A little fun

Click below to watch and click the speaker for sound

The Land and the Lore:

How Ireland’s Landscape Shapes Its People

Dear Friend,

There’s an old saying in Ireland that the land remembers everything.

From windswept cliffs to rolling green fields, from ancient stone walls to quiet bog roads, Ireland’s landscape is far more than a beautiful backdrop. It’s a living influence on the people who call it home. The rhythm of the seasons, the strength of the Atlantic winds, and the softness of a misty morning have all shaped not just the scenery, but the spirit of the Irish people themselves.

In today’s reflection, I’m sharing a piece that’s very close to my heart through an exploration of how Ireland’s land and lore are deeply intertwined, and how the places we come from quietly shape who we become.

If you’ve ever felt a connection to Ireland, whether through heritage, memory, or simple longing, I think this story will speak to you.

I invite you to read more here:

The Land and the Lore:

How Ireland’s Landscape Shapes Its People

There’s something about Ireland that settles into your bones, even if you’ve never set foot there. Ireland’s bogs, hills, sea, sky and the land itself, shape its people and their stories. Today, let’s discover how the Irish landscape lives on, even through generations living far from home.

Maybe it’s the soft roll of green hills stitched together by stone walls. Maybe it’s the wild Atlantic crashing against the cliffs. Maybe it’s the quiet mystery of the boglands, holding centuries of stories beneath their dark, peaty surface.

For the Irish, the land is never just scenery.

It’s memory.

It’s teacher.

It’s storyteller.

And even for those of us an ocean away, that connection lingers.

A Small Island With a Big Imagination

Ireland is not a vast country. You can cross it in a day. Yet within those few miles, you’ll find windswept coasts, mist-covered mountains, limestone plains, hidden lakes, and fields so green they hardly seem real.

It’s no wonder storytelling flourished here.

When you live in a place where the fog rolls in without warning, where ancient ringforts sit quietly in the fields, and where the sea can turn from silver to steel in an afternoon, your imagination doesn’t have to work too hard.

The landscape does half the work for you.

Think of the legends shaped by this place, the banshee wailing across lonely hills, the selkies slipping between sea and shore, and the fairy folk said to dwell beneath hawthorn trees. These stories didn’t appear out of nowhere. They rose from the land itself.

Even today, when an Irish person describes the weather, it sounds like poetry.

The sky isn’t just cloudy. It’s “threatening.”

The wind doesn’t just blow. It “howls.”

The sea doesn’t just move. It “roars.”

The land speaks, and the people answer.

The Bogs: Patience and Preservation

If you’ve ever seen an Irish bog, you know it’s not flashy. It doesn’t shout for attention like the cliffs or the mountains. It sits quietly.

But bogs are remarkable places. They preserve what time tries to erase. Ancient artifacts, wooden trackways, even long-forgotten histories have been held safely in their damp embrace for centuries.

There’s something very Irish about that.

A patience.

A long memory.

A refusal to forget.

For generations, families cut turf from the bog to heat their homes. The scent of a turf fire still carries something deep and comforting, something earthy and steady. It speaks of resilience. Of making do. Of drawing warmth from what is at hand.

Even for Irish Americans who’ve never held a turf spade, that instinct remains: use what you have, endure what you must, and hold on to your story.

The Sea: Leaving and Longing

And then there is the sea.

For Ireland, the sea has always been both a barrier and bridge.

It fed fishing villages. It carried traders and monks to distant shores. And in harder times, it carried sons and daughters away, to America, Australia, England, wherever hope might be found.

The sea is woven into Irish identity because so many departures happened at its edge.

Standing on a rocky shore, you can feel it, that mix of beauty and ache. The horizon promises possibility, but it also whispers of goodbye.

For descendants of Irish immigrants, that saltwater thread still runs through us. We inherit not only the stories of leaving, but the habit of looking back.

Perhaps that’s why Irish families, no matter how far they travel, tend to keep close ties.

We call.

We gather.

We tell the old stories again and again.

We remember where we came from, even if the “where” is now generations removed.

Hills, Sky, and a Certain Softness to the Land

Ireland’s hills are not harsh or towering. They roll gently, like a patchwork quilt. The sky feels enormous above them, always changing, and always dramatic.

Living under that kind of sky teaches you flexibility.

Sunshine and showers can arrive within minutes of each other. Plans shift. You learn not to cling too tightly to certainty.

There’s a softness in that way of living, not a weakness, but adaptability.

You bend like grass in the wind.

You endure like stone walls built without mortar.

You find beauty in small clearings of light.

And perhaps that’s why Irish storytelling carries both sorrow and hope in the same breath. The land itself models that balance.

The Land Travels With Us

Most Irish Americans don’t farm the same soil their ancestors did. Many have never walked those exact hills or stood beside those particular bogs.

And yet the landscape lingers in unexpected ways.

In our love of a good story told slowly.

In our habit of naming the weather as if it were a person.

In our fondness for gathering close when the world feels uncertain.

The land shapes temperament. It shapes expression. It shapes memory.

Even across oceans.

There’s a reason so many Irish descendants feel something stir when they see photos of the Emerald Isle, a recognition that feels older than logic.

It’s not simply tourism or nostalgia. It’s belonging.

A Formative Landscape

Ireland’s landscape is not just beautiful. It’s formative.

It taught a small island to be resilient. To be imaginative. To endure hardship without losing tenderness.

To look at mist and see mystery, to hear wind and find a story.

And perhaps that’s the real inheritance, not just surnames or recipes or songs, but a way of seeing the world.

Tell me. Have you ever felt that quiet pull of the Irish land, even from far away? I’d love to hear how it shows up in your own family stories.

Thanks for following my recipes and ramblings.

There Once Was A City Called Limerick

Céad Míle Fáilte, and you are very welcome to your Letter from Ireland for this week. With the bright sunshine and warmer days here in County Cork, one of the most notable features is the dawn chorus of birds that starts at about 4:30 am each morning. Who needs an alarm clock when there is such a natural cacophony of sound outside the window, although a little early perhaps!

I’m having a cup of Barry’s tea as I write, and I do hope you’ll join me with whatever you fancy as we settle into today’s letter.

Before I go on, just to say that I will be trying something different from this week onwards with the letter. Each week going forward, I’ll finish the letter with a question to you, and then I’ll aim to base some future letters on your answers. So, watch out at the end of this letter for our new format.

Earlier this week, Carina and I took ourselves up to Limerick for a few days out and about. The weather was kind to us, and we walked the city in a way you can really only do when the rain stays off. The Shannon was sparkling, and the old Georgian streets full of light. And King John’s Castle stood guard at its bend in the river, just as it has done for over eight hundred years.

So today’s letter is for Limerick. I had this lovely message a while back from a Green Room member that fits the subject perfectly:

“Mike, my great-grandfather left Limerick city in the 1880s for Liverpool. Would you believe, I’ve never been to Ireland, but Limerick is the place I keep coming back to in my mind. Funny enough, I also enjoy composing limericks! I would love to hear your thoughts on the city and if there is any connection between the city and the limerick rhyme?

Eileen, Liverpool.”

Thanks for that, Eileen. I find many of our readers carry a special place in Ireland with them, just as you do.

There Once Was A City Called Limerick

I cannot write about Limerick without addressing the title. Most of us know the limerick as a verse; you know the form: five lines, a particular rhythm, usually a punchline that lands somewhere between cheeky and outrageous. There once was a man from Nantucket… and so on.

The answer as to whether the verse form actually took its name from the city of Limerick is that it likely did, although we are not entirely sure how it came about. Some trace it to a parlour-game song, “Will You Come Up to Limerick?”, popular in the 19th century, where each guest at a gathering had to make up a verse, with the chorus bringing everyone back to Limerick. Others point further back, to the poets of the 18th century in County Limerick, who wrote in Irish using a metre that bears a strong resemblance to the form we know today. The word “limerick” for the verse itself only seems to appear towards the end of the 1800s.

So the link is real, but somewhat loose. Either way, it is a small piece of cultural shorthand that has carried the city’s name into every English-speaking household in the world. Now, that’s not a bad bit of branding, however accidental!

Walking the Banks of the Shannon

The first thing that strikes you about Limerick is the mighty Shannon, Ireland’s longest river. You can talk all you like about the city’s history, but the river is what made the place. Wide, slow-moving, tidal at this point, the Shannon has been the reason for Limerick’s existence from the beginning.

We walked from the city centre out along the riverbank following the Three Bridges Walk, with each bridge bringing us further back in time. There were rowers out on the water, the slap of the oars and the call of the cox carrying clearly in the still air. A couple of fishermen leaning on the wall and further on, the bend where the river curves around Thomondgate, the castle comes into view.

Your Limerick ancestors would have known this water well. The Shannon was always a working river: barges, hookers, fishing boats, the smell of the docks.

King John’s Castle

King John’s Castle is one of those places that looks exactly what you hope a castle should look like. Squat round-fronted towers, thick limestone walls, and a great gate facing the river. It was built in the early 1200s by the Normans, and a version has stood there ever since, surviving sieges, the Williamite Wars, centuries of neglect, restoration, and now a rather good visitor centre.

Standing on the ramparts, you can see how everything in Limerick radiates from this single spot. The Normans knew what they were doing when they choose to build here. Across the river sits the Treaty Stone on its plinth, marking the place where the Treaty of Limerick was signed in 1691. The treaty that ended one war, broke its own promises soon after, and sent a generation of Irish soldiers, the Wild Geese, into the armies of Europe.

The Georgian Streets

Walk a little south from the castle and you cross into a different part of the city altogether. This is Newtown Pery, the planned Georgian quarter laid out in the late 1700s by Edmund Sexton Pery and his architects. Wide straight streets, tall red-brick and limestone houses, fanlights over the doors, iron railings, the whole confident Georgian vocabulary.

It is easy to forget that Limerick was once one of the most fashionable cities in Ireland. The Georgian quarter was where the merchants and the professional classes lived, and you can still feel the assurance of that period in the proportions of the buildings. Some of the houses are immaculate, but others are now a bit faded, having spent much of the late 1800s and early 1900s serving as tenements. All of it is being slowly, carefully brought back to its former glory.

We had lunch on O’Connell Street, in a place where the windows looked straight down a perfect Georgian terrace. It was the sort of moment when you remember that an Irish city is never one thing. Instead, it has its layers, Gaelic, Norman, Georgian, Victorian, twentieth-century, present-day, all stacked on top of each other, and all still in use.

A City Worth Knowing

Limerick has had a complicated reputation over the years. Frank McCourt’s book Angela’s Ashes painted a memorable picture of a particular time and a particular kind of poverty, and that image probably stuck for longer than it should have. The Limerick we walked last week is a different city, and a city of a different generation. Confident, lively, aware of its problems, proud of its history, comfortable with itself.

If you have Limerick ancestry, this is a city well worth a visit. Walk the banks of the Shannon, stand on the castle walls. Wander the Georgian streets, find a window seat in a café and watch the city go about its business with a cup of tea in front of you. Your great-grandparents would, I suspect, be quite pleased to see how the old place is getting on.

Thanks again to Eileen for the prompt, It’s a reminder that a single place can stay with us, even from a distance.

As I mentioned at the top of the letter, before I leave you this week, I’d love to ask you something.

Which Irish town or city holds special meaning for you – through ancestry, a visit, or simply a place you’ve always been curious about?

To answer, simply hit reply – just a line or two is perfect. Carina and I read every response, even if we cannot always answer personally. You may even see your choice featured in a future Letter from Ireland, many of the letters I write come from conversations like this one.

That’s it for this week.

Slán for now,

Mike.

Submitted by Lawrence Mahoney

What Were the Main Occupations of Rural Ireland?

Hi Tom,

Each week we take a reader question and share suggested approaches, resources and a little historical context to help answer that question.

Do feel free to reply to this email and let me know if it helped you in any way, it’s always great to get feedback.

Today we answer the question: What Were the Main Occupations of Rural Ireland?

Let’s kick off with the following question from Sue:

“My great-great-grandfather Patrick Fahy is listed in the 1901 Irish census as a ‘shoemaker’ in a townland just outside Loughrea in County Galway. I assumed that meant he ran a cobbler’s shop – but when I look at Griffith’s Valuation from fifty years earlier, a Fahy is listed holding several acres of land in the same area. Was he a farmer or a shoemaker? Could he have been both? And how do I find out more about the kinds of work people like him actually did in places like Loughrea?”

Sue, Brisbane, Australia

Sue, your instinct is a good one. The location also caught my eye as my own mother’s family came from this area and her local market town was also Loughrea!  Now, the contradiction you’ve spotted between the census and Griffith’s is not a contradiction at all. In rural Ireland, it was very common for one person to occupy more than one economic role at the same time.

Patrick Fahy could quite easily have been a shoemaker and a small farmer. In fact, in a place like the Loughrea hinterland, that would have been entirely ordinary. A few acres might feed the family and keep a cow. A trade might bring in the cash needed for rent, leather, clothes, tools, or a daughter’s fare to England or America. One record might record one side of his life, while another catches a different side. That is why occupations in Irish records need to be read with a little imagination, as they rarely provide the whole picture.

Loughrea and Its Hinterland

By the nineteenth century, Loughrea was a small market town serving a much wider farming district in south-east Galway. It had the institutions you might expect of such a place with churches of different denominations, a courthouse, barracks, a post office, fairs, markets, and, after the early 1840s, a workhouse. The town and the countryside around it were not separate worlds, but depended on one another.

That matters when you think about your ancestors. A man living in a nearby townland might work partly from home, partly in the town, and partly on his own small holding. He could make shoes, repair boots, cut turf, save hay, attend fairs, and still think of himself primarily as a shoemaker when the census man called.

The same is true of women, though the records gloss over much of it. A farmer’s wife or a shoemaker’s wife might be milking, churning, keeping poultry, growing vegetables, mending clothes, taking in sewing, minding children, or helping with a small shop or trade. The census often summarises all this into “wife”, “housekeeper”, or no occupation at all. That lack of detail in the record should never be mistaken for idleness.

The Main Pattern: Farming Plus Something Else

If there is one point to hold onto, it is that many rural Irish families lived by combining incomes. A large farmer might rely mainly on land. But the small farmer, the tradesman, the labouring family, the widow with children – these households usually needed more than one source of support. A few acres on their own were often not enough, while a trade on its own might be too uncertain. Seasonal labour might fill a gap, or perhaps a son in England could send home money. A daughter in service nearby might do the same.

So the shoemaker with land was not unusual and nor was the tailor with a cow, the carpenter with six acres, or the publican with a shop and a farm at the back of the premises. This mixed economy is one of the reasons Irish records can seem to contradict each other from year to year, but they are simply capturing different parts of the same family’s life.

What People Actually Did

In and around a market town like Loughrea, the occupational world was broad, but not mysterious. There were farmers of different scales, graziers, herdsmen, carters, labourers, servants and shopkeepers. There were blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters, masons, coopers, wheelwrights, thatchers, saddlers and shoemakers. There were grocers, bakers, butchers, publicans, millers, schoolteachers, priests, constables, clerks, postmasters, solicitors and dispensary doctors. Some of these jobs we still have today, some we remember from our childhood while many have gone the way of the dodo.

As I previously mentioned, it is important not to picture these as neat categories.The shoemaker may also have farmed. The blacksmith may have held land. The labourer may have gone to England for the harvest. The widow may have run the household economy, taken in sewing, and managed the hens and pig that kept the family going. On paper, these lives can look simpler than they were in reality.

That is especially true in a county like Galway, where many families lived close enough to subsistence that resilience mattered more than specialisation.

Patrick Fahy the Shoemaker

So what does “shoemaker” probably mean in Patrick Fahy’s case? Most likely, it means he was known locally as a man who made or repaired shoes and boots and may have worked from home rather than from a shopfront in town. He may have made footwear to order, repaired worn boots, and done this work at a bench by a window where the light was best. But he may also have had a few acres, a cow, a potato plot, perhaps some oats, and enough land to keep the household from complete dependence on cash.

That sort of arrangement was common enough. The trade brought in money while the land gave a measure of security. If work was quiet, the produce of the ground still mattered. While if the crop failed or prices fell, the trade mattered all the more.

This is why a census entry and Griffith’s Valuation can sit side by side so naturally. Griffith’s records land and property occupancy in the mid-nineteenth century while the 1901 census records what a person said, or what the enumerator understood, to be their occupation at that moment.

Seasonal Work and Temporary Work

Another thing worth bearing in mind is that rural work was often seasonal. Many men from Ireland travelled to England or Scotland for harvest work. Others worked on local roads, in bogs, at fairs, or for local farmers when there was demand. A man could be described one year as a labourer, another as a farmer, another as a shoemaker or carpenter, without any of those labels being false. That is one reason I would be slow to build too much on a single occupational entry. It is a clue, not a final answer.

Cottage Industry and Household Work

It also helps to remember that not all useful work looked like a formal occupation. In Ulster, linen was central to rural life for generations, with flax growing, spinning and weaving woven into the annual cycle of many households. That made the rural economy there different from Connacht in important ways, and it left a stronger documentary trail through Linen Board records, local surveys and estate papers.

In Connacht, the pattern was different, but domestic production still mattered. Wool work, knitting, sewing, poultry, dairy work, butter-making, turf-cutting and small-scale craft labour all helped hold households together. Much of this never appears cleanly in formal records, but it was real work, and often essential work.

For genealogists, this means that “no occupation” in a census should be treated with caution, especially in the case of women and older children.

Trade Directories: Useful, but show only part of the picture

If you want to understand the occupational world of Loughrea, trade directories are one of the best places to look. Pigot’s, Slater’s, Thom’s, Bassett’s and Guy’s can show you who was established enough in a town to be listed as a trader, merchant or professional. They are particularly useful for following families through the years and seeing who dominated certain trades in a place across decades. Irish directories survive in a number of collections and are a valuable companion to census and valuation work.

But they have limits and tend to favour the visible and the established. They miss many labourers, cottiers, servants, small rural tradesmen and most women. They are also more likely to catch a man with a premises in town than a man working quietly from a house in a nearby townland.

So if Patrick Fahy does not appear in a directory, that does not tell you very much. If he does appear, that is useful. If a more prosperous boot and shoe dealer appears in town, that may help you understand the wider trade environment in which Patrick was working.

The Census: Very Good, but Still Only a Snapshot

The 1901 and 1911 (and now 1926) census returns are among the best tools we have for this period. They record age, religion, literacy, birthplace and occupation, and they survive in unusually full form for Ireland. But the occupation column still needs careful reading.

This self-reported column usually gives a primary identity, not a complete economic biography. It also tends to under-record women’s work. It says little about seasonality, part-time labour, shifts across a lifetime, or the difference between the work that fed a household and the work that brought in cash. So use it, but realise that it often does not tell the full picture.

How to Rebuild an Ancestor’s Working Life

The best approach is to put several record types beside one another. Start with the census. Then look at Griffith’s Valuation to see what land or property was held in the family’s name or nearby. After that, look at trade directories, civil registration records, and, where they survive, parish registers or estate papers.

Marriage certificates are especially useful because they often give occupations across two generations at once. A groom, his father, the bride’s father – these small details can show whether a trade stayed in the family, whether a family moved up or down, or whether farming and trade sat side by side for decades. Once you begin to do that, a much fuller picture tends to emerge.

In Summary

The value of an occupation is not just that it labels a person. It tells you something about how they moved through the world. A shoemaker in rural Galway was not simply a man making shoes, but also someone with a skill, with neighbours who depended on him, with customers who came to the door, with a place in the local web of credit and trust. If he also held land, that tells you something too. It suggests not comfort exactly, but a good fallback. A patch of ground, with a cow, a pig, a potato field these things mattered when keeping a family fed and prosperous.

In that sense, the occupation is often less important than how a man or woman fully spent their time. The full picture tells you how the family survived.

Key Resources

Here are some resources that you may find useful:

1901, 1911 and 1926 Census (National Archives of Ireland):

Website:https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-census/

Why it matters: This is your starting point for occupations, household structure, literacy, religion, and birthplace. It gives you a snapshot of your ancestor’s life at a specific moment in time.

Griffith’s Valuation:

Website: https://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/

Why it matters: Shows who held land and property between 1847 and 1864. Essential for understanding the farming side of a family’s life and locating them in a specific townland.

National Library of Ireland (Digital Collections)

Website: https://www.nli.ie/

Why it matters: Holds many original trade directories, local histories, and manuscript material. Useful when you want to go deeper into the commercial life of a town like Loughrea.

Dúchas – The National Folklore Collection

Website: https://www.duchas.ie/

Why it matters: Contains local memories of trades, crafts, and daily life recorded in the 1930s. Often gives colour and detail you won’t find in official records.

PRONI (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland)

Website: https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni

Why it matters: Especially valuable if your family has Ulster connections. Includes estate papers, valuation records, and material relating to trades like linen weaving.

Linen Hall Library, Belfast

Website: https://www.linenhall.com/

Why it matters: A key resource for understanding the linen industry and the working lives of families in Ulster.

John Grenham’s Irish Genealogy Website

Website: https://www.johngrenham.com/

Why it matters: Excellent for surname distribution, record guidance, and pulling together different strands of Irish research. Free access available for Green Room members.

Trying again to put the Bodhran Play out of business

Click below to watch and click the speaker for sound

Subscribe to IrishCentral