During the 1840's, the Irish scattered from their homeland, like
the flight of the wild geese. Hunger and oppression prodded them,
like a drover's goad, to the four corners of the earth.

 The Ireland that they left was hungry and poor. Potatoes were what
sustained them, four pounds each per day. When the five year Potato
blight struck, in the 1840's, there was literally nothing left for them
to eat. The " Famine" some called it, though not the Irish. To them it
was " The Hunger." Oats, grain, barley and corn were grown in abundance
and shipped to England, for Eire was her granary. Fish and the fruits of
the sea belonged to the Landlords. A hangman's noose awaited the
poacher.  Hundreds of thousands died from starvation and disease. Some
of the cynical overlords offered soup to any of the Catholic natives who
would renounce their religion. And their own called them "soupers", for
generations afterward. Out of a population of eight million, a million
died from starvation and disease. Another million and a half emigrated
in search of a better life.

 From Queenstown(Cork), Galway and Dublin, they flocked like lemmings
onto  rickety wooden Barques, headed to the four points of the compass.
Many more thousands died in the foul smelling hell of steerage in these
coffin ships. But, their spirit was never broken. They settled, like a
great wave, in the new lands and created smaller versions of their past,
amidst the foreigners.

 O'Reilly, O'Malley, O'Toole; Deegan, Dugan & Dunne. It was a litany of
the Gaels, that crossed the wide oceans. Wherever they settled, they
built great  churches to honor their Religion. Whether the church was
called St. Patrick's or  St.Bridgid's, it served as a spiritual shelter
for the immigrants and a magnificent stone monument to Catholicism.
These soaring limestone epiphanies were erected by the faithful, using
as mortar, the pennies of the poor.

 And the green was ever among them, to remind them of their homeland. In
Ireland, The English had decreed it a crime to be "wearin' the green."
In the new lands, like Boston, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and
Buffalo, it was worn proudly, like a badge of identity. A great
profusion of shamrocks and leprechauns, studded in emerald green, seemed
to sprout up everywhere.   And on March 17th, the feast of himself, St.
Patrick, sure didn't even the waters and the sky turn green in his
honor? Grand parades, with pipers and  bands,  marched down the south
sides of these new cities, to commemorate the heritage of the Irish.
 
 

Corned Beef and cabbage, from the slums of New York City, became as
Irish as McNamara's band. Neither was known in the homelands. For, the
immigrants were evolving into a breed of Irish-Americans that had a
culture all their own. Dim memories of the " old sod " were of a
spectral brigadoon that emerged, only in reverie, over the odd glass or
two of the barley. Only the lilt of the brogue remained.
 They are a mercurial people these Hibernians, steeped in the mysticism
of their Island home.  Poets and dreamers, they are quick to anger and
slow in the forgivin'.  The Poet, G.K.Chesterton, summed them up
ruefully. He said, " The Gaels are a race that God made mad, for all
their wars are merry and all their songs are sad."  They had a heart the
size of a lion, though, and would help those in need, even if their own
went without. They remembered their own troubles from " the hunger."

 The Irish had the advantage of the language here in America. They
could  put shoulders to the wheel and work their way out of the slums.
There was plenty to build in the great new land of America and the Irish
set to it, with a will. They labored as miners,  dock workers and track
layers, hod carriers and masons, domestics and shop clerks.  Many is the
modern city, in America, that was built with the sweat of the Irish.

 And sure, didn't the proper natives think Paddy had the brains of a
potato and was over fond of the barley? They didn't expect any of us to
be good at what we did. It was the wit and the blarney that were our
allies.    Soon, the lads had infiltrated the Police and the Fire
Brigades. Tamany and other political machines banded together the Gaels
and gave them clout in state houses and city halls. Hundreds of
thousands, who fought in the Civil War, earned their citizenship with
the barrel of a gun. The Irish were becoming a political force in the
social fabric of America.

 The coming tidal wave of immigration, from 1880 to 1920, would bring a
flood of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. They competed with
the Irish, the Chinese and others for the scarce menial jobs.

 It was Politics that gave the Irish an edge. They were great talkers
and well suited for the  verbal labyrinth that is the grand game of
American Politics. From these political strongholds, they were able to
secure the municipal jobs and contracts, that meant prosperity for their
own. The public schools were easier for them, because they shared the
language. Clerks, civil servants, Doctors and Lawyers soon peopled their
rise through the middle classes.

 Socially, they were still considered as upstarts. But, even these walls
soon crumbled, under the onslaught of the financial rise of the Gaels,
in American Society.
 Finally, one identified as one of their their own, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy, rose to the Presidency of the United States. The stigma of
being Irish and Catholic, in America, was gone forever. The wild geese
had come home.