West Cork festival explores why gout was called 'Irish hospitality'

Ireland's love affair with claret — as well as the wine trade's links to the Atlantic slave trade — is among the topics being examined at this weekend's West Cork History Festival

Claret was so popular in 18th century Ireland that Jonathan Swift referred to it as 'Irish wine'. It's one of the facets of the wine trade explored by Patricia McCarthy this weekend. Picture: Charles Jervas

Red wine from Bordeaux was so popular among the gentry in 18th-century Ireland that writer and satirist Jonathan Swift once referred to it as “Irish wine”.

Indeed, as architectural historian Patricia McCarthy will tell a history festival this weekend, Ireland’s love affair with claret was so intense that gout — the painful illness reputed to be caused by excess consumption — was known as “Irish hospitality”.

Lord Orrery once commented in a letter to a friend: “Lord Thomond is laid up with the gout: the Irish hospitality has broke out in his feet, and pins him down to a great chair and a slender meal.”

Ms McCarthy is one of 18 speakers at the three-day West Cork History Festival which begins on Friday.

Tánaiste (then taoiseach) Micheál Martin with Simon Kingston and Victoria Kingston at last year’s West Cork History Festival.  

Founded seven years ago by Victoria and Simon Kingston, the festival aims to open up frank and respectful conversations on the past and to examine it from several viewpoints.

History should also inspire and challenge, says Victoria Kingston, a writer, researcher, and curator.

Since it was founded, the festival has also made a point of looking at history from local, national, and international perspectives, and showing how it continues to resonate.

The weekend of talks, music, and field outings opens on Friday with writer Glenn Patterson, author of The Last Irish Question: Will Six into Twenty-Six Ever Go?

There will also be a panel discussion on what we have learned from the Decade of Centenaries, the first of the festival’s themes.

On Saturday, Professor Robert Gerwarth will put the Irish civil war in a European context — in an era of civil wars following the First World War — while Professor Nicholas McDowell will speak on ‘The Poetry of the Civil War from Milton to Yeats’, a new angle in thinking about artistic responses to civil conflict.

The festival’s second theme is Ireland’s 18th-century trade in wine, but also its more unsettling links to the Atlantic slave trade.

The weekend of talks, music, and field outings at the West Cork History Festival opens on Friday with a talk by Glenn Patterson, the author of 'The Last Irish Question'.

David Dickson and Kate Hodgson will look at Ireland’s, and particularly Munster’s, links to the transatlantic slave trade.

The West Cork History Festival, however, is not just for historians or academics. It is for everyone.

“And,” adds Ms Kingston, “it is also about having fun.” A series of field outings, concerts, and wine tastings will take place over the weekend.

On Saturday evening, Jessie Kennedy and Tess Leak with the Vespertine Quintet will perform original music inspired by Irish polar explorers, and the ill-fated Franklin expedition. There were many Irish sailors on board the two ships led by Captain John Franklin which set off to find the Northwest Passage in 1845. They never came home.

• You can view the full programme and book tickets on WestCorkHistoryFestival.org.