![]() I brushed up on my Irish-Greenwich matriarchal project file, happily absorbed in what I do, writing, researching, making collage, cutting and gluing; 'my school work' as I call it. A Passion for Genealogy - The Research of Susie Harrison. The london-Irish Ancestry part of my grandmother Isabelle Bane's family tree. I made a Kerry Irish collage and looked more at the story of the famine that my ancestors just had to escape. Accounts I find do have a certain watered down perspective of oppressor versus oppressed, but I feel there are two more considerations, one being that historic times always had a certain ruthlessness and in-humanitarian influence, non-acceptable today and so all the more shocking to us; but also, there were vicious circles here at play, clouding the part of any supposed innocents, with the existence of heavy drinking and all its family, social and financial consequences. No more brutal on Roman Catholics were the overlords in Ireland, than had been so in Britain, where the old religion was purged completely. Naturally, stern divisions had come into being. But, also, the personal self-destruction of alcohol afforded little hope for the greater community to ever gain respect and credibility, whatever the root differences. It's easier to just blame and be angry and continue drinking. Local Roman Catholic landlords, not even Protestant, were as bad as any absentee Protestant aristocrat, the latter being out of touch with the real world on an earthy level, and so were maybe worse and more culpable. I did find a more honest account by an actual Irishman on the alcoholic problem the Irish have such a propensity for. I looked to find out more about this. I was curious. The history I'd so far found said that the Irish, before the potato famine, simply drank water, and elsewhere it was stated they had a soured yoghurty drink. There was no mention of alcohol. So I had put this in my file, thinking the drink problem the Irish were famed for thus arose in consequence of the horrors of the potato famine. And it takes an Irishman to be honest about it all and say such alcoholism and its destructive effects had long gone on. Potatoes were not only the sustenance of the peasants, but also their peril, as from it they distilled hard alcohol. This drink was home distilled 'poiton'. If one removes the t, and replaces but one letter, one gets 'poison'. Gallons of such Irish whiskey were made, every second cottage or so manufacturing it. They drank to their detriment. When one is poor, it does always amaze me, that important finance or nourishment gets put into alcohol, for which there is a neglect of children and or wives, although women drank hard too. With large families, plenty of unemployed single men were up to no good, the 'bachelor group' as they were called, defining their manhood with hard drinking and fighting. Communities even expected this of them and supported them in it. Evicted tenants formed early guerrilla groups, such as the White Boys, carrying out terrorist activities in the nights, fuelled by their plentiful consumption of poiton and aggressive bravado, targeting landlords and any others suspected to collude with the British colonials. And, yes, they were born into abominable conditions, as peasants were pretty much in any part of the world. They were exploited as tenants, or cottiers, at any moment to suffer eviction. Sufferings make a path to drink, so that even by this the imagery is fulfilled of a people who are vulgar and uncivilised. They chose panacea in something that would not give them that, which would make all even more dreadful. With the catastrophic appearance of the potato blight starvation and disease now preyed upon them. There had already been such precarious balance in their ways of life. The lumper potatoes yielded high, but didn't mature until the autumn. Though stored potatoes kept families going right up till the end of spring, the crop then became inedible, and so began what was known as the 'summer hunger'. Those who had a little wherewithal would buy from dealers oats and barley to see them through to potato harvesting time. Those from poorer families sought different solutions, their menfolk seeking temporary work in the fields of England, while their women and children stayed behind begging along the roadsides. I can't know precisely what my own Sugrue's and Sheehan's experienced in all these regards, but I see in their new life in Greenwich they were far from finding a utopia, bringing along their own habit to drink and to inadequately function as families. The British both let them down, by bad policy in Ireland, and welcomed them, both friend and foe. Not in any of the newspaper articles of their dramas was it ever mentioned that they were Irish immigrants. They could have assimilated better if not for chronic drunkenness. For this, Irish families had a long hard journey ahead of them. It is almost as if there has been a biological propensity to drink, regardless of circumstance. All the Irish expats I have met in France are atrocious alcoholics. Alcohol is no way but the sole path of the Irish, but as a report has shown, 54% of Irish admit to harmful or risky drinking, compared to a European average of 28%. The Irish blood is in many of us, which I know from all the genealogy I've done for friends. I have long been teetotal. I have always wondered at the Irish and their heavy drinking. It's so stereotypical that we are not really supposed to by fairness ever mention it. But maybe this story requires some honesty. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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