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Vintage Irish Easter greeting featuring eggs

Easter, a cornerstone of the Christian liturgical calendar, holds profound significance for Irish Catholics. Irish Catholics in Ireland deeply value Easter traditions, intertwining religious observances with unique local customs that reflect the country’s rich historical and spiritual heritage. My historical fiction work, Roseleigh, prominently features an Irish Catholic family, the Cavanaghs. Because of this, I represent them partaking in traditions around the Easter Holy Week.

The Lenten Journey

Easter traditions in Ireland begin with Lent, a 40-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance leading up to Easter Sunday. For Irish Catholics, Lent is a time of self-reflection and spiritual preparation. Ash Wednesday marks the start of this period, when priests draw crosses in ash on the foreheads of the faithful as a symbol of repentance. Many Irish Catholics abstain from meat on Fridays, give up certain luxuries, and engage in acts of charity. Adherents see these Lenten sacrifices and practices as a way to purify themselves in anticipation of Easter.

During the Lenten season, people from all walks of life, including royalty, clergy, and commoners, widely observed the rigorous Black Fast. Its details are:

• One may not eat or drink anything from midnight until sunset
• One may not eat meat, eggs, dairy products, or alcohol
• One may have one vegetarian meal per day
• The meal during Holy Week may only include bread, salt, herbs, and water.

By the early 20th century, Irish Catholic traditions surrounding the Black Fast had significantly evolved. However, by the early 1900s, these stringent practices relaxed. The Catholic Church lessened the severity of The Black Fast, allowing for lighter meals and fewer dietary restrictions. These changes aimed to make religious practices easier for believers to follow. This shift allowed for a greater focus on spiritual reflection and charitable deeds during Lent, rather than purely on physical deprivation, thus aligning with contemporary interpretations of piety and devotion.

 

Holy Week: The Path to Easter

A series of solemn and significant events mark Holy Week, the final week of Lent. Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, begins the week. People received blessed palms at church to take home. In earlier times, men would also wear these blessed palm slips on their lapels. Additionally, people would hang palms in barns and on tree limbs to safeguard livestock. Palm Sunday was a day when people would also perform the spring cleaning of their homes.

 

Good Friday: Blessings and Prohibitions

Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, is significant in Ireland. It is a day of fasting, prayer, and penance, with many attending the Stations of the Cross, a devotional service that retraces the steps of Jesus to Calvary. Despite it being a favorable day to plant potatoes and grain, for the most part, people avoid work. People could not shed blood, slaughter animals, or launch fishing boats. Because of Christ’s suffering on the cross, adherents don’t burn, saw, or drive nails into wood. Traditional customs include covering mirrors in the home and avoiding unnecessary work, reflecting the somber nature of the day.

He, Fearghal, and Da rose at sunrise to take two large timbers representing the Cross to Father Dudley at Our Lady of Dolours for the Stations of the Cross and to attend the first mass of Good Friday. When they returned home, there was a small corner of Ma’s kitchen garden reserved for the garlic she said must be planted before noon. This done, the garlic would have significant curative properties. She would pull it in late summer for use between the Feast of the Assumption and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Ma made an awful-tasting cough tonic with the garlic, based on Da’s old-family recipe. Donnacha felt sure he and his siblings had developed excellent constitutions just to avoid her medicine.

Meanwhile, each of his four sisters would have lined up to have Ma cut their hair, none of them sure they should believe if they had a haircut on Good Friday their hair would grow twice as long and twice as thick but partaking in the ritual just in case. Ma and the girls would attend the 3:00 P.M. service Da found too theatrical, hating to see the girls cry, especially Cat, when they took their turns driving nails into the cross, and he’d refuse to go out in public without shoes for the Adoration. Their only meal today would be sowens — fermented oat milk…

The belief that hair cut on Good Friday would grow back thicker and longer was widespread. There was also a somewhat contradictory belief that hair cut during Lent (which includes Good Friday) would never grow back. People also believed that washing your hair at this time prevented headaches for the year to come. Yet another difference of opinion involved whether trimming finger- and toenails was a good idea on Good Friday or they would never grow again if you did.

Garlic played a crucial role in Irish folk medicine, believed to have healing properties for persistent coughs. There was a variety of recipes involving the ingredient, such as the Cavanaghs use in my novel, Roseleigh. However, garlic in goat’s milk was renowned for its curative properties. If any garlic was good, Good Friday garlic was especially so. In addition to its medicinal use, people also used it to keep hens and cattle healthy.

As on Ash Wednesday and Spy Wednesday, on Good Friday, those fasting would often drink sowens. The process of making sowens involved soaking oatmeal in cold water until it fermented, or boiling a handful of oatmeal in spring water to create a milk substitute. Because of the prohibition of dairy, sowens found its way into many other dishes. These included mashed potatoes and bread and the bases for white gruel dishes that also included nettles, turnips, cabbage, and herring.

 

Holy Saturday: Readying the Feast

Holy Saturday, known as Easter Vigil, is a night of anticipation. A unique Irish custom also took place on this day — “gugging for eggs.” Children would dress in old clothes, including aprons and headscarves, cover their faces, bringing a basket and a stick. They would go from house to house asking for eggs, with phrases like:

Gugs, gugs, eggs or the money, ma’am.

or

My Aestar Egg on you, please.

With Lent nearly over, people were tired of eating fish and looking forward to better fare. In some areas of the country, including Cork, people held a procession called “whipping the herring” to herald the last day of Lent. Someone, possibly a butcher, tied a herring to a stick and carried it out of town while the crowd whipped it to pieces.

 

Many Irish Catholics would also take part in the Easter Vigil Mass, one of the most important liturgies of the year. The service begins in darkness, symbolizing the tomb of Jesus, and includes the lighting of the Paschal candle, representing the light of Christ’s resurrection.

 

Easter Sunday: Celebrating the Resurrection

Easter Sunday is a day of joyous celebration, marking the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The day begins by breaking the fast of Lent with hen or duck eggs, preferably sprinkled with blessed salt. The children would also gather for a feast called a clúdóg, eating the eggs and other treats they had gathered the day before. Then there was a festive mass at churches adorned with flowers, and hymns of praise filled the air.

 

Symbolic Foods and Feasts

Food plays a central role in Irish Easter traditions, with many symbolic dishes and treats. Families gathered for a special meal, often featuring lamb, symbolizing Jesus as the Lamb of God. People would also eat other spring meats, such as veal or kid. Simnel cake, a light fruitcake topped with marzipan and originally associated with Mothering Sunday, came to be used simply as an Easter cake. People participated in cake dances at crossroads on Easter evening with the couple who dance longest winning a cake.

 

Easter Monday: A Day of Reflection and Celebration

Easter Monday is a public holiday in Ireland, often marked by parades, commemorative events, and family gatherings. Many visit the graves of loved ones, laying flowers and offering prayers. It is also a day for community activities, such as egg rolling competitions and other games, fostering a sense of togetherness and joy.

Modern Adaptations and Continuity

While traditional customs remain strong, modern Irish families often incorporate new elements into their Easter celebrations. The exchange of chocolate Easter eggs, a practice that gained popularity in the 20th century, is now a cherished part of the holiday. Easter egg hunts have become common, blending traditional religious observance with contemporary family fun.

The Easter Rising of 1916 transformed Easter in Ireland, blending religious celebration with a sense of national identity and the fight for independence. Historically a time of religious reflection, Easter took on new meaning as the Rising, which began on Easter Monday, drew symbolic parallels between Christ’s resurrection and Ireland’s hoped-for rebirth. The execution of rebel leaders, seen as martyrs, infused Easter with sacrifice and patriotic fervor. As a result, Easter in Ireland became a time to honor those who died for freedom, reshaping the nation’s cultural and political landscape.

Despite these modern influences, the core of Irish Easter traditions remains deeply rooted in Catholic faith and communal values. The resilience of these practices highlights the enduring nature of Irish cultural and religious identity.

Conclusion

Irish Catholic Easter traditions deeply intertwine religious devotion, cultural heritage, and national identity. From Lenten sacrifices to Easter Sunday celebrations, these practices have shaped the spiritual and communal life of Irish Catholics for generations. Despite modern adaptations and historical influences like the Easter Rising, the essence of Easter in Ireland remains rooted in faith, family, and community. These traditions, as depicted in Roseleigh’s historical fiction, showcase the enduring power of rituals in shaping identity. Irish Easter customs celebrate Christ’s resurrection and reflect the resilience and spirit of the nation, making Easter a time of reflection and renewal.

This Week’s Question:

Why Do My Irish Ancestors Seem to Disappear Before 1845?

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: Why Do My Irish Ancestors Seem to Disappear Before 1845?

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

“I’ve been making real progress on my Irish research. I found my great-great-grandparents in the 1901 and 1911 censuses, traced births and marriages through civil registration, and felt like I was finally getting the hang of it. But the moment I try to push back before about 1845, everything seems to dissolve. The same approach that worked so well just stops producing results. Am I doing something wrong, or is there something fundamentally different about researching that earlier period?”

Patsy, Auckland, New Zealand

Thank you, Patsy. You’re not doing anything wrong at all. What you’ve encountered is one of the most common, and disorienting, experiences in Irish genealogy research. I find that once you understand what’s happening, it tends to be something of a turning point.

The short answer is this: you haven’t just crossed a date, you’ve crossed a border of sorts. Let me explain what I mean.

Pre-Famine and Post-Famine Ireland: Two Different Countries.

The Great Famine of 1845 to 1852 didn’t just reduce Ireland’s population through death and emigration, but actually remade the country including its landscape, its social structures, its economy, and the records that survive to tell us about it. The Ireland that exists on one side of this fault line and the Ireland that exists on the other are, for a genealogist’s purposes, almost two different places.

The research instincts you yourself have built up, and they sound like good ones, were built primarily in post-Famine Ireland. Civil registration, which begins in 1864, gave you births, marriages and deaths in a reasonably consistent form. The 1901, 1911 and 1926 censuses give you households, ages, relationships. As a result, the records probably feel familiar and manageable.

However, cross back into pre-Famine Ireland and the landscape changes entirely. And if you don’t know that the landscape has changed, you might keep looking for things that just aren’t there – and conclude that the trail has gone cold, when often it hasn’t.

What Pre-Famine Ireland Actually Looked Like.

To understand the records of pre-Famine Ireland, it helps to picture the place itself – and nowhere illustrates the contrast more vividly than County Mayo on the western part of the island.

By 1841, Ireland’s population had reached somewhere close to eight million people. In Mayo, the population you would see in the rural countryside was extraordinary. Families of eight and more farmed tiny plots, sometimes just an acre or two of poor Atlantic soil, supplemented by income from spinning and weaving in the home. Holdings were frequently subdivided between sons, then subdivided again. A townland that might house a handful of families today could have held dozens of families in up to 1845.

This was a world in which a great deal of daily life left no official record at all. People were born, lived, and died in a rhythm governed by land and season and community, not by registration at official offices. Catholic parish records exist for this period, and can be invaluable, but coverage before the 1820s is patchy in many areas, and the further west you go, the thinner it tends to become. The records that do survive often reflect a world of Irish language names, local naming customs, and informal arrangements that can look very unlike what you’ve grown accustomed to finding.

Then the Great Famine of the mid 1840s arrived.

In Mayo, the impact was catastrophic. The population fell by somewhere between a quarter and a third in a decade – through a combination of starvation, disease, and emigration. What survived became a physically and socially transformed place. The tiny subdivided plots were consolidated or cleared. Whole townlands that had teemed with families were emptied. The Ireland that emerged in the 1850s and 1860s – the Ireland where civil registration began, and where your research has been working so well – was built on the ruins of something quite different.

The Straddling Families: Where It Gets Interesting.

Here is where this understanding becomes practically useful for most of us.

The majority of researchers with Irish ancestry don’t have ancestors who were entirely pre-Famine or entirely post-Famine. They have families that straddled the divide. Maybe a grandmother who was born in the 1830s who survived the famine, or parents who stayed and children who left. A household might appears in both worlds, but looks very different in each.

These are the families where I use a “Two Irelands lens” and it pays off directly.

Take a family you might find in the 1901 census in Mayo: there might be an elderly widow in her seventies with a son in his forties working a modest holding with his wife, and a couple of grandchildren. Straightforward enough. But push back a generation to her parents, to the world she was born into in the 1820s or 1830s – and you’re in a different country. Her parents may have farmed a fragment of land that no longer exists as a separate holding. Her siblings may have scattered so completely in the Famine years that no Irish record connects them. The very townland she grew up in may look unrecognisably different in the records that survive from that period.

Understanding this won’t make the research easier, but it will stop you being baffled and frustrated by it. Don’t think of it as hitting a wall, but think of it as crossing a border. Like any border crossing, it goes better when you know you’re doing it. That, in essence, is what it means to look through the Two Irelands lens.

How to Know Which Ireland You’re In.

Here are a few practical signposts that can help you orient yourself:

1. Civil registration begins in 1864. If you’re working in records before that date, you’re in pre-Famine or transitional Ireland and your primary sources for births, marriages and deaths will be Catholic parish registers, not civil records. However, remember that Civil death records straddle these two Irelands and will often provide a death registration for a person who was born in the earlier Ireland. Sometimes, this is the only record you will find in relation to them.
2. The 1901, 1911 and 1926 censuses are post-Famine documents. The Ireland they describe had already been through the Famine and a generation of consolidation and emigration. The families you find there may be significantly smaller, and significantly different in composition, from what existed thirty years earlier.
3. Griffith’s Valuation (compiled between roughly 1847 and 1864) sits right on the border. In some counties it was compiled early in that timeframe, while the Famine was still reshaping the landscape. In others, it was done later. What it shows you is not a stable, settled Ireland, but an Ireland in the middle of being remade. It’s an enormously valuable record, but reading it correctly means understanding the moment it was capturing.
4. If your ancestors were in the west of Ireland (Mayo, Galway, Roscommon, parts of Clare, Kerry, Cork, Sligo, Leitrim and Limerick) then the contrast between the two Irelands tends to be sharpest, and the pre-Famine records thinnest. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

The Realisation That Changes Everything.

When I think about researchers who have had a breakthrough in this earlier period, a version of the same awareness tends to have dawned on them all. They stopped approaching pre-Famine Ireland as a slightly more difficult version of post-Famine Ireland – but started approaching it as a genuinely different place, with its own logic, its own records, and its own way of leaving traces.

This shift in the researcher’s perspective is, I’d argue, more valuable than any individual record source.

It means you stop being frustrated that civil registration doesn’t exist, and start asking what does exist. It means you start reading the Catholic parish registers not as a poor substitute for something better, but as a direct window into a world that the Famine would soon destroy. It means you look at a townland in Griffith’s Valuation and wonder, not just who is there, but who is missing – and why. It means you look at supporting historical documents such as landed estate papers or the “Topigraphical Dictionary of Ireland” which was published in 1837.

Pre-Famine Ireland is harder to research than post-Famine Ireland, but it is not inaccessible. The stories of the people whose lives it contains – lived at high density, under extraordinary pressure, on the very edge of day to day survival – are some of the most compelling stories in Irish history.

The key is simply to look carefully through the “Two Ireland Lens” and consider which Ireland you are looking at.

Slán for this week,

Mike.

 With the 110th anniversary of Ireland’s Easter Rising today,

I felt this might be of interest…..Tommy Mac

This is Ireland

The flag which flew over the GPO on O’Connell Street Dublin in 1916 is returned to the Irish on 30 March 1966.

At a ceremony in Government Buildings Taoiseach Seán Lemass is presented with the Flag of the Rising by Comdt Frank Neill accompanied by the Irish Ambassador in London JG Molloy. The flag has been held in the Imperial War Museum in London since the events of Easter Week 1916.

The words “Irish Republic” are emblazoned in gold and white lettering on a bullet holed green background.

Upon receiving the flag Taoiseach Lemass thanks the British government and the authorities of the Imperial War Museum for returning the flag in the year that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Lemass also remarks that this is a gesture of good will by the British government to improve relations between the two countries.

Click below to watch and click the speaker once opened