if you lived then

[burntcopper]

AFP lot may remember me pointing out something when camping (can't remember if it was before or after our plans for the apocalypse), where I'd come across some bugger bemoaning that no-one these days had any idea about the land, and how would we do in our ancestors' place as peasants when confronted by the situation. Which led me to go 'excuse me, but my ancestors wouldn't know one end of the horse from the other when it came to ploughing either. We were the ones who made the plough or fixed the damn thing when it broke.'

My ancestors having been skilled craftsmen for the most part (aside from a few mill owners and smugglers). One of the main surnames is Cooper, which tells you a lot right there. And considering your position in society is normally derived from what your family does, and how social mobility isn't all that great in this country, I do love it when people sigh about how they'd have loved to live in past times with servants or been servants. Somehow this type of person seems to forget that there was a whole big section in between.

Hi, I'm from the skilled working class that provided glass, smiths, barrel makers, foremen of mines and toolmakers. How about you?

Comments

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Farmers one side - they pass the golden rule, which is if there's continuous records for the past 300+ years (the Petty survey in our case), you've probably been on that land for more than 3000 years. Even in certain bits of Ireland (aka the bits of land no-one else wants. gmh will confirm it has a lovely view, though).

The other side? Well,in the past century and a half, we show classic Irish social mobility[1] in assorted generations: labourer, train driver, schoolmaster, priest (non-reproducing), bank manager, academic, diplomat, etc, etc. Before that we appear to have been a combination of tinkers and hedge schoolmasters and everything in between - education seems to have been a big feature - and before that, apparently we owned a decent chunk of land until Lizzie I or Cromwell kicked us off it.

Mind you, go back far enough, and the name may derive from pre-Norman monks - and we are the only "De" name in Ireland not to be French. (The name has a different origin, which is still used in the Irish version.)

[1] We got independence, a huge chunk of the middle classes left or were pushed out. Where do you think we found the replacements?

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the farming side were prosperous enough that they provided schoolteachers, so even at their poorest, there was still enough leeway to educate children.

Also, names aren't much cop on professions in Ireland, since most surnames come from clan groupings, not from what your ancestor did for a living.