 1797 with the
repression of the United Irishmen in Ulster that year and had become a
schoolteacher in New York, eventually in Catholic schools, discusses a
short-lived Jesuit academy located four miles out in the country, near the
present site of St. Patrick's Cathedral. The section on Margaret Carey
Murphy Burke, a twice-widowed mother of several children and sister of the
famous Philadelphia publisher and Catholic activist, Matthew Carey,
challenges any image of the assumed passivity and subordination of Irish
Catholic women. It notes the remarkable way in which women in Religious
Orders played an activist role that in many ways were comparable to or even
exceeded the social activism of Protestant women. It also notes the generous
assistance she and her family received from recent convert and foundress of
the Sisters of Charity, Saint Elizabeth Seton.
Lastly, there is the account of a less celebrated kin of the Maryland
Carrolls, whose ranks included signatories to the Declaration of
Independence and the founder of Georgetown University. A cousin, Dr. Charles
Carroll, who immigrated to Maryland in 1715 and whose grandmother was
purported to be a daughter of the O'Conor Don, broke with the pattern of his
relatives who had come earlier to Maryland under the benevolent regime of
Lord Baltimore. He was unwilling to endure the disabilities that the British
had forced Baltimore's successors to impose on Catholics. Accordingly, he
conformed and joined the Episcopal Church, although remaining on good terms
with his faithful Catholic relatives. This was a pattern similar to what was
happening in Ireland at the time when many of the Catholic aristocracy and
gentry opted to conform to retain their social position or gain access to
professions or office.
John P. McCarthy

This Review appeared in a recent issue of the RECORDER, the journal of the
AIHS (American Irish Historical Society) in New York.
http://www.aihs.org/index.html

From: Avril Tobin
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Irish in Edinburgh

Dear everyone

Thank you to those who gave advice, references and publications in response
to my earlier email regarding my research into the Irish community in
Edinburgh.

A recurring theme in my interviews to date has been the preponderance of
Irish people who continue to have 'Irish jokes' or derogatory remarks
regarding the 'Irish intellect' directed at them. Although I am aware that
this has been revealed in other similar research, I wondered if anyone knew
of any literature that seeks to analyse this phenomenon (either in relation
to Irishness, or other cultural stereotypes).

I would be grateful for any help that anyone may be able to offer me.

Thanks in advance

Avril

Avril Tobin
Sociology
School of Social and Political Studies
University of Edinburgh
Adam Ferguson Building
George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9LN

a.tobin[at]sms.ed.ac.uk

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Quietly, without fuss, Oxford University Press are putting on their web
sites material about A New History of Ireland Volume VII. Various
publication dates have been given - which I can sum up as about now or soon.
I am not sure if this volume completes this extraordinary project, which
has, for decades, shaped - some would say, distorted - the practice of the
discipline of history within Ireland, and Irish historiography.

Of course... this volume contains its own contradictions - for example, it
has one chapter by Vivian Mercier, who died in 1989. Of course...we will
still want to know what he had to say. And of course we will want to see
what Jerry Sexton has done on Irish emigration in the twentieth century, the
research on which has had a number of us clutching our heads in horror...

P.O'S.

From one OUP web site...

A New History of Ireland Volume VII - Ireland 1921-1984

Edited by J. R. Hill, Associate Professor of Modern History, National
University of Ireland, Maynooth

Price: £125.00 (Hardback)
0-19-821752-8
Publication date: 4 December 2003
Clarendon Press 1200 pages, 13 maps, 64pp plates,, 234mm x 156mm
Series: New History of Ireland

'This volume in the New History of Ireland, covers a period of major
significance in Ireland's history. It outlines the division of Ireland and
the eventual establishment of the Irish Republic. This work provides
comprehensive coverage of political developments, north and south, as well
as offering chapters on the economy, literature in English and Irish, the
Irish language, the visual arts, emigration and immigration, and the history
of women. The twenty-five contributors to this volume, all specialists in
their field, provide the most comprehensive treatment of these developments
of any single-volume survey of twentieth-century Ireland.'

Contents/contributors
Preface
Contributors
Maps
Illustrations
Abbreviations and Conventions
Jonathan Bardon and Dermot Keogh: Introduction: Ireland 1921-84
1 Michael Hopkinson: From the Treaty to Civil War 1921-2
2 Michael Hopkinson: Civil War and Aftermath 1922-4
3 Desmond Gillmor: Land and People c.1926
4 Eunan O'Halpin: Politics and the State 1923-32
5 Brian Girvin: The Republicanisation of Irish Society 1932-48
6 Brian Barton: Northern Ireland 1920-25
7 Brian Barton: Northern Ireland 1925-39
8 Brian Barton: Northern Ireland 1939-45
9 J. H. Whyte: To the Declaration of the Republic and the Ireland Act 1945-9
10 J. H. Whyte: Economic Crisis and Political Cold War 1949-57
11 J. H. Whyte: Economic Progress and Political Pragmatism 1957-63
12 J. H. Whyte: Reconciliation, Rights, and Protests 1963-8
13 J. H. Whyte: The North Erupts, and Ireland enters Europe 1968-72
14 Dermot Keogh: Ireland 1972-84
15 Paul Arthur: Northern Ireland 1972-84
16 Desmond Gillmor: Land and People c.1983
17 Liam Kennedy and David Johnson: The Two Economies of Ireland in the
Twentieth Century
18 Vivian Mercier: Literature in English 1921-84
19 Cornelius G. Buttimer and Máire Ní Annracháin: Irish Language and
Literature 1921-84
20 Cyril Barrett: The Visual Arts and Society 1921-84
21 Joseph Ryan: Music in Southern Ireland since 1921
22 Roy Johnston: Music in Northern Ireland since 1921
23 Rex Cathcart with Michael Muldoon: The Mass Media in Twentieth-Century
Ireland
24 D. H. Akenson with Sean Farren and John Coolahan: Pre-University
Education 1921-84
25 John Coolahan: Higher Education 1908-84
26 J. J. Sexton: Emigration and Immigration in the Twentieth Century: An
Overview
27 Mary Cullen: Women, Emancipation, and Politics 1860-1984
Jonathan Bardon and Jacqueline Hill: Bibliography
Index

http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-821752-8

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Dear Eileen,

Is this one of those queries that begin with the unspoken - 'Leeds is near
Bradford so you must know everyone in Leeds'?

No, the name is not familiar - and there are two universities in Leeds...
Do you have a full reference for this paper?

Peter Somerville-Large is a bit vague about the duel, and where it took
place. Hiram Morgan says of Philip O'Sullivan Beare... 'He was part of a
hawkish group of exiles gathered round his kinsman and war veteran Donal Cam
O'Sullivan and around Florence Conry, the archbishop of Tuam in the 1610s.
It was as a result of Philip's duel with John Bathe in 1618 that Donal Cam,
coming upon the encounter, had his throat cut by Bathe'.... 'According to
the Compendium John Bathe, having borrowed money from Donal Cam, insulted
the honour of the O'Sullivans in comparing them in status to his own family.
Philip O'Sullivan wounded John Bathe in the subsequent duel but the latter
ended up killing Donal Cam when he came upon the aftermath of the encounter.
What we now know is that John Bathe was not a straightforward Anglo-Irish
exile but a spy in the pay of the English authorities in Ireland. Almost
certainly that is how TCD MS 580, a document that the Irish in Spain were
presenting to the state there and which was acquired whilst O'Sullivan was
still alive, came into the hands of Archbishop James Ussher amongst whose
manuscripts it is now found.
http://www.ucc.ie/acad/classics/CNLS/lectures/Morgan_madrid.html

I am trying to remember other accounts I have seen of the incident...

Paddy

- -----Original Message-----


Subject: O'Sullivan Beare
From: Eileen A Sullivan

Paddy,

Do you know Gareth A. Davies, Univ of Leeds?
His 14 page paper on the "Irish College at Santiago de Compostela" is
questioned by a Dublin friend.
Davies stated O'Sullivan Beare (Donal Cam) was killed in a duel in Madrid.
I have not read the paper, but will receive a copy in the New Year.

Eileen

Dr. Eileen A. Sullivan, Director
The Irish Educational Association, Inc.
Tel # (352) 332 3690
6412 NW 128th Street
E-Mail :
eolas1[at]juno.com
Gainesville, FL 32653

From: Carmel McCaffrey
Subject: Re: Ir-D Irish in Edinburgh, and Jokes 2

Paddy,

Thank you so much for this full response to the question of yesterday.
Having lived in England I know exactly what you are describing and still
have memories of this Irish bashing. How I hated it!

Could you possible send me a copy of your article in New Hibernia Review?

Carmel

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Avril,

I mention this pattern in my article for New Hibernia Review, which - to
remind people - I can send to anyone who asks for it, as a pdf email
attachment. I give a few references... See...

Patrick O'Sullivan,Developing Irish Diaspora Studies: A Personal View
New Hibernia Review, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2003, pp 130-148

Since - again to remind people - modesty is NOT an Irish Diaspora Studies
virtue, I think I can say that I still think the best introduction to 'Irish
Jokes' is my own chapter...

Patrick O'Sullivan, The Irish joke, in Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Creative
Migrant, Volume 3 of The Irish World Wide
Leicester University Press, London & Washington, first published 1994, ISBN
0 7185 1423 8
paperback edition 1997, ISBN 0 7185 0114 4

This chapter has been criticised - and praised - for standing back and
looking at the jokes themselves, and how they survive in the world. I still
think this chapter is very funny - though a reviewer in Boston was baffled
by it. And the approach has legs - for example, our Galician colleagues
have seized it to put a bit of theory behind their understanding of the
'Chistes de gallegos', the stupid Galician jokes told in Madrid. (There was
some discussion of this on the Irish-Diaspora list - see the archives...)

The other person who has written about these matters at length is Christie
Davies - a web search will give more information... But see...

Christie Davies , 'The Irish joke as a social phenomenon' in Laughing
Matters: a serious look at humour, (London: Longmans, 1988), eds. John
Durant, Jonathan Miller.
Christie Davies, Ethnic Humor Around the World: a Comparative Analysis (1990
and 1997)
Christie Davies, Jokes and their Relation to Society (1998)

The standard, straightforward text on 'Irish' jokes as racism, is Liz
Curtis, Nothing but the same old story - the roots of anti-Irish racism,
Information on Ireland, London, 1984, 1985. Catalogues often have trouble
with this book - the book was produced by a committee, the text is by Liz
Curtis.

So much for the background...

And all that being said, Avril, I do sympathise with your interviewees... I
would want to go on to say that the experience of 'Irish' jokes is one of
the most weird parts of being an Irish person in England... I say
'England', because that is where I live... The former leader of the
Conservative party, William Hague, recently told an 'Irish' joke at a formal
event - it was of the type precisely analysed by my chapter, needing that
particular cluster of English understanding of 'Irish' and 'stupidity'. But
you do have to ask why or how a prominent politician feels free to do this
at a public gathering.

On a day to day basis, it is almost as if there is a hiccup in the English
psyche - when it meeets something Irish or 'Irish' a joke will launch
itself. Sometimes I wonder if a name beginning O apostrophe is enough to
trigger this response. I remember, when my little boy was very ill, being
in a consultant's waiting room - and the nurse, taking down his details,
began a series of 'Irish' jokes...

The Irish of Ireland are protected from all this, and are simply amazed when
they leave Ireland and meet it for the first time. I said in my article in
New Hibernia Review that is perhaps a peculiar defence of political
independence that at least you do not get insulted in your own country.

Paddy


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Thomas J. Archdeacon"
Subject: Master and Commander

P.O'S mentions the attention to detail in "Master and Commander." I think I
caught a remarkably good example. Did anyone else notice that, in the
prayer service near the end of the film, Maturin seemed to stop his
recitation of the Lord's Prayer after the phrase, "but deliver us from
evil"? That would have been where a Catholic would have stopped. It's only
since Vatican II that Catholics have begun, at least during the Mass, to add
"For thine is the power ..." phrase that concludes the traditional
Protestant version. Inasmuch as the film calls just a bit of attention to
Maturin's Irish background and none -- as far as I can remember -- to his
Catholicism, that's a neat bit of accuracy.

Season's Greetings to all.

Tom Archdeacon

From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: RE: Ir-D 'Mock Irish'

Paddy

On the subject of mock Irish, don't forget Sean Mac Stiofain, born John
Edward Drayton Stephenson in London in 1928 and one of the IRA's more
psychopathic commanders.

Another form of alleged 'mock Irish' identity can also be identified, in the
accusations by anti-Semites in Ireland that Jewish people living here were
in the habit of changing their names to standard Irish-sounding ones, the
better to fool people, as the following extract from the Dail Debates shows:

Mr O'Leary. Deputy Kennedy referred to the cinemas. Who runs the cinemas in
this country? They are run by those people whom the Government is backing up
to the hilt-namely, the Jews. They are the people who control the cinema
industry in this country. The Government will not interfere with them. Why?
Because you will always find the Jew where the money is. Look at the big
firms in this city. Are they controlled by Irishmen? Recently I was speaking
to a man from Youghal and he told me that a Jew had set up in business in
County Cork and he put over his door the name "Michael Collins". He was
engaged in the radio business. Some of the Cork Deputies in this House must
be aware of that. Why should the control of our biggest and best businesses
be in the hands of Jews?

Dáil Debates 5 November 1947

Piaras

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of Jean Talman...
Subject: Canadian Association for Irish Studies Conference 2004

Just to let you know that Padraig O Siadhail has been doing great work on
the arrangements for the 2004 Conference to be held at Saint Mary's
University, Halifax, May 26-29. The theme is "Mother Tongues: The
Languages of Ireland". The deadline for submissions for papers is January
15, 2004. The Call for Papers can be found on the CAIS website
www.irishstudies.ca click on CAIS Conferences, or email Padraig at
padraig.osiadhail[at]smu.ca

Information on registration and accommodation is also available at this
link.

Please pass the word along to anyone who might be interested in presenting a
paper or attending the conference.

Danine Farquharson has edited the latest issue of the CAIS Newsletter and it
should be on its way to members shortly.

Nollaig Shona

Jean Talman
Celtic Studies
St. Michael's College
University of Toronto

From: Patrick Maume
I remember seeing this mentioned on a Catholic discussion list before I saw
the film, so I looked out for it. I'm not so sure - it could just be
coincidence. Incidentally, I saw a letter in one of the British papers from
an Anglican pointing out that in the same scene the Lord's Prayer begins
"Our Father who art in Heaven..." which is used in modernised versions of
the Anglican prayerbook but which for most of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries was seen as specifically Catholic, with Anglicans preferring the
more archaic "Our Father which art..."
Remember Austin Clarke's depiction of de Valera's ministers waiting
outside St. Patrick's Cathedral at Douglas Hyde's funeral, thinking "Better
not hear that "which" for "who"/ And risk eternal damnation"?
Best wishes,
Patrick

> From: "Thomas J. Archdeacon"
> Subject: Master and Commander
>
> P.O'S mentions the attention to detail in "Master and Commander." I
> think I caught a remarkably good example. Did anyone else notice
> that, in the prayer service near the end of the film, Maturin seemed
> to stop his recitation of the Lord's Prayer after the phrase, "but
> deliver us from evil"? That would have been where a Catholic would
> have stopped. It's only since Vatican II that Catholics have begun,
> at least during the Mass, to add "For thine is the power ..." phrase
> that concludes the traditional Protestant version. Inasmuch as the
> film calls just a bit of attention to Maturin's Irish background and
> none -- as far as I can remember -- to his Catholicism, that's a neat bit
of accuracy.
>
> Season's Greetings to all.
>
> Tom Archdeacon
>


----------------------
patrick maume

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Last week I went with my younger son to see Master & Commander, the movie,
based on Patrick O'Brian books, by Peter Weir, starring Russell Crowe...

This is why we father sons - so that we can go to the movies together...

The movie is splendid - done with great gusto, conviction and attention to
detail. No distracting 'love interest...' - unless you count Maturin's love
of natural history. There is the oddity - noticed by many - that in the
movie the raider pursued so relentlessly is French, not American...

I am not as relentless an O'Brian/Aubrey/Maturin fan as some - I think the
earlier novels like The Golden Ocean are better. But O'Brian writes so
gracefully, and has given his readers so much pleasure...

The Guardian newspaper called him a 'mock Irishman' - he was English, his
original name was Richard Patrick Russ, and for many years he hid his
English origins from his admirers...

So... I began to construct a list of 'mock Irishmen'...

1.
Patrick O'Brian
original name Richard Patrick Russ
See
Patrick O'Brian : A Life Revealed by Dean King

2.
Micheal MacLiammoir
Original name Alfred Willmore
See
The Boys : A Biography of Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, by
Christopher Fitz-Simon

3.
This might be an unexpected one... O'Callaghan, History of the Irish
Brigades in the Service of France (1870), has a section on the Irish origins
of the brothers Walsh, one of whom financed Charles Stuart's adventure of
1745-6 (which ended at Culloden), the other the colonel of the Regiment
Walsh. But O'Callaghan feels obliged to mention a pamphlet written and
published in 1792 by Lieutenant-Colonel Andre, or Andrew, Macdonagh -
alleging that the original name of the Walshes was 'Wash', their father was
a trader at Cadiz, and their grandfather was Isaac Abraham Wash of
Strasbourg. An 'obscure Israelitish family' is transformed into 'an
illustrious Irish family'. It is a complicated story - Macdonagh alleges
that he was falsely imprisoned by a lettre de cachet, used by Colonel
Walsh-Serrant.

O'Callaghan concludes... 'So far Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonagh, whose public
contemporary statement, on this point, I could not conceal, without a
violation of the laws of history.' My impression is that generations of
scholars since 1870 have read this section of O'Callaghan's book, and have
ignored it. I have never seen a further exploration of Macdonagh's version.

P.O'S.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: Brian McGinn
bmcginn2[at]earthlink.net
Subject: 'Mock Irish-Americans'

Paddy,

Your list of 'Mock Irish' reminded me that we have, and have had, some
'mock' Irish Americans.

Although the case of Senator Kerry is more ambiguous than the examples of
'Mock Irish' cited, revolving over the unresolved questions of what he knew
and when he knew it. And the motivation for originally disguising the
family's Jewish roots are certainly more understandable. Still, suspicions
arose that it was no great liability for a modern-day Massachusetts
politician with an Irish-sounding surname not to forcefully swat down
assumptions of Irish lineage.

So, herewith the first suggestion for a list of 'Mock Irish-Americans':

1.
Senator John Kerry (D-Mass):
http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-kerry09.html

"People assume," said Kerry spokesman David Wade. "Your name is Kerry, you
are from Massachusetts, the land of the Kennedys."
It remains to be seen whether any issue will develop over whether Kerry
tried hard enough to wave people away from the assumption that he was
Irish-American. Several friends of Kerry who were interviewed said they
assumed him to be Irish-American.

and

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20030729-025829-7031r.htm

"Much of his life, Kerry was thought of by most of his Massachusetts
constituents as being of Irish descent. He told the Boston Globe that he had
known for 15 years that he was of Jewish descent on his father's side and
his family came from Austria. In an article on June 15, the Globe said it
advised Kerry for the first time that his grandfather was a Czech Jew named
Fritz Kohn, who changed his name to Frederick Kerry to escape a violent
strain of anti-Semitism. According to the Globe, Kerry and his siblings
chose the name Kerry by dropping a pencil on a map of Europe and spotting
Ireland's County Kerry."

Any more suggestions?

And let's not forget that initially this process worked in reverse, with
Catholic Irish immigrants to Colonial America dropping the O' and Mac from
their surnames, if not changing them entirely, in an effort to avoid
discrimination.

The American Irish Historical Society's historiographer Michael O'Brien,
among others, pinned much of the alleged undercounting of early Irish
immigration to this practice.

How far we've come.....


Brian McGinn
Alexandria, Virginia
bmcginn2[at]earthlink.net

From: Carmel McCaffrey
Subject: "The Son of a Clare man" Irish Independent

I cut and pasted this story from the Irish Independent about the capture of
Saddam... It might be of interest to the Ir-D list.

Carmel


'It took the son of a Clare man to get him'

"IT TOOK the son of a Clare man to capture Saddam Hussein."

These were the words last night of Mary Queally from Dromelihy in West
Clare, aunt of the United States colonel who headed up Operation Red Dawn,
which led to the capture of the former Iraqi dictator.

Colonel James B Hickey is commander of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division's
1st Brigade in Iraq. His father, James Snr, now 73, is from Cooraclare in
West Clare, and moved to Chicago when he was 18. Colonel Hickey's mother,
Anne Marie, is from Co Mayo.

James Snr's sister, Mary Queally, still lives in Dromelihy near Cooraclare
and said last night she was "very proud of Jim and relieved that he is all
right. Jim was home with me here for 10 days with his wife about 10 years
ago. My brother Jim comes home every year and is due home again after
Christmas."

"James's mother and father have been very worried about him being in Iraq.
My brother rang me today and told me about the capture of Saddam Hussein and
told me James was fine. We are very relieved and very proud," Mary said.

"I was taking to his mother last week and she was very worried that
something was going to happen, so I started saying a few rosaries for him,
but look at what did happen.

"It took the son of a Clare man to find Saddam Hussein. Who would have
thought it? Thank God that no one was hurt," the widow said.

"Jim never liked the idea of James being in the army and often tried to
persuade him to leave it, but no way: James loves the army and would never
come out of it."

Local Fianna Fail Senator Brendan Daly, who has known the family for many
years, said: "The parish is very proud that the son of a Cooraclare man was
responsible for capturing an evil dictator. It took a man of great courage
to do what Colonel Hickey has done," Senator Daly said.

Colonel James B Hickey graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and
was commissioned into the regular army in 1982.

On June 13 this year he took command of 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division
(Mechanised) in Iraq.

Pat Flynn