Big Bill & Irish Heads ☃️🔬

So, What’s the Craic?

The Craic is back on this chilly Friday, so get cozy with a cup of tae and read our bits and bobs about the Irish at home and abroad. If you’ve been enjoying this wee newsletter, pass it on to friends and family by asking them to sign up here.

News from Home

Farewell, Big Bill the Snowman. We love it when Irish lads get together and do pointless things just for the craic. This week, a bunch of students from Limerick decided they’d have a crack at building Ireland’s biggest snowman, and they sure look like they succeeded. Big Bill was 23ft tall, had a traffic cone for a nose and stood proudly all weekend until his big head fell off on Sunday night. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere.

Food Delivery. The Lads at Bord Bia have got the abacus out and looked at all the food and drink we sent abroad in 2024, and the lines all go up. There was a 5% rise in Irish food and drink exports for the year, totaling a record €17 billion (about $17.5 billion). The growth was driven by whiskey sales. Seems you lot are partial to a wee nip of Jameson.

Brexit Bollocks. There’s a whole lot of new travel rules coming into place on the island of Ireland this January. It all stems from the UK deciding to leave the European Union. Anyway, the upshot is that Americans & 50 other nationalities will need a specific travel document when traveling from the Republic of Ireland (proudly part of the EU) to Northern Ireland (voted to remain but had to leave with the rest of the UK). It’s a bit of a pain in the arse, but you can get a breakdown of what you need here.

Awards for Colin and Bono. Americans were handing out awards of all shapes and sizes to the Irish this week. First up, Colin Farrell got the Golden Globe for his portrayal of The Penguin in, er, The Penguin. And our reading of things is that Bono can now do whatever he likes across all 50 states, as he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Big Joe Biden.

Good Luck, Lads. We are of the view that there can never be enough Irish drinking emporia in the world. So, we just wanted to take this opportunity to wish some Friends of The Craic – Chris Kerr, Jason Buck & Michael Godet – all the best with their new Irish brewery venture in Bristol, Rhode Island. If all goes well, Trágmar Ale Works should open its doors in March, just in time for St Patrick’s Day. ☘️

The Irish Influence

We are huge fans of Davy Holden, an Irish Lad (his words) who explains the history of the island and its people across various social media platforms. Holden, who was the subject of a recent RTE television documentary about his work, covers just about every facet of Irish history and culture you can imagine: conflict, the meaning of certain songs, mythology, movies, the legacy of the British, and so on. What we love about the Kilkenny man’s content is his knack for finding rare video footage of historical events, bringing to life stuff we only read about in history books.

Cúpla Focal

Ireland froze this week, so we have a few weather (aimsir) words and phrases for you. Tá sé fuar means it’s cold (and it really is 🥶) Sneachta {snak-ta) means snow. Finally, in honor of our friend Big Bill, snowman is fear sneachta. ☃️

Blast from the Past

On January 9, 1998, British politician Mo Mowlam put her career – and possibly her personal safety – on the line by choosing to visit prisoners on both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland’s notorious Maze Prison. It was a brave and audacious bid to save the delicate peace process in Northern Ireland. Talking to members of the IRA on the Republican side, UFF, UDA, and UVF on the Loyalist side, Mowlam was able to wrangle agreements that would lead to peace talks between the political representatives of the paramilitary prisoners. It was an extraordinary moment, one for which Mowlam received criticism, but that is now recognized as one of the most significant political gambles – and successes – in history.

And One Last Thing….

Would You Look at the Head on Yer Man. While there are plenty of beautiful Irish people with perfectly formed craniums, there’s a stereotype that the majority of us have to spend all day lugging around big old heads on our shoulders. But is it scientific fact? A schoolgirl, Farrah Corbett, decided to investigate at the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition this week. Her report went viral, and while Farrah found some evidence that our noggins are bigger than those of other ethnicities, she deemed it inconclusive due to the sample size of the study. The World Health Organization needs to fund a global survey on big heads because we want answers. Seriously though, we’ve seen some opinion articles that try to frame the big head stereotype as racist. Yet, we’d argue that the stereotype is mostly propagated by Irish people themselves, highlighting another indisputable Irish trait – an innate ability to laugh at ourselves.

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