BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Irish Culture Lace Curtain Irish

Lace curtain is as evocative of a certain style of family value as any I can imagine. Dublin, I suppose, is the capital city not only of Ireland, but of the phenomenon. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> In the U.S., there are many gracious Irish homes that boast the very best of lace curtain in the front window, but there's a bit more to it. It's a social phenomenon that includes choice of grammar school for the children, and whether the family lived in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, or (double points) Spring Lake. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> More than one marriage stood the stead of time, more, the choice of wife, based on the perceptions conjured by the what hung from the curtain rod in the front window. Lace curtain...what does it say to you? Was it made by Irish nuns, by hand? Thinking about it for a second, in how many homes was the "wrongness" of the six counties illustrated by the flax industry being homed "up there?" (Is this still so in some quarters?)

Can't speculate about the meaning of lace curtain. We knew that family was so far from our reach that we saw it only in novels. My one social-climbing aunt chose to study and emulate the WASP culture. I think she passed this on to me. That was kind of a neat thing, since it made rediscovering my Irishness that much more piquant.

I believe you hit the nail on the head. Lace Curtain Irish were considered "middle-class" or those that were considered to be middle class posers. I would not consider it a compliment to be called "Lace Curtain Irish" nor did my great grandmother.

I'd never heard the expression "lace curtain Irish" at all, until my (all Irish) mother-in-law mentioned it. In her eyes, it was those Irish who were putting on airs and pretending they were better off than they were, as Roni says. I think Mary Ellen's reference to part of the "wrongness" being related to the association with the North is an interesting point I would never have known.
I'd like to hear Dunesbury say more about "rediscovering her Irishness"....when and how did it happen for you???

Aha! We seem to have a consensus here; lace curtain as a looking-down-the-nose, two-faced cat. It's interesting. So many people working so hard to be respectable that they would abandon their daughters if they had been soiled. What's with that?
Mary Ellen

There are still HUGE numbers of people and cultures that abandon "soiled" daughters. It is hardly a new agenda. Re-hymenizing is a surgery long clandestine but booming in Japan and I recently saw it on one of the "cut and go" TV shows...Tis a sad world afterall;Tis a sad sad world...to bastardize a phrase...

Hi, Jeri. Don't recall when my self-image resumed its Irishness. It may have been when I met our Madame Editor on another forum several years ago and we discovered our many common roots and experiences. Haven't really done any thorough study, but I think it's mostly the Irish who have this fascination for our heritage. In my sisters it's developed along entirely different lines from mine, one through marriage and the other through friendship. I can't think of a non-Irish friend who has gone through this searching and examination.

On a different tack, this whole idea of soiled daughters is a gripping one. We never get over it, do we? That's not necessarily a bad thing. It keeps us honest in understanding ourselves and what makes us us, and impels us to look at others without judgment, but with an openness to understanding. Not a bad thing at all. The best positives come from the deepest negatives.

Jeez, Roni, you are absolutely right. I've had my nose up too close to it. It's everywhere! (Except maybe Ireland now. The latest stats there re illegitimacy are unbelievable to those of us who were raised to believe that people over there didn't behave in that manner. Yeah, I know. Duh...but believe me...there's a whole generation that believed that the mores of 1940s Ireland was still practiced well into the 80s...then, there was an influx of illegal alien Paddys into our small town and we all found out different, Thanks be to...)
MES

And on a cheerier note...I have never considered my "Irish" at all; although I have in abundance on both sides of the family. Maybe it is different when one's Irish forbears were here since before the Revolution as opposed to coming over and thru Ellis Island...My family was soooo invested in staying alive they kinda lost their ethnicity along the way!

I remember dating an Italian boy in college who asked me "what' I was. I was astonished as I thought it beguilingly obvious. I replied,
" Uh, a girl!" He said, "NO! Are you Irish or Spanish or Italian or what?" I asked my mom the next time I was home as I had no clue,
"Mom" I asked, "What am I?" She looked at me me in wonder and said, "I think it is rather obvious you are a girl..." See an hereditary condition that I got it from my Grammy who is still with us at 98. Last fall I asked her what her great grandfather's mother's maiden name was...she looked at me and said." Honey they are all dead what do you care...I certainly could care less." So, there you have it; heredity! You get it from you parents... :rolling:

Proves the whole point. Your family couldn't have cared less. They were All-American, true blue Yanks. My family, otoh, left Ireland only in the flesh. The spirit stayed over there. Boy, did it ever. That's why I'm here on this forum. I was steeped like a Barry's teabag.
What was a real hoot was the way the former generation pulled the wool over the eyes of their offspring. They had us all convinced that our Irish cousins were perfect little convent- and Christian Brother-raised (no cussing, etc.) pre-saints (like they said they were.)

Now, I'm willing to believe that the parents were actually as well-behaved in certain ways as they claimed, especially with what I've read about Ireland between Victoria and JFK, but post JFK, no way Jose! The Irish kids may have been just a little bit behind the Beatles, but they caught up, with a vengeance! And here we were in the US, still being brain-washed about things...well, just things. It wasn't just my family, either. There's a whole generation of 1st and 2nd generation Irish-Americans who were fed a steady diet of comportment based on how it was in Ireland the day the parents emigrated.
The best thing that happened to the "kids" in our family was the arrival in town of a 50-year-old former hippie from Kerry! :rolling: Set the record straight, so to speak.

In a way that is what America is about... homogenizing humanity...too bad it is taking soooo long.

Better late than never! We never knew about so many things. I don't know that it's been all that great to have the eyes opened now that I think about it. It's never the good stuff that's been hidden, is it? Like one never discovers that there was this really kind, generous soul going around doing good works. It's always the other way around---in the news---secret sins revealed for the titillation of the jaded. Dagnabit! (That didn't sound Irish at all, did it. Sorry.)
It is true, though, what my Irish-born parents told us about how they were raised. Mom always had the habit of flattening out the colored foil off Christmas candies because when she was little, they used to save them to bring them into school and they were sent off for the benefit of the missions. Whatever recycling effort was going on there, *everybody* did it. The silvered paper was collected and somehow benefitted the missions. (As an aside: I rolled it into a ball when I was 5 and stuck it up my nose. A very unfortunate thing to do. It was a _really_ long time...the weather was warm...before I was taken to the doctor, who removed the silvered grossness from my upper nasal cavity with a forceps. Painful and embarrassing.)
I know so many Irish people though, relatives and family friends, who went into missionary work, not just clergy, but nurses, teachers, and social workers, into Africa and the Far East, some for their whole lives. I don't know anyone of my contemporaries here who would do that. Yes, when I was younger, people would go into the Peace Corps for a while, but I get a sense that that dried up here, maybe because it's especially dangerous for Americans to be seen doing "good works" in third world countries while the gov't. does what it does? Ireland was a third world country herself for so long that the aid it sent seemed to be more from a fellow-sufferer than from "on high." Not a rant, just some memories revisited.
Mary Ellen

What you said reminded me of Shirley MacClaine and channeling.NO one Ever channels a druggie or an indigent illiterate. It seems to be the same with family stories.

My father's side lost ALL the American Indian relatives during the 70s and 80s by declaring that they were all English(funny that!) Which was a good trick in Oklahoma with people right from the Res attending the reunion....We have no axe murderers nor serial killers of whom I am aware at this point. BUT if they become stylish I am sure one will pop out of the woodwork or the lace curtains. :rolling:

It's the ones no one ever talked about that I worry about. We know their names, but that's it. Zipped up tight on all other details. Unfortunately, most of the people who could have told us what happened are all gone now. (There were always a couple of aunties who could be "loosened" up a bit on a couple of hot whiskys. All in the spirit of historical curiosity, you understand.) 'Neath this breast beats the heart of a truly nosey journalist.<G>

Hi, New to the board. But I thought this might help.

11) What are black Irish and shanty Irish?
This question came up a few times on the newsgroup but has never been resolved definitively. Neither "black" or "shanty" are used much in Ireland. They seem to be mainly used in America.
"Shanty Irish" was used to describe the poorest of the poor Irish immigrants, the kind who ended up in shanty town (the origin of the word "shanty" is not known, but it might come from the Irish "sean t�", meaning "old house"). Today "shanty" in the States is a derogatory term for people who in Ireland might be known as culchies but the people so described need not necessarily be of Irish descent.

"Lace curtain Irish" could be as poor as the Shanty Irish but they had notions of being more respectable. They were called that because they would put up lace curtains for appearances sake, even in a shanty town. Thus the term is far from being a complement.

{ Thanks for clarification to Neil Cosgrove. }

"Black Irish" is often taken to mean Irish people with dark hair and eyes. One romantic story is that they are the descendants of shipwrecked sailors of the Spanish Armada. Unfortunately for the story, it is very unlikely that enough of the sailors survived for their genes to be in the population visible today. A variation on this theme says they are descended from Spanish Moors who traded with people on the west coast of Ireland. Another explanation is that it's common in Irish to give people nicknames based on their hair, such as Seamus dubh and "black Irish" is just a carryover of this into English. Some people say that the "black Irish" were the original inhabitants of the island and all the rest were just blow-ins.

One other interpretation is that "black Irish" refers to the descendants of Irish slaves taken to the Caribbean island of Montserrat during Cromwell's time. The descendants of these slaves and black slaves from Africa live there to this day. The surprising thing is that they still speak with an Irish accent!

Wow. Thanks Mary Ellen. My Nana used to use that expression. I thought it meant the Irish that didn't live on Blue Hill ave.!

Hi!

I just stumbled onto this conversation and find it to be most interesting. My Irish grandmother died before I was born. However, my Austrian/Georgian mother told me that my paternal grandmother always had described herself as "Lace Curtain Irish," NOT "Shanty Irish."

The family seemed to be a little more well off. Maybe that is because of my grandmother's insistence on a college education for all of her children, music lessons for them, and respectability by active participation in the Catholic church.

My mother always used just one word to describe her mother-in-law, and that was "haughty." I know next to nothing about her. I did find a note of "condolence" that she sent to my mother when she found out that she was expecting me - the fourth born. That message did not exactly endear her to me.

Nonetheless, I identify strongly with my Irish "roots," as I was always closer to my father. Oh course, I love Irish songs and Celtic music. I wish I knew more about an Irish song that I just re-discovered: "Four Green Fields."

Pat
http://www.quiltersmuse.com

There'll always be a few haughty matriarchs who know how to send their daggers with unerring accuracy. (Pop psychologists generally attribute this tendency to their own sense of inadequacy.) Wasn't your mother generous to only say "haughty" to describe such a woman?

My take on "lace-curtain Irish" comes from your second paragraph where the Irish who came over and had so much to overcome and so little to build on and where the concept of "lace-curtain" didn't as much have to do with the window hangings as an determination to improve the lot of your offspring and the following generations.

The curtains were just a joke. Attention to the backs of necks, the heels of shoes, the homework, and all the rest of it, and especially the sense of being able to hold your head up as well as anyone else, there's the lace-curtain ethic.

Oh, "Four Green Fields" is wonderful!!!
sniff, sniff

Where can I hear "Four Green Fields"???

"Four Green Fields" is not an old song, as I had thought. It was written in the 1960s by Tommy Makem. It can be heard on CD recordings by Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers.

I had recorded the song and had it on my website for a couple of days before realizing that it is under copyright. So, I quickly removed it.

The initial information I had on it was from a site that has Irish information. No information was given about the provenance of the song, just that it was "traditional."

The song is powerful.

Pat

All this is very interesting about lace curtain vs. shanty Irish! I am abt 7-8th generation in US on my Mom's side, and 4th on my Dad's. In our family shanty Irish meant just what was said above---not only poor, or just recently up from poverty,but they were tough, brawling, lower sorts. Weren't living in shanties in the States but still acted like they were. Had nothing to do with income.

My Mom's family came here in later 18th C due to loss of land to penal laws---may have been better off in Ireland, but had to work hard once here, because of the anti-Irish discrimination. However, they got here so far in advance of the 19th C. huge emigrations, by then they had already done the all-American climb into better educations, professional jobs, etc. They were in NYC & as you can imagine they got into politics too.

My great grandmother sniffed at the Boston Irish--they were all shanty in her opinion! A generation ago, some older cousin was dating a Boston kid & her father wouldn't let it continue---the young man was shanty. His name was John F. Kennedy (However, the girl's father was correct! He was aware of the way the young man's father treated his wife in the fidelity dept & figured the apple wouldn't fall far from the tree. And it didn't).

"Black Irish" in our family meant black hair, and blue eyes & often quite fair skin went with it. I have Black Irish cousins. But whenever my Dad would see an African American actor or singer with an Irish surname, he would joke that the person was "Black Irish!"

As far as lace curtain is concerned, my Mom said it meant partly income & partly attitude---not only well off enough to have lace curtains,if desired (in the early 19th C anyone, Irish or not, who had lace curtains had handmade lace curtains, which were not cheap--factory made came later) but also valuing education, expecting the kids to achieve in school & go to (Catholic) college, etc. The college would have been Cath. because the Ivies & 7 Sisters didn't take many RCs back then.

Quiltersmuse, I wonder whether your pat grandmother & mother had a "normally" strained inlaw relationship & that is where the "haughty" came from? My father's mother used to think my mother's mother was stuck-up, when they first met, but what was actually happening was 2 paralyzingly shy women having difficulty making overtures to each other! They both had been widowed when young, one while pregnant, and both of them were very hesitant in social settings. And my father's mother was acutely aware of the background of her opposite number---the NYC political family history & all that, while she was a fireman's widow.

The Only difference between Lace Curtain irish and Shanty Irish are that the Lace Curtain Irish move the dishes out of the way before they [censored] in the sink.