Sham-rock

Or; Some thoughts on being Ir-ish, on St Patrick's Day

by ASH Smyth
March 2022

I – Ir-ish

Did you fail to spot that it’s St Patrick's Day today? No, nor did I. But on the whole, I found I don't care all that much, either.

I mean, I'm not the most die-hard of Irishmen. I don't, from day to day, think of myself as being particularly Irish. Nor, I suspect, do many other people.

I'm not well versed in anything to do with Patrick himself – apart from the snake-charming business, of course. I don't know a single thing about Gaelic Football, let alone hurling. Hell, I don't even own an Irish rugby shirt. In fact, the only bit of stash I do own is a George Best replica No.7 Northern Ireland football shirt, in a shade of green that I suspect does nothing for me. Oh, and an Ulster rugby shirt: I'm always pleased to count the Ulstermen in any all-island side. I'll put down a novel soon as I see 'Troubles' in the cover content (ditto 'the West of Ireland', and obviously anything to do with dreadful orphanages). I'm not offended by Tom Lehrer's 'Irish Ballad' ('Rickety Tickety Tin'), or the “Lucky Charms” guy out of Austin Powers, or the scenes about why 'Brendan McGann' cannot visit the White House in The West Wing. I've never seen The Commitments (is there a genre called shamrock 'n' roll – and if not, why not?), and I found Normal People to be, at best, entirely... normal. Not all Heaney poems are 100% brilliant. I've never once felt that I should un-Anglicise my name (unlike some acquaintances), though most pronounce it 'Smith' in any case, which has the same effect. And honestly I didn't much enjoy that 'black velvet' (Guinness and champagne) my dad suggested I might like to try last Christmas. I do not sing in pubs.

That said...

I was baptised in the Presbyterian church in Derry (bombed shortly afterwards), and my brothers subsequently – though in the CofE – by the man with the strongest Belfast accent in Kent, if not the whole of the United Kingdom. One of my earliest pro gigs was singing 'Danny Boy' – although I swear I'd never heard of it til the morning of the wedding (a Baring scioness's). My great-grandfather (Sealy) played for Ireland in the Four Nations (winning the Triple Crown in 1896), and toured with the Lions to South Africa. I cheered when Ireland won the Grand Slam on St Patrick's Day a few years back (not quite on track this year, alas). A great-great-great-aunt, Sarah Purser, would doubtless have overseen some St Patrick windows in her self-appointed(?) capacity as the matriarch of Ireland's stained-glass industry. My maternal grandfather looked out of his altogether less grand window as his Derry supermarket was blown up repeatedly by the racketeering IRA. I loved Jimmy McNulty in The Wire. And there's the Rubber Bandits, obviously. I'm very keen on the incredibly silly Boondock Saints movies – and, of course, Good Will Hunting. And Super Troopers (shenanigans!). Richard Harris, and Peter O'Toole (I do enjoy a pair of bottle-green socks with my black tie). I like the plays of Brian Friel enough that I will even take my mother – who once won a prize for acting from Friel – to the theatre to see them (from those with Irish mothers, yes, I am expecting sympathy). Sitting through Scorcese's eponymous Netflix nostalgia-porn gurn-fest, I was enraged (as well as bored) that it had precisely fuck all to do with Irishmen. In adulthood I've sung in both the CofI and Catholic cathedrals in Dublin, as well as the chapel of Trinity College, the alma mater of my paters up to and almost including Douglas Hyde, first President of Ireland (as well as Beckett, Wilde, and a thousand other Irish luminaries), where I still harbour the desire to do some further study. The broader family includes senior brewers and engineers (and erstwhile shareholders, aye me...!) at Guinness, and I have a decent if haphazard collection of their world-famous memorabilia. My direct ancestry includes Irishmen murdered, pointlessly, by other Irishmen. I write poetry, have a developed thirst, and have worked on many a building site. Oh, and my uncle's name is Patrick. So, yeah – I am a bit Irish.

Still, I didn't imagine St Patrick's Day to be any kind of big thing in the Falklands, so this time last year I posted a cheerful link to the story of a walrus that’d just washed up in Ireland (having seemingly drifted most of the way there while sleeping on an iceberg!), and went off into town about my business.

II – St Patrick's Day 2021

Taking my daughter to nursery, we walk along the road behind the hospital, and there we find, atop the long knee-high wall, an oval stone, perhaps the length of my thumb, with a neatly painted shamrock on it, its leaves inlaid with three red hearts, and yellow dots round the perimeter. Something professionally made, I'd say, at least in the gift-shop sense. But apart from the date, I can think of no explanation for such an object being there (the hospital is named for Edward VII, who I wouldn't imagine features on a list of heroic figures in Irish history). Presumably someone had simply dropped it, and a passer-by had put it there to be recovered, like a lost glove. At any rate, the stone is gone when I come back a few hours later.

♣

I stop in at the Teaberry Cafe, down on the harbourfront. BFBS (the Forces broadcaster) is playing, and there's good-natured chat about St Patrick's Day, and talk of a parade at Mount Pleasant Complex, the main garrison, some 40 miles outside of Stanley, followed by a curry lunch. What do they serve when it's St David's Day, I wonder? And do British armed forces usually parade on saints’ days, least of all Irish ones?

♣

Since the DJ mentioned the wearing of shamrocks, I invest in some Internet (don't ask), and Google 'shamrock', to see if it's synonymous with four-leafed clover, luck, etc. (see? Not a good Irishman). It isn't: on the contrary, St P interpreted the three (sic) leaves as metaphorical of the Holy Trinity. But given it's derived from the diminutive for 'young clover' (seamair óg), I then wonder if it might have an etymological connection to my father's name, Seamus. Also no. 'Seamus' is just the Irish form of 'James' – which is, in truth, my father's name on paperwork. The shamrock was used, among many other things, on both sides of the late-C18th clashes between the Irish Volunteers and the United Irishmen. Go figure. 'Seamus', meanwhile, has linguistic heritage stretching from Hebrew to the modern American 'shamus' or 'Irish' beat cop, such as infamously played by Sean Connery in The Untouchables.

♣

I am more than commonly enthusiastic about ludicrous tat, comically bad fakes, and duds of all types really. But one of my curiouser possessions (imho), doesn't quite fall into any of those categories, and is somehow all the more distasteful for it.

It is a T-shirt, emerald green (obv.), from the Ireland Premium Collection – 'Superior Quality' – with

Republic of Ireland

Established Nineteen 22

Limited Edition

Athl. Dept.

and a shamrock on it, in the now-familiar style of apparel companies wanting to lay claim to a legacy 50-100 years older than their own establishment. The writing is (or was once) in gold letters. Gold, furry, glittery, four-inch-high letters. Thankfully, the fur part came off with the first few washes.

I bought this item in the Derry tourist office.

♣

Out for a run the other evening, in the gathering dark, I several times made sharp manoeuvres to side-step what turned out to be bits of string, hair-braid, phone-wire, or equivalents. Coming here from Sri Lanka, where snakes were everywhere and where anything organic in its contours should be kept a wary eye on, one of the first questions I asked was whether there were snakes here in the Falklands. Doubtless my tea-planting forebears would also have preferred the snakeless terrain (and weather?) of the sub-Antarctic to the more bitey swelter of the Ceylonese hill country.

♣

Nor, it occurs to me now, is there, in this very small nation with a very large population of non-nationals, many of them with inevitably-Imperial ancestral connections, any noticeable enclave of Irishness. Not sure I've met a single Irishman, actually, or not with an identifiable accent, anyway. Perhaps some who came here by way of NZ, say...? Mind you, there is line- (barn-? square-?)dancing at the race course 'hall' on Monday nights...

♣

In that same Derry tourist shop, I bought a little Guinness rugby ball for Freya. A favourite fact: the Guinness brand is so intrinsically Irish that the newly-formed Irish state (this according to the Guinness factory, NB) had to seek the beer-maker's permission to use the image of the harp of Erin (in reverse) as their official emblem, since Guinness had already trademarked it, some 45 years previously.

The harp of Erin

♣

I tell a lie: I do know an Irishman. His name is K___, he's a doctor at the hospital, and I met him in the Teaberry about two weeks ago. He's from Armagh, and we have an outstanding drinking arrangement – or at least I trust it'll be outstanding.

Still, he doesn't really live here: three-month posting, if I'm not mistaken. And I'm not sure he's the type to cart about a lucky stone, or lose it right outside his place of work.

♣

In response to my query, a friend from Oxford confirms we sang in Trinity College chapel in or around the summer of 2002 (we think). It was during our more florid student days, and – how to put this – neither of us remembers all that much about it. I don't know if my ancestors, Beckett, Wilde, et al. can also claim that (the chapel singing, not the drunkenness), but said friend informs me he's played cricket on the TCD ground (lucky bugger), which I suspect is true of Beckett, and my great-grandfather. He also says that was the first time he drank Guinness, in the viewing tower of the Guinness Storehouse. That's something, I guess.

♣

K___ puts me in mind of another Ulsterman, a Sgt B_____, from the Royal Irish, who trained me for a couple of months before my 2013 tour of Helmand and Kabul. A decent chap, even if he did dress like Dolly Parton in his down-time and say “Smyyyyythe” like he was Sméagol harboring his precious. Anyway, where the Irish state harp emblem has become somewhat stylised – not to say sanitised – over the years, like the Starbuck’s mermaid, the Royal Irish cap badge still proudly boasts both Erin's tits on it. In an army with some weird and wonderful traditions, this remains one of a kind, I'm fairly confident.

♣

By the time I get to my hair appointment (i.e. by the time I walk the couple of hundred metres from one venue to the other), the BFBS bantz has moved on to the fact that the Irish Guards would usually have a St Patrick's Day parade, attended by Prince William, the Colonel of the Regiment; but because of Covid blah blah that's not happening. Except in the Falklands, of course, where – now the penny drops – the Irish Guards (or some of them) are currently on rotation as the infantry 'reaction' unit.

I look them up too. Motto: 'Quis separabit?'/'Who Shall Separate Us?' (who indeed?). Slow march: 'Let Erin Remember' (ditto). Quick march: (would you Adam 'n' Eve it?) 'St Patrick's Day'. Mascot: an Irish wolfhound, called Seamus (“We named you after the dog.”), although his pedigree name is technically Turlough Mor. Seamus is only nine months old and already stands as tall as the Drummer who's in charge of him.

As I leave the hair salon, a servicewoman who has written in is demanding “Irish stew, Irish dancing, Irish rugby,” etc., etc. Right now she's probably re-watching The Untouchables.

♣

The (now retired) Belfast-Kentish vicar's wife e-mails my mother a picture of a model of the Giant's Causeway (NI branch) fashioned entirely out of blackened champagne corks. Strong effort! Their daughter and her husband both played for my scratch cricket team a few summers ago, against the Rain Men, with the vicar umpiring. My team (victorious) was called the Shenanigans 2nd XI.

♣

A friend in the Defence Force here sends round a timely FWD with a bit of military history in it.

In March 1900, after the relief of Ladysmith (Natal Colony), Queen Victoria despatched a telegram conveying her 'admiration of the splendid fighting qualities' exhibited by the Inniskilling Fusiliers, Connaught Rangers and Dublin Fusiliers. An order was promptly promulgated that, 'in future, upon St Patrick's Day, all ranks of her Irish regiments shall wear, as a distinction, a sprig of shamrock in their head dress to commemorate the gallantry of her Irish soldiers during the recent battles in South Africa.' The 'wearing of the green' had hitherto been banned, for political reasons (see: The Wolfe Tones), so this constituted a major gesture towards the pride of Irish soldiery. Ditto the immediate founding of the Irish Guards (guards, by definition, being those who guard the person of the monarch).

The Queen soon after visited Kingstown (just south of Dublin) – where an exceedingly elderly family acquaintance in my childhood still recalled seeing her – wearing a large sprig of shamrock and carrying a parasol embroidered with the flower. This gave rise to the Countess of Limerick's Shamrock League, the following year, which sold shamrocks to raise money for the families of those who been killed in South Africa. A decade or so later, the League gave free tea to soldiers heading to the Western Front, and then sent sprigs to Irish servicemen so they could wear it on St Patrick's Days throughout the conflict. In that (admittedly rather limited) sense, the shamrock appears to pre-date the poppy as a memorial for those fallen in battle.

The Irish Guards, since then, have served in every major conflict, to Afghanistan.

♣

An old school friend's wife in Australia sends me two lovely videos of her children doing Irish dancing. All I can (and do) say is her son looks a damn sight less embarrassed than I would in that situation. The absolute, mortal horror.

♣

My father tells a story about the Boer War, in which a great-great-uncle Smyth (or Sealy? Or Geoghegan? Or Spence?) wanted to go off to fight, from Dublin, but was too young. His parents needed to consent on his behalf, but they – naturally thinking they were doing the right thing – refused. The boy's pals went to the recruiting station en masse, deployed to some soup kitchen on the beach, and all survived the war. Young Spence (I think) immediately joined up when he came of age, was shipped out with a different unit, and was killed a few months later, in a gloryless ambush in the middle of the Orange Free State.

My father tells this as a cautionary tale about parental interference – and it's a good one. But, more to the point, Irishmen fought on both sides of that war. It's not impossible that kid might have been killed by his own anti-Imperialist countrymen fighting alongside the republican Boers. Hopefully not family members.

♣

Another friend – from the Rain Men; born in Northern Ireland, recently claimed his Irish passport – sends me a tweet to the effect that there are 21m penguins in Antarctica, and only 6.6m people in Ireland, so if the penguins invaded they'd outnumber the Irish more than 3,000,000:1.

1)    He should try living in the Falklands.

2)    After that walrus business, I'm not sure polar animals invading is still necessarily a laughing matter. And

3)    Somebody needs to check their maths.

♣

My great-grandfather (definitely Smyth) survived the Boer War, then, as an engineer, aged 45 or so, fought during WWI in Flanders, digging mines under the German trenches. His son, aged about 19, served under Jan Smuts in the Union Defence Force, putting down the miners’ strike of 1922 (i.e. against white miners, in part trying to protect their jobs against cheaper black hiring). He later served in the Transvaal Scottish – which I'd always thought was odd until I just now noticed that the Transvaal Irish was one of two Irish commando units who fought for the Boers – and then in the South African Irish in the East Africa campaign.

At no point, in those conflagrations, did the Empire attempt to introduce conscription in either Ireland or South Africa, so divided were the sensibilities of both places.

♣

In the current circs, that TCD sabbatical isn't looking all that likely, even if I could finance such vanities. To add insult to injury, I get home to an e-mail from 'Lily at FutureLearn' (an online MOOC agglomerator) offering '5 courses for a virtual Irish adventure', including an introduction to Irish language and culture (four out of the five, from Dublin City University), and a course on the book of Kells (from TCD, where the book itself resides, in all its splendour). I'm interested.

Alas, the e-mail also refs. 'the Emerald Isle', 'the luck of the Irish', 'pot o' gold', and 'shenanigans' in about as many sentences. Jayses.

♣

“Everybody's Oirish on Paddy's Noight,” the MacManus brothers aver in The Boondock Saints. Not everyone. I tell my editor in Buenos Aires what I'm writing about. 'Oh God,' he writes back. 'Not more Irish shit.'

♣

Just twigged. It's not a 'stone' I found, is it? It's a 'sham-rock'.