View of Carlingford from the sea
Memories
Memories containing the words .
Shelagh O'Neill
29 January 2017
I remember returning home with my father Anthony in 2005 to visit Glenmore where his own father John was born in 1905. I say returning home, as I had never been to Glenmore before, but when I was there I felt like a salmon feels when it finally reaches its destination after traveling thousands of miles across the ocean to where it was born. My father himself had only been back once before with granddad in 1938 when he was just 12 years old and they had walked the whole way from Dundalk station to Glenmore. My father stayed next door with the Donnelly family and remembers being very embarrassed at staying with a lot of girls! He remembers my Great Grandmother, Mary O'Neill (ne Reilly) sitting in the corner of the old house dressed all in black. My father also vividly remembers the old Glenmore church with it's arch and slabs of stone laid by his ancestors, so much so we spent hours driving round trying to find it! Only to discover it had been rebuilt and a car park was now in it's place. That's progress! He recalled to me walking to the top of Slieve Foy with two of his cousins, Jerry and Albert and remembered how he cried when he reached the top he was so scared. He felt he was on top of the world. When we finally made it back to the top together fifty five year later he laughed at how he had felt back then as a boy and also laughed to his cousins Jerry and Albert who were no longer there that he wasn't crying now! Instead he has brought me home, his daughter, Shelagh who had made my own special journey with him to be there. Home again. We went to see Mary Reilly who lived up from the old house and as soon as I walked through the door she said she felt like crying as I looked the image of my Great Grandmother Mary. I knew I had come home again. I had always felt so tied to Ireland but as my mother and father had separated when I was just three I had never known why. So many unanswered questions. Great Granmother Mary and Great Grandad Andrew had had eight children, Mary (Minnie), Tom, Alice (who died aged 8), Elizabeth (who emigrated to Australia), John, Andrew, Peter and James. All of the children were the best turned out children you could imagine and how Mary was able to do that in the little cottage they all live in will always amaze me. When I was taken to the house, now a just a shed, I stood and wept. How she must have felt seeing all of her children leave her and emigrate to find work must have broken her heart. I can't imagine it. I feel so grateful that I was able to make it back to Glenmore with my father and see where we came from before he passed away last November. We spent so much of our lives apart, but walking up that hill together we found not just each other but how our roots were so entwined with one another and with Glenmore which will always stay with me forever. More > (0 comments)
Gabrielle Whitty (Woods)
29 January 2017
Coming Home.
The pain of leaving this place could only be endured with the certain knowledge that we would return. So when that day arrived Daddy was always the one to collect who ever had been away. Driving home filled with excitement, waiting for that first glimpse of the mountains just after Dunleer. Grandchildren coming from Kerry re-named them Papa's Mountains because they knew they were nearly there. Coming in the old Dundalk road, past The Bush,until we came to the Cross of Grange, turning left here, and up and up we climbed until be were at the highest part of the road. Daddy would stop the car and taking in the sweep of the Mourns, the blue of the Lough, Maeve's Gap, Finn lying along the crest of Slieve Foy, he would turn to the one who had been away and say,
"You see it was here all the time just waiting for you"More > (0 comments)
Kevin Woods
29 January 2017
I was asked to write a short piece for an Irish American Mag.called "The Spirit of Ireland" for the year of The Gathering 2013.
I remember the last train pulling into Carlingford Co. Louth in 1951. I was seven then. I remember “the big people” talking about how disastrous it would be for the locality. I could see no consequence for me .As a child I was ok about it. My father was the county state solicitor and held in high regard along with teachers, doctors and clergy. Then there were the rest! We regarded ourselves then as a classless society unlike the other crowd across the water.
As I reached my teenage years the impact of the railway closing began to dawn on me. Our town had lost its vibrancy, derelict buildings were the order of the day, men stood on corners, pitch and toss became a source of income for some or a loss for many. There wasn’t much happening!
I remember Joe Finegan leaving for Boston. There was a collection for him in the town and a presentation made to him at a dance in the parochial hall. Everyone knew it was goodbye. We wouldn’t be seeing Joe again and many other Joe’s followed.
My father was delighted when my brother followed him in his footsteps. He was even more delighted when another one was ordained a priest. He was less than enthusiastic when I told him that I wanted to be a salesman and close to distraught when my younger brother decided to run a chip van.
By the late 60s my uncle, a parish priest working with the Irish Centre in London organised a special train from London to Holyhead called “The Homeward Special”. He arranged a cheap fare to give Irish labourers a chance to come back home. It was packed but it’s also likely that that those who still couldn’t afford even that fare never saw Ireland again. When the boat docked in Dúnlaoire the hardest of men cried as they stepped off onto Irish soil.
The tears didn’t come only when they embraced a love one they came as they stepped off the boat. I was there. I saw them and in my physic I understood.
It is hard to image today in this world of plenty and cheap flights that such a thing happened such a short time ago. They had returned from a country not far away and were so grateful just to be “home”.
I don’t believe that there is another race with a reputation for being hard fighting drinking men who would cry in such circumstances. Poets - Yes. Writers –Yes. But these men; No!
There is something in Irish people that appears to be uniquely ours. It is an affinity we have with the place that lies deep in our physic. It is a desire that is passed on in a mysterious way through genes to generations that only know the place from the words of their forefathers. There are generations of citizens of other countries who still call themselves Irish who have never been here but dream of the day they will be. It is stamped in the itinerary of their lives. To be a part of it is to be a part of the spirit of Ireland
My parents are both gone to their reward. My father grew to love the openness of the new world when free education allowed us all to be equal – a classless society. He told me many a time I was a pretty good salesman and he came to love my brother’s chips.
Come home for the Gathering it’s in your genes.
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