Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawn
And that's the thing, right? I know my family genealogy on both sides (except the Ukrainian great-grandfather's line) back to their Irish counties of origin. For some branches of the family it's easy, as they never left Ireland in the first place or they went back. But I know without a doubt, there's English and Welsh and some Viking in there as well.
The Irish themselves are not really "Irish" anymore, and haven't been in a looong time. Most Irish have a percentage of Scandinavian admixture; Dublin was founded by Vikings, after all. Fun fact: Iceland's admixture has a substantial Irish component because the first Viking settlers to Iceland brought a bunch of Irish thralls with them from their holdings in Ireland.
And then you have about 1000 years of English and Scottish overlordship, with all the intermixing and raping which comes with that. Throw in some Spanish blood down south around Cork (i.e. Black Irish) and you've got a whole admixture stew. This is why 23 And Me doesn't report separate categories for Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English: it's all just called "British and Irish". There aren't enough genetic markers uniquely Irish among their reference populations to distinguish "Irish" from "British".
So . . . no one is really Irish anymore. No doubt I have a good degree of English colonizer blood. But the family will pretend it's Welsh  |
You forgot the Norman in the millenary admixture. The Norman invasion which became Anglo-Norman paving the way to domination by the English.
I'm maybe 1/4 Irish. My last name's Irish. My great-great granddad had come in the 1840's and remarried after his first wife had died, but his son came to Canada 20 years after his dad and they didn't get along, so he changed the surname's spelling. Both my maternal and paternal ancestors have Irish and French Canadian and Austrian origins, many born in the US and reintegrating Canada.
I lived in Ireland in the eighties and visited last summer so my sons and my wife could get the taste of it. I think one of the enduring traits in Irish culture that was passed on is a peculiar sense of humor and fatalism that I easily detect in my family.