The Irish

destroy: the current amurrican hard on for all things irish.

"Father Ted" was a load of arse-juice but the "D'unbelievables"...

Destroy: What Ned said about St. Paddy's in the USA, my ridiculous "Kiss Me I'm Irish" relatives: stop the Erin Go Bragh insanity please!, the Cranberries, Hothouse Flowers, the Troubles (wouldn't that be nice?).

I lurve leprechauns. And shamrock shakes.

Now, Irish Americans, that's *quite* a different story.

I love Ireland solely because of Guinness, Murphy's and Bailey's. I'm a lush.

Destroy: The food.

I believe it was Shane MacGowan once poignantly said: "Ertwas swillin' 'n' sllen/ inna mrsts o' Culcllan/ er pour me a-point o' whiskey t'day..."

My favorite Ireland memory: driving up the Conor Pass on the Dingle Peninsula, parking the car and hiking up a mountain. The view of the countryside, the ponds, the sheep and the sea was breathtaking, of course. But what was really remarkable was just how quiet it all was -- I could hear the grass crunching under my feet and I thought I was stepping on dried out grass, till I realized that it sounded so loud only because it was so quiet. I'd literally never "heard" silence like that before. I realized then how really loud even "quiet" moments are where I live, how there's always some sort of ambient noise in the background disrupting the perfect quiet. And then you just stand there, with the knockout view in the closest thing to perfect peace and quiet I'd ever experienced. Then you walk down and throw some money at the person playing some cliche Irish music on a harp at the foot of the hill.

destroy people who say: "I'm Irish, my mother's brother's budgie was bought from a pat shop in Galway"

paddy's night in Kilburn too, destroy that, even more so in Neasden.

search: Tony Cascarino

Anybody want to recommend some traditional Irish music? There's so much stuff out there and a lot of it looks terrible.

Ooops, sorry I thought this was an ILM thread 'cos I was on ILM and then I did a search and so I thought...I know...I am dumb.

And it's quite a late night for me.

'search' and 'destroy'? UMkay

Ned, not quite full blown trad....but you can't go wrong with Christy Moore.

Specifically, I'd recommend Planxty's 2004 (or is it 2005? I can't remember) live album, which is brilliant and has Christy Moore singing on it. Any one of the first four Chieftains albums are also top class. Martin Hayes is also very popular and good, and there's a great, great singer called Iarla O Lionaird who sings unaccompanied Irish songs. His voice is beautiful, but it can get a little wearing after a while if you don't understand what he's singing about.

The Dubliners ain't half bad either.

luke kelly.

also, what's with lack of WB Yeats love upthread?

Ned's question inspired me to dig out that Planxty 2004 album. It is GRATE.

Ned, not quite full blown trad....but you can't go wrong with Christy Moore.

My lord, the prosecution cites "Don't Forget Your Shovel".

search: Planxty's "The Well Below The Valley", if only for the title track.

My lord, the prosecution cites "Don't Forget Your Shovel".

Also "The Voyage", and his version of "Ride On".

xpost

If it's the same one the Devil's Interval do then it's got incest and 6 cases of abortion/infanticide, body count is the hallmark of a good folk song.

Planxty, yes - I only know the first three albums though. Also that Andy Irvine+Paul Brady album - in fact, is Andy Irvine famous? He's certainly not as famous as he should be! (He's also from London, of course!)I don't know as much about Irish music as I should.

yes well, not every track! I'm out of my depth here, and I've forgotten my shovel.

Planxty, yes - I only know the first three albums though. Also that Andy Irvine+Paul Brady album - in fact, is Andy Irvine famous?

he is famous enough, but maybe not as famous as he deserves to be. He plays live a lot in Whelans, and every time I go to see him I kick myself for not going to see him every time he plays, as he is awesome.

In a piece of inspired supportage, the first time I saw him was when he was supporting Will Oldham; a whole new generation of fans was born.

He is awesome. Everything I've ever heard him do, from Sweeney's Men onwards, has been great, and he always seems like the most talented and yet least well known in whatever setup he's involved in.

I think he is all about the music rather than about the self-promotion.

I love his song about how Ronnie Drew is actually a culchie.

CINCINNATI -- A man was caught Tuesday morning inside a car with his pants down.

Police said Kim Leblanc broke into a parked car overnight on Central Parkway, and the owner found him asleep inside and called police.

Officers said Leblanc was not wearing any pants when they arrived.

Investigators said Leblanc told them he had done drugs and believed that a leprechaun had let him into the car.

Leblanc remains in police custody on a variety of charges.

top scientist claims irish less intelligent than other ethnicities,

blames leprechaun influence.

Thieving Irish. Here's something funny: I'm American, and my grandfather raised us to be conscious of our Irish heritage. We just find out our Irish side actually came from England ... and had lived there for centuries before coming to the US, rather than actually coming here from Ireland during the potato/weird root tasting beer/cable knit sweater famine.

So what's the deal with that - English, Irish, what? I'm sure most of the people who claim Irish heritage here are less of Irish heritage than suspected.

http://www.dk-ink.com/AngelsRemembered/files/leprechaun.gif

Oh who knows. My family could care less about it, we're American...but my boyfriend's family is v v proudly Irish...except at this point all their relatives back home live in the Leith district of Edinburgh. At least they're all Hibs supporters!

um, hibs aren't the 'irish' team in scotland.

they are one of the Irish teams, as far as I know. especially if you live in Edinburgh. Scots may know better.

Hibs were the "Irish" team in Scotland before Celtic were.

If by "Irish" you mean "charitable club set up by members of the Catholic church to provide aid to poverty stricken Catholics who were mostly Irish immigrants" or something. Hibernian means Irish, doesn't it?

I thought all that mummers stuff looked suspiciously English but TIL they have it in Ireland and Scotland too.

An English innovation to attach bells to them so you can have maximum warning iirc.

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/asia-pacific/2026/01/05/xi-jinping-says-irish-novel-the-gadfly-sustained-him-during-traumatic-teenage-years/

Wonder is he a Normal People man

Yes but does he speak English with a South Dublin accent like Lenin did? What are his views on the humble spicebag? Yu Ming Is Ainm Do?

Is Ainm Dom obviously

I prefer not to speak…

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0206/1557148-campbell-connolly/

"She said in her speech that she was going to meet the families of the Bloody Sunday victims, but she never mentioned that she was going to meet the families of many of the police officers and soldiers who died on the very ground that she was speaking on."

can't believe she didn't reach out to Unionists

In lighter news, I was introduced to this recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mb8Mb0p808

ENya seems amused behind him

Classic Irish TV moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP4rpogDsiY

Reading about Irish Capitalism

The appetite of Amazon and other large tech companies for Irish wind power has indeed proved voracious. In 2023, 21 percent of energy on the Irish grid (35 percent of which currently comes from wind power) went to data centers, which are pressing for yet further opportunities to circumvent regulation on energy use. This is the highest proportion of energy supply used for such purposes in any nation on Earth, and it is rising year to year. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, enforce regulations to manage supply and ensure a fair distribution to its population (7 percent of its supply went to data centers in 2024). Do this here, the tacit threat from the data center Molochs seems to be, and we’ll leave Ireland. The economic results of this for a nation whose budgetary surplus balance is generated entirely by Big Tech firms and the onshore registration of their intellectual property would be a disaster (though one that might revive the question of what form an Irish economy unmoored from American corporate clientelism could take).

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/bog-trouble-doherty

He does kinda sound Jamaican

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjdMu_Ssolc

Gwan out of that

Debunked in the Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/04/viral-speech-ireland-thomas-gould-colonial-history-caribbean-english

Keeping in touch with this thread’s ignorant original post

Unrelated and maybe I’m late to this, but have been binging the Irish History Podcast lately. It covers a huge range of topics at a depth that is perfect for me. Recommended.

Happy Paddy’s Day lads

Happy Paddy's Day to ye.

America being normal today: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/03/17/290259538/the-dark-history-of-green-food-on-st-patricks-day

Eat your greens

as an irish american whose first name is patrick, i really am uncomfortable with st. patrick's day as it's practiced here. always felt like a celebration of crude stereotypes.

Unrelated and maybe I’m late to this, but have been binging the Irish History Podcast lately. It covers a huge range of topics at a depth that is perfect for me. Recommended.

― tobo73, Wednesday, March 4, 2026 2:29 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is a good recommendation. i am into my irish heritage and i enjoy irish music, the poetry of yeats, the novels of beckett etc. but the st. patrick's day thing just fills me with profound despair.

London is going through this incredibly creepy Irishcore phase at the moment and it generally weirds me out, just legions of English people from p much any part of society, hipsters and football lads, men and women, just cosplaying as Irish people, obsessing about Guinness, filling all the Irish pubs etc. Even the most average or basic Irish food or drink product appears in some new pub or bar, just this incessant and weird appetite for a culture that's not your own but that you think you can get away with dipping into.

This obviously means Patrick's Day is bigger than ever.

Does NPR realise that green is the colour of St Patrick’s Day because of the flag? Are they well?

xp that’s just cringe, my main issue with this is that you don’t get a single one of them who knows anything about the politics, like when the Soldier F shit pops up, they don’t give a fuck

well it's cultural appropriation of the crudest sort.

I'd say there are some who know a bit about the politics, lots of London leftists seem p big on the Guinness cosplay, strangely.

Not in my experience, biggest problem with ukpol leftists is they don’t give a fuck

you don’t get a single one of them who knows anything about the politics

i generally find the st paddy's hoohah extremely cringe but i gave my gf a laugh this morning by wishing her happy st patrick's in the billy mcveigh 'from oppression springs resistance' shirt i bought outside the museum of free derry. obv she knows i'm not wearing it ironically. on this day we remember the crimes of the british and the strength of those who opposed them, fuck the green hat stuff

Really weird seeing Irish flag sellers outside Charing x on Sunday.

Though I would like to try a Guinness cake sorry

beamish >>>

beamish > murphy's > guinness = smithwick's

lough gill anderson's red was much better than smithwick's though

i am into my irish heritage and i enjoy irish music, the poetry of yeats, the novels of beckett etc. but the st. patrick's day thing just fills me with profound despair.

I don't think this is a "but" situation. St. Patrick's Day as it's practiced in the US (and reimported to Ireland because the graspers saw a chance to make more money off it) is obnoxious. I remember being in California for St. Patrick's Day once, and one of my friends "playfully" punched me in the arm because I wasn't wearing green. She was amazed to learn that this is not actually a thing in Ireland at all (although it probably fucking is now, who knows). I'm just pissed off because our glorious taoiseach is over there as usual shilling for big business. "Please buy our lamb that comes from massive fucking farms that are destroying the water system! Please come and build your pharma factories here that are also fucking up the water system! Please invest in our housing market and evict everyone! We love it!"

My best friend is from Surrey and has an RP type accent. I will never forget us being on a Dublin bus during my university days & he pipes up in his hooray Henry accent & these two aul wans sitting in front of us WRENCHED their heads around and glared at him until he nearly died in his seat, like he was Cromwell reborn or something.

I miss those days! The LJs of this world are far too comfortable visiting imo

xp ar an airgead

i literally told you about the old fella on the bus crowing about mountbatten to me lol

That was a warning

Can’t just go waltzing into Saor Dhoire with the big English head on you

probably took a liberty yeah. best pancakes i've maybe ever had though at that one cafe

I find Beamish a bit watery. Murphys is better than Guinness though.

Whiskey only, though I do consider it a hate crime if people ask me repeatedly if I’m really SURE I don’t want ice in it

Guinness will always be my favorite, I did like beamish though.

I’ve been drinking almost exclusively nonalcoholic Guinness this year though, in an effort to remain dry. Shockingly good for a non-alcoholic brew.

Looks like I picked the right day - or wrong day depending on your view of St Paddy's Day - to walk about with my Celtic beanie on. I'm not in London though so the chances of being mistaken for a wanker are less at least.

America's CreateTV showed this year's Saint Patrick's Day Parade live this morning, and it's on their YouTube channel---dunno if you can see it outside the US---maybe other sources?---but here's the link---it was pretty amazing I thought, and hosts were exclaiming about how atypically beautiful the weather was:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXHc6tTWHMA

I'm seeing an awful lot of AI-generated shite hanging in London pubs, "Shenanigans In Progress" and worse.

I just fucking hate this place. I hate the racist, misogynistic, fashy cunts who are currently shutting down the whole country, and I hate the cowardly cunts who won't stand up to them. I hate big agribusiness. I hate the big tech companies (even though mister trishyb works for one). I hate it all. This shitty place, these shitty people. Gah. Oh, is Rory McIlroy doing well in the golf in fucking Trump's America, is he? And I'm supposed to be in favour of that, am I? Fuck off.

OK, sorry, I just needed to do that.

we're more "craic" than other ethnicities tho? we're great "craic".

€505 million to placate the fash. Absolutely pathetic craic altogether.

not to swoop in to undermine the main points but negotiating with the ifa and hauliers, who stayed out (officially and afaict reasonably fairly) of the protests and keeping it fairly clear that a sectoral deal would be done through official lines only seems to have done rather a decent job of getting a support deal done (which was necessary) while ensuring that no further space/power than was necessary was ceded to the fash in those fairly prominent and probably reasonably vulnerable to it organisations

waiting the cunts out until maybe a day more than was already too much also seems to have let the public tire and ask most of the right questions of the protest elements most rogue and most linked to the far right

id call it quite well judged given the starting hand tbh and i dont routinely comment on the political genius of martin et al

rory mcilroy is a northern irish golfer who doesnt seem very popular with american golf fans and he was successful in a tournament played abroad this evening yes.