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Most of the familiar Irish characteristics—which nobody admits to having seen lately—are survivals and distortions from the past. Under the batswing of English protection, Ireland was spared a role in history almost completely. According to the Chinese, this is a blessed state to be in. But the Irish chafed under it. They cursed the English and they cursed themselves—to the point where cursing itself became a distinct Irish art form. "May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may the High King of Glory permit her to get the mange" is a comparatively mild one. The old Gaelic word for satire (der) also meant a spell that caused facial disfigurement and even death. To this day, the Irish play their satire for keeps. Dublin is the backbiting capital of the world. ("If you want an entertaining evening, tell your hosts who you had dinner with the night before.")
Irish religion is also a stubborn holdover. Post-Reformation England wasted several hundred years trying to bring her offshore island into ideological line, in the process hammering Catholicism deeper and deeper into the Irish system. From the victim's point of view, a cosmopolitan religion was an excellent way of trying to get back into the stream of history. Time and again the Irish signaled other Catholic countries for help. The French or the Spanish would send a few ships—like Khrushchev sending his missiles halfway to Cuba—and another rising would fail, until a mood of fatalism set in and the old warlike mockery became heavily larded with cries of lament and self-pity: "Poor Wexford, stript naked, hangs high on the cross,/With her heart pierced by traitors and slaves." The warrior, the lugubrious drunk and the ironist all took up residence in the same skull.
Charm v. Hustle
The Irish have a well-deserved name for being rebellious, but the fight did go out of a lot of them as their land was stripped away and their leaders were killed or exiled; and some of their self-disgust may stem from not having been rebellious enough. A prose-poem called The Parliament of Clan Thomas (circa 1650) derides the peasantry for selling out to Oliver Cromwell and becoming, coincidentally, Uncle Toms. And after the Rising of 1916, the rebels were actually jeered by their fellow citizens. A few of the noncombatants later came to blather a good fight, but far more of them lapsed into political indifference and deeper cynicism, which is why, for some years after independence, this colorful country produced the world's drabbest politics.
Thus, the conservatism exhibited by the American Irish is not such an unaccountable change of spirit as one might suppose. The dispossessed have reason to be cautious, as even Rap Brown must know by now. After roughly 1700, the revolutionary spark in Eire came mainly from Anglo-Irish Protestants more recently arrived, such as Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet and Parnell, and from people rich and secure enough to take chances. The English habit of stuffing their problem island with Britons kept backfiring in this way. After a generation or so, the new settlers were Irish themselves, ready for a fresh fight.