In the County of Mayo, in the constabulary district of Belmullet, in the sub-division of Bangor, in the Poor Law Union of Belmullet, in the District Electoral Division of Glenamoy, in the Parliamentary Division of Mayo North, in the Townland of Glencullen Lower, in the Barony of Erris, in the Parish of Kilcommon, my mother, Evelyn Roisin ni Ciaran was born.
Now she lies buried in Aughaval cemetery, in the ancient parish of Aughaval, near the modern town of Westport, in the same County of Mayo. Her headstone is now erected over her final resting place, and on it you will find the dates of her coming and going – 5th September 1916 and 23rd October 2010. You will also read on that headstone the name of her husband, Michael Fahy, who died in 1988, and whose body lies buried in his native town of Tyldesley, near Manchester.
On my desk, at the left hand corner there is a photograph of these two people, recently reunited after the separation of war, walking down O’Connell Street in Dublin, on their belated honeymoon, and smiling shyly away from the lens of the street photographer who captured the happy couple in a magnificent moment. War over, life re-starting, an interrupted love story taken up, sun shining, street bustling, shadows dancing, all before them.
It was Easter Week 1946. After a few days in Dublin, the young couple went down to the West. There are photos somewhere of Mammy sitting on the rocks at the edge of Loch Conn, photos that Daddy took. I was conceived during that holiday, not in Dublin, but in the old house of my aunt Sarah. I can truly say I started life in the Barony of Erris, in the Townland of Glencullen.
There was talk at that time of Daddy possibly getting work at a garage in Bangor, and the family home being established on that western shore, but coalmines promised better wages, and so we, children, grew up with Lancashire accents, and not the lilt of the West. Mayo became for us, not home, but home from home, the place of everlasting pilgrimage, the return to roots and relations.
I had two homes as a child, the land of my father in Tyldesley, and the land of my mother in Erris. One is the land of cobbled street and factories, childhood friends and northern twang. The other is a land of endless horizons, mountains, moorland, open skies, river and lake, and somewhere near, the sea. And cousins, cousins who spoke English in an unheard of Irish way, different and immensely entertaining.
Lancashire was the home of realism, rain and routine, of autumn darkness, winter cold and spring’s promise. Erris was the land of summer sunshine, adventure travel, and dreams. In us, children, these two places co-existed and coalesced. They both conspired to make us who and what we are. In death, our parents’ graves are markers, reminding us where we came from. The workaday world of industrial Lancashire is in our blood, just as the wildest reaches of Erris inhabit and haunt our psychic world.
On Mammy’s grave my Father’s name is written. And rightly so, for they came together and they made a home, a place of love into which we were born. They were two lovely people, my father and mother, and the power that gives me just thinking about it, is immense.
They are gone from us now, and soon it will be the six-month’s mind since our Mammy’s funeral. The soil has settled, our emotions too. The headstone is erected, and the words are inscribed. But there is no last word, no ending to this story.
My mother and my father have gone to God. And God is very near.
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Erris Poetry 