I’m the usual Midwestern (originally, now from the Pacific Northwest) white person – Irish and German, though there might be some English, Scottish, French and who knows what else in there before they immigrated to the U.S. in the 1840s and 1860s.

I grew up with one grandparent who emphasized the Irish Catholic side of the family, so we had St. Paddy’s Day with corned beef and cabbage, carrots, potatoes, soda bread, a cake with a shamrock on it (shamrocks aren’t a real plant, by the way) and little replica shillelaghs (shi-LAY-lee) all over my grandparents’ house. (I also learned to do some Irish dancing in my Catholic school girl uniform from the wonderful Sister Eileen at Notre Dame de Sion Lower School in Kansas City, but that’s long forgotten. Thankfully.)

I’m not Catholic anymore; I don’t eat meat (though I did find a motherlode of “vegan corned beef and cabbage” recipes today); and I don’t want a chocolate cake with green sprinkles making a shamrock on it. I don’t drink green beer or Guinness. I do listen to some Irish music though…

Why did so many Irish Catholics come to the U.S. (and Canada and Australia)? Here’s a kind of goofy Sinead O’Connor … um … rap – which pretty much answers that:

And I admit to loving “Kilkelly, Ireland” about what happened back home (I first heard it in 1991 in Estes Park, Colorado, when the group Colcannon played there – I like their version better, but I can’t find it online):

Here’s one of my fave Irish-in-the-U.S. Pogues songs, in a rather weird YouTube form:

And randomly, a couple of my fave recent Irish books:
Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer
Colm Toíbín’s Brooklyn

With the exception of Paula Spencer, occurs to me that everything I’ve linked is pretty sad. But the Irish have a good sense of humor, and I’m personally pleased that my long-ago family immigrated, and that I do not live in a place where the Church still has way too much power. Plus, hey, we wouldn’t have so many sad and sentimental and frankly boozy songs and books and movies (well, the movies tend to be a bit more grim) without that immigration.

All of that said, the original point of this post was that I love it when the Muppets sing “Danny Boy.”

I bet you do too.