By Greg McInerney
People often talk about the “luck of the Irish” as if it were some fairy charm – leprechauns, shamrocks and pots of gold. In truth, the phrase didn’t begin as a compliment, and it certainly didn’t begin in Ireland.
It grew out of the 19th-century American gold and silver rush, when a surprising number of the most successful miners were Irish or of Irish descent. Rather than credit their graft, resilience and skill, others dismissed their success as mere “Irish luck” – a backhanded way of saying they couldn’t possibly have achieved it through intelligence or effort..”
Edward T. O’Donnell, a historian of Irish-American history, explains that the phrase carried “a certain tone of derision” – as if these “fools” could only succeed through luck, not brains.
Some writers now connect it more broadly with Irish resilience and survival despite colonisation, famine, and emigration – a kind of “we’re still here, so that’s luck of a kind .”
So originally it meant something closer to “dumb luck” than magical good fortune.
Over time, Irish communities quietly reclaimed the phrase. For a people who survived colonisation, famine, eviction and emigration, “luck” often meant something more stubborn: the ability to endure, to start again, and to find beauty in whatever the land offered.
In that sense, there is a kind of “luck of the Irish” in a piece of bog oak – ancient wood preserved against all odds, patiently revealed by hand. It isn’t luck in the magical sense, but the deeper fortune that comes from persistence, memory and craft. The Irish once spoke of ‘luck’ as survival against the odds – and this ancient wood is exactly that: 5,000 years preserved in the bog, brought back to the light. I like to think a piece of bog oak brings a touch of that quiet Irish luck and resilience into any home.”*
*Greg McInerney is a Bog Oak Wood Sculptor. (Irish Arts Council ARN 94510) of 4000 year-old wood carved into timeless sculptures while preserving Ireland’s landscape. www.ancientirishbogoak.ie
