Tea at Trianon: America and the Celts

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

America and the Celts

From Charles Coulombe at Crisis:

In our country, while certain particular regions were heavily affected by the Cornish, Welsh, and Manx, it was the Scots and the Irish—Green and Orange alike—who had the most effect on the national scene. In colonial times, the Ulster Scots settled heavily in the Appalachians; their descendants have had a huge effect on country and bluegrass music and Southern culture generally. Indeed, in the odd way that the continuing struggles among the peoples of the British Isles have been imported/used/transposed for political purposes over here, some characterized the Civil War as a conflict between Southern Celts and Yankee English, even as others recast it as a fight between Confederate Cavaliers and Northern commoners or plutocrats.

The Catholic Irish gravitated toward the larger cities, forming political machines in many of them. Even if these were corrupt, à la Tammany Hall, they usually kept the streets clean and safe, which cannot always be said of more honest city halls. From the Fenians of the mid-19^th century to the NORAID of the mid-20^th, some Irish Americans did their best to keep a hand in with the Old World’s struggles—even if few went quite as far as the New York–born Eamonn de Valera.

Today, of course, that old song seems pretty hollow, with Sinn Fein supporting the British government’s heavy-handed imposition of abortion on recalcitrant Northern Ireland in 2019. Meanwhile, the Scots kept up kilt-wearing and Scottish games, while the American branch of the Orange Order continues paradoxically to call for religious freedom and old-time Gospel religion.

All of which having been said, how can one say that America invented the Celts? Well, it is a funny thing about these United States. Immigrants traditionally have arrived anxious to assimilate. But they do bring things with them which often take on new forms all but unrecognizable to the countrymen left at home. Chinese Americans produced chow mein and chop suey; Italians spaghetti and meatballs and pizza pie; Mexican cuisine somehow turned into Taco Bell; and the Dutch St. Nicholas morphed into Santa Claus. When these things return home, sometimes they colonize. Thus it has been for the Celts.

Because the Scots and the Irish took jobs with the police, every major force in the country has a pipe band—most often noted for funerals. The Scots Americans, through their clan associations, Tartan Day, and the Kirkin’ of the Tartans ceremony (Presbyterian in origin but now found in Catholic churches as well), have also spread back to Scotland. The Americanized version of the Celtic Halloween has become the bane of cultural purists all over Europe. But nowhere has this taken place so completely as with St. Patrick’s Day. (Read more.)