First of all, let me back off from anything and everything that Allen disagreed with. I claim no great expertise in this very complicated history, and he obviously knows whereof he speaks, er, types.

I'm still pretty sure that Cromwell had something to do with banishing the landowners of Ulster to "hell or Connaught," but I have no doubt that he was not the only, nor even the first, conqueror to run the native Irish off their most fertile and desirable land.

On the question of how strong and how long Irish Americans identify with Ireland, I'm sure it varies wildly from family to family, especially insofar as some folks don't want to remember while others want nothing more than to remember.

My maternal grandpa was one who wanted nothing to do with the old country. He married outside the Irish-American ghetto ~ grandma had recently arrived from Alsace-Lorraine with her mother; they were German by language and heritage but officially French according to their passports.

Grandpa was absolutely adamant about being an American. He was born here in the states, unlike my other three grandparents, only very shortly after his parents had come over from Ireland. At the local Hibernian Club, he was known as "Bernie the American" among his mostly-Irish-born fellows. At home, he insisted that his wife modify her considerable pastry-chef skills by using a round piepan for her incredible apple streudel so that it'd become American apple pie. (Man, that was some great ~ and justly-famous ~ pie!)

My father's parents were born and grew to adulthood in Ireland, and so would probably have taught me all kinds of traditional lore had they lived, but they both had passed on before I was a year old. In the end, my knowledge of "true" Irish culture was no better or deeper than that of any American kid cut off from all living memory of an earlier family home.