As Irish as Paddy's pig

[Haihao]

Hi Everybody,

Could you please tell me what the origin is of the idiom "As Irish as Paddy's pig"?

Thank you!

Haihao

[Ralf]

Nice one. 'Paddy' is a generic term for an Irish person. And since Ireland's traditional trademark is farming, a pig may serve to epitomise 'Irishness'.
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[Jamie (K)]

In the United States, a large truck or van in which the police transport people they've just arrested (in a riot, for example) is called a "paddy wagon". Most people don't even know why anymore.

[Haihao]

Thank you, Ralf. I got everything now I wanted to know of the idiom. Thank you, Jamie. That reminded me that 'paddy' could also mean 'cop'.

[Inga]

from Irish Gaelic Padraig - 'Patrick'? (I have in my dictionary :))
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[Haihao]

I am sorry but I am afraid I couldn't quite catch you. Could you please put it a little more specifically?

[Jamie (K)]

[Ralf]

Hi Haihao,

What Jamie said is quite true. If you're interested in a wryly humoristic view on Irish history in the early 1900s, read Roddy doyle's A Star called Henry. The second 'Henry volume' Oh, play that thing is about his emigration to America and picaresque adventures in New York and Chicago. If you like the first one, you'll enjoy the second one all the more.
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[Haihao]

Many thanks to both of you again! Your info is also very helpful to me, Ralf. You know I am "in love with" Irish literature and culture and would like to know more and more about her including the history and Irish emigrants' life in America in the early 1900s. BTW, my more than most favorite writer is Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald among my most favorite. I go to Irish bars in Tokyo to enjoy my favorite Guinness quite frequently....

[Ralf]

Hello Haihao,

[Jamie (K)]

"Finnegan's Wake", I think, Ralf.

Somehow or other I got my hands on a book from Ireland of the "true crime" genre that described the forced marriage of an Irish girl under circumstances that I thought would be impossible in modern Western culture. Some father wants an old man's farm, so he figures that if he marries his daughter off to the guy, the old man will croak and he'll get control of the farm through his daughter's inheritance. He just looked around until he found a priest who wouldn't ask any questions (which took some looking), got the deed done, and the girl lived with the old guy who got her pregnant, brutally beat her with great regularity, and -- who would have expected it! -- outlived her father. She had to orchestrate a clandestine escape to England to get free. This was a shocking story that reminded me of the things women come back from the Middle East telling about. I think it happened two or three decades ago.

[Haihao]

Thank you very much again, Ralf and Jamie, for sharing with me the helpful and abundant information. I'm interested in and respect for Irish people's virtue of tolerance, dignity, wisdom, etc. which I got to know from Irish Americans. Like the story described in the movie 'In America' of new Irish immigrants to the United States, their struggle for making a new life in America in the early 1900s is another impressive one just as 'tomorrow is another day', the famous expression now everybody may know well of in the English world, has showed us with its unfading strength in the novel 'Gone With the Wind' by the protagonist Scarlett O'Hara.

[Jamie (K)]

Haihao, keep in mind that the Irish-Americans like to over-romanticize their ancestors' virtues.
Certainly, like all groups who came to the US, the Irish have achieved great things. However, they also had a larger problem than normal with doing UNwise and Undignified things. They had a bigger problem than most groups with alcoholism, violent crime, abuse in the family, and similar things.

The Irish took much longer to become fully integrated into American society partly because of these social pathologies, but partly also because more of them chose politics and political patronage as a means of advancement, rather than education and building an economic base. Using ethnic politics to advance in American society is a very emotionally attractive method, but it has been shown to be one of the slowest.

They are often compared to the German-Americans, who arrived at the same time and quietly worked, built businesses, educated their children, and became American in one generation, while many Americans whose ancestors came from Ireland in the 1850s are still waving the Irish flag around, even if they've never seen Ireland. They also went through a period of writing a lot of books that exaggerated the Irish role in world history, much as African-Americans do today.

[Haihao]

Thank you, Jamie. That's informative. I like both-sided information, that's true democracy and the truth, IMO, is always between the two.

[Jamie (K)]

Haihao, sometimes you can see these differences demonstrated in individual Americans.

Walk up to an American whose name is O'Brien, for example, and ask him what his ethnic origin is. He'll probably just say "Irish!" and he'll probably make a big deal about his Irish ancestors, whether or not he knows anything about them. He may do this even if half his ancestors came from somewhere other than Ireland.

Walk up to the average American with a name like Meyer, or something else very German, and ask him what his ethnic origin is. With him you're more likely -- but not certain -- to get a response like, "I'm pretty sure our name is German, so our family must have come from Germany sometime back, but I know I'm a quarter Polish, and there's some Scottish and American Indian in there somewhere."

Most Polish-Americans will give a similar response to the one I described for the Irish, and Italian-Americans may respond like the Irish and Polish, or like the Germans.