St Patrick’s Day brings the question of “identity” into sharp focus, not only in Ireland, but around the world, where suddenly millions of people who we regard as foreigners suddenly become “Irish”, at least for the day.
t is a practice that is actively encouraged by the Irish State, with the presentation of a bowl of shamrock to the president of the United States and government ministers fanning out all over the globe to propagate Irish mythmaking.
This question of identity has always been a thorny one, with Daniel O’Connell saying to the Duke of Wellington: “Just because you are born in a stable doesn’t make you a horse.”
On the other side of that coin the writer George Moore, who was certainly 100pc Irish, wrote in Confessions of a Young Man that one of his “dominant” characteristics was “an original hatred of my native country” and that he could not “think of the place where I was born in without a sensation akin to nausea”.
What then made so many people want to be Irish, not just for St Patrick’s Day but to such an extent that they are now indelibly marked as “Irish” in the history and culture of their adopted country?
Unlike the natives, those who wish to be considered Irish often become accomplished Gaelic speakers and call themselves by invented Irish names. They become so immersed in their adopted culture and “more Irish than the Irish themselves” that in the end they are taken at face value.
In an age of “cultural appropriation” what is one to make of Micheál Mac Liammóir, born Alfred Willmore in England, without a trace of Irish blood, or Patrick O’Brian, the writer of literary seafaring novels who went out of his way to propagate a fictional Irish identity. Does it matter? In an increasingly woke world, claiming a false identity is no longer considered just a little eccentric, but can be seen as an affront to the identity of the nation that has been unwittingly adopted.
Probably the most sinister and malevolent of these Irish imposters was the terrorist Seán Mac Stíofáin, born in East London, without a drop of Irish blood. He was marching in the footsteps of the English-born republican martyr Erskine Childers, who also adopted Ireland as a “cause” and was eventually executed by the state he helped to create.
With a diaspora running into hundreds of millions and the fact that we hand out passports like confetti at a wedding, it is probably not surprising that being “Irish” has become a state of mind rather than an actual identity.
The actress Grace Kelly, who later became Princess Grace of Monaco, was from Philadelphia, where her father John B. Kelly was the son of Irish emigrants. Out of sentiment she went on to buy the family’s ancestral cottage near Newport, Co Mayo, now a sad heap of stones used as a backdrop for Instagram users.
In the entertainment world dancer Michael Flatley and fellow Riverdance star Jean Butler were steeped in Irish culture from an early age, even though they were born and reared in the United States — he in Chicago, she in Mineola, New York.
As a nation we are more than willing to adopt those of questionable Irish provenance, especially if they have a flair or sporting skill. This can be seen in the Irish soccer team and increasingly, in more recent times, on the rugby field.
So maybe when St Patrick’s Day comes upon us, we should just embrace being Irish, no matter what it stands for in today’s globalised world.
Five who embraced their ‘Irishness’
Seán Mac Stíofáin: Terrorist
He was born John Edward Drayton Stephenson in East London. His father enrolled him in a Catholic school to save money for drink and an encounter with IRA leader Cathal Goulding led to him adopting a fictitious Irish personality. He came to Ireland at the age of 31 and rose through the ranks of the IRA, becoming leader of the terrorist organisation and its political wing Provisional Sinn Féin (now Sinn Féin). He was responsible for a reign of terror in his adopted ‘homeland’.
Patrick O’Brian: Writer
The acclaimed author of the literary seafaring novels featuring the character of Aubrey-Maturin, was presumed to be Irish, a presumption he not only never contradicted, but encouraged. He was, in fact, born Richard Patrick Russ in Chalfont St Peter, England. He was outed as an imposter Irishman in a BBC documentary in 1998, when he was 84. Fittingly he died while staying in Trinity College Dublin in January 2000.
Micheál Mac Liammóir: Actor
A gay icon when it was neither popular nor profitable, he was born Alfred Willmore in Kensal Green, London (and not Cork as he claimed). He appears to have become immersed in Irish culture after an early career as a child actor. To prove his credentials, he enrolled in the Gaelic League in London and arrived in Dublin a fully formed Irishman in 1917, at the age of 18. He and his lover Hilton Edwards lived in the latter part of their lives in the splendour of Harcourt Terrace and he was eventually made a Freeman of Dublin.
Margaret Skinnider: Sniper
The only female combatant wounded in the Easter Rising, Skinnider was a Scottish lesbian, originally born in Lanarkshire. She learned her trade as a markswoman to defend the British Empire, but after coming under the influence of Countess Markievicz dropped everything to get to Dublin and take part in the 1916 Rising. She was badly wounded trying to burn down Georgian houses in Harcourt Street. She survived, took the Republican side in the Civil War, became an influential member of the teachers union, the INTO, and despite her injuries lived to a ripe old age, dying in October 1971.
Ray Houghton: Footballer
The “Little Scot” as Jack Charlton described him became a part of Irish sporting folklore when he “put the ball in the English net” as the song commemorates. The “granny rule” meant that some of those picked for Charlton’s teams had never crossed the Irish Sea before playing in Lansdowne Road, didn’t know a word of Amhrán na bhFiann and opted for Ireland because they had little chance of playing for the country they were born in. But none of that ever mattered to Irish fans.
