A friend told me she was rather surprised by the reaction of an older Irish-American gentleman she knew when she made a cheerful comment about St. Patrick’s day and Corned Beef and Cabbage, and he angrily said that he would never touch that un-Irish stuff, but explained no further.

So, I explained.

There is a reason Ireland is called the Emerald Isle and the Kerry Butter people have you swooping over the greenest cow pastures imaginable in their commercials. The island’s climate ensures great green and lush pastureland perfect for raising beef, something the English knew when it conquered that rather disunified collection of kingdoms.

Until the time of Cromwell, England and Ireland lived in an uncomfortable, feudal peace between the conqueror and the conquered, between a sovereign and a dependent. The English were not kind, and with Cromwell went a little overboard in its anti-Catholicism, and totally subjugated the Irish people whose job was now to work for England and address its needs.

The Irish raised the beef that England consumed, but were not themselves allowed to eat beef, or at least anything other than the post butchering discards. Cattle raised for milk were needed for that milk and would not be butchered by the owner until the cattle was too old to produce milk and could at least supply some really bad meat compared with what they were raising for the English.

So, the two choices of beef for the Irish were the disposable trimmings and old stringy cows.

The English on the British Isle and the English Lords who lived on their estates in Ireland or ran them as absentee landlords from England got the good beef.

What both the good meat and the bad had in common was the use of corn sized salt to brine the meat for preservation without refrigeration.

To raise the beef, the best pastureland was needed and, so, the Irish were forced off their ancestral lands relegated to farming smaller plots of marginal land. With limited space and poor land, the most convenient crop to survive on was the potato that could be grown abundantly in less favorable soil, and we saw how that ended up.

The lack of beef affected Northern Ireland the most as it was away from the major beef processing centers, so they couldn’t even get the scraps.

The majority of Irish mainly consumed dairy products and meats such as pork with Irish Bacon, similar to Canadian Bacon but boiled, being the actual annual meat on the Easter plate that also had cabbage, a vegetable easy to grow on the poor land the Irish got while cows got the good land, and the potato, not a tuber of choice but of necessity.

Meanwhile, the English This makes it easier to get the high quality drug at the cheapest prices. viagra for sale india Parents or guardians must meet certain eligibility requirements in order for their teens to use PTDE to complete their driver training, such as not having a suspended license within the last three years, or have quite half-dozen points on their driving record. cialis professional uk Use of laptops on your lap viagra pill on line can less your sperm count and sperm motility because of its hot temperature which destroy male sperms. Kamagra jelly is a liquid variation of the dose generally depends upon the severity appalachianmagazine.com cialis cheap generic of the case. were eating beef, much of it corned for shipment, for their annual Easter Meal, St. Patrick’s Day actually being a reverse national holiday as the traditions that make it such a big day began in the United States among Irish immigrants and were then adopted in varying degrees by those on the Old Sod.

When the Irish began arriving in the United States, because of their poverty and difficulty in finding work as “Irish Need Not Apply”, any meat they consumed had to be cheap, and although Bacon was cheap in Ireland, it was not so cheap in the U.S., so the immigrants went with what they knew, poor meat brined to preserve it and make it palatable.

Living in neighborhoods of other rejected people, it was not long before the Irish found the Brisket in the Jewish Deli, and the Deli owner found a customer base in the Irish.

Just as with the potato in Ireland not being the food of choice, corned beef was not the meat of choice, but the meat that could be obtained. In both places, Corned Beef was the product of necessity. The real Irish prefer Irish Bacon and cabbage on St. Patrick’s day.

Now with refrigeration, the Irish everywhere have choices their ancestors did not have. We can buy the meat of our choice, and judging from my life experience, we really favor the good cuts.

For the Irish, not the Hallmark card, green beer guzzling, expectorating on the street version, but the real ones, Corned Beef and Cabbage is a stereotype that grew from the poverty and suppression of their ancestors. It is not a celebratory gastric choice.

Since refrigeration and getting England out, the Irish in the old Country have a choice of meat, and corned beef is not at or near the top of the list.

“Authentic” Corned Beef and Cabbage is an American tradition that is based on the necessities that came from oppression, and does not have a positive history, and Old Sod Irish see it as an attempt by those who left to connect to one’s roots, but, sadly, choosing an aspect that speaks more to deaths than celebrations.

Because of the beef proscription and the British Parliament claiming the Potato Famine was God’s punishment for the Papists, during the potato feminine it was not uncommon for someone dying of starvation to have a green tint around their mouths since, in desperation, they had turned to their last resort, eating the lush grass that fed the cattle so well.

Look at one of the most demeaning moments of your own ancestral history when your people were subjugated and could only avail themselves of those things discarded by the overlords and then this is made into a symbol of your people by those who had created the poverty of the past that created that moment.

And that is why some older, informed Irish-Americans, while letting other people pretend they’re Irish for a day, will not themselves partake of Corned Beef and Cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, unless someone else makes it or it’s fee at the bar.