The indelible Irish

As the art of tattooing has received wider acceptance in recent years, so people are taking greater care over what design they choose to put permanently on their skin.
For people of Irish heritage, there is a rich background of Celtic design and Irish heraldry to choose from — and some are making good use of that visual history.
“I wasn’t going to get some stupid butterfly on my [breast],” said Burghartt, sipping a drink one recent weekend with her husband in a midtown bar. She pulled up the right sleeve of her T-shirt to reveal the intricate gray-black detail of the tattoo on her shoulder.
“It’s my coat of arms,” she said proudly. “I’m a Murtagh.”
There are plenty of people with tattoos that are decorative, pretty, garish, acquired on a whim or in a fit of youthful rebellion. Not so Therese.
She continued: “The 10th anniversary of my father’s death was last June. So that’s why I got it. It’s about remembering who I am.”
Deciding what she wanted wasn’t difficult. Once she’d made up her mind, it seemed both obvious and natural.
“Once I decided,” she said, “I knew it was what I should do.”
But to get the correct design, she first had to find the Murtagh coat of arms, and then she had the design brought to life by Ramon Nigron, a tattooist in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Tattoos are not cheap either. “This was supposed to cost $300, but I’m not saying how much I paid,” Therese said.
Barman M.J. Keane, a friend of the Burghartts, pulled up his sleeve to show off a Celtic band around his left bicep.
“Everything I get is Irish,” he said, referring to his four tattoos. He’s deeply proud of his Irish roots.
“It’s all about my family,” he said. “My dad is the greatest man I ever met. My mom is the greatest. My parents are the best.”
Keane went out and got a copy of the Book of Kells before he decided on the band on his bicep. Leafing through the ancient Irish illuminated manuscript, he finally found a design on a page that he liked. This he traced carefully and took it to a tattooist in Hunter Mountain, N.Y.
Nigron, who tattooed the Burghartts, said that Celtic and Irish designs are especially popular but it dependes on the part of the city.
“It’s often family pride,” he said, confirming Keane’s thoughts. “It’s symbolic.”

Trailer park art
Not everyone likes tattoos. But Eamon Hanley’s experience suggests that the pride in one’s heritage that lies beneath an Irish tattoo could win some over.
Hanley is an attorney in New York City, fiercely proud of his Irish dad and Irish roots.
Getting his tattoo took Hanley to a library in search of the Book of Kells — and also staying mum around dad.
“When I was a child, my dad used to tell me that if I ever got a tattoo, he would burn it off me,” Hanley writes on his weblog. “He said if that didn’t work, he would use a cheese grater.”
Hanley, like Keane and others, did some research first.
“To research the design,” he said, “I went to a fine arts library and photocopied pictures from the Book of Kells. I bought tracing paper and the rest is history. It’s like a connection to the old country.”
“I got the tattoo, an Irish band around my right biceps, in my first year of law school. I never told my dad.”
Then his mother told Hanley’s father, without his permission. Dad’s response?
“Tell him to buy a trailer and move in to the trailer park so he can be completely white trash,” Hanley said he father said.
Readers of Hanley’s weblog were left hanging as to the outcome: “Should be a fun talk with the big man.”
Speaking about his tattoo, Hanley said: “I chose an Irish band because my dad is from Ireland, and although I am more proud of being American than anything else, I think we should be proud of our heritage as well. I also think it looks cooler than an American flag or an eagle, which are very common.”

Sept. 11 spark
There was a surge in tattooing after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks as people sought to commemorate lost ones or display their patriotism — deep, permanent emotions — permanently on their skin.
Thus tattooing takes on an almost religious aspect: it is a statement about who a person is, what his core beliefs are, or what matters most to him. The permanency of a tattoo gives it the gravity of a wedding vow, a christening or first communion.
Said Pat Burghartt, Therese’s husband: “I got my tattoo because it’s a statement. I wanted a statement. I’m an ironworker and I’m going to be an ironworker for the rest of my life. When I worked with the first group of guys in my union, I fell in love with them, with the job. For lack of better words, we get a lot of stuff done.”
It’s fitting — though it’s likely that few people are aware of it when they are wincing under the needle — that in 1891 in New York City an Irishman, Samuel O’Reilly, invented the electrical machine that tattooists use to ink the skin. O’Reilly’s Chatham Square tattoo parlor in New York City — where the Bowery meets East Broadway — quickly became legendary.
O’Reilly’s invention cut tattooing time from agonizing hours to bearable minutes, although today, large, elaborate tattoos can still take hours spread over several sessions.
Men heading to the army or navy, returning from war or from the sea, recorded their experiences and ideals on their skin. O’Reilly, according to New York historians, frequently took home more than $100 a day at the height of his trade — a small fortune.
Today tattooing is cleaner, safer and much more sophisticated than even in O’Reilly’s day. But the emotions and feeling behind getting a tattoo remain the same.
As M.J. Keane put it: “It’s about who I am.”