The Dictionary of National Biography however considers that his maternal grandmother’s Italian origins probably explain William Allingham’s 1863 description of Sullivan's ‘short and tight’ appearance, ‘with dark complexion and thick curly hair’, dismisses suggestions of a part-Jewish origin as unsupported by any evidence, & makes no mention of Francillon’s Mid-Victorian Memories of 1913.
In all this I was rather disregarding the fact that Sullivan was also, through his father, half Irish.
Now that we are all basking in the warm glow of the Queens ‘shared heritage’ & Obama’s ‘shared multiculturalism’ perhaps we should trumpet & celebrate Sullivan. We got there first with our very own Black Irish Italian English hero.
But then we have been multicultural & multiracial since at least Roman times.
But would we be taking a chance with the label Black Irish, which has certainly at times been used as an insult? Let us take advice from the Ireland-Information site.
It seems more likely that 'Black Irish' is a descriptive term rather than an inherited characteristic that has been applied to various categories of Irish people over the centuries.
One such example is that of the hundreds of thousands of Irish peasants who emigrated to America after the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849. 1847 was known as 'black 47'. The potato blight which destroyed the main source of sustenance turned the vital food black. It is possible that the arrival of large numbers of Irish after the famine into America, Canada, Australia and beyond resulted in their being labelled as 'black' in that they escaped from this new kind of black death.
While it at various stages was almost certainly used as an insult, the term 'Black Irish' has emerged in recent times as a virtual badge of honour among some descendants of immigrants. It is unlikely that the exact origin of the term will ever be known and it is also likely that it has had a number of different creations depending on the historical context. It remains therefore a descriptive term used for many purposes, rather than a reference to an actual class of people who may have survived the centuries.
