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‘Her own and her children's share’: luck, misogyny and imaginative resistance in twentieth-century Irish folklore
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 June 2022
Abstract
In twentieth-century Irish folklore, luck had much to do with women. While women were rarely seen as legitimate possessors of good fortune, luck was frequently perceived as being communicated through women's bodies and lost as a result of their actions. A caul, an intact amniotic membrane over a newborn's head and by-product of a pregnant woman's body, was believed to convey luck and health to either the mother or the child but not to both. The emphasis in this tradition on women's corporeality cast women and their maternal by-products as appropriable familial and communal resources. This and additional lore reveal that women were constructed as dangerous, ‘object-like others’ whose mere presence could threaten men's safety. Twentieth-century Ireland's folk and political cultures each operated within frameworks of supporting ideological systems. Despite being easily distinguishable in articulation, these cultures were frequently in concert with one another, especially relating to prescriptive gender roles. In numerous instances, lore about luck bolstered legislative, social and religious policies of the Irish Free State and the early Irish Republic regarding women. However, narrow divergences allowed women limited space to contest gender hierarchy in folk communities. Some women found opportunities for subversion in the very cultural fabric that restricted them, resorting to imaginative resistance to reject and counter misogynist discourse and assert female subjectivity.
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References
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24 Janet A. Nolan, Ourselves alone: women's emigration from Ireland 1885–1920 (Lexington, KY, 1989), p. 70.
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31 For half of the couples who married in 1946, the husband was at least five years older; for a quarter, the age gap was at least ten years: Mary E. Daly, ‘Marriage, fertility and women's lives in twentieth-century Ireland’ in Women's History Review, xv (2006), p. 582; Earner-Byrne, ‘The family in Ireland’, p. 647.
32 Earner-Byrne, ‘The family in Ireland’, pp 655–6; Bourke, Husbandry to Housewifery, pp 264–5.
33 Mary E. Daly, ‘“Turn on the tap”: the state, Irish women and running water’ in Valiulis and O'Dowd (eds), Women and Irish history, pp 208–09, 213. In rural areas electricity to power pumps was an essential prerequisite to the provision of running water.
34 Maryann Gialanella Valiulis, ‘The politics of gender in the Irish Free State, 1922–1937’ in Women's History Review, xx, no. 4 (Sept. 2011), pp 569, 574.
35 John P. McCarthy, Kevin O'Higgins: builder of the Irish state (Dublin, 2006), p. 86.
36 Valiulis, ‘The politics of gender’, pp 574–5, 577.
37 Judith Hartford and Jennifer Redmond, ‘“I am amazed at how easily we accepted it”: the marriage ban, teaching and ideologies of womanhood in post-Independence Ireland’ in Gender and Education, xxxiii, no. 2 (2019), pp 6, 9–10.
38 Úna Ní Bhroiméil, ‘Images and icons: female teachers’ representations of self and self-control in 1920s Ireland’ in History of Education Review, xxxvii, no. 1 (2008), p. 12.
39 Gerardine Meaney, ‘Sex and nation’ in Ailbhe Smyth (ed.), The Irish women's studies reader (Dublin, 1993), p. 233; Gerardine Meaney, ‘Race, sex and nation’ in Irish Review, xxxv (2007), pp 51–2. See also Tom Inglis, Moral monopoly: the rise and fall of the Catholic church in Ireland (2nd ed., Dublin, 1998).
40 Marina Warner, ‘What the Virgin of Knock means to women’ in Magill (Sept. 1979), p. 39; eadem, Alone of all her sex: the myth and cult of the Virgin Mary (London, 1978), pp 83–4; Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish culture (Notre Dame, IN, 1996), pp 107–08.
41 E. Heartney, ‘Thinking through the body: women artists and the Catholic imagination’ in Hypathia, xviii, no. 4 (fall 2003), pp 3–22, quoted in Ní Bhroiméil, ‘Images and icons’, p. 10.
42 Ní Bhroiméil, ‘Images and icons’, pp 10–12.
43 Catherine Nash, ‘Remapping and renaming: new cartographies of identity, gender and landscape in Ireland’ in Feminist Review, no. 44 (1993), p. 47.
44 Peggy Watson, ‘Eastern Europe's silent revolution: gender’ in Sociology, xxvii, no. 3 (1993), pp 479, 482, 485. See also Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘The citizenship debate: women, ethnic processes and the state’ in Feminist Review, no. 39 (1991), p. 63; Joan B. Landes, Women and the public sphere in the age of the French Revolution (London, 1988); Nirmal Puwar and Carole Pateman, ‘Interview with Carole Pateman: “the sexual contract”, women in politics, globalization and citizenship’ in Feminist Review, no. 70 (2002), pp 123, 126.
45 Maryann Gialanella Valiulis, ‘Defining their role in the new state: Irishwomen's protest against the Juries Act of 1927’ in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, xviii, no. 1 (1992), p. 54; Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Gender: a useful category of historical analysis’ in eadem, Gender and the politics of history (New York, 1988), p. 47.
46 Caitriona Beaumont, ‘Women, citizenship and Catholicism in the Irish Free State, 1922–1948’ in Women's History Review, vi, no. 4 (1997), pp 570–71; Diarmuid Ferriter, Occasions of sin: sex and society in modern Ireland (London, 2009), p. 546.
47 The marriage ban for teachers was in effect for teachers who qualified between 1933 and 1958: Jennifer Redmond and Judith Hartford, ‘“One man one job”: the marriage ban and the employment of women teachers in Irish primary schools’ in Paedagogica Historica, xlvi, no. 5 (Oct. 2010), pp 639, 648, 651, 652.
48 Marriage bars also applied elsewhere after the great depression: Eoin O'Leary, ‘The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation and the marriage bar for women national teachers, 1933–1958’ in Saothar, xii (1987), p. 48.
49 Redmond & Hartford, ‘One man one job’, p. 648.
50 Gerardine Meaney, ‘Race, sex and nation’, pp 49–50.
51 See Peter Gray, The bourgeois experience (London, 1998), pp 5, 14; Joan Perkin, Victorian women (London, 1993), p. 111; Tom Inglis, ‘Origins and legacies of Irish prudery: sexuality and social control in modern Ireland’ in Éire-Ireland, xl, no. 3/4 (2005), p. 16.
52 Carolyn A. Conley, ‘No pedestals: women and violence in late nineteenth-century Ireland’ in Journal of Social History, xxviii, no. 4 (1995), p. 801.
53 Brigittine M. French, ‘Gendered speech and engendering citizenship in the Irish Free State: ordinary women and County Clare District Courts, 1932–1934’ in Christina S. Brophy and Cara Delay (eds), Women, reform, and resistance in Ireland, 1850–1950 (London, 2015), pp 140, 155.
54 Regarding Catholic influences, see Maria Luddy, ‘A “sinister and retrogressive” proposal: Irish women's opposition to the 1937 draft Constitution’ in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, xv (2005), pp 184–5.
55 Anne McClintock, ‘Family feuds: gender, nationalism and the family’ in Feminist Review, xliv (1993), p. 69. A ‘rigidly gendered’ ideology can be found in fiction of the period too: Leeann Lane, ‘“In my mind I build a house”: the quest for family in the children's fiction of Patricia Lynch’ in Éire-Ireland, xliv, no. 1/2 (2009), pp 174–5.
56 For examples, see Sarah-Anne Buckley, ‘Child neglect, poverty and class: the NSPCC in Ireland, 1889–1939 — a case study’ in Saothar, xxxiii (2008), pp 57–70; Jennifer Redmond, ‘The largest remaining reserve of manpower: historical myopia, Irish women workers and World War Two’ in Saothar, xxxvi (2011), pp 64–5.
57 See Elaine Farrell, ‘A most diabolical deed’: infanticide and Irish society, 1850–1900 (Manchester, 2013), p. 250.
58 Uncharitable attitudes toward single mothers were common in Ireland both among Catholics and Protestants. For example, see Myrtle Hill, Women in Ireland: a century of change (Belfast, 2003), p. 29; Clíona Rattigan, ‘What else could I do?’ Single mothers and infanticide, Ireland 1900–1950 (Dublin, 2012), pp 9, 54, 61; Sandra McAvoy, ‘Aspects of the state and female sexuality in the Irish Free State, 1922–1949’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University College Cork, 1998).
59 Lindsey Earner-Byrne, ‘The boat to England: an analysis of the official reactions to the emigration of single expectant Irishwomen to Britain, 1922–1972’ in I.E.S.H., xxx (2003), pp 52, 58, 64.
60 Farrell, ‘A most diabolical deed’, p. 247.
61 Clíona Rattigan, ‘“Done to death by father or relatives”: Irish families and infanticide cases, 1922–1950’ in The History of the Family, xiii, no. 4 (2008), pp 370, 372, 375–6, 380. See also Clíona Rattigan, ‘“I thought from her appearance that she was in the family way”: detecting infanticide cases in Ireland, 1900–1921’ in Family & Community History, xi, no. 2 (2008), pp 146–7; James M. Smith, Ireland's Magdalen laundries and the nation's architecture of containment (Manchester, 2007), p. 55.
62 Maria Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland, 1880–1973’ in Women's History Review, xx, no. 1 (2011), pp 123, 118. See also Moira Jean Maguire, ‘The myth of Catholic Ireland: unmarried motherhood, infanticide and illegitimacy in the twentieth century’ (Ph.D. dissertation, American University, Washington D.C., 2000), pp 161–2.
63 See E. Moore Quinn, ‘The caul in Irish folk belief and practice: a birth-related example of continuity and change’ in Salvador Ryan (ed.), Birth and the Irish: a miscellany (Dublin, 2021), pp 188–93. Caul lore varies by culture: see, for example, Carroll Y. Rich, ‘Born with the Veil: Black Folklore in Louisiana’ in Journal of American Folklore, lxxxix, no. 353 (1976), pp 328–31.
64 Interview with Siobhán Ní Mhurchadha, f. 62.
65 Contribution of P. J. O'Sullivan, Derrygorman, Annascaul, County Kerry, 1941 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 782, ff 250-51).
66 Regarding stigmatising of childless wives, see Bourke, Husbandry to housewifery, p. 267.
67 Contribution of Seán Óg Ó Dubhda, An Clochán, Caisleán Ghriaire, County Kerry, Sept. 1938. (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 554, f. 164).
68 Earner-Byrne writes that though Ireland ranked among the highest in marital fertility, ‘family size was in slow decline by 1911.’ B. Walsh, ‘Marriage in Ireland in the twentieth century’ in A. Cosgrove (ed), Marriage in Ireland (Dublin, 1985), pp 132–50, 142; Earner-Byrne, ‘The family in Ireland’, pp 643–5; Yvonne McKenna, ‘Embodied ideals and realities: Irish nuns and Irish womanhood, 1930s–1960s’ in Éire-Ireland, xli, no. 1/2 (2006), p. 47.
69 Earner-Byrne, ‘The family in Ireland’, p. 643. Finola Kennedy found economic factors more influential than Catholic teachings: Finola Kennedy, Cottage to crèche: family change in Ireland (Dublin, 2001), pp 1, 6.
70 Bourke, Husbandry to housewifery, p. 267. Beaumont reports the same statistic for 1926: Beaumont, ‘Women, citizenship and Catholicism’, p. 566. Daly notes, ‘Irish-born women in Britain had better prospects of marrying than if they remained at home’: Daly, ‘Migration since 1914’, p. 537.
71 McKenna, ‘Embodied ideals and realities’, p. 44. See also Inglis, ‘Origins and legacies of Irish prudery’, pp 16–18, 21.
72 Fishing questionnaire from Paddy O'Brien, Drumcliff, Donegal Town, County Donegal, 1979 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 2071, f. 191).
73 Fishing questionnaire from Pádraig Mac Coughamhna, f. 110. In a similar vein, Clodagh Tait discusses women's ‘apotropaic labour’: see Tait, ‘Worry work: the supernatural labours of living and dead mothers in Irish folklore’ in S. Knott and E. Griffin (eds), Mothering's many labours, supplementary issue no. 15 of Past & Present, ccxlvi, (2020), pp 217–38.
74 Fishing questionnaire from Eamonn hOireabard, An Baile Dubh, Trá Lí, County Kerry, 1979 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 2071, f. 133).
75 Fishing questionnaire from Pádraig Mac Coughamhna, f. 108. There are analogies with Irish customs regarding funeral processions. ‘A person, on meeting a funeral on the road, turned around and took a few steps with it. It was said that three steps would do’: interview of Siobhán Ní Mhurchadha, f. 187. Both death rituals and men's work should take precedence over more mundane activities.
76 Fishing Questionnaire from Paddy O'Brien, f. 190.
77 The list of ambiguous or liminal characters likely to bring bad luck to fishermen included priests, unbaptised babies, engaged men before they wed, barefoot and/or childless women: Ní Fhloinn, Cold iron, pp 134–5, 248–9.
78 Fishing questionnaire from Breda Lewis, f. 88.
79 Ní Fhloinn, Cold iron, p. 140.
80 Niall Ó Dónaill, Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla (Dublin, 1977), p. 1012.
81 Ní Fhloinn, Cold iron, 59, 66–8, 109, 144–6, 150, 191–6, 210–15.
82 While there was some suspicion of red-haired men, it did not compare to the dread of red-haired women. Of the forty-five replies to a 1979 fishing belief questionnaire, twenty-two specifically identified bad luck with red-haired women, an additional seven reported bad luck following either women or men with red hair: Ní Fhloinn, Cold iron, pp 140–41.
83 Fishing questionnaire from Jim McNern, Bruckless, County Donegal, 1979 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 2071, f. 183).
84 A similar gendered understanding of red hair can be found in England: M. E. Ringwood, ‘New Year customs in Co. Durham’ in Folklore, lxxi, no. 4 (1960), pp 252, 254.
85 Fishing questionnaire from Charles Conaghan, Fintragh Road, Killybegs, County Donegal, 1979 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 2071, f. 187).
86 Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, pp 110, 112–15, 117. Magdalen asylums were resorted to at a significantly higher rate after Irish independence: Clíona Rattigan, ‘What else could I do?’, p. 209. Regarding national sexual self-identification, Ferriter notes, ‘Delusions about Irish sexual purity proved to be quite durable’: Ferriter, Occasions of sin, p. 546.
87 Fishing questionnaire from Eamonn hOireabard, f. 133.
88 Fishing questionnaire from Pádraig Mac Coughamhna, ff 108-09.
89 See J. J. Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985: politics and society (Cambridge, 1989), p. 645; Inglis, ‘Origins and legacies of Irish prudery’, pp 12–14, 23–4.
90 Quoted in Ní Bhroiméil, ‘Images and icons’, pp 8–9.
91 Interview of Siobhán Ní Mhurchadha, f. 62. See also C. C. Baines, ‘Children born with a caul’ in Folklore, lxi, no. 2 (1950), p. 104.
92 Fishing questionnaire from Bridget Thornton, 2 Glenview Road, County Wicklow, 1979 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 2071, f. 124).
93 De Bhanbille reports that he heard an old woman say she ‘got a good price’ for two cauls she sold: contribution of Séamus De Bhanbille, County Wexford, Sept. 1938 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 553, ff 152, 157–8); Ní Fhloinn, Cold iron, pp 228–9.
94 Arnold Schrier, Ireland and the American emigration 1850–1900 (Chester Springs, PA, 1997), p. 94.
95 McKenna, ‘Embodied ideals and realities’, p. 59.
96 Ibid., pp 41, 56.
97 Middle- and upper-class Irish nationalists had eagerly appropriated certain bits of Irish folklore, especially any traditions connected to historic resistance to colonial rule: see Beiner, Remembering the Year of the French,; Hilary Joyce Bishop, ‘Memory and legend: recollections of penal times in Irish folklore’ in Folklore, cxxix (2018), pp 18–38. Meanwhile, these same nationalists were loath to acknowledge traditions they found unseemly: see Henry Morris, ‘Irish wake games’ in Béaloideas, viii, no. 2 (1938), pp 123–41; Bourke, The burning of Bridget Cleary.
98 Moynagh Sullivan, ‘The treachery of wetness: Irish Studies, Seamus Heaney and the politics of parturition’ in Irish Studies Review, xiii, no. 4 (2005), pp 451–68. See also Máire Leane, ‘Embodied sexualities: exploring accounts of Irish women's sexual knowledge and sexual experiences, 1920–1970’ in Máire Leane and Elizabeth Kiely (eds), Sexualities and Irish society: a reader (Dublin, 2014), pp 41, 53.
99 See Christina S. Brophy, ‘“What nobody does now”: imaginative resistance of rural labouring women’; E. Moore Quinn, ‘“All I had left were my words”: the widow's curse in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland’ in Brophy and Delay (eds), Women, reform, and resistance in Ireland, pp 185–210, 211–33.
100 Brophy, ‘“What nobody does now’: imaginative resistance of rural labouring women’, p. 188.
101 Ballintoy, County Antrim, 1956 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 1432, f. 98), quoted in Ní Fhlionn, Cold iron, p. 156.
102 Interview of ‘Michael Haverty’, Curraghboy, County Roscommon, 1959 (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 1550, ff 174–5).
103 Interview of Siobhán Ní Mhurchadha, f. 21.
104 Ibid.
105 Contribution of Diarmuid Ó Cruadhlaoich (N.F.C., Main manuscript collection, MS 553, f. 194).
106 E. Moore Quinn, ‘All I had left were my words’, pp 215, 216, 219.
107 Contribution of Diarmuid Ó Cruadhlaoich, ff 194–5.
108 Fishing questionnaire of Eamonn hOireabard, f. 133. ‘Scad’ possibly refers to scadán, an Irish word for ‘herring’, or the scad family of fish that includes mackerel. Curses made when kneeling were believed to be more efficacious: see Henry Morris, ‘Features common to Irish, Welsh, and Manx folklore’ in Béaloideas, vii, no. 2 (1937), p. 174.
109 A Fulbright Fellowship funded research for this project. I presented an earlier version of this article to the 2016 Women's History Association of Ireland conference at Queen's University Belfast. I am grateful for the invaluable feedback fellow panelists and attendees provided. Many thanks to Aedín Ní Bhróithe Clements for her generous assistance in procuring materials.