The ‘Mad Irish’ you want to see

Guest writer Mary Marshall with a piece critical of how some academics seek to depict or explain culture and history.

Segment from Mary Marshall's painting Our Ned is dead.

Australia - An Aboriginal man once told me how it riles him up having clueless, non-Aboriginal lecture him on what his culture and history is.

The University lecturer was speaking from the podium on Irish and their resistance. He has deduced the resistance from 1916 Easter Rising through to the 1981 Hunger Strike was insanity – all indigenous Irish who partook in the events were utterly insane. I looked around at the young students feverishly scribbling notes – all non Irish bar the one sitting next to me who suddenly reaches out her hand and holds mine. I realize the rage boiling in me is obvious – I am rigid with rage and stabbing my pen down on the desk over and over. But the days of drama and such are over – I am old, slyer, educated and know how the game is played. I raise my hand and carefully speak so as not to be reduced to a train-wreck of expletives.

I loudly state at the lecturer: 'You do not understand - all who resisted knew full well what they were doing. You mistake courage and integrity for insanity.' And the lecturer looks taken aback then politely acknowledges there are other ways of perceiving Irish resistance.

I want to laugh at him and the great halls of academia that still persist in relaying lies and distortions. But I have made my point to all the students there - why sully it with sarcastic, raucous laughter.

And all the while a line from a poem I wrote is drumming in my head – ‘We are the ‘mad Irish’ you want to see – still Britain’s toy – still the Vatican’s bumboy’.

An Aboriginal man told me once how it riles him up having clueless, non-Aboriginal lecture him on what his culture and history is. I believe I fully know now how he feels.

We are the ‘mad Irish’ you want to see

We are still Britain’s toy

Still the Vatican’s bumboy

Still caricatures in media

We are the ‘mad Irish’ you want to see

Subversion, co-ercion, submersion…

Compromise…

Into the vat of British lard

We are yer Irish cock forever hard

Spiked with grim wit from head to toe

When we smile shamrocks wedged in our teeth wink at you

as blood fills our eye

We are Mammy’s boys

We are brittle hags

We are a once proud Mother Ireland

whose legs splayed wide open has been pack raped to shreds

When we cry the uilleann pipes scream: Fenian from womb to tomb

We are Depressive, Violent, Alcoholic, Vengeful

We be the feckin’ ugly yet slyly clever losers

drowning in morbidity

We duck & weave

&

spit out a “top o’ the morn to ye”

We are the ‘mad Irish’ you want to see

Propped up with a sprinkle of poetry & songs

Well soaked we are in centuries of blood, war & grief

We know ‘how the Irish became white’ Noel Ignatiev

Make no mistake of that

Subversion, co-ercion, submersion, compromise

Into the vat of British lard

We are yer Irish cock forever hard

Spiked with grim wit from head to toe

When we smile shamrocks wedged in our teeth wink at you

as blood fills our eye

We are still Britain’s toy

Still the Vatican’s bumboy

Still caricatures in media

We are the ‘mad Irish’ you want to see