The Emerald isle

It was something of a revelation when my father told me about my Irish ancestry.
 
I can’t remember how old I was, probably somewhere in the double digits, but I do recall that moment of complete surprise to learn my family was suddenly so much more interesting than a dad who worked for ICI, and a mum who helped at a local nursery (children, not plants). Although I have a hunch I may have kept quiet about it to my school friends who already thought I was a bit of an oddity.
 
But when I had my own family, my heritage suddenly felt more important, so I attempted to trace my roots, but all I had to go on was my grandmother’s surname of Finney, the family lived in Dublin, and there was vague mention of the Irish Potato Famine.
 
I wanted to know more.
 
I booked my flight to Dublin.
 
Finding Out
I did the whole tourist thing and visited the remarkable Book of Kells Experience (this has recently had doubt cast on its backstory), the Guinness factory, and the Emigration Museum. But it was the National Library that was the main purpose of the trip.
 
The ancestry records, whilst not guaranteed to be absolutely accurate, indicated the Irish side of our family may have indeed emigrated around the time of the Famine, which meant my grandmother was most likely born in England; my Irish heritage was being diluted by the minute.
 
But what really hit me, especially when we walked through the St Stephen’s Park Gardens where the Easter Rising took place in 1916, was how very little I knew about Ireland, and I wondered why, given it is geographically just a few miles away, it’s not part of UK school history lessons?
 
I wanted to know more.
 
A brief history lesson
Escaping Roman rule, and prior to the brutal invasion of the Vikings, Ireland had developed its own distinct Celtic type of Christianity, and the country was prosperous. But they were unable to organise effective resistance to the invasion, and it was only in 1014 that the Vikings were finally defeated at the Battle of Clontarf.
 
But the invaders left their mark, founding the first true cities of Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford.
 
It was the Norman Conquest that brought about the next major change when the Anglo-Norman barons tried to rout out the Gaelic aristocracy and establish a feudal system. But the barons were too occupied with their other wars, and the result was the creation of three regions:

• Dublin and its immediate hinterland, ruled by the English, that became known as the Pale (which is where the expression ‘beyond the pale’ comes from)
• An arc of territories under Anglo-Norman rule
• The western coastal region that returned to Gaelic customs and remained outside of English rule

 
But it was the next epoch that saw the first major religious intervention under Henry VIII’s reforms. However, despite his, and the next two monarchs’ attempts to force the Irish to adopt the new religion, the Irish rejected the Protestant Church.
 
From this point, as each monarch rewarded their nobles with large swathes of land, evicting those people who had farmed the land for generations, and add to this the migration of Scots who arrived from the north, grabbing parcels of land for themselves as they went, the Irish people were pushed out into the swamp areas of the country, where it was difficult to grow crops or keep livestock. Which is why, when the potato arrived, it proved to be the only crop they could successfully grow, and it became essential to their survival.
 
By the 19th century, most of the cereal grains produced in Ireland were exported, along with dairy and meat products. The native Irish population’s survival relied on their potato crops, which is why, when the potato blight destroyed the entire crop in 1845 and the next few years, it resulted in a million deaths and millions more emigrating. Ireland’s population plummeted. The British government not only did nothing to help, but they continued to export grains and other foodstuffs, ignoring the plight of millions. This staggering lack of humanity or compassion shocked me.
 
This was 1845, when the Victorians were pushing the boundaries beyond anything anyone had ever known. It was the age of the industrial revolution, steam ships replaced sails, the railways arrived, the electric telegraph. Charles Dickens referred to it as ‘the moving age’.
 
But the government’s astonishing lack of care towards its own people, was something of a shock to me.
 
What happened in the following decades was a rise in nationalist aspirations, which led to the Home Rule Bill and the Ulster Covenant, and whilst World War 1 interrupted their plans, the Easter Rising in 1916 further cemented the Irish Nationals’ determination to become independent. The battle that took place in St Stephen’s Green Park was a turning point, and whilst it was not a military success, it contributed to the establishment of the Irish Free State on 6 December 1922.
 
And that is where my research stops because the civil war erupted, and continued for several more decades.
 
Conclusion
I set out on this journey in the hope of reconnecting with my Irish family, and whilst it wasn’t quite the success I hoped, in the short time I was a guest in my ancestors’ homeland, despite it being my first, but I hope not my last, visit, it didn’t feel like I was a  stranger in a foreign land. There’s a thread, as fine as gossamer, but a thread, nonetheless, attaching me to that Emerald Isle, and that same thread stretches across the globe to countless others, which is why so many people, like me, try to trace their way back there. But to learn about the catastrophic loss of life and the staggering lack of humanity or compassion shown by the government at that time, has left a dark shadow over what was otherwise an enlightening and joyful experience.

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