The Ginger Problem
Let’s start simple here. Being a redhead, historically, has not always been the most desirable thing to be. Certainly not in the Middle Ages, when red hair was thought to be indicative of witches, werewolves or vampires. Apparently, there was a time in history where the sight of Ron Howard would have been considered the ultimate in horror (whereas today the sight of him only inspires a vague sense of queasiness in most people). At other points in history, red hair was believed to mean one was surely a whore or had a wicked awful temper (later research has shown only around 60% of redheads are angry whores).
And even if you didn't fall victim to the superstitious associations with the world's rarest hair color, you certainly wouldn't enjoy some of the crappier consequences of having low levels of dark pigmentation. Like burning to a blistered, bubbly crisp when spending 15 minutes in the sun. Or ending a day at the beach with ungodly spots all over your face and ears and back and shoulders. And if Al Gore knows what he's talking about at all, most of the world’s redheads should be planning and constructing a vast underground bunker for themselves as we speak if they know what’s good for them.
Hell, not only are redheads the most vulnerable to the rays of our otherwise life-giving sun, redheads are also more sensitive to pain. Seriously. And which country has the world’s highest concentration of redheads? Yup, that would be Ireland. The Irish even have unlucky genes it seems.
The Viking Tyranny
Historically the best protection a civilization can have against invasion is to be located on an island. Just look at Japan. Until being occupied by America following World War II (USA! USA!) it had never been successfully invaded (although you could argue the high density of ninjas in the country had something to do with it). At any rate Ireland is an island, they should have had it made, right?
But what if around the 8th century a civilization living not far from Ireland were to develop a culture based on seafaring warfare, piracy and sporty horned helmets? Oh shit…
…here come the Vikings.
The Vikings’ modus operandi was to attack exclusively from the sea, pillage, rape and burn then sail off while trading hearty high fives and congratulatory butt slaps. In other words Ireland being an island nation, something traditionally of great advantage, ended up being their worst nightmare. Today we have a fairly harmless image of Vikings (although extended exposure to Hagar the Horrible has been known to cause brain hemorrhages) but trust us when we tell you that the real Vikings were grade-A cocks. The Vikings were the basically the bullies of the middle ages and like that poor red-headed kid that spent most of middle school stuffed in his locker, the Irish were the Vikings’ favorite targets and spent over 200 years being metaphorically swirlied.
The Tudors
Folks really seem to love the Tudors, the English dynasty that ruled England from 1485 to 1603 and included monarchs like King Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. You seemingly can’t swing Anne Boleyn’s decapitated head without hitting a new TV show or movie starring either Henry VIII or Elizabeth, most of which focus on what Henry’s penis happened to be doing while he was king or how Elizabeth made it in a man’s world baby, but what was arguably the Tudor’s favorite pastime is almost always overlooked. What was that you ask? Why brutally suppressing Ireland and trying to wipe out Irish culture of course!
Elizabeth in particular, contrary to the heroic soft-lit portrayal of her you see in the two “Elizabeth” movies, was one supreme bitch when it came to Irish (guess the frustration from being the “Virgin Queen” her entire life had to taken out on someone). While trying to subdue Ireland, Elizabeth ordered the English to use scorched-earth tactics, burning the land and slaughtering man, woman and child. This caused widespead famine and countless thousands died from starvation alone. She also set up plantations across Ireland populated with Protestant English settlers, the idea being that these would be the seeds from which English Protestantism would spring forth and overtake traditional Irish Catholic culture. The fact that you can still pick up a current-day newspaper nearly 500 years later and read about fresh fallout from that decision really makes you hope we’ll someday get an Irish-produced biopic of Elizabeth. We suspect Cate Blanchett would have to spend a bit of extra time in make-up getting the pock marks and bald spots applied to make her look like the real Elizabeth should an Irish team be in charge.
But of course all this ugliness could have perhaps been avoided had Lady Luck not once again pissed in the Irish’s stew. The Tudor line came to power when Henry VII defeated Richard III in the War of the Roses (a war that was a lot longer, more bitter and bloody than it’s fruity name implies) and true to form the Irish had supported the losing side. Whoops. From that point on the Tudors saw Ireland as a possible threat and point where their enemies could stage attacks on them from, and so spent the next 100-years or so violently beating on the Irish like Moe on Curly. The Irish had two choices of which side to suport, essentially a coin toss, and if they had gone with heads instead of tails nearly 500 years of religious strife and stifling English domination might have been avoided. But hey if things had actually gone well for the Irish their greatest cultural achievement, their countless angry drinking songs, may never had been written and keggers around the world would all be a little poorer for it.
The Life and Times of Wolfe Tone
Wolfe Tone (1763 – 1798) was an Irish-born lawyer and the father of the Irish Republican independence movement (as well as proud owner of one of the most kick-ass names ever to grace a history book). Some have even called him the Irish George Washington, but of course since this is the Irish George Washington we're talking about he didn't valiantly lead his forces to victory, founding an independent nation that would go on to become the most powerful in the world. No, instead Wolfe Tone stayed true to his roots and was repeatedly kneed in the testicles by ol' Lady Luck.
Wolfe Tone co-founded of the Society of United Irishmen whose goal was to get the Catholic and Protestant factions of Irish society to unite their powers Marvel Team-up style to defeat their Dr. Doom-esque English overlords. Unfortunately for the fate of a free Ireland, Wolfe decided to ally himself with the French forming a true dream-team combining the rotten luck of the Irish with the military incompetence of the French. When Tone launched an invasion from France to free Ireland from the English the luck of the Irish kicked in immediately sending gales and fog to meet the French fleet whose ships of course all promptly got lost, sunk or turned sail and ran away.
Tone and the French made a few more attempts to invade Ireland with a similar lack of success until finally Wolfe Tone was taken prisoner when the English captured a ship he was on. Tone's captors didn't even recognize him though and he most likely would have got away if Lady Luck hadn't, in a last ditch effort, managed to deliver a flying dropkick to his nuts yet again. By sheer shit luck while stepping off the prison boat he happened to be witnessed by a lawyer he had faced off against several times back when he was practicing law, who still held a grudge and ratted him out. So yes, lawyer's souls have always been dank pits full of spite and evil.
Tone was charged with treason and sentenced to death. All Tone requested was that he be given what he considered a more honorable death via firing squad instead of hanging and the English, presumably just to be pricks, insisted hanging was the only way to go so Tone, in a ballsy but perhaps strategically ill-considered move, countered by cutting his own throat. English plans to get the last laugh by dressing Tone's corpse in women's clothes and shooting it out of a cannon were fortunately called off when they couldn't find a gown in his size.
The Great Hunger
Even by their standards the Irish were going through a bit of a rough patch in the mid-1800s. The people were dirt poor and almost all Irish land was owned by Englishmen (most of whom would never even set foot on Ireland lest their boots be sullied by inferior non-English soil). The English made sure the best land was used to graze cattle for British consumption, and only the leftover scraps were left for growing food for the apparently somewhat unimportant purpose of actually feeding the Irish.
But wait, not all is lost! Enter the potato, that most manly of vegetables. It can be grown nearly anywhere in large quantities, is full of energy and nutrients and is pretty freakin’ tasty baked with a nice cheese sauce, bacon bits and chives. So to sum up, though a unique and twisted set of circumstances the survival of the Irish people was entirely dependant these edible roots. What could possibly go wrong? What, haven’t you been paying attention so far? This is Ireland, the question isn’t whether the shit’s going to hit the fan, but to what degree. Unfortunately for the Irish they got hit with an elephant shitting into a jet-engine level blast this time around.
Not only did the potato crop completely fail, but it did for seven straight years from 1847 – 1852. Before the famine Ireland had a population of around 8 million, after the famine it was less than 6 million (half of the 2 million lost died, the other half had wisely got the hell out of Ireland). To this day Ireland’s population has still not come close to regaining the number of people they had back in 1847.
Oh and if there are any Irish people reading this, in the interest of full disclosure we Americans should tell you that the potato blight that killed your crops was most likely sent over the Atlantic on American ships. Sorry. And when you immigrated to the United States in droves to avoid starvation caused by the blight we sent you, you were often discriminated against or beaten. Really sorry. Then to top it all off some hacks from an American outfit called “Cracked” decided to write an article about your suffering full of broad generalizations and unfounded stereotypes. Really very sorry.
The Easter Rising
Americans have nothing to brag about when it comes to the American Revolution. It’s likely we would have lost if France didn't bankrupt and starve themselves to help us out (in order to spite England. What, you thought French pettiness was something new?) But the Irish, no doubt due to their impetuous and rash nature, didn't really plan this particularly revolution very well.
The plan was to take over Dublin from Great Britain. It was the week of Easter in 1916 and English were busy with some “World War I” business or something, so perhaps we can only assume the Irish rebels imagined they would be too war-weary to bother with a few freckle-faced malcontents. On paper it sounds like not a bad plan.
What the Irish hadn’t counted on was that the English are never too war-weary to put them back in their proper place. Stomping down the Irish is as well loved a British pastime as watercress sandwiches over a ripping game of croquet. The rebels didn't have enough men, a breakdown in law and order led to widespread looting, and, yeah, the British sent in the troops. Lots of troops. Like 16,000 of them to fight off the 1200 or so Irish renegades. The Irish did what they had already done in the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Irish Rebellion of 1798, United Irish Rebellions, The Nine Years War, Desmond Rebellions and a half dozen more we’ve no doubt missed, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The American Revolution might not have been perfect, but at least we only had to do it once.
So, is it all doom and gloom for the Irish? Actually no, it’s not. The Irish would eventually gain their independence and in the last decade the Irish “Celtic Tiger” economy has been booming with quality of life in Ireland among the best in the world. So this Saint Patrick’s day raise a pint to Emerald Island and enjoy it while it lasts, because given the Irish people’s unerring ability to get bitch-slapped by fate just as things are looking their brightest, it’s probably only a matter of time before Godzilla rises from the ocean to devour the island whole.
Nathan Birch writes the fluffy animal-filled webcomic Zoology and Kristi Harrison does the blogging thing over at Here In Idaho.
