Ireland. We arrived early in the morning by the ferry from west Scotland, figured we needed to get to the outskirts of Belfast to hitchhike, passed flagrant support for the old empire,
and hightailed it south to a hitching point on the verge of a slip road, that went both south and west – our best chance of getting to Galway.
It took around thirty minutes before Yvonne picked us up in her camper and hurled us southward for about an hour, yarning with Meg about how the goddess is present here in Eíre.
We were in the hands of the goddess and her muse, wild chance, and in the flow of it were offered two more lifts before we landed in Kells.
Kells, where the famous book was once held (between Iona where it originated and Dublin where it now resides), is where the goddess temporarily lost us, or rather we lost her.
We spent hours trying to thumb a lift and eventually we stole into a pub’s free wifi, found a local bus route, walked back across town, flagged the driver, and stepped onboard.
Not so fast! We didn’t have a bus card or any Euros, so the driver refused us until a kind punter shouted us tickets, stating we just merely pay it forward. 🙏🏽
Two buses and a train later, we reached Galway just before midnight, 18 hours after we woke in our tent in Stranraer, west Scotland. We slept long that night in a house belonging to some friends from home, and eventually we woke and took the gentle morning sun.
Around the corner was an independent grocery store where we bought some goodies. After cooking breakfast, we set out for a big drift, finding a historical edge, along the River Corrib.
the tourist centre,
and some of the better moulds of Galway.
Drawn to all the waters that have determined the planning of the city,
we swam in the Atlantic on the days it was warm.
It was good to finally stop and catch our breath.
Salthill, the coastal suburb where we stayed, has become gentrified in recent years, although the tough past was still present in the backstreets.
During the week we left the small city on a number of day trips. Fields, forests, animals and wild spaces called us.
We bussed to the little town of Loughrea, walked the village streets,
beheld the agri-religious present.
and walked out of town for three miles,
to Feara Bréige, otherwise known as The Seven Monuments or the Moanmore East Stone, a ceremonial site that dates back around 3000-5000 years.
Patrick had earlier found a small, pierced stone on the beach at Salthill, collected up some cabbage palm leaves to strip for cordage, and made this little neck piece,
for Woody on the last day of his 13th year.
We stayed awhile, contemplating our lineages, the ceremonial approaches we are part of back home, all the cultures, chance encounters, lands and peoples who brought us to now.
We left some wool from sacred Scorhill in Dartmoor as an offering,
and continued our journey south. We had a fair distance to walk to our screening later in the day and set off, savouring the bounty of blackberries –
gifts of the goddess.
It was quite a walk and our thumbs were not smiled upon by the locals, many of whom lived in almost identical houses to this.
After a few hours of walking, one guy stopped in an old Landrover and spoke crudely, ‘Get in’. We baulked, beginning to describe our intended destination before he sped off almost crushing Patrick’s foot. Woah!
Half an hour later, as it began to rain, a woman travelling home from an organics workshop stopped and drove us the remaining miles to The Happy Pig, where we cut some wood and met Mark Boyle,
whose lovely stack we contributed to.
Mark, Marie-Thérèse and Olwyn, were three of the collaborators we met at The Happy Pig and the An Teach Saor community project. Marie-Thérèse took us on a tour of the gardens,
and the beautiful house Mark built.
This small timber framed and clad strawbale home has been made with an attention rare today, and sports a living, earthen roof, and a way of being in a garden as a friend to life.
In the cold and drizzle of the late afternoon, we felt deep kinship with the politaesthetics of this small, well-organised community,
bridging their way home, albeit fatigued by the many drop-ins who frequent the community, due to the attention garnered from Mark’s books.
Once it grew dark, about 25 people filled The Happy Pig for a screening of The New Peasants,
and afterwards we received a gift of inspired questions, met Paul Kingsnorth and spoke with him after the Q&A. What a day, which ended with a generous lift back to Galway by Keith, who gave Woody his spare hurling stick and ball.
The next day brought Woody and Patrick’s shared birthday. We rose early, bussed to Rossaveel,
where we conversed with both donkeys and horses,
and put Woody on a fishing charter with captain Kevin and several lovely families.
They headed out of the little harbour,
and on into deep water around the Aran Islands. Woody caught two fish, including the largest pollack of the day!
Patrick headed off to Inis Mór, one of the Aran islands, for a day of walking,
observing,
and soul labouring, some of which materialised in this:
We are so so grateful to our friends from home, Jo and Paul, for offering Paul’s home in Galway, where we could rest and source some local organic flour and bake bread each day,
drift more slowly and notice little delights on the streets,
discover the old economies, which bore nutritious meats from the tides,
and to behold the artisanal crafts of a time past, though soon to return.
Preciously, we had time to sit, work through complexes inherent in a family, including a young person transitioning to adulthood.
On our final day in Galway, Meg and Woody went fishing and exploring parts of the small city they’d not been too, while Patrick bussed south to Ennis in County Clare for family business.
In the grand new library of the town,
he was assisted by friendly librarian Peter, who set him up with old local newspaper mircofilms from 1830.
Originally, Patrick thought his paternal Eíre ancestor was Michael Daniel Connell from Loughill in Co Limerick but this was an Ancestry error. After establishing his apical ancestors from Clare were Michael Connell and Catherine Mary Killeen, Patrick then searched the records that linked them as parents of his great, great grandmother, Agnes C Connell. Michael was transported to Australia in 1830, and in the library Patrick found the newspaper where his case was reported under Ennis Assizes (second column).
He will write something more substantial later on the Terry Alt agrarian rebels of co. Clare that his forebear, Michael Connell was punished for being part of, and offer it as a kin piece to his Luddite post.
The things to know for now is that after Michael Connell received his ticket of leave and was essentially free, a prior love from Ennis, Catherine Mary Killeen, born in nearby Drumscliff in Co. Clare, joined him in Moruya and married him on Yuin peoples’ land. The now famous Mossy Point at Broulee was prior named Connells Point after him,
and he is described in the local historical records as being “an interesting chap, folk-lore has it that he was a sort of layabout bushranging, beachcombing squatter who lived there in the 1850s.”
Patrick headed from the Ennis library to the magical Drumcliff cemetery,
and found a number of Killeen’s in the district.
and a monument to the 2000 locals buried here who died during the potato famine a decade or so after Michael Connell was shipped off to NSW.
In 1860 the Irish revolutionary John Mitchel wrote, ‘The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.’
All the misery, all the suffering, all the ideological warfare across the globe because of the strange appropriations and misspellings of this guy – the spiritual sun/son –
who offered two very simple invitations – to upturn the money tables (collective accountability to the wellbeing of the village) and to be sovereign in our unique connection to the divine spark (the personal accountability required to keep our souls alive and nourished).
Before he left Ennis, Patrick connected with the divine spark within the musicians at the P Lucas establishment.
He had been on the look out for a session not mediated for American tourists, and found it here. Bliss!
The next day we travelled to Dublin by bus. By now we were conditioned to accept exhorbitant public transport costs in Eíre and besides, we had a date with Cian, a Dubliner, genealogist and historian, who helped organised our screening at The Happy Pig, and gifted us tickets to the Book of Kells at Trinity College, his old alma mater.
After beholding the old book under glass in a darkened room, Cian guided us through the Long Room, and spoke about the complex and troubled journey of Irish independence,
It was quite a room, and there was a lot to say and notice, including the absence of books removed for archival cleaning.
We are so grateful to Cian for his enthusiasm and support for us while in Eíre,
grateful to Niall, whose house we stayed in in Dublin, despite never meeting him. Grateful to Ali and Richard (from back home) whom we joined for a pint in the capital, and grateful to the goddess who is ever present in this rich and lyrical land, the only country to have a musical instrument as its official emblem.
~
Thank you to the many supporters and fellow journeyfolk of this whole month’s adventure. We’ve learned much, grown, remembered, questioned, changed and aged, and as we now turn for home we take with us in our full hearts a little of the communities of life from the mother countries of Albion, Cymru, Alba and Eíre.
