Memorial service for Michael Collins at Saint Raphael's in San Rafael

 Memorial service for Michael Collins at Saint Raphael's in San Rafael.

Old Irish family stories emerging (photos)

We ran into my cousin Katie at the Nicasio Druid's Hall crab feed. Lovely surprise. Old Irish family stories emerging, overlapping, Buried history revealed. The mosaic of our lives. We'll visit her ranch at the foot of Black Mountain (Elephant Mountain!) Connection long time coming.

Finding new rellies on facebook

The Bantry & Manchester Walshes have found us in Facebook—it's about time, cousins! Hello all. I'm Jennie (Jane) Walsh Reilly's grandaughter. Please go to Geni and add your families.

I sent you Teresa Armstrong's link, there are 4 more links on my page. I'm waiting for Alan. Is Noel on FB? Go to my page to see the links.

BIG HINT: if last name is Walsh (or Armstrong), we're related. Grainne is Teresa's daughter—I had to look it up on Geni. These are all Paddy & Mary's kids (Bantry & Manchester.

Wasn't someone in Cardiff? Sinead? & Birmingham?).

Don't know about Frank & Bridie's kids (Tralee). Haven't had contact since the 70s.

The Walshes are a Nation Once Again—we're at 700 people on Geni & still growing!

And we're not done connecting with all the Nevada Walshes yet. Bea sent a story about Mike Malloy the Nevada Co DA. Look him up. Also Steve Walsh & family just joined. At this point-even a road map isn't helping tho Bea explained how we're related. Either a 2nd cousin or a 2nd cousin once removed. Not sure where he lives. Is he on FB? Maybe we need to start a Group page for all of us (the We're Related app isn't working).

Mike Malloy is in Reno, Nevada...he's my 2nd cousin; his father Emmett was Nellie Walsh Malloy's youngest.  Nellie was Old Pat's oldest child.  I've never met him.

So when's the next WALSH REUNION? Who's putting it on? Where? Who can put up 2-300 people at once?

We just need a flophouse large enough! I wonder if Jim Chanpie would let us make an encampment at Home Ranch? We all keep pestering him over they years. The Walshes  (all 700 of us) are his most frequent visitors.

The Norman Invasion

RE Sharon Doubiago's email (below) stating that "The Norman Invasion," was not an invasion from Norway.

NB It's hard to pinpoint race (racism) as reason for behaviour—take the Normans and the Northmen meeting on common ground—England—they were all related by blood and ancestry or country of origin. The larger story is a bit more complex that what seems on the surface.

Technically what Sharon wrote is true, but the Normans really were the NORSE men—Viking invaders from Norway (not modern day Norway—it included all of Scandinavia & Iceland) who raided Frankish Gaul in the 9th c and then the pirates settled in Normandy, or Northmannia— and eventually mingled with their cousins, the Frankish (Ostro- & Visigoths), and the surviving "Romanized" Gaulish Celts.

The North men, led by Rollo, were bought off, and settled there by Charles the Simple—to the detriment of the natives—so that they would leave the rest of France alone. They became paid mercenaries of the Frankish Crown.

It was just another very large raiding party except now the Vikings spoke Scandinavian-French!

What they were unable to do during the British Viking invasions—take over the entire island of England (though their Anglo-Saxon kin did get a good toe-hold), etc, they were able to so at the Battle of Hastings. England, lacking a clear successor, was already ravaged by the original opportunist Norsemen from Norway. King Harald. Canute.

Though technically, King Edward the Confessor was Norman already. He died in 1066 with no heir. So it was a free-for-all with Norway and Normandy both vying for the British crown.

(In reality—it was Norwegian brother literally fighting against brother for England. Norwegian King Harald & Tostig were estranged. Harald was supposed to rule for a term, then turn the throne over to Tostig but he bogarted. England was their battleground. They nearly slaughtered each other but kissed and made up then joined forces to snag the abandoned crown rolling across the castle floor but then they were killed at the Battle of Stamford...)

Edward's kin, William of Normandy jumped in to pluck the crown—but tho he was crowned 3 months later, he was met with English resistance and there was continuous civil war for five years.

William the Conqueror (Wales) & Edgar used Wales and Scotland as refuges and staging grounds.The whole of the west of Britain from Devon & Cornwall to Scotland was in turmoil (mostly what was left of the Celtic tribes—I might add). BTW, meanwhile, the opportunist Danes [more Norsemen!] invaded too.)

(NB The idea of one united kingdom is a red herring here—there was no one uber king of all of Britain. It was five years of pure and total carnage, and then some. But the history books tend not to play it out that way. Neater PR package.)

"Many of the Norman sources which survive today were written in order to JUSTIFY their actions, in response to Papal concern about the treatment of the native English by their Norman conquerors during this period."

A Nigerian poet once told me, "When two elephants fight, it's the grass that loses." England was the grass. Only there was a whole herd of Norsemen fighting each other.

Skirmishes continued in England and France with the Norman Plantagenets coming to power in 1150, a crisis in 1204 escalated into the Hundred Years War (1337-1453!)

So how was the Battle of Hastings a good thing? Predecessors to the Hatfield-McCoy with battles played out on a continental scale for nearly 400 years!

The Normans who came to Ireland had conscripted Welsh troops who settled (as THEIR land was taken by the Normans!)—so that becomes a little more complicated as it also refers to the Brythonic Celtic speaking Welsh under Strongbow.

William seized all of Britain and paid his nobles (some 5000-8000 total) in titles and someone else's land. First England, then Ireland. New tactic. Self perpetuating Norman Conquests. Some English lords were able to buy back their lands but William forced Norman marriages to English nobles, changed inheritance laws—and he displaced native aristocracy.

"William systematically dispossessed English landowners and conferred their property on his continental followers. The Domesday Book meticulously documents the impact of this colossal programme of expropriation, revealing that by 1086 only about 5% of land in England south of the Tees was left in English hands. Even this tiny residue was further diminished in the decades that followed, the elimination of native landholding being most complete in southern parts of the country.[32]

Natives were also soon purged from high governmental and ecclesiastical office. After 1075 all earldoms were held by Normans, while Englishmen were only occasionally appointed as sheriffs." ibid

Norman rule was so atrocious, most English aristocracy fled to Scotland, Scandinavia, Byzantium, Russia—the Black Sea.

Dubh = black (Irish) or dark, Iago = James. Your name, Sharon!

My Bantry family name, Walsh, refers to the Welsh. Whether it predated Strongbow's invasion, I don't know but I think it does because the Laws of Breffney predate the invasion. Brethach—Brannagh (as in Kenneth) all are the Gaeilc form of Walsh.

Sharon Doubiago's email written to Maryna in response to John Bennet's piece on Norwegians & Their Long Boats Pillaging the Coastline of our Hearts

Last night (early this morning) I read Wikipaedia's accounts of both the Battle of Hastings, 1066, and Mary Queen of Scots. Can you believe I have never known either of these, tho both names were uttered as in daily prayer in my childhood. Suddenly, and finally, the history coalezes, fits. (I just hated Queens when I was a girl. And I so loved knowing something about the English, a major river (root) I was a part of).

How ignorant, how stupid and blind one can be all the way. Only last night (this morning) did I understand "The Norman Invasion," the term so often uttered by my grandmother, Lura Maude Chitwood Edens, was NOT an invasion from Norway!

And that Mary Queen of Scots (raised in France--Normandy? --was the Catholic mother of King James, his Bible. holy fuck!

There's a funny little sentence: about how the Norman invasion (William the Conquerer!) meant, wonderfully, phew!, that England was Europeanized, saved from being Scandanavian.

Are we being racist?

My great-grandmother was a Sullivan

Jane Rose Sullivan Walsh

My great-grandmother was a Sullivan who married a Walsh. They married into the McCarthy family as well. My grandmother was Walsh who married a Reilly. I also have Sullivan 2nd & 3rd cousins In San Francisco.

There are a lot of other Sullivans we think we're related to. There's a Sullivan family in San Geronimo Valley, they even look like us. But without family records it would be very hard to prove much of anything in Ireland before the 1860s as most church records were destroyed.

Marin wasn't particularly Irish. It was an admixture. It did however, have large immigrant groups from the Azores, Ireland, Italy, etc. I remember my grandmother pointing out the Italian Swiss colony. Some moved to Asti.

Our family had a summer home in West Marin that became their full time home. I think many San Franciscan families did that. It was not a wealthy enclave. Not like today.

Also, when there was no cure for TB, and other infectious diseases, it was thought that moving to the country would improve one's chances of surviving. It has a long tradition dating back to the mission days at San Rafael when acolytes were shipped to San Rafael to heal, but few Natives survived European diseases.

During the '06 quake, and fire, most people had no place to live, so many moved to Marin. There were a lot of Irish in San Francisco. My grandfather was responsible for, and patrolled a tent city on one of the hills. Maybe Lone Mountain.

Then, during the Depression, more people moved to Marin from San Francisco as it was easier to survive in Marin. My grandfather commuted by train and ferry to San Francisco.

My grandmother's garden on Coomb anOr in Forest Knolls fed more than one family and she had eight kids. The place looked just like her father's farm in Bantry, hence the name.

One St. Patrick's Day I was teaching kids poetry in Alexander Valley and there was a little party and one of the room mothers and I got to talking, comparing Irish last names.

Imagine this conversation:

My family are Sullivans and Walshes.

Yeah? Funny. So are mine.

Mine are from Bantry.

You're kidding. So are mine.

Get out! Our family had a ranch in Nevada.

So did we. Really.

Are you kidding? Omigawd, were you related to Wild Bill Walsh?

Yeah, he was my grandfather.

No way. He was my great uncle, my grandmother's brother. That makes us, let's see, 2nd cousins. We're related. We're actually related! (More screams, etc). It happened, it really happened like that.

And here I had been teaching her young daughter, Samantha Estomba poetry—not knowing we were 2nd cousins once removed. We were related. I must admit we had hit it off like a house afire.

AVS notes: Nancy Walsh Estomba

I taught poetry today in Peggy Maddock's 3rd grade class at Alexander Valley School and one of the mothers brought in some treats. Green cookies, and green punch. It was St. Patrick's Day, after all. I introduced Neil to them and Nancy Estomba said her maiden name was Walsh…

I jokingly said, Oh, we're probably related, not thinking it was true. Where from? I asked. Cork, she said but she didn't know what town.

So I asked her her grandfather's name. And she answered, Bill. He came to San Francisco and had a ranch in Nevada. The hairs on my arms stood up. You mean Wild Bill of Home Ranch? I said. She said, Yes.

Oh my God we are really related, we're second cousins! I yelled, hugging her. She did look related. And I told her stories of her grandfather, and of Wild Bill, the ranch, and the name of the Irish town her family was from. All in a day's work.

Which meant, my favorite 3rd grade poet in the class, Samantha Estomba was really my cousin. The news spread through the school like wildfire. Kids looked at me with new eyes. Not a stranger to the valley, but one of their own.

3/17/2000

Anim Chara

The cats formed semi-colons at the foot of my bed: intensity overwhelms those who don’t understand the Celtic temperament. As if it were my fault, I dream of people before I meet them. A good Cartesian response to the unmeasurable.

I know craziness second-hand, my mother’s indulgements—influenced by the drug-induced ’60s & ’70s. Then, my grandmother also spent her free time wandered about the house muttering curses to Cromwell, the Anglo Saxons & Jutes. The sassanach, she spat.

When I was a child, I thought they were swear words. I knew they were bad, very bad, that I mustn’t forget my history. Who we are, where we came from. And when I recognize “kin” so far from home, I am overwhelmed. It’s a rare and pleasurable thing to meet like-minded souls.

At 20, I knew I was different than others. . . I‘ve learned that the doors of perception don’t open for everyone: if so, forgive my trespass. There’s an Irish word for it: anim chara (soul/heart friend).

To sleep, to dream. . . Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine: people live in one another’s shadows. I dreamed I had to memorize 5 lines in Welsh—it was all a jumble of sounds, with no images to hang onto. I no sooner got one line down, when it forced out the one preceding it, and so on through the night. I can’t even begin to pronounce Welsh, I barely know the rules of Irish. I awoke with the cadence of another language in my head. Perhaps this is the Welsh poet Paul Evan’s parting gift to me. Pay attention to the rhythms. Teachers come in the most surprising forms.

Once Vins van Neervan and I went to Leuven in Belgium where he went to University to study philosophy. Wandering Marika's city, we stumbled upon an arch with Old Irish enscribed on the lintel.

To my surprise, I was able to decipher it. . . perhaps one of the few visitors able to do so in the past several hundred years. We found the gates to a college founded by Irish monks in the so-called Dark Ages. And here we are, archaic sentinels from a culture (and languages) on the verge of extinction for nearly as many centuries. And we’ve so rudely taken a long time dyin’ at that.

The Celts are going, the Celts are going at last. Hurrah! Soon a Celt on the streets of Dublin will be as rare as seeing an Indian on the streets of Manhattan.—British Government, ca. 1847.

In my family, we eat sodabread with tea, croon Irish songs when the uisge beatha gets the better of us: Oh the praties they grow small. . .

My grandmother, Jennie (Sínead) Walsh Reilly, never let us forget our history: 1 to 4.5 million dead from the Famine Years. We managed to hold onto our farms: the Walshes, and Sullivans of Bantry—at Coomb an n-Or; Gort na Sgrena; the Reillys and Duffys of Long Kesh, Fioragh and Drogheda on my grandfather’s side.

They came to America in 1919 and 1904, respectively. They were active in the Gaelic League, my grandfather was one of the movers and shakers of the Knights of the Red Branch in San Francisco, the IRA gunrunning story I’ve told before.

When Lord Russell said: the famine is good, teach ’em a lesson, the Choctaw Indian nation collected something to the tune of $212 for food; they sent us maize. Too late. Coffin ships to America. Slavers to the Barbados. From the Celtic Fringe to the Celtic diaspora. All those children sold in slavery: this is why so many Blacks have Irish surnames, blue eyes and freckles.

They say there was enough food in Ireland to feed 20 million. Instead we fed the British with our bones. Their sheep replaced us. But we survived. Sínn Fein: Ourselves, alone, she said, Never forget. Use their language against them, she said.

This, my inheritance. Slainte Gael macushla mo chroidhe. During the famine years, ships filled with Irish cattle and grain sailed for Britain while we died with grass stains on our teeth. Béal na blát: from the mouth of flowers. I am allergic to both corn and potatoes (as well as hazelnuts—the kernel of knowledge).

My father’s history I know very little of: Joseph Hurley from County Cork. There’s a Rebel Cork connection, but my paternal grandmother, Viola Heaney was born in San Francisco. Something about Lace Curtain Irish, that may be a rumor, but I have a sideboard of heavy Irish crystal.

Odd that I might be distantly related to Séamus Heaney. . . At Poetry International in 1993, I told him of this connection, he laughed, called me coozin, giving me a big smacker. We sang Irish songs, lifted our glasses high.

I told him of my grandfather’s IRA connections, I was surprised to learn he knew of my grandfather’s friend Liam Mellows. And of course, Parnell. All this fragmented history, my grandmother literally cursing Cromwell till her dying day.

Something struck me about our having a racial lack of confidence—rang a bell: my grandmother said similar words to that effect. The fighting underdog. I wish I knew more about our Welsh connections, other than Strongbow, and the Norman Invasion: Hibernius ipsis Hiberniores.

My grandmother maintained we got the name Walsh because we came from Wales—what, 1000 years ago? A bit distant. My great-grandfather Michael Walsh raised fast horses, drove cattle between bonfires at Lúgnasadh to ensure fertility. Ironically Walsh/Welsh means foreigner in the Germanic, wealas. An Anglo Saxon appellation?

One of Alexander of Macedonia’s generals during negotiation of a peace treaty, queried a Celtic chieftain: What do Celts fear most? The Gaul replied in formal address: That the sky should fall upon our heads.

Slogan: sluagh garim, a Celtic battle cry, furor is to blood-summon. How does one come to terms with: Cenedl heb raith; cenedl heb galon (a nation without a language; a nation without a heart). I prefer phrases like Tá grá agam ort or Yr wyf yn du garu to the names of war. Glamour, corrupted from grammar, this rough magic by which we strike. It’s in the blood. The dark, threatening sky. Again.

My anim is Maureen/Little Mairi/Mara/Maura (bitter herbs or small rebellion) not the more common Muire (mother of God). I prefer my crib-Irish: she of the sea.

Mor could be translated as great, or muir/ sea, depending on the fada. The Mórríghan is great goddess of the sea. Rí is royalty. The shapechanger war goddess Morrigu isn’t exactly milquetoast, there are others I’d prefer to emulate. At least she doesn’t lie.

© 1997? Maureen Hurley (Originally a letter poem to the Chilean poet Waldo Rojas Serreno)