Ireland has been calling me since I was a girl. It called me in story and in song, in my dreams and in my waking thoughts. It was no easy task to get me to listen. There is a great big sea between the little coal region town where I grew up and that fair green isle almost 3,000 miles away, floating in the Atlantic off the coast of Europe. The mystique and romantic allure caught me first and immersed me in a literary sea of Irish tales and mythology. Then there was the music...
Perhaps the drone of the melodic bagpipes are a symbol in my head of the nation shared through my heritage. All I know is those pipes gave me chills from the first time I heard them. Not the traditional bagpipes, per se. Those are Scottish. The true Irish pipes - the Uilleann, or elbow, pipes are the ones heard most in Irish music.
The bagpipe, the Uilleann included, are an instrument of the commoner. The Celts - be they Irish, Scot, or Welsh - were primarily a poor lot of peasants. They lived a hard life of hand to mouth, mostly focused on the task of feeding themselves and their families by ilking out a living on the shores of their respective county. One of their few pleasures was music and dance. And music they made - with their voices, of course - but also with crude instruments that oft times were fashioned from the little they had.
The bodhran, an Irish frame drum - which I play - is said to have first been a grain tray that one innovative and rhythmic young lad must have been tapping one day as he worked. The tin whistle (which I play as well) and the flute, were simple wind instruments that most likely were created by happy accident too. The pipes were similarly made, though with a bit more ingenuity, methinks.
So, yes the music called me next, and filled my ears and heart with love for a place I'd only seen in books, TV, and movies. The internet was not a presence in those days. We used our imagination a lot more. Surrounded by my beloved books and music, I traveled to Ireland astrally and vicariously, in dreams and in waking thoughts. And it led me down another road. My next stop was personal. My interest in Ireland spurred me to begin exploring my Irish genealogy, setting me on a journey that continues to this day.
Without going into great detail, let me cut to the chase. Yes, I did get to Ireland. And have been back four times since. The fifth will not come soon enough, nor will the sixth, seventh, or eighth. I never plan on not going back. I found something there I have never found anywhere else - a sense of inner peace that radiates out from my core. Ireland feels right. The square peg that is me finally found the round hole. It is called belonging.
The pipes have led me on a amazing journey into my heart, my history, and my soul. The music somehow unlocked doors for me that would otherwise have remain closed. Never in a million years, back when I was a girl, would I ever have dreamed of going through some of them. And now, I cannot imagine not having done so.
My fear of flying, which I alluded to back in the first paragraph of this blog, was overcome. Well, maybe not the fear entirely, but surely the physical inertia that accompanied it. The recollection of the sheer joy of my feet planted on Irish soil, the wind coming in off the Atlantic and filling my nostrils with the scent of the sea, the salt stinging my skin, and a soft Irish rain falling in the fields are enough to get me on that plane each and every time. Ireland is a nation of the elements - air, water, earth, and sky. Looking down, through the clouds, at the end of that 6 hour plane ride, and seeing the green patchwork magically appear in a sea of blue, is an experience that never loses its magic for me. I cry every time.
The pipes called me and although I knew not at first to where, I never regretted following them. It is not quite a decade yet since I made that first journey across the Atlantic, but Ireland, you see, was like an old friend met again. Stepping off that plane after that initial flight over, my foot connected with Irish turf, and it felt surprisingly familiar, like a pair of old slippers after a long and grueling day.
Genetic memory? Yes, I have referred to it as such many times since. Ireland, for me, has been a sanctuary for my soul. The pipes called me, and I listened. I am grateful beyond words, for it completed a circle that was started by the great great grandparents, over a hundred years before. My maternal Irish grandparents, Charles and Mary Carroll and Patrick and Mary Devlin, came here by ship in the mid-1800's, fleeing the hunger, death, disease, and devastation called An Gorta Mor, The Great Hunger. A small but murderous fungus took up with a greedy and villainous military power and millions of Irish men, women, and children died as a result of their macabre union. A great exodus began, my grandparents included.
Would my great great grandparents have left Ireland otherwise? Immigration can be voluntary and welcome but in the case of my grand-parents and the countless others of Irish heritage in my generation, I do not think so. During the years of 1845 and 1852, 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%. At one point, there were twice as many Irish in New York City than there were in Dublin.
The pipes have been calling others like me. Returning to Ireland has always been popular but the ongoing and now heightened interest in our roots has spurred many more to embark on that sojourn across the Atlantic. The exodus of the Irish leaving home in the 1800's has been reversed over 150 years later as their descendants make their way back to that little island that we can not forget. Ireland remains the home of our ancestors, and for a great many of us, the home of of our hearts. This year, 2013, has been marked by the Irish government as the Year of the Gathering.
The pipes called me and I followed. It's a bit of fancy, I suppose, but I like to think of the pipes as voices. Voices of our ancestors, perhaps? Voices of the spirits of the ancient Irish earth? Voices calling us, compelling us, telling us to go home, go home, go home to Erie.Can we ignore the tug on the silver line that connects our soul to its source?
The pipes called me, and I listened. The pipes called and I listened to their ancient song as it found its way into my very being. The pipes called and they pointed me home.
What will you do when the pipes call to you?
