Chapter 4
It’s hard to know what came first, the Irish or the drink. Many travellers in Ireland from the 1600s onwards made comment about the revelry of the drunken Irish. Reference to alcohol, or ‘aqua vitae’ and ‘usquebaugh’ as it was called, do not occur in Irish sources until the fourteenth century, although, as Elizabeth Malcolm in her fine study Ireland Sober Ireland Free has pointed out, the art of distilling is thought to have been invented as far back as the twelfth century. ‘Fermented liquors such as ale and mead had, however, long been staple drinks among Celtic peoples,’ Malcolm notes, while adding, ‘It is interesting to note that the name of the Celtic goddess, Medhb, literally means, “she who intoxicates”—a clear indication of the significance of drink in Celtic culture.’ Or how about this eleventh-century poem to St Bridget: ‘I would like to have a great lake of beer for Christ the King/I’d like to be watching the heavenly family drinking it down through all eternity.’ It’s Irish Christianity, Jim, but not as we know it.
In his introduction to Inventing Ireland, Declan Kiberd begins with the probe ‘If God invented whiskey to prevent the Irish from ruling the world, then who invented Ireland?’ It’s a rhetorical rise, sure, but there’s a kernel of national truth in there somewhere. By the mid-sixteenth century whiskey had become such a problem in Ireland that the English government felt it necessary to introduce legislative controls. In a preamble to the required legislation, there was notice of how ‘Aqua Vitae, a drink nothing profitable to be daily drunken and used, is now universally throughout the realm of Ireland made’. Stricter decrees were used to limit the making of whiskey in Ireland to peers, gentlemen and borough freemen. By 1571, the manufacture of whiskey was banned in Munster. In 1584 the Lord Deputy received a note for the reform of Ireland. One of the main suggestions was that the previous ‘statute for the making of aqua vitae be put in execution, which sets the Irish mad and breeds many mischiefs’. As with today’s legislative approach, the series of acts and decrees had little effect on drinking levels.
When we get to the first half of the seventeenth century, excessive drinking and drunkenness were prevalent in most parts of Ireland. And it wasn’t just the poorer classes who were at it—it seems most social classes in Ireland had a fondness for the drop. Here is Richard Head’s observation of the Irish gentry: ‘If you, on a visit to them, do not drink freely then they think they have not made you welcome, so that a man know not how to take a leave until he is unable to stir a foot.’
Writing in the early twentieth century, historian Michael McCarthy noted that the association between alcohol and the Irish had become embedded. His acute observations tell a familiar picture of the social ubiquity of alcohol in Irish society. ‘Amongst Irish Catholics, drink is the synonym for hospitality. It stands alone and is not associated with food. Every festive meeting, every social call, every business transaction, must be wet, as they say, with a drink. The man that does not stand a drink is considered a mean man; the man who gives drink freely in his own home and pays for it for others in public houses is a decent fellow. There is a kind of veneration for the man who has spent a fortune or ruined a career by drink; and people expatiate in the great things he might have done were it not for drink.’
The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century story of Irish drinking is one of attempted zero tolerance, beginning with the morally flawed figure of Father Theobald Mathew (1790–1856) and the attempt to form temperance societies in recognition of the growing social problem with alcohol. The Corkonian intoxication with the figure of Father Mathew, founder of the Temperance movement, is well established in both popular song and sentiment Leeside, most famously in the refrain The smell from Patrick’s Bridge is wicked/How do Father Mathew stick it?/Here’s up them all says the boys of Fairhill.
The Father Mathew statue, known locally as ‘de statue’, has taken on symbolic significance, and is to Cork what Clery’s clock is to Dublin—a place where relationships begin and end and friendships are born and broken. The strong connection with the ‘Apostle of Temperance’ is interesting when viewed alongside nineteenth-century drinking patterns, said to rival our current twenty-first-century ones. Our love of drinking didn’t begin today or yesterday, in other words. The Temperance and Pioneer movements were side effects of the guilt and shame associated with Irish drinking. As we’ll see in later chapters, that guilt still exists among the Irish problem drinkers in London. It exists, too, in daytime drinkers in rural bars in Tipperary and in those who serve them and facilitate their lifestyles. It exists among adolescents and schoolchildren when they talk about alcohol and their relationship to it. More than likely, I carry some of it around myself. But it’s not just guilt that drives the Irish relationship with alcohol, which is one part puritanical to two parts party. As the great addiction writer George Valliant has observed, ‘It is consistent with Irish culture to see the use of alcohol in terms of black or white, good or evil, drunkenness or complete abstinence.’ In other words, when it comes to Irish drinking, for many it’s a case of all or nothing.
——
The story of Fr Mathew encapsulates well this extreme Irish attitude to alcohol. Born in Thomastown Castle, Co. Tipperary, on 10 October 1790, Theobald Mathew felt a lifelong affinity with the poor and distressed and this was evident from an early age. Influenced by local priest Fr Denis O’Donnell, Mathew entered the seminary in Maynooth in 1807, at the age of 17. Not long after, he reportedly threw a party in his room in honour of some kindred spirit, and to save himself the embarrassment of expulsion, the following morning he left the seminary. The Capuchins took a chance on him, and he entered the order in 1810, quickly establishing a name for himself as an engaging and magnetic public speaker.
From a friary at Blackamoor Lane in Cork he captured the affections of the poor and the confidence of the rich, with his treatment of the penitents in the confessional drawing particular attention to his sympathetic nature. As in contemporary society, alcohol abuse was rampant in early-nineteenth-century Ireland. While accounts differ, Mathew himself was known to take a drop, and many argue it was this personal experience that gave him an insight into the alcoholic mindset. I visited the present-day Capuchin order in Cork, where Fr Dermot Lynch lent me his own insights. ‘I think the affinity with him by the people came from his own life for the ten years while he was involved in the Temperance movement, he became a Pioneer. Before that he was a moderate drinker. I think his greatness came from the fact that he helped turn the tide of public opinion. It was a very popular thing to drink at the time, yet eventually over three million people took the pledge. The Temperance movement was only the beginning of a large-scale social movement in Ireland, yet it was an important first step.’
There is little doubt that Fr Mathew did a lot of good, particularly for the poor of Cork. Yet he remains a controversial figure, and examining the purported facts surrounding his life means discarding much of the historical hyperbole.
Like all great leaders, he had his demons and was known to be ego-driven, arrogant and prone to serious lapses of judgment. Throughout his life he had financial difficulties and was at odds with the hierarchy of the church. Perhaps there is something in that—in the ambiguous attitude between alcohol and organised religion in Ireland—which Fr Mathew challenged. Says Professor John A. Murphy: ‘I think it’s fair to say he was at an oblique angle to conventional Catholic thinking in that he was a teetotalling freelance cleric. I don’t imagine he was subject to any great discipline by his own order, but then again one of the great themes in the nineteenth century is the tension between diocesan and regular clergy, and he fit into that.’
Prof. Murphy also points to the fact that while on paper the Temperance movement looked impressive, appearances deceive, and the movement had few long-term results in achieving large-scale Irish sobriety. Many of those who took the pledge may not have had full control of their senses. The ‘farewell drop’, as it became known, often stretched over long periods and reports in newspapers of the time have large crowds arriving in cities such as Cork to take the pledge, already heavily inebriated. The Sub-Inspector for Enniscorthy gave the following account. He ‘saw numbers take the pledge in a beastly state of intoxication and hundreds took their farewell drop immediately before receiving it’. He went on to say that many took the pledge and forgot they had done so, only to return again later to take it again!
So even in our giving up, the Irish were giving in.
‘All these campaigns lose momentum because of the unnatural demands they place on the individual,’ notes Prof Murphy. ‘I mean, abstaining from anything is a wholly unnatural position for anybody to take! I think, really, that Fr Mathew was more in line with the Victorian notions of social reform and betterment.’ As for the significance of the Corkonian devotion to the statue, Prof. Murphy points out that you can have an attachment to the statue, but that doesn’t necessarily mean an attachment to the man.
‘Essentially it is a much loved urban landmark and a convenient one as well.
‘There was a genuine concern among citizens when the idea to shift the statue was mooted. The idea was frowned upon and rightly so. I think the Father Mathew statue is much more important to Cork people than any corresponding statue in Dublin. I can’t think of a Dublin landmark with similar public appeal—perhaps the O’Connell monument—but I don’t think it has the same resonance of affection.’
One of those who has sought to capture the Cork association with Father Mathew down through the years is balladeer Jimmy Crowley. As the church’s grip on Irish morality loosened, Father Mathew proved a popular source of sardonic wit in the folk tradition, Crowley explains.
‘I suppose he was to Cork what Matt Talbot was to Dublin in a way and he remains popular in the folk tradition at least. Further back you could muster ten good songs about him, from the likes of John Fitzgerald, the bard of the Lee, who wrote an impressive elegy, and several others. They were all very much in the ballad broadside tradition—mostly religious songs—none would have been sardonic at that time. Later on, with the passage of time and a more liberal era, he became a sort of figure of derision to a certain degree.’
Crowley himself joined the ranks in the 1970s at the expense of Finance Minister Richie Ryan, who committed the unforgivable act of raising the price of a pint in excess of the price of a drop of whiskey, thus provoking the ire of Crowley’s pen:
‘If you go down to Patrick Street you’re bound to meet with Fr Mathew,
A Temperance man of high degree, sometimes for short he’s called ‘de statue’,
He tried to keep us off the booze, and on it looked with reprobation
Yet if he had Richie by his side, he’d have success throughout the nation.’
‘I know people who are complete heathens and are very taken by him,’ says Crowley. ‘There have been some wonderful clerics in Cork, such as Fr Prout and people like that, who have stepped outside the conventions of clericism. To my mind Father Mathew was part of their story.’
Recently, a play written by Sean McCarthy, who had a 20-year interest in the subject, sought to examine the complexities of Father Mathew, separating the historical figure from the well-known populist folk hero. McCarthy first came in contact with the story of Father Mathew through his grandparents’ generation and a few years back he wrote a play based on the life of Mathew. ‘There are two extremes in relation to his drinking; one says he hardly drank at all, and certainly not to excess, while others claim he was a drunkard,’ says McCarthy. ‘Archbishop McHale of Galway, who was a lifelong enemy of his for a lot of diverse political reasons, said that all through the Temperance campaign Father Mathew went up and down the country with a blonde on his hand, and that the profit made on the sale of medals was spent on buying brandy! We know he never made a profit on selling medals because he ended up in prison for debt half way through the campaign, so we can take it that is untrue. In the play we go with fact that he was a heavy drinker, and perhaps an alcoholic embryo, which is precisely what gave him insight into the alcoholic mind.’
McCarthy points to Father Mathew’s arrogance as his ultimate downfall. It was while researching the story further in the early 1990s that he came across some documents in a library in Boston which he claims highlight the moral frailty of the man. ‘In 1840, Father Mathew and Daniel O’Connell prepared an address to the Irish people in America on the issue of slavery—this became known as the “Abolitionist Charter”. It was very strongly worded, and implored all Irish people who called themselves Christians to follow the cause. Eight or nine years later, though, when the question of slavery was more alive and controversial, Father Mathew is brought to America by Governor Lumpkin of Georgia and the Archbishop of Savannah, both of whom are slavers. He lands himself in a very difficult situation, where to my mind he is at his most arrogant and most dishonest. This provides for his downfall, both in life, and also in the play I wrote.’
Despite his reservations, like most Corkonians, McCarthy has deep-rooted admiration for Father Mathew, and sees him in the broader context of Irish social reform.
‘He was a man of extraordinary ego to the point of megalomania, and ultimately this arrogance was to be his downfall. He became a figure of fun to people of my generation. But in fact, he was a great social reformer, and also a great liberal thinker. Arguably, he was a liberation theologist long years before the term was even invented. We could do with someone like him now when you look at Irish society and our association with alcohol.’
Writing in 1845, Father Mathew felt in optimistic mood when he predicted the future generations’ relationship with alcohol. He wrote that ‘all the rising generations are being educated in the strictest habits of temperance; and in a few years, drunkenness will be a thing passed away, never to return’.
Yet by September 1845 twice as many drunkards had been admitted to Cork Bridewell as in the same month in 1844. Faced with mounting evidence that his Temperance movement had not signalled the death knell for Irish drunkenness, Fr Mathew conceded later that year that some drunkenness did exist, but was mostly limited to ‘poor sinful females’. Whether or not Fr Mathew would have succeeded in having a long-term impact on the mindset among the Irish in relation to alcohol is debatable. From 1845 onwards, the Famine rendered his work largely secondary. In his fine study, Father Mathew and the Irish Temperance Movement, Colm Kerrigan questions whether Mathew achieved his objective of the rejection of drunkenness by mass society. Recent social history would suggest he had little impact. Shortly before his death, in 1856, Mathew said the following:
‘We have turned the tide of public opinion; it was once a glory for men to boast what they drank, we have turned that false glory into shame; we have also given to the timid temperance man, to the teetotaller, the protection of his virtue, and a large share of public sympathy for his sacrifice in the cause of the first of virtues, sobriety.’
Today, that passages sounds as it reads, a hopelessly idealistic desire for a better society with a more mature relationship to alcohol, which has yet to materialise. Still, flawed as he may have been as a person, at least he tried.
——
Cut to today and Father Michael Mac Gréil is a man on a mission. As chairperson of the Irish Pioneer Association, he grew sick and tired of hearing talk that the movement was in terminal decline. A few years back, he decided to visit every Pioneer centre in the country and assess the strength of the movement for himself. When I spoke to him, he had been to over 900 parishes and visited somewhere in the region of 1,100 Pioneer centres. He is currently in the process of compiling a report to present his findings to the Irish Pioneer Movement. He says, contrary to public opinion, the movement is still very much alive: ‘It is still there and I think we have to work on it and tend it more. I’m still getting a reaction to my visit and I have a lot of information about the commitment. What people sometimes don’t understand is that the Pioneer movement is primarily a spiritual movement and educates by example. Of course we also encourage sobriety.’
He admits there are ‘big challenges’ within the movement, yet feels that the Irish Pioneer Association still has a role to play in modern Ireland. At one time the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association boasted half a million Irish members, proud to wear the Pioneer pin as a badge of self-sacrificial Catholic devotion. It drew members from every section of society, and could summon over 80,000 people to outdoor rallies as recently as the 1950s. Yet estimates now put membership at less than 150,000, with uncertainty over how many of those are active Pioneers. Within the movement itself, debate is beginning to happen. Many argue that its abolitionist stance has no future in modern Ireland, with some calling for moderate drinkers to be allowed join. Indeed, on its website as part of its 2009 Lent campaign, the slogan was ‘Why not abstain or reduce your alcohol intake this Lent?’ It’s a very big ‘or’, showing that the movement perhaps realises the strict abstinence game is up. There seems to be a new consensus emerging within the movement that abstaining from alcohol completely should be encouraged among under-18s, while moderation should be the ideal for those aged over 18.
Fr Mac Gréil says that it is impossible to accurately comment on the strength of the Pioneers in Ireland, given that they are a largely unseen organisation. ‘We have always been a discreet group and have never gone for publicity. We are a spiritual movement who offer up abstinence for the sins of intemperance.’ The image of a teetotalling membership, sternly anti-drink, is somewhat misleading, he says, pointing out that being in favour of abstention doesn’t necessarily mean being anti-alcohol.
‘Our mission is sobriety in society, sure, but we’re not anti-drink. We may have had that image in the past, but we encourage people to drink in moderation. I mean, I am strongly in support of well-run pubs and would hate to see anything happen to the rural pub in Ireland. It is a very important social institution, and in many senses a well-run pub is also an institution for moderate drinking.’
Yet with alcohol such a pervasive facet of Irish life, the Pioneers are finding it increasingly difficult to get their message across. There are mitigating factors, argues Fr Mac Gréil. ‘I am totally opposed to the identification of sport and alcohol. I say to workers in Guinness, sure, support our national games, but do it anonymously if you believe in it so much. But what they’re doing is using sport to promote their products, and that’s not promotion, that’s advertising a mood-changing substance in an area identified with youth. It’s a disaster in this country.’
Fr Mac Gréil believes that the availability of alcohol in recent years in more outlets has fuelled our increasing dependence. ‘I think you have to study the false propaganda of the alcohol industry, the manner in which they promote the subtle and psychological way to sexual satisfaction and athletic prowess through the use of their products. I think a lot of it is a big lie. The big scandal at [the] moment is off-licence[s] and the supermarkets using alcohol as loss-makers to encourage people in [to] buy more. When you go into a supermarket now, alcohol is there like a stack of turf.’
Historian Diarmaid Ferriter sees the decline of the Pioneer Association in Ireland within the broader context of social and religious change and points out the inherent contradictions in a movement which promotes silent self-sacrifice on the one hand while simultaneously calling mass rallies and large-scale publicity events.
‘It’s interesting how it operates. It was meant to be a personal thing yet it thrives on mass participation through its structure and rallies and all that. I mean, personally I can remember being taken out of school to take part in these mass gatherings. I’m sure people, too, will recall borrowing Pioneer pins when going for job interviews in order to make an impression. It sounds pretty surreal now!’ Ferriter agrees that the movement has witnessed a gradual decline since the 1960s, and offers little hope of resurgence.
‘There’s little doubt that it’s been in decline for decades, much the same way as young people going to church has declined. I think there is a pressure on a whole generation nowadays that would make it very difficult for them to be part of a movement like the Pioneers.’
While the Irish Pioneer Association admits hardship in attracting members in the 30 to 50 age group, it does claim something of a resurgence among those under 25. A rebranding of the youth wing in the 1980s had a positive effect, with the emphasis now more on social outings than sacrificial penitence. Twenty-six-year-old Su-zann Scott, chairperson of the Young Pioneers, says that over 25,000 young people have joined the movement in recent years, and claims the association is having little difficulty attracting younger devotees. (The Irish Pioneer Movement is currently updating their database but feels membership may be closer to 18,000 currently).
‘For me being a Pioneer is not just about not drinking, it is a huge social outlet, with so many competitions and events organised every week. There is a real sense of belonging and it works like having an extended family. That’s why I choose to be a Pioneer—I now have friends in every corner of Ireland.’ Scott says that modern Ireland is in need of the Pioneers now more than ever and feels proud to be part of a movement focused on changing society for the better. ‘There is sacrifice and prayer involved, but we just want to try and promote peace and harmony in the home and in general society. Ireland has the highest rate of binge-drinking in Europe, so the Pioneers have a huge role to play. I’m always proud of my Pioneer badge. The way I look at it, I know if I never shame it, then it’ll never shame me.’
Visitors to Ireland such as Dunton Fynes Morrison, Sir William Petty and Arthur Young all give us descriptions of the drinking and drunkenness in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which read like 250-year-old equivalents of Prime Time specials. From those accounts, the image and idea of the ‘Drunken Paddy’ emerged and went overseas. That image has been hard to shake off, and in any event we haven’t tried too hard, culminating in everything from cartoons in the British press in the nineteenth century to modern-day us shows such as ‘The Simpsons’, which rarely has reference to Ireland without the booze. Those stereotypes exist because those social connections to alcohol in Ireland exist over many centuries.
Long before glitzy advertising campaigns, drinking patterns in Ireland were abnormal. Our ancestors drank to take themselves out of the daily misery of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life. Yet before that, they drank because of a lack of self-control and a romantic and sometimes religious attachment to mood altering. And yet we’re not always a weak-willed race—the abstinence movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are evidence of a sobering of thought and maturing of attitude in Ireland towards excessive drinking and drunkenness. Today, those movements struggle to hold onto their messages, and are looking for ways to adapt to the society they operate in, rather than vice versa. Moderation and reduction are the new buzzwords of the Pioneer Movement, where activities and sober social outings are promoted above pious abstinence. But what chance had they? Every abstinence movement in Ireland has been destined to failure, doomed by virtue of society’s longstanding relationship to alcohol. The makers of modern Ireland were as much barmen and brewers as they were poets and politicians. But our relationship to alcohol through the last few hundred years is a complex one. Undoubtedly there have been long periods when consumption levels have been excessive, such as the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and early twenty-first century. But per capita consumption fails to take fully into account the numbers who abstained during those periods. Even today, 150,000 members of the Pioneer Movement is still an impressive figure, given the decline of the Church and religious movements in the past decades. As Elizabeth Malcolm points out, ‘Much attention, both serious and frivolous, has been devoted to the drunken “Paddy”, beloved of the popular press and music hall. But the drunken “Paddy” is only one side of the coin; the other side is the teetotal “Paddy”.’
Moderate Paddy, though, has yet to reveal him- or herself.