The weekend started like any other, with the exception we lost an envelope full of money which was our pay for the week. At the risk of sounding pitiful, I was mostly upset that someone who found the money, never thought about the person who lost it. It was out of my hands, so I told my husband that my plans for Friday evening would remain the same. I attended an excellent lecture. He is always supportive of my passion for knowledge.
             Those who know me well also know my passion for anything historical regarding the Irish. Dr. Kenneth Nilsen, an expert in Irish language in North America , has taught at Harvard Extension School in Cambridge and is known at St. Francis Xavier College in Antigonish, NS. There he has served as Chair of the Celtic Dept. He told a wonderful story of how he and Professor Michael Connolly [edited collections: They Change Their Sky: The Irish in Maine [2004] and John Ford in Focus [2008] met over their shared passion for the Irish language about 25 years ago. Together they filmed and spoke with many of Portland’s elder Irish population at that time, many of whom are now dead. Interestingly enough, it is believed that Portland had more Gaelic speakers per capita than anywhere else in the USA. The audience had a chance to view some of these oral interviews done many years ago. The first fellow interviewed was a Mr. Patrick Malone. Though I neither speak nor understand Gaelic, it was compelling to see the passion in his face as he told a story. His lips barely moved but his eyes were very expressive. He was on my mind all weekend, this Mr. Pat Malone. Some of the men interviewed had been longshoreman on Portland’s waterfront. Another woman interviewed was a Concannon woman who lived to be 103, and was a Domestic. They all spoke Gaelic, some with bits of English mixed in with their stories. I had a question about the census of 1901 in Ireland, how I noticed quite often that some of the men in my family were listed as speaking Irish, but not able to write Irish. I was told it was as if there had been genocide of the language. This did not surprise me as his has happened in many cultures when certain groups were forced to Americanize. [The French in Maine comes to mind as well as the Native Americans.]
             I thought about the storytellers in every culture. I have read a great deal about how important they were to a community. On the western coast of Ireland, in County Kerry lies a peninsula named Dingle. The island’s fiercest waves crash into the rock shoreline and jagged cliffs in this area. Mountain passes hug the cliffs and views surely to shorten your breath, Dingle Peninsula and Slea Head are something you will never forget. It is a pity so many had to leave years ago. Off the coast near Slea Head are a group of jagged rock islands which stand hundreds of feet into the air. In the last part of the nineteenth century a woman named Peig Sayers lived here on one of those islands. Her home was on the Great Blasket Island. She was the island storyteller. She had over 300 stories that were her own. I read her autobiography translated by Bryon MacMahon. She was highly respected by her community. There is a small description near the beginning. It tells how she is in the hospital bed combing her hair and she is nearly blind of old age. A group of schoolboys run into the hospital and up to her room. The nuns and nurses in the hospital watch the boys closely as one steps forward speaking Irish, “Peig Sayers, we offer you this gift as a mark of our esteem.” He placed the gift into her hands. Tears streamed down her face as she held out her hands to caress the boys face. She was on her deathbed. The storyteller reached all generations.         
            Professor Connolly tells me that the Irish word for storyteller is seanachi, pronounced ‘SHAN a key’. At the end of the book she tells how she did her best to give an accurate account of the people she knew. In the words of Peig Sayers, “People will yet walk above our heads; it could even happen that they’d walk into the graveyard where I’ll be lying but people like us will never again be there. We’ll be stretched out quietly – and the old world will have vanished.” I highly recommend reading her autobiography which details her life from a young girl, through marriage when she moved to the desolate Blasket Islands and the hardships she endured always keeping her faith close to her heart.
             All my early teen years, while interviewing my elder relatives, some Irish, never did I think anyone had the interest that I had. I really thought I was the only one with this desire to know more about my people. It has only been after a lifetime of collecting turn of the century photographs of ancestors from Ireland, artifacts and stories as well as numerous correspondences, all neatly stored in a shoebox, that I came to know there is a community of researchers who share the same passion as I do. It was an enlightening experience to meet these people. They all have specialties. Some are professors, who have studied the working waterfront with the longshoreman; some are avid genealogists, who have large volumes of information, much of it in their heads, about many of Portland’s Irish families. Some are authorities on Irish women and their work as Domestics and the workers at the Portland Star Match Factory. I have many connections in my passions. I think maybe we should all stay in touch with our passions. Anyhow, this weekend renewed my interest in the people we all know in our lives. They all have stories.
             The rest of the weekend was getting ready to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I just love those Pittsburgh Penguins. They have heart and that is their passion.