Originally a religious holiday to honor the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day has evolved to become an upbeat celebration of Irish American culture—especially on this side of “the pond,” as the Irish oft refer to the Atlantic Ocean that so many of their countrymen and women crossed over in the 19th century to start a new life.
Shamrocks, leprechauns, marching bagpipe bands, and colorful green costumes are integral to the annual merriment on March 17. Yet the holiday is rooted in a far more sobering past, according to Catherine Anne Judd, an English professor in the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences who teaches film history and 19th-century British, Irish, and American cultural history.
In 1844 a potato blight fungus transported into Europe by seabird guano (prized as crop fertilizer) from in the Chincha Islands off the Peruvian coast spread throughout the continent, eventually reaching the British Isles and Ireland, Judd explained.
Imported from South America during the Elizabethan Era, by 1845 the potato had become an important inexpensive food staple for both humans and livestock throughout the Old World. And nowhere was the potato a more crucial crop than in Ireland—the poorest region in Europe and Britain (it would not become an independent nation until the early 20th century).
At the time, Ireland served as Britain’s “breadbasket,” fueling the famous industrial revolution. The grains, dairy, and meat that grew plentifully in Ireland were almost all shipped out of Ireland to Britain. Food exportation continued with no modification throughout the Great Famine years (1845-1853).
“With the potato fungus—usually referred to as the ‘potato blight’—Ireland’s entire social and economic structure collapsed, and the Irish faced a dilemma of either staying and starving to death, or emigrating,” said Judd, adding that approximately two million fled Ireland during the famine while two million died, reducing the population postfamine to about five or six million Irish.
Today, according to statistics, about 32 million people in the United States claim Irish heritage—more than six times the population of Ireland.
Judd noted that the Irish had been emigrating in substantial numbers well before the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, and the U.S. had long been a destination. At least a million famine escapees landed in the United States during the famine years, and by the end of the 1840s, Irish comprised nearly half of all immigrants in the U.S.
They faced snobbery and prejudice as poverty-stricken new arrivals and religious discrimination and prejudice from a large sector of the Protestant American population. Still, the Irish managed to assimilate into their new homeland, Judd noted.
Since the 5th century, the Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop St. Patrick had long been deeply revered by the Irish. The island’s patron saint’s death day, March 17, 461 A.D., was marked with solemn rites and rituals, Judd pointed out.
Yet in America, by the 18th century, Irish soldiers, military leaders, and civilians were honoring St. Patrick’s Day in a more celebratory fashion—and with the entire new nation joining in. New York City and Boston became particularly famous for their large parades and citywide St.Patrick’s Day celebrations.
And buoyed by the strength of numbers of Irish immigrants into the country in the mid-19th century, the holiday increasingly reflected Irish pride and resiliency.
Judd highlighted that March 17 today continues to mark a day of Irish-heritage pride, when wearing green, trumpeting shamrocks, eating potatoes, cabbage, and corned beef, and drinking alcohol are all featured aspects of St. Patrick’s Day revels in the U.S.
Judd’s research includes an essay on Western plague literature that features a few novels set during the “Great Hunger” written by both Irish novelists as well as Antony Trollope who was postmaster general of Ireland when he began writing novels.
