At Tara Today

At Tara today in this fateful hour

I place all heaven with its power,

And the sun with its brightness,

And the snow with its whiteness,

And the fire with all the strength it has,

And lightening with its rapid wrath,

And the winds with their swiftness along the path,

And the sea with its deepness,

And the rocks with their steepness,

And the Earth with its starkness,

All these I place

Between myself and the powers of Darkness

SAINT PATRICK

Except for the part about the sea, Saint Patrick might have been describing Montana back in AD 410 or so.

In Ireland, they smile benignly at the fervor with which Americans celebrate the feast day of Saint Patrick. Everything from faces to beer gets dyed bright green, corned beef and cabbage is on every menu and woe betide you if you have not donned those emerald socks that hide in your top drawer through the rest of the year.

In America, everyone can say they are Irish on St. Patty’s Day and in a way it is probably true, for the Irish have emigrated in their millions to the United States throughout its history. Most of them arrived without even a shamrock to their name. They put their strong backs and their fighting spirits into the hardest of manual labor. Some scraped their way up the financial ladder and some took generations to make a go of it. Not many returned from whence they came; an early death down a coal mine was preferable to losing face back home.

In this central southern portion of Montana, it was the Norwegians and Swiss who proliferated and settled the land, but it was the Irish who had the grit to populate the darkness of the mines. Marcus Daly (1841-1900) came to ButteMontana from CountyCavan in Ireland in search of gold or silver. His discovery of massive deposits of copper turned him into one of the richest men in the American West. He founded the town of Anaconda and filled it with Irish labor to smelt the spectacular amounts of copper ore.

Thomas Meager was the first governor of Montana. He was an Irish Nationalist leader in the Irish rebellion of 1848. Deported to Australia he managed to escape and made his way to America. He fought in the American Civil War and after being awarded the governorship of Montana drowned after falling from a steamship near FortBenton. No kidding!

Another famous Irish Montanan was Captain Myles Keogh whose bravery on the battlefield of the Little Bighorn in June 1876, led by General Custer against the Indian Confederation, was marked solemnly by the victorious Indian warriors leaving his body unmolested and his horse Commanche (the only living thing left standing that day) still at his side.

We are about as Irish as Sitting Bull, although Richard’s auburn hair announces some sort of Celtic heritage. We have made some good Irish Brown bread to mark the day and it will go very well with a slathering of Amish butter and a nice cup of tea.

Sláinte

Post By Virginia Cross (8 Posts)

Virginia has been a wanderer her whole life. She is seldom lost however and has made an art out of plunging her roots deeply into whatever soil she finds herself. She is usually in the good company of her husband of 35 years.

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