Tag Archives: Irish

Dark-Humor at a Funeral

Background: N is an American with part Irish/Norwegian descent. During funerals, he remembers his uncles sharing a compilation of the deceased person’s best jokes and most scandalous stories to garner a few laughs.

Text:

N: “When the official funeral ceremony was over, I remember my four great uncles would gather at the reception and start cracking jokes at the dead person’s expense…sort of brutal to be honest. They’d air out all the person’s dirty laundry, but everyone seemed to really enjoy it… I always thought it was super fun as a kid because everyone was laughing… I didn’t understand the profanity much.”

Interviewer: “Did they do this at every funeral?”

N: “Pretty much anyone’s, mostly at each other’s to be honest…maybe because they knew they wouldn’t be offended if someone were cracking jokes over their own deathbed. It sadly got to the point where no one was left to share the jokes…and the tradition sort of died out.”

Interviewer: “Did anyone ever get upset?”

N: “I don’t really remember but I think everyone got pretty used to it. But [the uncles] definitely stayed serious at certain funerals, like if the person were less closely related to the immediate family, if you know what I mean.”

Analysis:

In many western societies, funerals are viewed as a time to mourn and be sorrowful over the passing of a lost loved one. However, others choose to celebrate and reflect upon the life of the deceased by having a bit of fun. Most likely, N’s heritage played a role in the type of traditions involved at funerals. His uncles’ habits of telling jokes at the funeral can also reflect how Irish or Norwegian culture, specifically in America, choose to take a more joyous perspective in the face of mortality. Although someone’s life cycle might come to an end, their impact is remembered and cherished by the family through oral tradition. Notably, N’s uncles refrained from telling the jokes at funerals of people considered outsiders to their immediate family, thus demonstrating how the tradition can be particular to the family as well. While the in-group finds it amusing, they must be cautious of how out-groups perceive the practice.

Irish Marriage Proposal Tradition — The Sheep Rug

Text

MB recently went on a trip to the Irish island of Inisheer, where she met a local man named Kevin at a bar.

“We went outside for a cigarette and he proposed to me. Like legitimately got on one knee and had his grandmother’s ring. I was so confused and I didn’t know what to do, so I took the ring and just didn’t reply.

“The next day I was like, ‘I need to return this ring.’ I went back to the bar because no one has like any form of communication. And I was like, ‘When does Kevin come?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, he’ll be here after work.’ So I hung out until Kevin showed up. And then I was like, ‘Look, I can’t marry you. Here’s your ring back.’

“Kevin was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, wait. I owe you a sheep. Do you want a sheep?’ I was like, ‘What do you mean? I’m leaving tomorrow. What am I supposed to do with a sheep?’ And he was like, ‘No, no. In Inisheer tradition, when you propose, you’re supposed to give a sheep as your proposal gift.’ I was like, ‘What do I do with a sheep? What do you expect me to do with that?’

“Kevin said sometimes people turn the sheep into a rug, so I was like, ‘Oh, okay. I’ll take a sheep rug, I guess.’ And I wrote down my address on a little piece of paper.

“I thought it was hilarious because I was not expecting to get an actual sheep rug in the mail from Kevin. But low and behold, two weeks after getting back to L.A., a box showed up with this sheep rug. It’s gorgeous. So yes, I did, in fact, get an engagement sheep rug from Kevin, the rubbish collector.

Context

MB is a 20 year-old college student from New Jersey currently living in Los Angeles. She has traveled extensively and was in Ireland to film a documentary when this proposal occurred.

While she was not familiar with this specific Inisheer tradition, MB said she had heard of similar customs in other cultures. “It’s a tradition to present the woman with something that would appeal. So I feel like I had seen it, but I didn’t know that was an Irish thing.

“But this island also is super traditional, so it wasn’t super surprising. For context, the island is very small. Not a lot of technology. It’s a tourist destination now, but year-round, I think less than a hundred people live there. It’s all farmland. The only things that people do are own a shop or work on a farm or work on the ferry that runs to the mainland. So it’s very traditional. They all know each other, so there’s no need to text. They just go to the same place at the pub and knock on each other’s doors.

MB said she plans to keep the sheep rug for a long time and keep telling this story for the rest of her life. “I cherish this sheep rug so much. I think it’s the best souvenir I could ever receive.

She also admitted that sometimes she feels like she insulted Irish marriage tradition, even though Kevin was very insistent. “Obviously, because I was doing the documentary, I wanted to talk to people and actually get to know the culture. But I did not expect to be proposed to. And coming in and then leaving … I don’t know. But he really didn’t give me an option. And who am I to turn down a sheep rug? That sounds awesome.”

Analysis

Marriage is one of the most celebrated life milestones across cultures. Historically, marriage is what brings two families together, establishing kinship networks and serving to reproduce not only life but culture. Thus, as one of the most important societal rituals that transforms identity, marriage is surrounded by many traditions, including those related to the engagement as MB experienced.

MB was told that she would be given an older sheep. It is unclear to her whether the sheep rug she received was already made at the time of the proposal, so there is no way of knowing much about the sheep it came from. Nonetheless, it is interesting that she was not given a young sheep to symbolize fertility, which is an important theme across diverse wedding traditions. Giza Roheim’s research, “Wedding Ceremonies in European Folklore,” explores other iterations of such themes.

Ultimately, Kevin’s insistence in giving her the sheep speaks to the immense power of ritual. Even though MB declined the marriage proposal, he insisted on following through with the whole proposal ritual. This demonstrates the belief that rituals must be performed correctly and in their entirety, or else the occasion loses its transformative power. In Kevin’s case, it is possible that he believed a failure to follow through on the engagement ritual would give him bad luck with future proposals, or alternatively, not release him from his commitment to MB. Whatever the reason, it is clear that he was acting under the weight of ritual obligation, rather than reason.

Irish Knitting Superstition

Text

“Irish people culturally believe that when you knit something, you knit a piece of your soul into your project. And so Irish knitters purposely knit one mistake into their project so that their soul can escape. Otherwise you’re breaking off little pieces of yourself every time you give someone something that you knit.

“So I’m like, ‘Oh, I haven’t been giving my soul away to anyone because I always make a mistake or two.’ Still, there’s certainly some pieces that people have that are a tiny little expression of me.”

Once having heard of this belief, GR began to express it as her own. “It actually makes a lot of sense to me because knitting is just such a labor of love,” she said, adding that she could never sell the pieces that she knits. “No price could quantify the work that I’ve done. It’s so deeply personal. When I’m knitting, I feel like I’m tapping into something cosmic.”

She added that part of this feeling comes from the labor of making something entirely by hand. “There’s no machine that can ever replicate it. Using a knitting machine doesn’t feel as personal. It feels like cheating, honestly.”

Context

GR is a 21 year-old college student from Portland, OR, currently living in Los Angeles. Her grandparents were Irish immigrants.

GR knits a lot in her free time, mainly making beanies for herself and her friends.

GR originally read about this belief online, but her Irish roots in addition to her love of knitting made it easy for her to identify with this belief and adopt it as her own.

Analysis

This belief captures the deeply emotional experience of creating something and gives words to the profound connection an artist feels to their work as an expression of their soul. It also provides a rationalization for any flaws in one’s project, which reduces the pressure on the creator to attain perfection. Such an understanding of the value of mistakes is especially relevant in the art of knitting, a very precise and meticulous craft in which one mistake might make you want to unravel the whole piece until it’s perfect. This belief helps calm the unforgiving pursuit of perfection, which is the enemy of creativity.

This folk belief contains two elements: first, the magical belief that the act of knitting places a piece of one’s soul into their work. This is an example of the law of contagion, in which a non-material bond is established between a person and object. In this belief, the ritual that breaks this bond is the act of knitting a mistake into a piece, allowing the soul to escape. This second element of the belief is an example of conversion magic, a form of performative magic that offsets another magical thing.

Ooh Ah Up the Rah

Nationality: Irish
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: November 24, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background: “Celtic Symphony” is a song performed by the Irish band, The Wolfe Tones. The song is sung at gatherings of Irish people. The line “Oh Ah up the Ra” is emphasized and belted out. The phrase is a declaration of support for the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Context: I witnessed my Irish friend’s family perform this song while at his house for Thanksgiving last fall. While singing songs after dinner, this song came on and all of his Irish family members sang it together, most of them quite drunk. My friend explained that it was one of the songs Irish people always sing together. “Oh Ah up the Ra” is basically a “big ‘eff you’ to the British,” he told me.

Main Piece:

Here we go again,
We’re on the road again,
We’re on the road again,
We’re on our way to Paradise,
We love the jungilty,
That’s where the lion sleeps, (yeeeaaaaahhhh)
For in those evil eyes,
They have no place in Paradise.

graffiti on the walls just as the sun was going down,
I seen graffitti on the walls( Of the CELTS, Of the CELTS),
Graffitti on the walls that says we’re Magic, We’re Magic,
Graffiti on the walls…….Graffiti on the walls……..
And it said…………..
Ooh ah up the Ra, say ooh ah up the Ra (x6).

Thoughts:

I felt quite a lot of jealousy while watching and certainly hearing my friend’s family sing this song together. Even the youngest of my friend’s cousins, at ages seven and eight, were singing at the top of their lungs as everyone paraded around the room. It is clearly a song sung with immense patriotism and pride. However, the reference to the IRA must infuse the song with a certain vigor, as nearly all of my friend’s family was still in Ireland during the British occupation and have lost friends and loved ones in the conflict. There is a juxtaposition between the hearty and jubilant performance of this song and the horrors and pain upon which the song is founded. While many nations sing songs in unison out of love for country and shared experience, it seems that the Irish certainly have the most fun doing it and doing it the loudest.

Luck of the Irish

Main Piece:

Collector: “So what is the four-leaf clover and what does it mean?”

Informant: “The four-leaf clover is a very rare thing to find, but if you find one it is said to bring good luck and safety. My grandma would always tell me a story about how the four-leaf clover would help the people of Ireland see evil spirits from a distance so they could escape and get away to a safe place where the spirits couldn’t get them.”

Background:

The following is an Irish superstition and sign of good luck. I had heard about this folklore symbol before and reached out to the informant knowing that she was of Irish descent to see if it had any significance to her. Luckily enough, the informant had a strong background in the folklore and personal experiences as a passive bearer with it from her grandmother.

Interpretation:

This lore of a four-leaf clover is one that has been around for a long time. I am not of Irish descent and have heard many times about how lucky you are to find a clover with four leaves. Although this folklore has spread out across the globe, it is universally accepted and told as a monogenesis folklore story originating from Ireland. I personally had only heard about the four-leaf clover is a good luck charm, but the informant’s story from her grandmother opened a whole new arena of this lore for me. I would be interested to research more about the Irish spiritual nature and evil spirit lore that her grandmother passed down to her. Based on what the informant shared with me, it sounds like there may be an entirely paralleled legend from Ireland in which this clover acts as a positive motif.