u/Hopeful-Remote9725

Everyone in Ireland will be familiar with the pejorative phrase 'taking the soup', referring to folk memory of soup kitchens during the famine offering aid if and only if those that needed it would convert from Catholicism to Protestantism.

How common place was this practice in reality? A few follow up questions; to what extent did this play a role in the anglicisation of the country (if any), and are a lot of Irish and Northern Irish Protestants today descended from 'soupers'?