A Brief Transformation

I love books. I wander into quirky little bookstores, lose myself in late-night reading binges, find inspiration and wisdom and adventure. Today I realized just why I love books. Books make things beautiful. Oftentimes I miss the meaning in my own life until I write it down, because the very act of doing so lends every event significance and character. Even ugly, painful, or sad things become beautiful in books.
I am on what is perhaps one of the greatest adventures of my life right now, spending five and a half months living in Ireland. I have dreamed of this for years. Yet dreams and adventures are full of a surprising number of mundane matters and frustrating obstacles, like the phone company that ripped me off and the two hours I spent in phone stores when I would otherwise have been out "adventuring" in the uncommonly sunny Irish autumn afternoon. On the verge of tears and mourning my wasted Euros I suddenly noticed a bookstore I had unknowingly bypassed several times, and went right in. I asked the man working there what his favorite books were, bought two of them, and emerged to find Dublin transformed. Once more the cobblestone streets beckoned, the old brick and stone buildings hinted at the centuries of history they have silently witnessed, and the rare treat of a blue sky promised something wonderful.


Dublin was magical and romantic in all its bustle and I wandered over to St. Stephen's Green, strolled by the pubs as the streetlights started to come on, and wondered what Dublin had in store for me. Just the very act of going into a bookstore, and the faith in literature that brought me there, gave me newer and happier eyes with which to see Dublin. If my afternoon were written down, it would sound quite romantic: walking on Grafton Street, dropping coins for the street musicians, listening to the Garda man ring a bell to notify people that Stephen's Green was closing for the evening... if written it would all be a dreamy haze of quickly glimpsed and blended details, and it would all be there for a reason. I guess that's what is wonderful about books- everything is there for a reason. If my life were a book those few wasted Euros at Vodafone would be significant, would be set in the context of some sort of personal transformation or set of dramatic events or portrait of life in a city. Books make the ordinary a work of art, and just enjoying the presence of a few books turned a frustrating afternoon into several hours of romantic dreaming in a faraway land I had finally reached.

And then I had to try and get that damn new SIM card working... "real life" jars like the unpredictable, jerky Dublin buses. But I've written them down, those buses, and they are now characters in my beautiful story of life in Dublin.

Roots in County Clare

Mary McInerney of Cahergal, 1925.
Photo taken from "Newmarket on Fergus: Looking Back"
compiled by Brendan P. Arthur.

Living with a host family gives one a totally different experience of traveling than staying in a hostel or apartment. Here, at Cahergal Farmhouse with the McInerney family, I am surrounded by things like this.

Noreen's uncle, a Bishop, with
the Pope

                                    The Murphy sisters, whose family owned Cahergal before one of the few Murphy daughters who didn't become a nun married a McInerney.

They have lived on this property, first in the smaller guest house and now in the big main B&B, for 4 generations. As Noreen told me the other day, her husband Michael was born here. So was his father, and so was his grandmother. And long before then, all the way back in the 1300s, this land was McInerney land. One local Luke McInerney has published several articles on his medieval ancestors, who can be traced all the way back to their progenitor Donnchadh Mac Conmara, who lived during the 1100s (See article by Luke McInerney). The McInerneys of history built some of the structures that developed into the castles, churches, and, well, bed and breakfasts that dot this landscape. They owned land that I've walked on, and in fact murdered each other over it during a dispute in the 1500s. Land is livelihood. As Michael reiterates, it's all in the grass. His horses grow strong on it and his cattle grow fat. He tends his hundred or so acres day in and day out, with the help of his sons when they're here. Whether they'll raise their families here too is yet to be seen; as Noreen resignedly tells a curious neighbor in for a visit, no marriages yet. But family ties run strong and roots run deep. In contrast, only one of my parents was born 3,000 miles away from the other, and my maternal grandfather came all the way from Poland. There were no Copelands in California before probably about the 1800s. The Murphys, one of whom was Michael's grandmother, were living in Cahergal then, and their house was already at least 100 years old.
And now for a little family history.

Patrick and Bridget Murphy were prosperous farmers with 13 children, 9 of whom traveled the world as nuns and others who died young but one, just one, who stayed, and married one of those McInerneys who in the 1600s were called "a great ancient noble family" (see Luke McInerney footnote 30). So it is that the doors of the guest bedrooms where so many tourists spend a night before heading to Shannon Airport bear a McInerney coat of arms. 

Photo taken from the article "My Mother Taught me How to Pray" by Caitriona Clear

Michael's dad was a farmer, and this property was much different then. For one thing, the 300 year old guest house didn't have solar panels yet. The building that is now the B&B was one story, not two. There was a dirt (or, sometimes, mud) driveway instead of a paved one. It wasn't uncommon to see people using horses to plow their fields.  

Today Cahergal is a successful, modern business: fancy guest bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms, energy efficient appliances, a location right by the Shannon Airport, etc. People stop in here for a night before they jet back home, or like me they live here for a while as a volunteer or student on a practical experience assignment. French, Czech, German, Austrian, and now American girls have stayed here to take endless photos of the cattle and get overstuffed on Noreen's homemade scones. What is it that draws us here, to an old Irish farm? Upon hearing that I could stay in a 300 year old house on a working Irish farm, I jumped at the opportunity. What is it about age, history, and the continuation of a way of life for generations, that makes us want to be a part of it? I'm going to disappoint my readers by saying I don't quite know. What I do know is that, after walking the fields, scrubbing the floors, and welcoming the travelers much like myself, I have put down some young roots in this old soil. My only Irish ancestor came to the U.S. right around when the Murphys were raising their 13 children, so I can't claim the kind of family connection to the land that so many Irish families here have; but something about continuing a way of life through generations, and living in a place where the everyday presence of history makes it feel as close to the skin as one's own blood, makes me feel like this is home. I may be moving to Cork tomorrow, and perhaps I'll find some connection there too, but at least one part of my wandering mutt of an American self has become a native of County Clare. 

Cortney Copeland of Cahergal, 2011