On Being Celtic

I've noticed a lot of mail order catalogs offer books and clothing, jewelry and other do-dads with "Celtic" themes or motifs. And by "Celtic," they don't mean Scots or Welsh, they mean Irish. Shamrocks abound, as do the color green and references to St. Patrick, Blarney Castle and leprechauns.

I'm not knocking this, you understand--with a last name like "Delaney," it's the last thing I want to do--but I do want to note that we've come a long way from the days when businesses posted signs in their windows or put ads in the newspapers saying "Help Wanted. No Irish Need Apply."

A long, long way from my great great grandfather who drove his tinker's wagon into the little town of North Tama, Iowa, with a wife and the name of "DeLaney." Note the capital "L." He didn't want to be considered just a half step above the "colored" people who were less than a generation away from slavery and if capitalizing a letter in the middle of his last name to make it look French would make his family respectable, then that's what he'd do.

Right up into John Kennedy's presidency, you never heard an Irishman called a "Mick" without the name being preceded by "dumb" or "stupid."

So I have to wonder at my father, who went into the Army Air Corps in 1941 as Dick DeLaney and came home in 1945 as Mick Delaney. He said he hated the name "Dick": that when in the service, he'd palled around with 3 other Irishmen whom everyone called "the four Micks" and the name just stuck. He said he thought the capital "L" in the middle of his name was a stupid affectation and went back to the original spelling.

But it must have taken a whole lot of nerve to take two pejoratives and flaunt them in the face of that unspoken but pervasive prejudice. He said it just made sense.

He could put on a brogue that sounded like he'd just stepped off the boat from County Derry, yet he desparaged what he called "professional Irishmen" who got teary eyed over "Danny Boy" on St. Patrick's Day, but never got closer to the "Ould Sod" than New York City; and, though he enjoyed seeing all the "Celtic" artifacts in the catalogues, he'd never buy them. Yet, just before he died, my sister, M. J., gave him a license plate frame that said, "I brake for leprechauns," which he promptly installed on a car that he always kept free of any sort of bumper sticker or aerial ornament.

We wouldn't think of removing it.