Free Republic

Growing up Irish in Queens and on Long Island, Daniel Cassidy was nicknamed Glom. “I used to ask my mother, ‘Why Glom?’ and she’d say, ‘Because you’re always grabbing, always taking things,’” he said, imitating his mother’s accent and limited patience, shaped by a lifetime in Irish neighborhoods in New York City. It was not exactly an etymological explanation, and Mr. Cassidy’s curiosity about the working-class Irish vernacular he grew up with kept growing. Some years back, leafing through a pocket Gaelic dictionary, he began looking for phonetic equivalents of the terms, which English dictionaries described as having “unknown origin.”...

THE IRISH IN AMERICA By John Francis Maguire, 1868 CHAPTER XXIV. The Know Nothing Movement--Jealousy of the Foreigner--Know Nothings indifferent to Religion--Democratic Orators--Even at the Altar and in the Pulpit--Almost Incredible--The Infernal Miscreant--A Strange Confession THE KNOW NOTHING movement of 1854 and 1855 troubled the peace of Catholics, and filled the hearts of foreign-born American citizens with sorrow and indignation. They were made the victims of rampant bigotry and furious political partisanship. There was nothing new in this Know Nothingism. It was as old as the time of the Revolution, being Native Americanism under another name. Its animating spirit...

In a stunning reversal, hordes of Irish immigrants are waving goodbye to the Statue of Liberty and heading home. "A lot of them don't want to go back," said Seamus Dooley, chairman of the Gaelic Athletic Association. "They're here illegal, so they don't have a choice." The GAA kicked off its 94th season yesterday in Gaelic Park in The Bronx - but with 10 less teams. The group - which plays Emerald Isle sports like hurling - has lost 200 players in two years. It's tempting for many to bolt now while the economy in Ireland is booming. The Irish...

Today's rancorous debate over immigration has a parallel in the nativist reaction to the mass Irish immigration in the mid-19th century. Spurred by the potato famine that began in 1845, 3.5 million mostly destitute Irish migrated to America by 1880 - about 7 percent of the population of 50 million. By contrast, today's 11 million unauthorized immigrants, of all nationalities, constitute just 4 percent of our population. Contemporary immigration foes, like former Gov. Dick Lamm and Rep. Tom Tancredo, claim America can't absorb so many foreign-born without fatal damage to our economy and culture. Yet, history shows we did just...

For as long as I can remember, all I've ever heard about the Irish in general or the Irish in America or the meaning behind St. Patrick's Day was ... drink, drank, drunk. That's it. And I'm not alone. Back in 2001, social activist Tom Hayden published a stunning book entitled "Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America"; it's a memoir-social history-travelogue combined. In a chapter called "Drinking, Sexuality, and Assimilation," Hayden writes: "Drinking was the only Irish legacy passed along to me. You drink because you're Irish, I learned, which soon became you're Irish...

Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination against their menfolk, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!” These ads were supposedly aimed at non-Irish men: we have a job and if you are English or German or anything but Irish come in and apply. Today anyone can buy fake NINA signs on Ebay (the fakes are all dated Sept 11, 1915, by the way.) No historian, archivist or museum curator has ever been able to find a genuine NINA signs, nor a newspaper report or court case, nor even a recollection of...

Abstract Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in...

IT WAS GOOD not to see Gerry Adams at the White House yesterday. Not to have to watch as the leader of the free world exchanged pleasantries and shamrock with the Hibernian branch of the International Brotherhood of bin Ladens and Zarqawis. Not to have to listen as that charmless brogue touchingly recommitted itself to the promotion of peace and justice for all. Not to have to turn away in disgust at the whole grisly exercise in hypocrisy and cant and shamelessness. For years the raucous St Patrick’s Day parades in America’s big cities have been upstaged by the much...

Irish-American Politicians Drop Sinn Féin, Finally Americans of Irish descent have always had a soft spot for the old IRA and Ireland's struggle for freedom. Not only do they see the Irish as a parallel to the American revolutionaries, but most of their ancestors fled Ireland as a result of British colonalialism, maladministration, and outright oppression. This has led us to keep blinders on to the nature of the modern conflict in Northern Ireland. American politicians of Irish descent have proven to have a soft spot in their head for supporting the modern IRA's political wing, Sinn Féin, despite the...

BOSTON (AP) - In this land of Kennedys, O'Neills, Fitzgeralds and Flynns, where shamrocks grace the jerseys of the basketball team, the Italians are taking over. With the ascendancy of Salvatore DiMasi to the speakership of the Massachusetts House last week, Italian-Americans hold the two top positions in the state Legislature for the first time in its 224-year history. "Finally," said Sheryl Iftikhar (maiden name Spataro), who works at a convenience store in DiMasi's lifelong home, the city's North End, a neighborhood where visitors can buy signs that read "Parking for Italians Only." DiMasi, who took over from Irishman Tom...

President Ronald Reagan, who wore his Irishness on his sleeve even as he kept the troubles of Ireland mostly at arms' length, passed away at his California ranch last week at age 93. After John F. Kennedy, Reagan was America's most verifiably Irish president of the 20th century. Just as Kennedy could trace a well-recorded family line back to County Wexford, Reagan was able to point to County Tipperary and the tiny village of Ballyporeen as the starting point for his family's Irish-American story. As president, Reagan visited Ballyporeen in June 1984. It was one stop on a four-day sojourn...