emigrant.htm

Irish Emigrants

Now more than 70,000,000 people who has ancestor from Ireland all over the world. From the end of 1840 to the early of 1850,Irish people emigrated to America, and the number of these emigrants was more than 2million and this was one -fourth of the population in Ireland. By 1900, about 4 million Irish people emigrated to U.S.A. The famous tragic story of these days is "Titanic". Now the population of Irish American is about 40million and 18% of total population of U.S.A.

　Of course, they emigrated to not only U.S., but Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so on.

However, Irish people were discriminated as "white ethnic "because they stayed in Catholic even in U.S.A.. I think they are only people who were discriminated even though they were white people. This would be related with the western idea which people originally from Greek-Roman are superior. European people seem to like to think they are Greek-Roman posterity and as a proof there is a monument in Boston, which says " Greek-Roman people came here.". This is unable to understand for Japanese people because we were out of the world history for a long long time. Japanese ancestor might have same idea, that's why they closed and rejected to have foreign culture and people for 300 years in Edo era. If Japan was located in Europe, we would have thought that way.

European people are basically mixed races. It is said ancestor of Irish people were not Greek-Roman but Celt. Now Celtic art ,music and culture are very popular and famous. The word "Celt" sounds like mysterious. "Celt" is not the first resident of Ireland and most of Celts came from middle Europe and disappeared. They were seemed to be violent and savage by Greek and Roman, but we can see their great art and culture through some remains. "Celt " fought against Roman like Caeser and moved from place to place.

Almost in same age, we had Kyodo( Races who mount well and menaced Emperor Shi ) in Asia. Both of them were main stage of the history, but Celt disappeared in forest and Kyodo disappeared in plain. Celtic descendants are Gaels ( in Scotland ), Welsh (in Wales ), Bretons( in France ) and Irish. Especially Irish people are said to have Celtic blood thickest in them. This could be the reason why they were discriminated.

Till 20th century, They couldn't have chances to show their ability and talent, but now we have many famous Irish people who have Irish ancestor.

Who are famous people who have Irish roots ?

J.F.Kennedy (The 35th American President), Richard M. Nixon ( The 37th American President ), William J Clinton ( The 42nd American President ), Ronald W. Reagan ( The　40th American President ), John Lennon, Paul McCartney, I'm not sure about ... RIngo Starr & Gorge Harrison ( The Beatles ), Lafcadio Hearn ( Yakumo Koizumi ), Margaret Mitchell ( Gone with Wind ), Grace Kerry ( princess of Monaco), Harrison Ford ( actor ), Robert De Niro ( referred as an Italian American, but has Irish root, too ), Kevin Kline ( actor ), Mariah Carey ( Her mum is Irish-American ).....

If you have seen the movie " Gone With The Wind " , you might remember the last scene. Scarlet stands up and say "going back to Tara" . In this movie, Tara is the name of the farm place which her uncle built. This Tara is named from very important place to Irish people in Ireland. The landscape of Tara in the movie is very similar to Tara in Ireland. First recorded in history as the seat of the Irish High King Cormac McArt, Tara is an ancient sacred site. It was the seat of the ancient High Kings of Ireland. St Patrick is also associated with the site. It was finally abandoned around 1000 AD. A battle was fought there during the 1798 rebellion and Daniel O’Connell held one of this “monster meetings” there as part of the campaign for catholic emancipation.

The Hill Of Tara Photo Courtesy

So this words would mean " Never forget suffering in Ireland and Irish spirit. " . I like you to see that movie again with this view. You would find what they talk about.