Joe Biden’s Irish Roots

“Everybody had a sister who was a nun everybody had a brother a priest. Vocations were a big deal.”

His first Irish memories are of his Aunt Gertie when he went to his grandparents’ house.

“I’d go upstairs and lie on the bed and she’d come and scratch my back and say, ‘Now you remember Joey about the Black and Tans don’t you?’ She had never seen the Black and Tans, she had no notion of them, but she could recite chapter and verse about them.

“Obviously there were immigrants coming in who were able to talk about it and who had relatives back there. She was born in 1887. After she’d finish telling the stories I’d sit there or lie in bed and think at the slightest noise, ‘They’re coming up the stairs.’”

Biden confessed to being uncomfortable with Irish wakes, which were a constant when he was a child. “I hated it, you know, everybody sitting around and drinking and the corpse in the next room."

But, he added, "There is something about the Irish that knows that to live is to be hurt, but we’re still not afraid to live.”

Biden is a voracious reader of Irish history and to this day his hero is Wolfe Tone, leader of the 1798 Rebellion.

“Wolfe Tone is the embodiment of some of the things that I think are the noblest of all. He was a Protestant who formed the United Irishmen. He had nothing to gain on the face of it but he sought to relieve the oppression of the Catholics caused by the penal laws. He gave his life for the principle of civil rights for all people.

“I view him as an honorable figure. He was obviously passionate which I admire. He had the ability to make his own comfort secondary to the greater good.”

Biden says there were profound differences between the Irish in Scranton and the Irish in Delaware.

“That is because they came over differently," he said. "The Dupont Company were sending ships back to Ireland and bringing back workers so the first people who did come did not do so as part of a famine. They were paternalistic, built their church for them. It was a different experience.”

“I see myself as an Irish Catholic. If we have a moral obligation to other parts of the world why don’t we have a moral obligation to Ireland? It’s part of our blood.”

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Nster.com