From Poker Flat

Oh! hail to sweet Erin’s fair isle. Hal Ludlow. Source: Fun Almanac 33 (5 January 1881): 13. Click on image to enlarge it. “Sworn foes to disturbance and riot” is surely ironic or even sarcastic given contemporary worries of Irish riots and violence, and more mockery appears in the assertion that Irish children are “blest / With potheen [an Irish whiskey], and pigs, and potaties [potatoes].” The last item is particularly bitter given the horrors of the potato famine four decades earlier. — George P. Landow

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Last modified 3 February 2016