Carbolic Flashback: March 17, 1845: “If There’s One Thing Us Irish Can Count On, It’s the Potato”

rizzoCommentary by Carbolic Smoke Ball Editor Horace Peckham:

Well now, I’ll begin at the beginnin’, says I, and here, on the feast to honor himself, Saint Patrick, no less. Instead of telling it to you in the Irish, as is my custom, I’ll spell it out in English so that even the despicable sons of Cromwell can read what I’ve got to say.

In a world where change is practically the only constant, every century, a new technological advance (so-called) turns us upside down – from the wondrous improvements in smelting, to this dizzying cotton spinning, to the steam engine itself!

Why, aside from change, the only other thing us Irish can depend on with absolute certainty is, of course, our national staple, the potato. Starch, starch and more starch.  There’s nothing better for you if you’re Irish, ya know. We could not live without it, but we needn’t ever worry about that.

Now the reason I’m writing: Some of the peevish sons of Cromwell are up to their old shenanigans, bless my soul, trying to scare the good people of Ireland into leaving.

It’s not enough for them that they took our land, lo the many years ago. Their latest deceit, so I am told, is to convince our people that a fungi is creeping across the nation’s potato crop – a blight on the land that, they say, will quickly destroy each and every potato throughout all of Ireland. 

They’ve even invented a new word for this thing of theirs: a “famine.”  And they claim it will lead to the death, or worse, the emigration, of millions of our people.  Some of these Protestant liars are making the assertion that hundreds of thousands of our people will end up in a backwater land, such as America.

Now how ridiculous is this? It is, in fact, a stark lie, bald-faced and all, and you heard it here first. The ones who are utterin’ these things will regret it till their dying day, if they should live that long.

The potato is the raison d’etre, the sine qua non of Ireland. Like the land and the sea, the potato will always be – unchanged, immutable.

I say it again, as I say it in this column each and every day: the only blight on our land remains the cesspool that was Oliver Cromwell, almost two hundred years after his malefactions against God and his people, the Irish.

As goes the ancient saying that seems to fit every occasion, and really none at all: “The lad set sail a mere youth, on a youth’s voyage, but when he returned, he was — an Irishman!”

And now I’ll be sayin’ good day to you.  And happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Mar 17