Even now, here 30 years since, when I turn to the southwest in Ennis from Shannon, and head out on the peninsula that ends at Loop Head, and somewhere on that road get my first wind of turfsmoke, I remember the first time and the sense that I had then of coming home. "The name's good," the man in the customs hall had said, letting my bags pass without a look. I had a hundred … [Read more...] about Nora, an Excerpt
Irish Diaspora
Confessions of a
Bronx Irish Catholic
Over the years, I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what it means to be Irish. Occasionally, my public writings and ruminations on the subject have led to me being described (and dismissed) as a "professional Irishman." If only it were true! Unfortunately, I'm still a semi-pro, forced to make a living at activities unrelated to my ethnic investigations.
A … [Read more...] about Confessions of a
Bronx Irish Catholic
The Irish as Playful Souls
The old St. Patrick's Day quip about there being two kinds of people – those who are Irish and those who wish they were – turns out to be not so far from wrong. The research my colleague Michael Hout has carried out shows that there are a lot more Americans claiming to be Irish than one might expect from immigration records, because the children of ethnically mixed marriages … [Read more...] about The Irish as Playful Souls
The Irish Diaspora and the North
By Pete Hamill
November/December 1994
Writer Pete Hamill, whose parents are from Belfast, explores the connection between the Irish diaspora and Ireland, and offers suggestions as to what Americans of Irish descent can do now to help further the peace process. Almost forty years ago, a fine Irish-American writer named John McNulty wrote an account of his first trip of Ireland. The story was lovely, full of the … [Read more...] about The Irish Diaspora and the North
Irish Travelers of Aiken County
By Daniel J. Casey and Conor Casey
September/October 1994
By the mid 1960s more than three hundred Irish Traveler families had settled on a fifty-acre parcel of land that they called Murphy Village. They named the site for Father Joseph Murphy, a parish priest and advocate who started the settlement for Travelers and guided it for twenty years before his transfer in 1968. What makes Murphy Village unique is that it's a continent away … [Read more...] about Irish Travelers of Aiken County