Connected? Who is related?

During the 1920s in Colorado, ethnic celebrations such as St. Patrick’s Day fell by the wayside at the risk of appearing as “un-American.”

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

In history, you can never be completely sure what and who is related to who and with what. As St. Patrick Day approaches, I submit the following. It is up to you to call ‘Blarney.’
“As North Denver’s pioneer parish, St Patrick’s has an exotic history involving a bitter struggle between Bishop Matz and a pastor powerful enough to twist the 20th Street Viaduct – Joseph P. Carrigan, who also inaugurated festivities that have evolved into Denver’s popular St. Patrick’s Day parade,” according ‘Dr. Colorado’ Thomas J. Noel.
Michael J. Carmody first said mass in the fire station at 15th and Boulder Street but by 1885, Father Carrigan became the steady pastor and almost immediately set to work expanding the parish. Carrigan had previously served at St. Mary’s in Breckenridge and Denver as well as St. Ann.
“North Denverites in those days were separated from the city by the South Platte River and a maze of railroad tracks, where trains killed and maimed people every year. Further more, the 15th Street bridge over the Platte was so rickety that the city posted a notice at either end: ‘No vehicles drawn by more than one horse are allowed to cross the bridge in opposite directions at the same time,’” wrote Noel in Colorado Catholicism.
“Father Carrigan and his parishioners joined the crusade to build a viaduct from downtown to North Denver as a safe crossing over river and rail lines. Mayor Robert W. Speer cleverly persuaded the railroads to put up most of the cost of the viaduct. Completed in 1911 for $500,000, this three-quarter-mile-long trussed viaduct left Denver at 20th Street but landed in North Denver at 33rd Avenue – at the front door of St. Patrick’s. Parishioners praised God for what is now the oldest and largest trussed viaduct in Colorado, and North Denverites still call its bend ‘Carrigan’s Curve,’” according to Noel.
Fighting City Hall was one thing, but Father Carrigan felt compelled to take on the Bishop as well. He was publicly critical of Bishop Matz diocese almost immediately after he succeeded Bishop Machebeuf, some saying he wanted an Irish bishop instead of another Frenchman.
“In defiance of his bishop, Father Carrigan, in 1907, undertook the erection of a new church. After touring Spanish missions of California founded by the Franciscan friar, Junipero Serra, Father Carrigan became enamored with the mission revival style. With architects Harry James Manning and F.C. Wagner, he designed a beautiful stone church with asymmetrical front bell towers connected by a curvilinear parapet. An arcaded cloister along Pecos Street connected the Church with a large courtyard and rectory. Fund-raising difficulties and Father Carrigan’s ongoing feud with the bishop prolonged construction for three years. Priest and parishioners finally celebrated completion of the new St. Patrick’s, a block northwest of the old church, in May 1909. A year later, Bishop Matz reassigned Father Carrigan to St. Stephen parish in Glenwood Springs. This solution followed a rather uncivil civil court case, numerous appeals to Rome, and a scandalous public fight from the pulpits,” wrote Noel.
Father Carrigan is given credit for initiating St. Pat’s fundraising gala the old Broadway Theater in which it’s mostly Irish congregation donned costumes, played bagpipes and celebrated in collaboration with the Daughters of Erin, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians as early as 1885.
“A more militant approach was taken on March 17, 1902, according to the Denver Times, by Captain Stephen J. Donleavy, secretary of the Denver Fire and Police Board: He announced plans to recruit a volunteer army in Colorado in order to invade England and free Ireland,” says Noel.
Anti-immigrant organizations like the Ku Klux Klan wielded substantial power during the 1920s in Colorado, and ethnic celebrations such as St. Patrick’s Day fell by the wayside at the risk of appearing as “un-American.”
The St. Patrick’s tradition was reportedly revived in 1962, when Denver Post columnist Red Fenwick and his “Evil Companions Club” staged a march.
“Witnesses claim it was a short march: the paraders walked out of Duffy’s Shamrock Restaurant, went around the block, and back to the bar,” according to the Post.
By 1974, the revived Denver March 17 celebration was claiming it was the second largest parade in the U.S.

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Irish loving and fighting

Celts and Scandinavians who originally named the island Irlanda and were less pagan than the occupying Romans

“The Irish are a fair people: they never speak well of one another.” — Samuel Johnson

“Where there is Irish there’s loving and fighting. And if we stop either, it’s Ireland no more.” — Rudyard Kipling

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Like so many things that are labeled Irish, it can be argued whether or not a thing is truly Irish.
Saint Patrick, for example, born in Scotland in about 385 A.D., his father was an Italian official for the Roman government. Story has it that Irish pirates kidnapped him, sold him into slavery, and he later escaped eventually ending up in France where he became a monk. In France, it is said he had a vision suggesting he go back to Ireland to convert the Pagans to Christianity.
The so-called “Pagans” were the Celts and Scandinavians who originally named the island Irlanda and were less pagan than the occupying Romans.
But there are other instances.
“The Irish Elk, Megaloceros, is misnamed, for it is neither exclusively Irish nor is it an elk,” notes the University of California – Berkeley Museum of Paleontology web site and citing S. J. Gould’s 1977 book “The misnamed, mistreated, and misunderstood Irish Elk.”
It is a giant extinct deer, the largest deer species ever, that stood up to seven feet at the shoulders, with antlers spanning up to 12 feet, and ranged all over Europe, Asia and north Africa.
The animal became a lightning rod in evolutionary theory debate in the late 19th and early 20th century as an example of orthogenesis, in which it was postulated that “changes in organisms was due not to natural selection, but to internal directional trends within the linage.”
One more example is necessary — as things Irish should come in threes.
A Claddagh ring is a famous design for rings and door knockers that supposedly traces its origin to the Claddagh village located just outside the old walls of Galway city.
Its pattern shows two hands clasped together around a heart bearing a crown.  The hands symbolize faith, the heart, love, and the crown, loyalty and fidelity. 
It is believed that this ring was derived from the Italian “fede ring” (also know as “faith rings”). 
There are many different stories related to how the design came about.
Some say the design dates to the story of Dagda, the father of the gods (with power enough to make the very sun stand still).  Dagda is said to represent the right hand of the Claddagh ring.  The left hand represents that of Anu (who later became Danu), the ancestral and universal mother of the Celts.  The mythical Beathauile represents the Crown, and the heart represents the hearts of all of mankind, and the element which gives everlasting music to the Gael.
Another story suggests the king of Claddagh, fell madly in love with a peasant woman but was foiled by her lower status. In his turmoil, the king killed himself and had his hands chopped off and placed around his heart as a symbol of his undying love for the peasant woman.
The supposedly true story is of a Galway slave, Richard Joyce, who was captured by Algerian corsairs and sold to a Moorish goldsmith, who taught him the trade.  In 1689, Joyce was given his freedom and he returned to Galway to set up shop in Claddagh, where he eventually designed the ring, or not. Depending on who tells the story.
What is truth? If you are Irish, that is up for discussion, and perhaps is worth fighting over.
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