The Langs of my family left this place in 1828. pl
RSS- Iran launches air attacks on Israel
- ISW on the developing Ukrainian defense industrial base and Russias strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure
- Britain? Kaput! By Walrus.
- Declaration “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity
- The situation and some possible courses of action … A Pat Lang post reposted from 26 February 2022
- HARPER: COL. W. PATRICK LANG R.I.P.
- A Note On Our Folly By Walrus
- Israel attacks Iranian embassy in Damascus
- He is risen…
- The Polish Proa Fleet
My great great grandmother, Bridgette Downs Figg came from County Clare by herself in 1854. Her son, Jason, was in the 11th Tennessee, Cheatham’s Rifles and was killed at the Battle of Atlanta. Her husband, James, fought for the Union.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7684/18119269372_0d020702c5_b.jpg
Thank you for that rendition, Danny Boy is one of my favorite songs. I think of my great grandmother Mary O’Quinn on this day.
saw this on the web this morning:
“For the Love of Saint Patrick
As soon as I’m able to extricate myself from my writing position, I’ll be hosing off the old pickup going to town two prep for St. Patrick’s Day.
No, I will not be dropping by the local Catholic Church to operate offer my confessional. That would take the rest of the month.
But if you know where to look at Walmart, you can find an acceptable corned beef in almost every town in America.
My what I’d really like to do is swing by “The House Of Good Corned Beef.” If I were in Seattle, but it’s a long drive from Texas.
My gastronomic fine tuning advice for the Walmart corned beef is as follows:
Order yourself about a pound of fresh organic clothes from Amazon. Walmart may have those in their spice department. While you’re at it pick up a pound or two of pickling spice to go with it.
When you get your pre-packaged corned beef home, you can rinse off all of that pickling gel that comes from the corned beef factory. This will allow you to make a much less salty corned beef.
The American palate seems to get confused between taste (as in spices), and salt (as in that stuff that’s bad for blood pressure).
The solution is like real corned beef establishments (HOGCB in Seattle) do: throw a big handful of pickling spice along with a few extra clothes in at the time of cooking. This will give you a corned beef that is. Less salty – maybe just enough to offset the cabbage and carrots – while kicking up flavor a notch.
Oh Yum!
There is no practical way to have left over corned beef. Not only are Reuben sandwiches, easy enough to make (should you have any leftovers) but also sliced up in homemade corned beef hash with Yukon gold potatoes is about as good as it gets at breakfast time. Serve with two eggs over easy and some catch up. Don’t forget to call the cardiologist.”
Athalone: County Westmeath here.
We came over a bit further back. Around 1688. Appears that Cromwell rewarded my ancestors with a bit of Ireland during the Commonwealth and when Charles II came back, and apparently at the armed insistence of the prior owners, it was decided to get an ocean between our family and the British Isles.
(As a side note, it has been said that we came over as transportees and indentured, a status we apparently broke out of fairly quickly when many times Great-Grandad “headed for the hills”.
Oddly enough, he married an Irish lass from Dundalk, so it all worked out.
Curiously enough, I got a poem from a US friend which puzzled me a bit. It connected Saint Patrick with Whales, not Wales. 😉
Question: do we have people from or with more profound knowledge of Ireland around here in the mid-seventies. Anyway I still have this lacunae/blank spot on my mind concerning something that attracted my attention:
The Child of Praque, it was called. Or at least that was what I was told it was. Still haven’t solved the riddle how did it get there and what the name is about.
Drogheda. They have fond memories of Cromwell there.
We are in New Orleans on holiday and have a nascent plan to join in a St. Patrick’s Day parade in the Bywater district, just down from the French Quarter. My wife and I both have Irish roots and what else do we need?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bywater,_New_Orleans
Smart move. They missed the famine.
Have a Happy St Patrick’s Day!
Boiled “Bacon” and Cabbage
About 2 1/2 pounds pork shoulder butt (also called picnic shoulder), rolled up and tied
1 medium sized cabbage, quartered and sliced
Brining the pork first’s a good idea. Dissolve 3/4 cup coarse kosher salt and 3/4 cup sugar in 1 cup of boiling water. Add it to a gallon of cold water. Add pepper if you’d like. Chill brine completely in the refrigerator before adding pork. Place your pork in the brine and place in the refrigerator (preferably for up to 48 hours).
Remove the pork from the brine, rinse well and pat dry. Place the pork in a pot with a couple of bay leaves and some peppercorns, cover with cold water and bring to the boil, then immediately reduce the heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes/pound.
20 minutes before the pork’s done, add the cabbage to the pot. Simmer for 20 minutes, the cabbage should be just cooked through.
Remove the pork, let it rest for five minutes or so before slicing. Drain the cabbage. Serve with mustard. And whatever you’re drinking.
Q: Why is St. Patrick the patron saint of engineers?
A: Because he created the first worm drive.
–popular Pittsburgh joke. Pittsburgh holds an annual “St. Patrick’s Day” parade in which the engineering schools compete for building floats; St. Patrick (in a green Santa Claus suit) arrives at the end in an unusual mode of transportation, which should vary each year. Appalachian music was derived from the Irish music brought by immigrants; both are still strong in Pittsburgh. We’ve come a long way from “no dogs or Irishmen allowed”.
Tom Cafferty
My Langs and an associated group of Catholic Highlanders left the West Highlands in 1695 where they had been a sept of Macdonald. They settled in Louth and Meath and lived there until 1828. They were freehold farmers as the had been in Scotland. The group married among themselves as well as with “Green” Irish women. As a result I have some Fay ancestors from Meath. For some reason as yet unclear to us, the group of families sold out and moved en masse to St. Lawrence County New York where they bought property and started farming again. After the WBS many of these people moved to western Wisconsin. Why they moved from Ireland is unclear to me. pl
Celtic dueling violins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywMPtwM8avs
St. Patrick’s Day cartoons
http://bit.ly/2n6UM8W
http://bit.ly/2mAYx2g
http://bit.ly/2ni7gek
The town is actually called Athlone degringo…
It’s actually “the child of Prague”. See details in Wikipedia…..
This is the one day each year when my good Gaelic name gets pronounced correctly!
Taking the day off so make an Irish dinner for ten, with corned brisket cooking in a broth of locally-brewed stout, the usual cabbage wedges and root vegetables waiting for their turn in the stew, and some soda bread that’s in the dutch oven now. My Irish mom called this cuisine “boiled dinner”, but “corned beef and cabbage” sounds more appetizing!
Happy St. Paddy’s Day, all!
In 2010, during a road trip around the northern half of the Emerald Isle, a friend and I made the Pilgrim’s trek up to the summit of Croagh Padraig, Ireland’s holy mountain. With the summit shrouded in low clouds, up we went until our view of Clew Bay and its purported 365 islands disappeared. To that point in the trip, we hadn’t crossed paths with any other Americans (the reasoning behind our going north rather than south), but on our descent we came upon a group of fathers and sons from Gonzaga High School in DC making their ascent. Apparently, it’s Gonzaga senior class tradition to make this journey with your dad. Having had recently lost my own dad a year earlier to cancer, I found it all the more poignant and heartwarming. Many of the boys were attempting to climb barefoot, as the truly devout pilgrims will do. Mind you, this is no easy feat, as the last 300 meters of the climb are not on a maintained trail but rather straight up the shoulder of the mountain over broken scree, which resembles a field of razor-edged footballs. Ah, the hubris and resilience of youth!
We didn’t make it far enough south to County Wexford, from where my paternal grandmother (one Helen Danford) and her people hailed, but I will one day. It’s nice to be able to enjoy this day for something meaningful, rather than simply for getting s#!tfaced in a bar with a bunch of louts in stupid green Santa hats. Erin Go Braugh!
>Why they moved from Ireland is unclear to me.
That might be a question worth pursuing. My own Mertaugh ancestors came over from County Cork at a time consistent with the potato problem(*)(**), but what earlier Irish emigration happened?
(*) http://genealogy.az.gov/azdeath/080/10800671.pdf
(**) I suspect that the record is extremely non-HIPPA compliant.
Allen Thomson
We have and are pursuing that but my long haired sleep in genealogist does now ant to consult an Irish genealogist because she does not trust them not to blow smoke in her “ear” as they have been known to do to stroke Americans who often cannot find Europe on a map without labels’ Irish records are not very good and are often incomplete. Do you have an Irish genealogist who you would recommend? We can’t find them on a ship manifest. pl
All
“Danny Boy?” Sure, the ultimate Irish song but this is what my\Celt blood says to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EteWTJowEVE
pl
For “Danny Boy”, there is the wonderful musician James Galway, born in Belfast in 1939, and still playing–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n98uNCYXyuE
http://www.jamesgalway.com/
In fact your good Gaelic name is spelled either Ciaran or Kieran, but not Cieran! Not in these green parts anyways. The local pronounciation is KeerAwn. As for St Patricks day dinner in the land of no snakes? You’re more likely to have something Italian or more exotic that corned beef and cabbage and spuds. We have ideas above out station now! Slainte agus Beatha a cairde. La Fheile Padraig, Baile Atha Cliath
Try this link Colonel Sir,
http://accreditedgenealogists.ie/
Yes, I misspelled. I found a couple of articles about the tradition in Ireland. Should have paid more attention. It’s Prag in German.
Beautiful country. Incidentally I lived several month in a cottage next to the church in a small town close to the sea in the above part on the map Pat links to.
I had frequent visits from some type of motorcycle gang trying to intimidate me, checking me out. One day I woke up to learn that a young man was found dead in front of the Church. Multitude of stabs. The family, but apparently not the young man, who worked in a hotel at the seaside, were Sinn Féin. Some type of blood feud? I immediately suspected the gang. The leader had always played with a knife, watching me closely during their visits. I knew that the cottage was frequently used by “refugees” from Northern Ireland. And there was the occasional bomb warning. Initially I tried to tell the people I was fine, I would simply “duck and cover” beneath the table. Only later found out about what this signifies. 😉 But no chance, I had to come along with everyone else to some houses at the end of the village. And yes, the Child of Prague was everywhere. Even in bars and restaurants in Dublin.
“the summit of Croagh Padraig”
Didn’t know about that. My closest friend told me about something comparable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%27s_Peak
If it’ll make you feel any better, I also cooked a deep pan of lasagna for the weekend’s meals.
Good cooking should be an ecumenical enterprise!
Kieran can be an Indian name too; likely from Sanskrit.
My own last name, Mak-Kinejad – must be partly Irish; right from outside of county Cork.