Arthur Guinness Signs A Lease

By Edward O’Donnell

Two hundred-forty-nine years ago, on New Year’s Eve, 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a long-term land lease for 24 acres at St. James Gate in Dublin. He planned to move his fledgling brewing operation there. It was a risky move on his part, for Dublin already had more than sixty breweries at the time and his brewery sat on parcel of land was old and run down. But 34-year old Guinness judged it an excellent place of business – well situated in Dublin, a city with easy access to the water supply so vital for his various brews. He was so confident of his future success, he brokered a rather unusual deal for the property: a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum.
Arthur Guinness, born in 1725, was the son of a prosperous land agent in County Kildare. At 31, he took a £100 bequest and established his first brewery in 1756 in Leixlip. Three years later, seeking bigger opportunities and more customers, Guinness moved the operation to Dublin. He faced a major challenge in upgrading his dilapidated brewery, not to mention the intense competition of fellow brewers. But he proved a skilled master brewer of ale and beer (stout was yet to come) and the company prospered.
In the 1790s Guinness began producing what became its trademark product, a rich dark porter that came to be known as stout. Originally, developed in London, it derived its unique color and flavor from roasted barley. Interestingly, Guinness called his brew “Black Protestant Porter,” a name that reflected his opposition to the United Irishmen, led by Wolfe Tone (In the nineteenth century the Guinness family mellowed a bit and became supporters of Catholic emancipation). This porter was so popular, especially in the larger English market, that in 1799 it became the only Guinness product brewed.
The name “stout” evolved around the 1820s. Seeking to distinguish its product from its many rivals, the company renamed his product “Guinness extra stout porter.” Its devoted drinkers shortened it simply to, “Guinness stout,” and finally just “stout.” The drinking public loved it by any name, and by 1838 Guinness was Ireland’s largest brewer.
The company grew substantially after 1855, under the direction of Benjamin Lee Guinness, the third member of the family to head the company. Prior to taking over the firm he’d been elected in 1851 as Lord Mayor of Dublin and later served in Parliament. He increased production, sales, and exports to Europe and the United States so dramatically, that by the early 1880s Guinness produced more than 100 million barrels of stout per year. In 1886 the brewery, now led by Edward Guinness, became a publicly held company, with total shares valued at more than £100 million.
The company continued to prosper into the 20th century. By 1914, Guinness was the largest brewer of beer in the world. Production rose to three million barrels per year by the 1920s. Its famous ad campaign – Guinness is Good for You” began in 1929 and ran in many variations for decades.
In recent years Murphy’s Irish Stout emerged as a rival to Guinness, first in Ireland and eventually in Europe and the United States. Murphy’s, of course, was no upstart operation. The original brewery opened in Cork in 1856. Like Guinness, it offered a hearty stout, but with a distinct flavor. The company also benefited from rising nationalist sentiment as a result of the Troubles. Simply put, Murphy’s came to be identified with the Republic of Ireland while Guinness, especially for those who knew the company’s history, seemed more and more identified with the 18th century Protestant Ascendancy.
Competition between the brewers grew intense in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1996, Murphy’s executives were ecstatic when a photograph of President Clinton, holding a glass bearing the Murphy’s moniker, appeared in papers around the world.
Ironically, even as Guinness began to lose its grip on Ireland, it began to win over the world. The trademark Guinness stout is now brewed in 35 countries. To main a link to the famed brew’s roots, the company requires that every batch made overseas must contain a flavored extract brewed at the original St. James’s Gate. And the world is buying – every day consumers around the world down some 10 million pints of Guinness.
Now there’s an aspect of the diaspora worth celebrating. Happy New Year!

Everything Everyone Should Know About St. Patrick

By Edward T. O’Donnell

The First Christian Missionaries
Contrary to popular belief, St. Patrick was not the first Christian missionary in Ireland, though he was certainly its most successful. Some evidence exists of missionaries traveling through Ireland by the late fourth century A.D., but they seemed to have enjoyed little success. The best-known missionary before Patrick was Palladius, sent by Pope Celestine in 431 A.D. to minister to “the Irish who believe in Christ.” Many scholars believe that at least some of the deeds and accomplishments later attributed to Patrick were more likely those of Palladius (some contend that Patrick and Palladius were one in the same). There were others as well, Auxilius and Iserninus worked in the south of Ireland while Secondinas preached in the north and east.

St. Patrick
St. Patrick, or Patricius as he was known in Latin, is the patron saint of Ireland. He is traditionally credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland, though it is more accurate to say that he was the leading figure among many missionaries engaged in that task.
No one knows for certain where Patrick was born, but based on his own account, it was most likely in southwestern Britain. In recent years many people have expressed delight in the “irony” that Ireland’s patron saint was actually “English.” The problem, of course, is that no one in the 5th century was what we would call “English.” Rather, the people living in present-day England were Romanized Celts, or Britons. Patrick was thus a Celtic Briton who went by the name of Succat. Patrick’s father was a low-level Roman official and a deacon. Patrick’s grandfather had been a priest.

St. Patrick’s Calling
At age sixteen, Patrick was captured by Irish raiders under the command of Niall of the Nine Hostages and taken to Ireland as a slave. For the next six years he labored tending sheep and pigs for one Miliucc near Mount Slemish in Antrim. Life as a herdsman was rough. Patrick barely survived, poorly clothed and without protection from the elements and frequently near starvation. He sought consolation in constant prayer. Finally, his prayers were answered by a mysterious voice that said “Your hungers are rewarded: you are going home.” Miraculously, he walked unharmed two hundred miles to the Wexford coast. There he managed to stowaway aboard a ship transporting Irish wolfhounds to the continent. After reuniting with his family in Britain, he experienced a vision in which he was handed a letter inscribed with the words vox hiberionacum, or Voice of the Irish, and heard people calling him “come and walk among us once more.”
It was not long before Patrick headed for Gaul to study for the priesthood. He was ordained about the year 430 A.D. and, haunted as he was by his years of captivity there, Patrick headed for Ireland.

St. Patrick’s Mission
Patrick began his mission in Ireland sometime about 432 A.D., possibly as successor to Palladius, first bishop of Ireland. Although Christian missionaries had arrived before him, the Irish remained a pagan people. Patrick faced enormous dangers from local chieftains and bands of marauders, but especially from the druid priests who correctly perceived him as a threat to their authority. “[E]very day,” he wrote, “I am ready to be murdered, betrayed, enslaved.”
Patrick concentrated his missionary efforts in the west and north of Ireland. He converted countless thousands during his mission and established, according to tradition, bishops throughout north, east and western Ireland (everywhere, it seems, but Munster). Patrick, as primatial bishop, established his see at Ard Macha (present-day Armagh), symbolically a stone’s throw from the seat of Ulster kings at Emain Macha.
When he died ca. 461 A..D. much of Ireland had been exposed to the teachings of Christianity. The process of conversion, however, took time and as late as the seventh century groups of non-Christian Irish continued to resist.

St. Patrick’s Lorica
One of the most important works attributed to Patrick is his prayer called “St. Patrick’s Lorica” for its alleged power to protect him from harm. It reads in part:
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations and vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

[NOTE: source of translation: Thomas Cahill]
Some scholars note that the language is more seventh century than fifth and therefore question whether or not Patrick himself wrote the prayer. “On the other hand,” as Thomas Cahill writes in his classic, How the Irish Saved Civilization, “it is Patrician to its core, the first ringing assertion that the universe itself is the Great Sacrament, magically designed by its loving creator to bless and succor human beings. … If Patrick did not write it (at least in its current form) it surely takes its inspiration from him.”

St. Patrick’s Legends
Of the many legends associated with St. Patrick, two stand out. First, it is said that he drove the snakes out of Ireland. The problem with this story is that Ireland never had any snakes to drive away. Separated from England (where snakes of all sorts abound) and the Continent thousands of years ago, Ireland emerged from the Ice Age snake-free. If St. Patrick were alive today, of course, he would have his spokesperson come forward to offer a slightly modified legend which stretched but did not break the limits of belief: “Since Patrick’s arrival in Ireland no snakes have been sighted.”
A second and more plausible legend is that he used the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Trinity (by comparing the three leaves with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit). The legend is unverifiable, since Patrick doesn’t mention it in his writings. Some have suggested it derives from an earlier Celtic tradition of using the shamrock as a metaphor representing a “trust in your soul,” “belief in your heart” and “faith in your mind.” Some missionary, if not Patrick himself, very likely Christianized this concept. Few in Ireland seem troubled by these details, and the shamrock remains the Irish national symbol.

St. Patrick’s Legacy
Much of what we know about St. Patrick comes from his Confessio, a kind of spiritual autobiography. A unique mystical chant attributed to Patrick, called the Lorica, is preserved in the Liber Hymnorum, or Book of Hymns. A handbell that he is alleged to have used during Mass is on display in Ireland’s National Museum.
And, of course, every year, on March 17, St. Patrick is honored in Ireland and throughout the world. The date, according to tradition, corresponds to the day of his death (c. 493) at Saul, near Downpatrick in County Down. The style of celebration varies by country and even region. For centuries the people of Ireland marked the day as a solemn religious event, perhaps wearing green, sporting a shamrock, and attending mass, but little more. Certainly there was no massive parade like the ones found in American cities like Boston, New York and Chicago. These have the aura of proud pageantry about them, but sadly much of St. Patrick’s Day in America has been neither religious nor contemplative, but instead an excuse for excessive drinking. Fortunately, the revival of interest in Irish and Irish American culture has prompted parade organizers, church officials, and others to de-emphasize drinking and encourage more appropriate activities such as concerts and poetry readings.
Interestingly, as the American Irish move toward a more Irish form of celebrating March 17, the Irish in Ireland have begun to imitate their American cousins. St. Patrick’s Day parades now occur in most major Irish cities. Differences still remain. Parades in Ireland tend to be more like Mardi Gras pageants than the more formal and earnest shows of ethnic pride found in America.
A more somber remembrance of Patrick occurs every year in Ireland, on the last Sunday of July. Thousands of pilgrims ascend – some barefoot and others on bloodied knees — the nearly half-mile high mountain in the west of Ireland named Croagh Patrick. The devotional ceremony is in memory of the time in 441 when Patrick fasted there.

Brendan Francis Behan

This edition features Brendan Francis Behan, born in Dublin in 1923. His family included some colorful characters. One of his uncles wrote the Irish National Anthem and his grandmother aided IRA fugitives and even served three years on an explosives charge. At age 13, Behan walked out of school for the last time and joined his dad as a housepainter. Not content to just make ends meet, the ambitious lad eventually sought IRA explosives training and, shortly after his sixteenth birthday, set off to Liverpool with a backpack full of dynamite.

However, Behan’s bombing debut backfired. He was arrested, taken to a precinct house, stomped into oblivion, dragged to a cell, then led to court where, black-eyed and limping, he testified to his “unyielding determination to regain every inch of Ireland’s national territory.” The audacious youth was then hauled away to Borstal Detention Center for a three-year stint, aptly chronicled in The Borstal Boy – a memoir masquerading as an outrageous novel – so amusing it makes one wish one had spent adolescence in a reformatory.

Though it proved great for Behan’s writing, captivity did absolutely nothing to make him a lawful citizen and, after enjoying his newfound freedom, the Borstal alum survived a nasty gunfight with two detectives in the middle of Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery (where, ironically, he now rests). By then a repeat attempted-murderer, he received a grim fourteen-year sentence to notorious Mountjoy Prison. Once acclimated with the dismal venue, however, he made the most of his time by learning Irish from another inmate and entering into correspondence with writer Sean O’Faolain. Even more fortunate for Behan, his lengthy sentence was abruptly commuted after four years as part of a Christmas amnesty.

Having already picked up the pen while incarcerated, the quick-witted ex-con found that he was a far better writer than bomber. He published several prose pieces in reputable journals and also spent some time in Paris with the likes of Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett. Such genteel company influenced the young Behan, as the rebel spirit acquired some discipline. Upon his return to Dublin, he found steady employment writing for The Irish Times. He also penned a play, The Quare Fellow, in which a prisoner is condemned to a fate at the end of a rope. This foreboding drama eventually catapulted Behan into international stardom. With his growing literary achievements and outlandish personality, the Irishman became a legendary figure.

Self-described as a “drinker with a writing problem,” Behan’s inveterate consumption of booze resulted in some memorable public moments, such as his immediate expulsion from Francisco Franco’s Spain when, upon arrival, the jovially intoxicated writer announced to media that he had come for the very-much-alive dictator’s “funeral.” Another Behan classic came while giving a lecture at Montreal’s McGill University, where the quasi-staggering Irishman caught sight of a British monarch picture and launched into obscenity-laced vitriol.

Having long ago lost a kidney during a precinct stomping, Behan’s barhopping antics only worsened his battered body. In what would be his last bout with liquor, the forty-41-year-old was taken to nearby Meath Hospital. On the brink of eternity, the avowed disreputable soul made peace with this world by blessing several nuns at his bedside (in his usual irreverent style) by expressing his hope that their “sons all be bishops.”

Paddy Moloney with Chieftains and Special Guests

March 13

Symphony Hall Boston

301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston

8:00 p.m.

617 482-6661 | celebrityseries.org

From the moment Paddy Moloney launches into his lively Gaelic introductions, to the stillness after the last lyrical notes of the tin whistle fade away, and all the rollicking reels and seamless step-dances in between, you will know that no matter where you come from, tonight, you’re at home in Ireland.

 THE CHIEFTAINS AND FRIENDS , THE CELTIC CONNECTION 2009 TOUR

 February 2009 marks 35 years of touring in North America for the group, having made their U.S. debut in 1972 and their first tour in 1974.  The 2009 tour began on February 16 in Portland, Oregon and ends with a St. Patrick’s Day performance on March 17 at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto, Canada. For times and dates www.thechieftains.com

 Legendary Irish Musical Group Joins With Scotland’s Alyth McCormack And Nashville’s Jeff White and Deanie Richardson For A Celebration Of International Musical Heritage

 The Chieftains original members include founder and frontman Paddy Moloney (Uilleann pipes, tin whistle), Matt Molloy (flute), Sean Keane (fiddle) and Kevin Conneff (bodhran, vocals).  For this year’s tour, Chieftains fans will no doubt miss Sean Keane who will be spending time with his family and will be unable join with the group on these dates.  Other performers to join Paddy, Matt, and Kevin in 2009 include the notable Irish harpist Triona Marshall, and the young Canadian acrobatic dancing team of brothers’ Jon and Nathan Pilatzke, along with traditional Irish dancer Cara Butler. 

 Says Chieftain Paddy Moloney: “Beyond the Celtic-Scottish connection that we focused on last year, we plan on giving everyone a taste of the overall influence Celtic music has had internationally.  In particular, we’ll be previewing our upcoming project related to the Celtic-Mexican connection.”

In 2009, The Chieftains will be wrapping up a new album focused on this Celtic-Mexican connection, featuring a track with famed singer Linda Ronstadt among other guests.  For the 2009 tour, The Chieftains will perform selections that span their latest and greatest hits, many of which are found on their 2006 release The Essential Chieftains, as well as preview selections from this new album. 

Celtic Woman, Isle of Hope Tour

Celtic Woman Isle of Hope had it’s official opening night on February 13th in St Paul, Minnesota in the Xcel Arena. The new show was unveiled with new songs like ‘Fields of Gold’ ‘ True Colours’ as well as original songs written for the show by David Downes and  Brendan Graham.

 

David was on site for the new show, along with Chloe, Lisa, Lynn, Mairead and Alex, all wearing fabulous new gowns by designer Synan O’ Mahony, and the Celtic Woman band and Aontas Choir.

 

Named the number one Top World Music Artist by Billboard Magazine, Celtic Woman has been winning over audiences worldwide since their March 2005 debut. They’ve appeared on PBS, Live with Regis and Kelly, Martha Stewart, CBS Early Show, Brian Boitano’s Skating Spectacular and The Bonnie Hunt Show. For cities, times and dates visit www.celticwoman.com