By Kieran Patrick Loughney
As the harsh winter loosened its icy grip at the Catholic school I attended as a child in New England, the runup to St. Patrick’s Day would begin in earnest. We kids were tasked with tracing mimeographed shamrock shapes onto green construction paper and cutting them out with dull scissors. Dozens of these would decorate our classroom where we’d be taught songs such as When Irish Eyes are Smiling and It’s a Great Day for the Irish. My classmates were primarily not of Irish descent. Nevertheless, on March 17th we’d all be dressed in green.
I’d come to learn much later that The Sisters of Mercy, an order which originated in Dublin, were sharing an American version of Irish culture. I’d also learn that before the 1970s, pubs in Ireland would close on St. Patrick’s Day, and the Irish would mark the occasion by attending church. St. Patrick, despite the folklore, did not drive the snakes from Ireland—there were none there to begin with. The songs the sisters taught us had little association with traditional Irish music. Irish Eyes was written by an Ohio native and the one proclaiming A Great Day for the Irish was penned for a Judy Garland movie.
The ersatz Irishness of things would become a curious phenomenon in movies such as the diddly-eye Irish cliché fest of Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People, and in TV ads for Irish Spring soap and Lucky Charms cereal with the chuckling leprechaun. The stepdancing on steroids of Michael Flatley’s shirtless appropriation of Irish tradition, Riverdance, may be the most flamboyant example. I’m not offended by a little cinematic shorthand to depict ethnicity, nor am I easily upset by blatant stereotypical depictions of my forebears or even modernizing traditional music or dance. (The folk-punk band The Pogues thrill me with their snotty rock versions of Irish traditional music.) Still, an authentic and historically accurate representation of my heritage is always welcome.
In the colorful history of the West Village, The White Horse Tavern remains a monument to the large wave of Irish immigration that reached these shores more than a century ago. The saloon, the second oldest in New York City (only McSorley’s is older), according to Village Preservation, was a gathering place for immigrant longshoremen, artists, and writers. The three Clancy Brothers, struggling actors from Tipperary, were regulars at the White Horse in the early 1960s, enjoying pints of beer and singing songs passed down from their ancestors back home. Together with their friend Tommy Makem, they’d soon be performing at Carnegie Hall and be invited to the White House by President Kennedy, forever marking the White Horse Tavern as the place where traditional Irish music first entered mainstream American culture.
At my own annual St. Patrick’s Day party in my former home in Scranton PA in the early 1990s, a guest, noticing my extensive music collection and hearing the non-stop Irish music being played that day, invited me to host a radio show at a station he owned. I accepted and began an immersion in all things genuinely Irish. Over the next three years I’d learn more about Irish history, storytelling, music, and dance than I ever had, presenting a program of traditional music and interviews with musicians, authors, and historians. Although I’m thoroughly American, my ancestors having arrived three generations ago, I had discovered and was eager to share the rich heritage established by my people long before I was born.
At the dawn of personal computing, my father fired up his primitive Radio Shack desktop and began a genealogical examination of our family roots. His research confirmed that our forebears had indeed all come from Ireland. While hardly a surprise to us, it helped to fuel my desire to one day visit Ireland. Many years later, I pulled out of a hotel parking lot west of Dublin and, determined not to consult a map, followed a rural road amid the meadows of the Wicklow Mountains. Coming upon ancient stone ruins, I pulled over and eavesdropped on a tour group in progress. The guide described the sixth-century stone church built by St. Kevin (my twin brother’s name is Kevin). I walked away as he continued his lecture, but thought I heard my own name mentioned. I circled back some time later. Finding him in an adjacent set of ruins, I asked the guide if he had mentioned the name Kieran. “I did indeed, sir,” he replied. “You’re standing on the ruins of St. Kieran’s Church right now.”
