The Ballycastle Blog: Irish Genealogy and More

If you were born outside Ireland and have a grandparent born in Ireland, are you interested in obtaining Irish citizenship? Let us know your thoughts and interests.. We look forward to hearing from you.

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.

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 Shay Healy, an Irish relative in Dublin, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

There is a dire need for the government to appoint an independent taxidermist to take the Celtic Tiger, stuff it and put it in the skip at the back of Leinster House. We can make no progress as a country as long as we keep referring to our Celtic history, which has been thoroughly exposed as bogus by gardener-turned-anthropologist, Diarmuid Gavin, in his TV documentary series, Blood of The Irish.

Diarmuid used DNA evidence to confound what we have been believing about ourselves, all these years. He breathlessly told us that fifty-five thousand years ago, the ancestors of the first Irishman, began their journey from the Rift Valley in Kenya,

His findings were so obvious, that he scarcely needed the DNA to prove his thesis. Don’t we all know that any attempt by Irishmen to cohere into a group, always begins with the “rift”…or as it is better known in Ireland, the “split.”

As our ancestors traveled from the Rift Valley, all the way across Europe till they reached the Basque Country of Northern Spain, there wasn’t as much as a single Celt to be seen, not to mention bodhrans or banjos. And there was no such thing as “the craic.”

Our forebears remained in the Basque Country until about 10,000 years ago, when they finally moved on to Ireland, having realized that a good slick advertising campaign about “the mist that do be on the bog” and “friendly Irish staff to greet you,” could yield a handsome turnover of tourists.

But this shocking disclosure that we are descended from the Basques, means that all the Celtic baloney we’ve been peddling recklessly, all this time, is a big, fat lie, worthy of a banker.

Thankfully, fate has not deserted us entirely. In a twist as corny as a country song, it may be that our saviour in this hour of national crisis is none other than pure, sweet, mother-loving, ever-smiling, “howya Josie,” twinkle-eyed Daniel O’Donnell,

According to Diarmuid’s research, Daniel, is descended from the great Irish chieftain, Niall of the Nine Hostages, the man who allegedly kidnapped St. Patrick and brought him to Ireland. If we dump the “Celtic Tiger” tag as quickly as possible and revert to St. Patrick’s as our national saint and the shamrock as our tourist emblem, Daniel can rescue our Irish pride during the transition, by being able to remember the first name of every American tourist who comes to Ireland this year.

And there’s more good news. Bernard Lagat, the Kenyan athletics hero who declared for the United States, last week won the famous Wanamaker Indoor Mile, in New York, for the seventh time and in doing so he equalled the record of our own Eamonn Coghlan, who in his heyday on the American indoor circuit, was known as The Chairman of The Boards.

Lagat was slightly bemused that Eamonn, who traveled to New York for the race, could be so gracious in giving him benediction to equal his record.

“He wanted me to win today. That means a lot. It’s unbelievable, because normally you don’t want someone to take your record.”

While Daniel is busy shaking hands at airports, ferry ports and train stations, what is to stop us sending Eamonn Coghlan to Kenya under the guise of a FAS scheme, to lure future Lagats to declare for Ireland. As long as two or three executives from Fas accompany him, to ensure he wasn’t padding out his expenses, it would be money well spent.

And there’s more good news. Spanish international soccer player, Xabi Alonso was born in Tolosa, in the Spanish Basque country and Didier Deschamps, the French international, was born in Bayonne, which is part of the French Basque country. A smidgin of saliva is all it would take now to establish a player’s Basque-Irishness and a few sturdy Basque players might spare Giovanni Trappatoni the awkwardness he has created for himself by his macho Italiano refusal to pick Andy Reid.

But by far the best news to emerge from Diarmuid’s detective work, is the disclosure of the existence of a cave in The Burren, which provides us with evidence that the first Irish settlers, our Basque ancestors, survived by living in caves. It may not be this year, but the way things are shaping up, by this time next year, we could all be living in caves.

And if you do find yourself living in a cave, in light of this new evidence about our ancestry, make sure there are two ways out of your cave, in case of emergencies. You know what they say about putting all your Basques in one exit.

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

Throughout the centuries, some Irish family surnames proliferate in specific geographic regions and counties in Ireland – Murphy in Cork, O’Sullivan in Kerry, Sweeney in Mayo, Healy in Sligo, Power in Waterford, etc. etc.

Knowing the Irish family surname location patterns throughout Ireland helps you isolate regions of the country where a particular Irish ancestor’s origins may be found. Additionally, combining the ancestor’s parents’ surnames, the father’s surname and the mother’s maiden name, may pinpoint a specific civil parish and townland where those two surnames were dominant in past centuries and still are today.

Let us know the geographic regions of Ireland where you found your Irish ancestors’ family names and post them here.

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).

According to Irish surname specialists, the surname “Whelan” is the 79th most common surname in Ireland. Thousands of Irish immigrants named “Whelan” came to America in the last two centuries. A large number of them saw their family name recorded “Whalen” by government immigration and census officials on government forms. Consequently, when searching for your long lost Irish ancestor “Joseph Whelan” or “Josephine Whelan”, be sure to look for “Whalen” also. Surname spelling variations occur with other Irish surnames also. To my bemusement, my global search for the surname “Whalen” for the entire country of Ireland in the Griffiths Valuation Survey (1840 – 1860) database produced zero households, and in the 1901 Irish census only 9 households.

Lesson Learned: If at first you don’t succeed in finding an ancestor with one Irish surname spelling, try a slight variation of that surname spelling to see what you might find.

Let us know what Irish surname spelling variations that you’ve encountered in your research and post them here.

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:

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.

Many Irish surnames begin with O’, such as O’Grady, O’Sullivan, O’Neill, O’Reilly, and O’Brien. An O prefix on a surname translates to “grandson of”, whereas a Mac prefix translates to “son of”. It was not uncommon for Irish immigrants coming to America in the 19th century to lose the O’ or Mac, when they processed through U.S. Immigration, whether by choice or not. When searching for an Irish ancestor’s records in Ireland, it is wise to not only look for the surname without the O’, but also the surname with the O’. For example, in addition to looking for your grandfather James Sullivan in Ireland, you should also look for James O’Sullivan. You may find that your Irish family name originally had an O’ prefix long ago, before your ancestors traveled to America.

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

That moment! It is a moment frozen in time and memory. A moment you’ll always remember, the moment that you view a handwritten entry in an old ledger book in a small Irish village parish office, after months or years of searching. The handwritten entry from 1866, recording your Irish grandparent’s birth, or the handwritten entry from 1911, recording your Irish grandparents’ marriage appears before your eyes. An emotional, sentimental feeling comes over you. Here is the evidence and record of a significant event in your Irish ancestor’s life in Ireland. The record connects you with your Irish ancestors’ origins. The record is a part of your Irish family history that, in some spiritual way, may define who you are today.

After you identify your Irish ancestors’ home and parish in Ireland and you travel to Ireland, it is well worth a visit to the parish church to view the baptism and marriage records and find the entries related to all of your ancestors in that parish. The parish pastor will transfer the ledger entries to modern forms with the parish seal, as the official records of your ancestors’ baptisms or marriages.

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