The Ballycastle Blog: Irish Genealogy and More

Note: The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

(This is a loose translation into English of an article I wrote in Irish some years ago for a local antiquarian publication. From my two short and most enjoyable visits to America, your laws on alcohol are more draconian than our own).

I have a theory that the skills of making poteen came into the Gaeltacht from English speaking areas as all of the terminology associated with its making, used in Irish, are English words such as still, worm, wash, mash, cap, first-shot and round. In my youth, the old people, speaking in Irish or English, called poteen “fuisgí”, and the legal variety they called “Parliament”. (i. e. a Parliamentary tax had been paid on it.)

I never saw poteen being distilled, but I often heard my father describe how it was made from barley. There is a lot of time-consuming preparatory work before the barley is ready fore distillation. In this post, where I am not sure of the quantity or time, I use a question-mark. Two (?) hundredweight bags of barley were required for a full round (four and one quarter gallons of poteen). They took one third from each bag and placed them in a third bag.

Steeping (3 days)
The barley has to be steeped in water for three days. Running water was preferred. During this time the barley expands 20% to 25%. This is the reason that a third bag is required.

Sprouting (10 – 12 days)
After steeping, the Barley is spread out on a dry floor to a depth of four or five inches. The top layer has to be kept wet. This is accomplished by raking the barley every day and by sprinkling the top layer with water. The barley gets very hot during the sprouting process. After three days or so, 4 or 5 rootlets, no thicker than a hair, emerge from the broad end of the seed. A couple of days later the sprout emerges from the pointed end of the seed. The time is dependent on the weather, but the sprouting continues until most of the sprouts are about one quarter inch long. The rootlets are about an inch long by now and the barley is matted together in a single mass.

Drying (2? days)
The sprouted barley has to be dried to stop the germination and to allow it to be ground up. It was dried in the big pot used for spuds. They had to stand with it all the time and stir the barley every 10 minutes.

Grinding (2? days)
The dried barley was then ground on a quern. A good grinder, usually a woman, could grind two stone in an hour.

Fermentation (5 - 7 days)
The ground barley was put in a big barrel together with 50-60 gallons of water and half a pound of bakers yeast to start the fermentation. When the yeast starts to work, little bubbles are released, forming foam on the top. Fermentation takes 5 – 7 days. At the end the alcohol content is 4 – 5%. This is now the “wash”.

IT IS AGAINST THE LAW IN THIS COUNTRY TO DISTILL ANY ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE

Distillation (8? hours)
A still would usually hold 10 to 15 gallons. Alcohol boils ay about 80C and water at 100C so therefore they did their best to keep the temperature of the wash at about 85C so that the alcohol was boiling briskly and only a little steam coming from the water. They tried to keep the thread of fuisgí coming from the still as fine as possible and at any rate less than a linen thread. The first cupful had to be thrown on the ground for the fairies. This was very wise as the first cupful contained poisonous, volatile, higher order alcohols and esters.

They found the wash was exhausted by lighting a dry tráithnín and putting it to the thread of fuisgí. If there was still alcohol coming from the wash, the flame would flare up; if not, it would quench. They had to fill the still six or seven times before the round was complete. They fed the solid material left to the pig. It was said that the poor pig could not go out a gap without banging his head

At the end of the round there should be four gallons and one quart ( taking into account the amount drank) If there was very much more, say six or seven gallons, they had to do another run, which did not take long as the alcohol content was high. If there was less than four gallons they made it up with water. Fuisgí has a proof rate of 55 compared with 40 for Parliament. At this strength if you drop a little drop into a glass it will make individual beads around the bottom.

IT IS AGAINST THE LAW IN THIS COUNTRY TO DISTILL ANY ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE. GOD HELP US.

But if you are a farmer in France you can distil as much brandy as you like for yourself and your friends. In some states in Germany you can even sell up to 60 litres of homemade schnapps to tourists. Harmonisation? How are ya!

(Harmonisation of its laws is an objective of the European Union and some progress has been made in the areas of transport, health and safety, and labour laws though harmonisation of taxes and excise duties are decades away.)

See more Irish family history articles and Irish genealogy lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

One interesting aspect of Irish children’s first names, is this name pattern tradition that a large number of Irish families followed in the 1800’s and 1900’s:

1st son was named after the father’s father
2nd son was named after the mother’s father
3rd son was named after the father
4th son was named after the father’s eldest brother

1st daughter was named after the mother’s mother
2nd daughter was named after the father’s mother
3rd daughter was named after the mother
4th daughter was named after the mother’s eldest sister

I’ve seen this tradition in the numerous Irish family document searches that I’ve conducted, while examining Irish records from 1850 through 1920.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

Saving the year’s supply of turf, (we never called it peat), was a family exercise extending over several months each year. Soon after St. Patrick’s Day my father would arrange to have the turf cut. At this stage a sod of turf is about 16 inches long and 4-5 inches square, and black sodden mass 80% water. Our bog was a fairly shallow blanket bog (about 5 feet deep), so we got only three tops ( three vertical rows). Two of the tops were thrown in two parallel vertical heaps on the bank and one in the bog hole. The next process involved “spreading the turf” where the sodden turf sods were spread out in a single layer to dry. This was very messy and heavy work and at the end of the day you and your clothes were covered in black muck. With my father and brothers working, it took 4 or 5 days to complete.

After about three weeks the top layer was dry while the bottom was still very wet. The turf was then “wreckled” that is the sods were stood on their ends in groups of 10-12 . I enjoyed this part of the process as you could be creative and develop your own “signature” wreckle. After about a month, the turf was dry and ready to be moved from the bog to the side of the road, though the time it took to get to this stage could be seriously delayed by bad weather.

The first ass cart I remember working on (assisting with the filling and emptying) had metal shod wooden wheels, but shortly after that my father replaced the axle and wheels with a car axle and rubber car wheels, which was regarded as a major technological advance. One part of our bog could not be reached by cart, so the turf was removed by ass and pardogs (wickerwork panniers). I was put in charge of this part of the operation at age ten. Two years later, I was put in charge of the ass and car and my younger brothers inherited the ass and pardogs. We had to move 140-150 cart loads a distance of 30 to 300 yards to the side of the road. This took place in June and took us about three weeks to complete. The weather seemed better then, as I recall hot sunny days working with the turf. In the next bog were three boys about our own age. As our carts passed each other, both groups were greeted with a fusillade of clods (small pieces of turf up to about 3 inches long). After a warm day in the bog we were covered in turf dust which stuck to your sweat and the way we had to clean up was to go for a refreshing swim in a large rock pool where the water was significantly warmer than the sea.

Our bog was three quarters a mile from our house, and, as you could put much more turf in the cart, we had about 70-80 cart loads to get home. I hated it as it seemed to take forever. We could get maybe 5 or 6 carts home in a day. Things seemed to cause delay. The ass might tire and fail, and would need the next day off. We had one ass that would work away happily for three or four days and then would just stop and would not move any farther. You just had to un-harness him and leave the cart there until he had his day off.. On the sharp stones the wheels regularly punctured and occasionally a wheel seized. On one occasion I was walking ahead of the ass when the reins were jerked out of my hand. When I turned and looked back, the cart was on its side in a deep ditch and the poor old ass was on his back with his legs up in the drain.

My children have very good memories of bringing home the turf for their grandfather. We were living in England at the time and during our summer holiday a brother would borrow a tractor and trailer, and with a team of from 10-15 children the job was completed in one day. My children thought it great to ride with their cousins in the trailer to the bog and to run home barefoot through the bog. My brothers went with the tractor while I stayed with my father to build the stack. The children were completely banned from throwing clods (my daughter had lost half a front tooth from a direct hit from a cousin). At the end of the day my brothers and I would start throwing clods at each other and the children were allowed to have a bog fight with us which they all remember. They were fascinated at the way we caught the in-coming clods and threw them back.

What I have described is the process of saving turf in North Mayo in the era of the ass and cart. With different types of bog the process was somewhat different.

Readers are welcomed to share their bog and turf stories with us.

See more Irish family history articles and Irish genealogy lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time. The following was written in response to a comment on an earlier blog post of July 22, 2008.

A visitor has made a welcome comment as to what evidence I have regarding St. Bridget’s status. There is no direct evidence, but there are two bits of deductive evidence which I consider compelling.

What direct evidence we have comes from the Lives of the Saints and these were written a hundred or more years after the death of the Saint by a successor with a view to strengthen the particular institutions claim to primacy. Copies exist many hundreds of years old with some fragments going back to the eighth century. They are, however, regarded as not very reliable and as being full of exaggeration and dubious miracles. In St. Bridget’s life we are told that she was a head-strong independent young princess in conflict with her father when she met St. Patrick and was converted from paganism.

Another powerful Celtic woman was Queen Maebh (Maeve) of Connaught. She personally assessed the prowess of one hundred princes before deciding to marry Ailill and then went to war with Ulster because Ailill had a better bull than she had. The story of that war is told in the Táin. In pagan Celtic Ireland it was impossible for a princess to reach adulthood and still be a virgin.

One of the series of legends we have are the Imramha. They are a series of curragh voyages of adventure and they are a bit like a James Bond film in that they follow a formula. Among others they usually visit the Island of Apples (apples were a symbol of abundance in Celtic times), the Island of Fire, the Island of Ice and the Island of Women. The Island of Women was considered to be full of magic and mystery. In the Voyage of Bran the women did not want the men to return so when they tried to row away after a year the women threw magic ropes that stuck to the curragh and hauled them back. One time a crew member grabbed the rope before it touched the curragh and with his sword Bran chopped off the crew member’s hand and so they escaped. However, when they got home a hundred years had passed and as soon as they stepped ashore they became very old men.

In another story there were three women for every man and the men found the women’s demands so exhausting that they went on strike. The strike was settled when it was agreed that the men would be allowed to hunt for one day a week. In another there were seven women to every man and with his crew half dead the skipper went back on his own to get a second crew to relive the pressure on his first crew. St Brendan the Navigator’s voyages are in this tradition and he visits the Island of Fire and the Island of Ice but unfortunately missed the Island of Women.

I have tried to imagine the monks in their freezing scriptoriums solemnly writing down the sexual antics contained in the oral legends.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a community which had the last echoes of a Gaelic past and the cult of St. Bridget. Her cult had absorbed much of the Celtic goddess Bríd the fertility goddess, mother earth the mother goddess. I was genuinely taken aback when I walked into the church in Portugal and saw St. Bridget the Virgin because I had an image of St. Bridget as a mother figure and giving a mother’s protection to Ireland.

See more Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

As a child growing up in 1940’s rural Ireland Christmas was a time of excitement and wonderment. During Advent the adults were required to fast but this did not affect us children. The Christmas season really started the Sunday before Christmas and one of the first manifestations of Christmas was a visit to the local shop with an ass and cart to purchase paraffin, flour, candles and other provisions for the Christmas period. My grandfather killed the goose and turkey and plucking, which took place in an outhouse took about an hour and a half. (When my grandfather became too infirm to kill the fowl I took over his duties as my father was too squeamish for the task and I performed those duties for the family for about 10 – 12 years).

Christmas Eve was a day of abstinence (no meat) but my mother believed in the Celtic day which starts at night-fall and so we had a special meal after dark to commence the Christmas festivities. After the war tinned fruit became available and a big treat at that Christmas Eve meal was tinned pineapple, to this day my favourite fruit. A huge excitement was caused by lighting the candles as two candles were lit in every window in the house and to look around the village and to see candles in every window except those houses that had a bereavement during the year. (Someone who was a bit tight- fisted would be described as “He only lit candles in his front windows”).

We were lucky and unusual in that Santy came to our house with a toy, a book, an orange (a huge treat after the war) and a garment knitted by my mother or grandmother.

Christmas Day we walked to Mass fasting and while I was an altar-boy a big treat was the shilling we got from the parish priest after Mass. (We were terrified of upsetting him and he did not know how to deal with children but in hindsight he was a most compassionate and caring man. When I got involved in local history I found out that as a young priest he had campaigned vigorously to improve the material lot of his impoverished parishioners).

We had Christmas dinner in my grandparents’ house next door. My grandmother cooked the turkey and my mother the goose in large ovens by an open turf fire. Glowing coals had to be constantly replaced on top and under the oven and the duties of keeping the fire blazing and providing a supply of hot coals was assigned to one of the children. How they managed to get them as perfectly as I remember is a wonder to me as even with an electric oven I still struggle to get the goose right.

On St. Stephens Day we dressed up as mummers (also known as wren-boys or straw-boys) and went round the village singing and dancing in each house. A neighbour made the classical straw-hats for us and in most houses we got a few pennies and some sweets or cake.

The candles in the windows were again lit on New Year’s Eve and we had the Scottish custom of first-footing where it was considered lucky if the first person through the door was dark and carried a sod of turf for the fire. All children old enough blackened their faces with polish or soot and came as an excited group all together. Ours was a tee-total house so there was no whiskey as is usually involved.

The candles were lit for the last time on the eve of “Little Christmas” the 6th January. It is known in Irish as “Nollaig na mBan” . “The Women’s Christmas” and on that day my mother and grandmother did no cooking.

I still put two candles in a window (I am tight-fisted) after dark on Christmas Eve to welcome the Baby Jesus. Join me.

Guibhim Beannachtaí na Nollag agus Ath-Bhliain faoi shéan agus faoi mhaise oraibh uilig

(I wish for the Blessings of Christmas and that Next Year will be content and successful for everyone).

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

Nineteenth century Ireland suffered many years of localised crop failure. The Gotta Mór (the Great Hunger) of 1845-7 is remembered mainly because the crop failure was so widespread, but also because it was accompanied by major epidemics of cholera and typhoid which devastated a weakened population.

Maritime communities fared marginally better as they had access to food from the sea. The men fished, but it was women and children who scoured the shoreline at low tide for shellfish and edible sea-weed. On rocky shores they found periwinkles in rock pools, limpets attached to rocks and crabs in crevices under rocks or under drifts of seaweed. On sandy shores they could find cockles, mussels, razor-fish and clams.

There are four types of edible seaweed. Dillisk (Rhodymenia palmate) comes from the Gaelic word “ Duileasc “ which is derived from “ duill uisce “which translates as “water leaf” and it has almost become a generic name for all edible seaweeds. It is reddish in colour and grows as a parasite on other seaweeds. It does best in sheltered bays and it can be eaten fresh or dried. You can still find it for sale occasionally usually from a van at a market or from a house with a hand written sign outside.

The most common type of edible seaweed found in exposed areas is “Creathnach” (Ulva lactuca) a kind of sea lettuce that grows profusely on the seaward side of rocks. It can be found all year round and can be eaten fresh but it is much more nutritious if it is boiled (on milk) for at least an hour. It cannot be dried.

“ Sleabhach “ ( Porphyra umbilicalis) grows on rocks from Autumn to Spring but is at its best in January – February. The fronds stick together on the rocks when they dry and can be lifted off flat rocks in large sheets and ribbons. It is boiled for at least an hour often on milk. It cannot be dried.

The fourth type of edible sea weed was “Cairrgín” ( Chondrus crispus ). It starts off red but turns green in sunlight and white when dried. It grows low down on the sea shore so it needs to be a very low tide to pick it. If it is cooked in milk for about half an hour and the fronds are removed, it sets into something like a blancmange. It was considered an excellent food for those convalescing after an illness. It can be purchased in some health food shops as Carrageen moss. The blancmange can be improved by adding a sweetened fruit such as cooked gooseberry or raspberries.

Nori used in sushi dishes is a processed form of “Sleabhach”. Apparently the Japanese farm over 600 square kilometres of the seaweed and the annual crop is worth a billion dollars. Here is a recipe to impress your Japanese friends.

Sleabhach agus Ruacháin
(Slough-uck a-guss Roo-caw-in)
Nori and Cockles

Ingredients per individual serving
3-4 oz. Nori
15 – 20 Cockles
Butter
Milk.

Cook the Nori in milk for an hour. Cook the cockles in their own juice. If the Nori sheets have not broken up put them in a food-processor for a few moments Serve with a Nori mound in the centre, pour over it a little of the cockle juice and top it with a generous blob of butter. Surround the Nori with the cockles and serve.

I have never seen Nori or the inside of a sushi restaurant, but believe it should work. The original is delicious and cockles go particularly well with “Sleabhach” though other types of shellfish were also used. Perhaps someone who tries the recipe might post his or her culinary review.

See additional Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

Over twenty years ago, on a holiday in Portugal, we visited a church in, I think, Oporto, which contained a statue of St Brigit the Virgin. My reaction was one of incredulity bordering on culture shock, as with our Bridget of Kildare, her virginity or otherwise was of no consequence or relevance in the Celtic times she lived in about
450 A D.

Bríd (pronounced Breege) was the Celtic mother-goddess venerated throughout Celtic Europe and her feast day was at Imbolc (1st February) and the first day of the Celtic spring. She was associated with regeneration, fertility, growth and spring calving which saw the arrival of milk and butter after the supply had dried up in the winter.

On a recent visit to America I came across a lovely book “ How the Irish saved Civilisation “ by Thomas Cahill, Anchor Books. It is beautifully written and authoritative on the Early Irish Church. He describes how Bridget, the head-strong daughter of a king, was converted by St. Patrick. She founded a double monastery (one male and one female) at Kildare and was a powerful personage in the Early Irish Church. There are some hints that she may have performed some functions as a bishop, e.g. ordaining priests and saying Mass, and her feast day is, guess what, the 1st February. Her monastery was at Kildare, Cill Dara (the Church of the Oak Tree). The oak tree played a central role in druidic ceremonies and beliefs.

My own mother was called Breege and had a great devotion to St. Bridget (or was it Bríd ?) She was a great believer in the “Brat Bríde” or Bridget’s Cloak. Bridget’s colour was red ( not very virginal) and on St. Bridget’s night, the night before 1st February she spread her red cloak all over Ireland to give it protection for the following year. It was the custom to leave out over-night, on a tall bush, a piece of red flannel so that it was touched by Bridget’s Cloak. This was the “ Brat Bríde “ and its touch would cure sickness in people and animals. A newly calved cow was touched by the “ brat” to ensure a good supply of milk and the spuds for planting in spring were also touched to ensure a good harvest.

St. Bridget’s Cross - North Mayo and Native American Design

Over forty years ago when I got married my mother gave us a St. Bridget’s Cross as a wedding present for, as she said, to bless the marriage. Years later, while we were living in England, I included it in a multi-cultural exhibition. One of the assistant curators was an American who was part Native American. He got very excited when he saw my St. Bridget’s Cross as he said Native Americans also made them and they were associated with nature and the gods.

Much of Bríd of the Celts was incorporated into the cult of St. Bridget, but St. Bridget the Virgin ? Not our lassie from Kildare!

(I am taking a short break until September from contributing to Mike’s blog. Any particular topics you would like me to blather on about?)

See more Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

In a few short generations, modern man has forgotten how crucially important fire was for mankind for many thousands of years. As someone who was brought up in the 1940’s, in a house that did not have electricity or running water, I have some appreciation of how important it was for us as a family. Saving and gathering sufficient fuel for a year involved all the family in several weeks work spread over a period from St. Patrick’s Day, when it was time to cut the turf, until it was all brought home from the bog by ass and cart (a slow and grossly inefficient frustrating method of transport) by August at the latest.

Our fire burned in our kitchen/living-room and never went out. Last thing at night two sods of turf were embedded in the hot ashes and with restricted access to oxygen just slowly smouldered throughout the night. The first chore in the morning was to rake out the hot coals formed by the two sods, clear all the ashes from the previous day, to light a new fire with the hot coals and to hang a kettle to boil for the first cups of tea of the day.

My strongest memory of the fire was of its warming power. It was our only source of heat and secondary fires would, very occasionally, be lit in other parts of the house. The main way for distributing the heat was by earthen ware hot water jars wrapped in thick stockings. After the war the high tech of rubber hot water bottles arrived. All our cooking, mainly boiling and frying, was done on the fire and we had a large oven in which my mother did baking and roasting. Years later, on a trip to Scotland, we visited a restaurant that specialised in peat smoked products, salmon, venison, oysters etc. They all tasted just like Mammy’s cooking.

All water for washing was boiled on the fire. We had two types of water: spring water from a pump two hundred yards away for drinking and cooking, and water from a stream one hundred yards away for personal and clothes washing. Hauling water was heavy physical work and a ten gallon pot full of boiling water was a potentially hazardous and heavy article that required two adults to remove from the fire. As kids I know we had a bath in the kitchen for Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day, but how much oftener I cannot recall. As the eldest I was the last in and my memory is of freezing soapy water that I absolutely detested. A big summer event was the annual washing of the blankets. This was done by lighting a fire by the stream and boiling the water there. I recall it as a fun event where we helped with rinsing the blankets in the running water and, of course fell in or got soaked.

Survival depended on the fire and, naturally, superstition evolved around it. It was considered unlucky to give your fire away and if a neighbour had a new house he brought his own fuel to be lit in your fire. A sod of turf glowing at one end would be used to give some light on a dark night when visiting a neighbour. The sod of turf was added to the neighbour’s fire as a sign of friendship. However it was considered good etiquette to bring your own sod of turf to light at the neighbour’s fire for the return trip.

Fire was a big component of druidic ceremonies in Celtic Ireland and echoes of two survive. Our big bonfire night is St. John’s night 23rd June (still widely practised, some say, as an excuse for waste disposal) which is of course the Celtic Mid-summer festival with Christian overtones. If you could jump through the flames you would be safe for a whole year. Another fire festival was on 1st May called Bealtaine (Beal’s Fire). A practice in Sligo was to hang whin bushes over the door for luck on 1st May. In the evening the children gathered the whins and had a bonfire.

There is the tale of St. Patrick lighting the Pascal fire on the Hill of Slane before the High King lit his on the adjacent Hill of Tara. In the subsequent conflict with the High King’s druid St Patrick was victorious and thereby converted the High king. Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiach was an authority on the Early Irish church and the missionary Irish which was isolated from Rome for 150 years. His view was that the Irish church had little influence on mainstream Christianity, except that it was possibly responsible for the introduction of the Pascal fire into Easter ceremonies.

See more Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

A Blessing before Meals from North Mayo

Beannachtaí na cuig arán agus an dá iasc
Mar do roinn Dia ar an gcuig míle fear;

Rath ón Rí a rinne an roinn
Ar ár gcuid is ár gcomhroinn.

A loose translation is as follows:

The blessings of the five fish and the two breads,
That God divided on the multitude of five thousand

The Great King’s blessed bounty
On our food and shared fare.

(I prefer to use loose translations as I find that literal translations are wooden and stilted and also lose a lot of the nuances and subtleties of the originals).

Douglas Hyde was our first President (1938 – 1945) and was also a noted Gaelic scholar. In his book “The Religious Songs of Connaught” he has a version of the blessing and was particularly taken with the last couplet which he describes as a particularly fine example of Bardic poetry.

Bardic poetry was syllabic and great effort was made to ensure that every line contained alliteration. Other types of ornamentation such as a play on words were also valued. There were four main types of syllabic structures and up to twenty others of which a type known as “Deibhidhe” was the most important.

“Deibhidhe” was written in couplets and each line contained exactly seven syllables.

The first line contain no fewer than four “r”s in “Rath”, “Rí”, “rinne” and “roinn”.

The second line contains two sets of alliteration “á” in “ár” and “ár” and “gc” in “gcuid” and “gcomhroinn”.

The couplet is tied together by a play on words i.e. words sounding the same but with a different literal meaning

rinne = made
roinn = divide
gcomhroinn (second syllable) = share.

A version for America:

In this version I hope to retain the original Bardic couplet by giving a phonetic spelling and a pronunciation guide

The blessings of the five fish and two breads,
That God divided on the multitude of five thousand.

Wrah own Wree (P) a wrinn un wrinn (P)
Er awr gidge (P) iss (P) awr go-wrinn

Pronunciation.

I have heard the Irish ”r” sound described as having burrs all over. Think of the “wr” sound in “wrath” and “wrench”.
The “i” sound in “Wrinn” is like the “i” in “ring” and the “nn” has a nasal resonance. To pronounce “gidge” replace br in “bridge” with g. “Iss” is as in “hiss”. I have included (P) for pause to help the phrasing.

Enjoy your meal!

See more Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

Agriculture and farming have a rich tradition in Irish culture and history. Farms dominate the rural landscape, and have done so for centuries. In the 19th century, during the height of Irish emigration, it was a traditional custom for an elderly farmer, about to retire, to transfer ownership of the farm to the eldest son, the first in line to inherit the farm. The eldest son’s siblings would then probably have to find other careers and livelihoods, sometimes emigrating from Ireland to find their fortune elsewhere. Eliminated from the farm inheritances, a large number of Irish Americans’ ancestors traveled to America in the late 19th century and early 20th century to find work and a better life. Their eldest siblings remained in Ireland, carrying on the families’ farming traditions. Due to this farm inheritance pattern, some Irish farms have, consequently, stayed in the one, same family for decades and decades, going back to the late 19th century when Irish land ownership improved and increased.

Once you find your Irish ancestor’s place of origin or townland, it’s a safe bet that you may find distant relatives in your Irish family tree close by, farming in the traditional way on the original family farm. If not, some descendants of your ancestors may be in the area!

See more Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.