The structure of the collection, and thus display, is four main areas.
First is the Country and its Culture – so the very name of Ireland, the Shamrock, St. Patrick, the distinctive surnames and not to forget – Guinness.
Second– A history of Ireland, this gives a background to the spread of the Irish around the world, Irish monks taking Christianity back to Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, the flight of the Earls and the Catholic Gaelic families serving the Catholic monarchs abroad and the mass emigration following the potato famines of the 1840s.
My third section is perhaps where the collection started being simply “The Irish” – at its most basic level if one wins an Olympic medal or is awarded a Nobel prize you will appear on stamps of many countries not just your own. The same applies to famous, and sometimes not so famous, inventors, writers, explorers, artists and even pirates.
The final section is the Irish Diaspora – “The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland” – the Irish is the largest in the world exceeding that of the Greeks or Jews. There are over a hundred million worldwide with Irish ancestry which compares to the population of the whole of Ireland which was nearly six and a half million in 2013.
While it is often thought this was because of “The Great Hunger” – the potato famine of 1845 – that is only a part of the story.
Irish dispersal is most significant to English speaking countries USA and Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Caribbean. Many went with the British Empire as administrators, soldiers, educators or missionaries. Those earlier migrations of Catholic chieftains and their retinues to Europe meant that people of Irish descent went to Canada from France and South America from Spain.
An interesting aspect of Irish emigration is that equal numbers of men and women were involved so they could marry within the ethnic group which tends to keep the culture alive in their new surroundings.
Thanks you to Peter for an intersting and enjoyable afternoon.