I’ve always been curious about the origins of the term ‘Jackeen’, which is leveled against Dubliners primarily in a sporting context today. A few weeks ago at the Division 1 final in Croke Park, a few Kerry fans who had found their way onto the Hill beside us got good mileage out of the term. It seems the popular theory is that it has something to do with pro-British sympathies among Dubliners historically, as the Jack in the term is popularly believed to come from ‘Union Jack’. Terence Dolan’s great work, A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish Use of English, notes it to be a pejorative term for “a self-assertive Dubliner with pro British leanings.”
Looking back however, it seems that the term was used firstly more generally as a pejorative term for city dwellers of a certain class, though it certainly took on new meaning in time.
In the archives, the term appears to have come into popular usage here around the 1840s, though on the other side of the world, an article in the New York based The Dollar magazine from the time is still good for a laugh and a little indignation. It described a ‘Dublin Jackeen’ as “a fellow who does very little for a living, and wants to do less.”
From The Dollar magazine, August 1841.
Across two pages, the article managed to insult almost every aspect of an ordinary Dubliners existence, noting that:
The dialect of a Dublin Jackeen is as peculiar as everything else about him,and as different from that of his countrymen in general, outside of the Circular Roads, as chalk is from cheese, or Bog Latin from Arabic. The Jackeen for instance, says ‘dis’,’dat’, ‘dough’, ‘tunder’ and the like – while all other manner of Irishmen make a great capital out of the th, and stick it like grim death, shoving it even into such words as ‘murther’, ‘sisther’, ‘craythure’ and every place else where they find a convenient chance.
The Dollar seemed to use the term to describe a certain kind of lawless Dubliner of the lower order, claiming that “A Dublin Jackeen is the least of a cosmopolitan of any man in the world”, rarely venturing beyond the chaotic and drunken Donnybrook Fair. The piece was clearly written for laughs, though it made no mention to any kind political connotations to the term.
Before The Dollar, The Irish Monthly Magazine gave a somewhat different description of what a ‘Jackeen’ was, describing them as being “a personage, who in our metropolitan society, supplies the same place which the conceited cockney does in the great capital of the sister island, or the Bourgeois dandy in that of France.” To them, a ‘Jackeen’ was “the affected puppy of the middle ranks”, though someone “who will never be mistaken for a gentleman.” Like The Dollar, the term was associated with a certain lawlessness, though the social class was different.
One of the earliest references to the term I can find with any kind of British overtones is from The Kerry Examiner of February 1854, where it was noted that “During the last general war, Dublin contributed more than its quota to the ranks of the British army and military records could attest that no better soldiers served than the ‘Jackeens’ of the Irish capital.” Also from Munster, the Cork Constitution suggested seven years later that a ‘Jackeen’ was someone who ‘hates his own country, and is forever making vain and painful efforts to imitate the English, for whom he professes a violent admiration, and by whom is cordially despised.’
As time progressed, the term began to become synonymous with the idea of Dubliners holding pro-British sentiment. While it may have been used in earlier times to describe city dwellers, by the early twentieth century it had taken on one particular meaning. When John Patrick Henry published A Handbook of Modern Irish with the Gaelic League in 1911, the term ‘Seóinín’ was noted to mean a “Shoneen or Jackeen” described as “a West Briton who copies the English and cringes to them.”
The GPO before independence, complete with Union flags.
One of the few Bureau of Military History Witness Statements (essentially the recollections of participants in the Irish revolution, collected decades later) that references the term ‘Jackeen’ comes from Kevin O’Sheil, who also described the peculiarities of those in districts which were more decidedly Unionist in outlook:
The typical Rathminsian, and even more so the typical Rathgarian, was a remarkable type. To begin with, he had developed a most peculiar accent which, immediately when he opened his mouth, revealed his venue. It is quite impossible to describe the accent in mere words, and it is greatly to be regretted that it disappeared before the coming of the recording.
In more recent times, ‘Jackeen’ is primarily a term in jest between GAA fans, but it has also been used politically on occasion still. In 1990, a Dáil Deputy told a meeting in Castlebar that “The dignity of the people is being trampled on by Dublin ‘Jackeens’ who don’t understand how small farmers in the West of Ireland operate.” Just like the tired talk of the ‘Dublin Media’ and ‘Dublin Establishment’, Jim Higgins was merely using it to differentiate a Dublin based government from the ‘Plain People of Ireland’.
In time, the term ‘West Briton’ (and later ‘West Brit’) became the preferred insult to level against those deemed Unionist in political outlook, or somehow ashamed of Irish identity. Unlike ‘Jackeen’, it could be applied to anyone on the island. In Westminster, the Unionist MP Thomas Spring Rice made it clear in 1834 that “I should prefer the name of West Britain to that of Ireland.” Captain R. Henderson remembered in his Bureau of Military History Witness Statement that at the time of the Rising, “the West Britons were resentful at this revolt against English domination, the British Army Separation Allowance element in its then ignorance was infuriated against the soldiers of Irish freedom.”
Regardless of what it may have meant in the past to different people at different times, Dubliners would come to embrace the term ironically. In the glory days of 1970s GAA in Dublin, the homemade banners proclaimed that ‘The Jacks Are Back’. While we’re not sure where it came from, it’s a term that is likely to stick around as a light-hearted jibe towards Dubs.
