100 Things You Didn't Know About Ireland

By Brighid O'Sullivan

Over 100 facts of science, history, religion and trivia devoted totally to Ireland with a cross-over into American history as well. This book is for young and old alike and not meant to be used as a history text but more of a fun read for the novice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brighid O'Sullivan
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9798201424237

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One Hundred Things You Didn't Know About Ireland

A Guide to Irish History and Civilization

By Brighid O'Sullivan

For Elena, my Russian Irish Princess

How this all began  

When I was a little girl, my father told me a secret.  He was the recipient of a very special inheritance. Dad told me had two lively leprechauns! He said they never strayed far from his side and watched over him, keeping him safe from harm.  What I interpreted this to mean was my dad actually owned the leprechauns. Pat and Mike were passed to my father from his Irish grandmother. They would one day pass onto me. Sort of like guardian angels.

I knew nothing about leprechauns at the time. Had I known about their tales of hijinks in Ireland, the stealing of young brides or babies, or playing practical jokes on the unfortunate peasants, I would have been leery. Leprechauns had a less than stellar reputation.  If I had believed they existed at all, I would not have believed their motives to guide and care for any one individual, but my father was insistent that they were honorable little men. Not what I would later read in the Irish stories.

As a child, I was naturally naïve. I believed whatever my dad told me. On warm summer nights in Chicopee, Massachusetts, dad and I would sneak around the backyard trying to get a glimpse of Pat and Mike whom I swear never showed themselves. At least not to me. Dad claimed their blue-green eyes were clear as the nose on my face. Sometimes I lied and said I saw them too.

Behind our house, the lush green grass extended about a hundred yards from our low-income tenement.  In the middle of our yard was a clothesline. These were tall slender poles buried in concrete. Trousers and linen hankies, blouses and skirts, and towels and sheets strung from braided cotton ropes, stretched taut from one end to the other. The clothes shivered in the wind giving them a ghostlike appearance and on the nights we took our walks, the laundry was still there. Hiding in the dark. Behind the clothes stood grapevines on a chain link fence. Behind the grapevines another yard, and then traffic. If I looked closely, I saw tiny headlamps glimmering through trailing woody stems, blinking like tiny fairies. Those lights were my father's joy. You see 'em, girl? he would say, fully expecting me to nod as he pointed through the grapevines in the dark.

Um where?

Dad looked at me saucer-eyed and breathless, expectation in his voice. There. There, he would say. Sure you can see their eyes. Look close, girl.

So I squinted real hard, not wanting to disappoint. Dad took my hand while I held my breath, hoping I wouldn't scare the little men with my loud breathing for sure I must be a giant to a real life leprechaun! I tried so hard to see them, convinced myself that I actually could see what he saw. I thought that if I did not believe, who knows what would happen? It was leprechauns who left money in exchange for lost teeth I was told. Tooth fairies were something Americans made up and I was no fool to leave a note addressed to a tooth fairy for never would I insult a leprechaun. Not on purpose.

Dad was passionate about leprechauns but that wasn't all he got excited about. One day, he brought home an alligator. A real live one! It wasn't big; about twelve inches long. My friend, Sam slipped his hand into the alligator's aquarium, to pet him he told me. It bit the tip of his finger. The next day, the alligator was gone.  Taken by leprechauns,  Dad said, —lest somebody else get hurt.

I suppose Pat and Mike lived in our back garden most of the time. My sister and I tried to sneak up on them but never caught a wink, even though we kept our flashlights pointed at the ground in a pretense of catching night crawlers after a rain.  We walked barefoot but there was no one to hear our foot-falls, only stars peered down on us. It was just the two of us after all.

These were some of my best memories of childhood. Before the failed surgery on Dad's back leading him to years of unemployment, chronic back pain, and an addiction to alcohol. Before the paint on our house peeled.  Before the Irish disease that would take his life at age fifty five. Life had been good. Summers of sleepovers and swimming, the scent of sugary fresh grapes; fireflies bursting through the dark; and my father's Old Spice cologne that sliced through the wind like sharp cheese. After Dad's surgery, the stories grew shorter and less often.  He tended to repeat the same stories.

I was only seven, full of stories myself where Barbie  and Ken  lived in a brick-red house beside a pond full of ducks and a station wagon with wood grain siding parked in the drive.

Yeah, Dad. I see them. I see them fine, I said and wished he'd stop asking. I wanted to hear about his childhood, what my grandmother was like before she got sick, why he played The Green Alligator and Long Necked Geese song over and over, why the St Patrick's Day parade was his favorite event. Why he never went to Ireland. He told me it was too dangerous to visit, that children were separated based on their religion, and kids from Derry never met the kids outside of Derry. He was right about all of it though I had no idea what he was talking about. That was back in the 70s during The Troubles.

Dad never talked about Irish history, the amazing Irish achievements, the colorful ways and ideas of what it means to be Irish.  All I heard about was leprechauns. He never mentioned how without Ireland there would be no America. I grew up in a country where people with only a smidgen of Irish heritage claimed to have Irish roots and people traveled to Ireland to look up genealogy and old homesteads.  Ireland has made a tremendous impact