First Contacts- Ireland
Hello all
Hoping this finds you well, despite this bitterly cold weather- just when you think how spring seems to be springing, it's another round of warm coats and sneezes...it's the time of year when we long for summer, for beaches and cocktails and warmth on the skin; and while we remember it, we can't quite believe it will ever be possible to walk out the door in shorts and a tshirt again. Many of us fill in our evenings with holiday porn, and turn our dreams into bookings, marking our escape routes into the calendar- a chunk of freedom with a soft centre of excitement.
I am no less excited about planning this trip, even though it begins at summer's end. I aim to begin on or as close as possible to the 9th September, the new moon. In many cultures around the world, it is traditionally seen as an auspicious time to begin new projects; perhaps I am merely susceptible to superstition, but I have observed in my own energy levels over the years that it often is the day when I feel a renewed vigour, and feel inspired to begin something I may have been planning and putting off. Apart from that, with the low light pollution, and the lack of the moon, the stars at night will be abundant (clouds aside...) and it feels appropriate to begin then, under those stars which have guided sailors along this coastline for time immemorial.
I will be flying from London into Galway, and the first place I will visit and buy yarn is at the Sheep and Wool Centre in Leenane/Leenaun. This is in the Connemara, an area with many Irish speakers, and the home of a music style bearing many rhythmic and vocal similarities to the music of Western Morocco, the final destination of the journey. Perhaps listening to some of this music there will imprint on my mind throughout the trip, reminding of the beginning and heralding the end. This centre is primarily a museum, and was founded in the hope of raising awareness and protecting the traditional woollen crafts of the Connemara; carding, spinning, weaving and knitting, and they also sell locally produced wool. I'll be hooking my first scarf, and the first piece of the blanket on the bus back to Galway, spending the night there and the next morning shopping for yarn for the next stage...and so on. I will be spending 10 days on the island, with a bit of help from the Irish bus company, I plan to go through Ennis, Limerick, Tralee, Killarney, Cork, Youghal, Waterford and onto Rosslare to catch the ferry to Roscoff in Brittany. These are the main bus route stopping places, but this next week involves me researching yarn shops, which may be in smaller towns close to these, or on farms/mills I can visit.
Ireland is a country I have little personal knowledge of- I have a lot of roots there, though too far back for connections to have been maintained. My mother's mother Kathleen McLoughlin, was the daughter of an Irishman and her mother's family were musicians from Lambeth. Her mother died when she was an infant, and her father being involved in activities which didn't make him a suitable single dad, she was brought up in Dalston by her aunt and her aunt's Italian boyfriend. Despite her very Irish name, and Catholic schooling, she didn't really have much cultural connection to Ireland, and considered herself very much a Londoner. I never met her though, she died a few weeks before I was born. I wonder if she would be happy that one of her grandchildren would be making a journey along the Irish coastline- or if she would think I was a fool to be leaving London!
According to DNA tests, my oldest paternal ancestor could apparently be found in central/west Ireland many generations ago. My father's father was from Glasgow with both Catholic and Protestant parents, from Northern Ireland. The Troubles were very much echoed in this Scottish city so close across the sea, and to a certain extent still are. It seems to be easy for patriotic British people to forget the damage it has done to its neighbouring emerald Isle over the centuries, at times maintain the insulting stereotypes of simple-minded backward people, or more recently of potential terrorists. Discrimination against the Irish was rife until very very recently, really until another group of people, equally insultingly, became the potential terrorists. But Ireland was one of the first places, and its people among the first to have been exploited and impoverished by the British establishment; was this something of a blueprint for their future global colonies? Certainly many tactics of divide and rule, and of denigrating the status of the native language were employed here too. Scots were encouraged and given land to settle in the northernmost province of Ireland, Ulster, creating a mixed- but not necessarily blended- cultural background. Generations later, the descendants of both the Ulster Scots and the Ulster Irish found themselves having to choose where their loyalties lay...
But Irish culture, despite colonialism, is alive and well, and I look forward to beginning my journey in a part of the island where Irish is still spoken, beside the Atlantic Ocean in the Connemara, County Galway.
Love and light to you all, Billy xxx
Hoping this finds you well, despite this bitterly cold weather- just when you think how spring seems to be springing, it's another round of warm coats and sneezes...it's the time of year when we long for summer, for beaches and cocktails and warmth on the skin; and while we remember it, we can't quite believe it will ever be possible to walk out the door in shorts and a tshirt again. Many of us fill in our evenings with holiday porn, and turn our dreams into bookings, marking our escape routes into the calendar- a chunk of freedom with a soft centre of excitement.
I am no less excited about planning this trip, even though it begins at summer's end. I aim to begin on or as close as possible to the 9th September, the new moon. In many cultures around the world, it is traditionally seen as an auspicious time to begin new projects; perhaps I am merely susceptible to superstition, but I have observed in my own energy levels over the years that it often is the day when I feel a renewed vigour, and feel inspired to begin something I may have been planning and putting off. Apart from that, with the low light pollution, and the lack of the moon, the stars at night will be abundant (clouds aside...) and it feels appropriate to begin then, under those stars which have guided sailors along this coastline for time immemorial.
I will be flying from London into Galway, and the first place I will visit and buy yarn is at the Sheep and Wool Centre in Leenane/Leenaun. This is in the Connemara, an area with many Irish speakers, and the home of a music style bearing many rhythmic and vocal similarities to the music of Western Morocco, the final destination of the journey. Perhaps listening to some of this music there will imprint on my mind throughout the trip, reminding of the beginning and heralding the end. This centre is primarily a museum, and was founded in the hope of raising awareness and protecting the traditional woollen crafts of the Connemara; carding, spinning, weaving and knitting, and they also sell locally produced wool. I'll be hooking my first scarf, and the first piece of the blanket on the bus back to Galway, spending the night there and the next morning shopping for yarn for the next stage...and so on. I will be spending 10 days on the island, with a bit of help from the Irish bus company, I plan to go through Ennis, Limerick, Tralee, Killarney, Cork, Youghal, Waterford and onto Rosslare to catch the ferry to Roscoff in Brittany. These are the main bus route stopping places, but this next week involves me researching yarn shops, which may be in smaller towns close to these, or on farms/mills I can visit.
Ireland is a country I have little personal knowledge of- I have a lot of roots there, though too far back for connections to have been maintained. My mother's mother Kathleen McLoughlin, was the daughter of an Irishman and her mother's family were musicians from Lambeth. Her mother died when she was an infant, and her father being involved in activities which didn't make him a suitable single dad, she was brought up in Dalston by her aunt and her aunt's Italian boyfriend. Despite her very Irish name, and Catholic schooling, she didn't really have much cultural connection to Ireland, and considered herself very much a Londoner. I never met her though, she died a few weeks before I was born. I wonder if she would be happy that one of her grandchildren would be making a journey along the Irish coastline- or if she would think I was a fool to be leaving London!
According to DNA tests, my oldest paternal ancestor could apparently be found in central/west Ireland many generations ago. My father's father was from Glasgow with both Catholic and Protestant parents, from Northern Ireland. The Troubles were very much echoed in this Scottish city so close across the sea, and to a certain extent still are. It seems to be easy for patriotic British people to forget the damage it has done to its neighbouring emerald Isle over the centuries, at times maintain the insulting stereotypes of simple-minded backward people, or more recently of potential terrorists. Discrimination against the Irish was rife until very very recently, really until another group of people, equally insultingly, became the potential terrorists. But Ireland was one of the first places, and its people among the first to have been exploited and impoverished by the British establishment; was this something of a blueprint for their future global colonies? Certainly many tactics of divide and rule, and of denigrating the status of the native language were employed here too. Scots were encouraged and given land to settle in the northernmost province of Ireland, Ulster, creating a mixed- but not necessarily blended- cultural background. Generations later, the descendants of both the Ulster Scots and the Ulster Irish found themselves having to choose where their loyalties lay...
But Irish culture, despite colonialism, is alive and well, and I look forward to beginning my journey in a part of the island where Irish is still spoken, beside the Atlantic Ocean in the Connemara, County Galway.
Love and light to you all, Billy xxx
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