Family Trees: How I Am Finding (And Strengthening) My Irish Roots

By Kristen

I couldn’t tell you when it started, my seemingly unnatural obsession with all things Irish. I could tell you that it was the first time I saw a book full of pictures of the beautiful landscapes or the first time I heard the enamoring accent or even the first time that I heard rumors of my long-gone family that first came to America from Ireland. I could tell you these things, but they wouldn’t be true. The truth is that it’s been there all along, for as long as I can remember. I think I must have been born with a bit of Ireland in my soul because I felt its pull before I could even locate it on a map.

A few years ago, I got into genealogy. I’ve always been interested in hearing old family stories, but as generations come and go, it is becoming apparent that much of the history of how we came to be is fading into black. The vibrant characters who loved and lost, fought and won, and traveled near and far to eventually bring me into existence are losing their dimensions and simply becoming names on a flat piece of paper. The birth and death dates are easy enough to find. They’re right there on the tombstones, after all, but it’s that dash in between that gets me. What magnitude of stories does that little line contain?

With this in mind, I set out to find as much as I could about all the people who came before me—not just that they were alive but how they lived. I haven’t been let down. Some lines of research do turn out to be dead ends, but the disappointment is mitigated by the admiration of a relative who was imprisoned for his faith in Scotland or the bravery of a man who set sail from Greece and started over alone in a new country. Every new story was a revelation to me, and each one encouraged me to keep digging, and then I struck gold.

I am royalty.

Okay, okay. Maybe not technically, but I am distantly related to the late Princess Diana and, therefore, her sons and all the generations that will live hereafter. As you may imagine, I was curious to find out what the connection actually was and what circumstances led to two such different outcomes for descendants of the one same person, whoever he or she may have been.

It turns out that the common denominator is a man called the Most Reverend John Vesey. Princess Diana’s line descended from a son, and mine descended from a daughter. While I was still intrigued by the lineage, what was most exciting to me was that John was Irish! This wasn’t exactly a new finding for me. I had traced some Irish heritage already. What was new was that John was findable and concrete. He was the Archbishop of Tuam at one time, so I can physically go to where he once worshiped and taught. I can go to the university in which he studied. I can find the house and estate that he built, which is at least partially still standing. One day, I plan to do just that.

The chancel arch in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam, where John Vesey presided.

While the individual characters are unique, my story is not. I am only one of an uncountable number of people who are interested in finding out more about their family history, and this seems especially true for my fellow Americans who are often either regaled by legends of some cool ancestor or really have no clue how all the pieces of their puzzles fell into place. Maybe you are one of these people, and maybe you understand what I mean when I say that it is pretty amazing how even just one link to a place can drive you to learn all you can about it, identify with it, sympathize with it, and love it.

I am very interested in all of my family roots, which are also made up of major portions of Greek and German. I love learning about both cultures and take every chance I get to immerse myself in them, but as you have probably already figured out, I feel most drawn to my Irish heritage and really wanted to connect with it in a big way. Part of this for me was a desire to learn Irish. Besides the fact that some of my family most likely spoke it at one time, I also just find it really fun and beautiful.

If you are like me, you may want to learn Irish but have no idea where to begin. If you are not blessed to live in an area with Irish speakers or the availability of classes to attend, you probably think it’s impossible or at least improbable. I did. I tried books and a computer program, and while I did enjoy them and learned from them, there is nothing like having a comhrá (Irish for “conversation”) with other speakers. This is where The Irish Gift comes into play.

I found The Irish Gift in a last effort to find classes near me after multiple previous searches. I really didn’t think it would yield any results, but I typed in my search query, and up popped the site.

The Irish Gift is made up of a group of very talented people who practice the traditional arts of Ireland. Collectively, they play everything from the uilleann pipes and flute to the bodhran and fiddle. They sing in the sean nós style, and they speak Irish. They see their talents as a gift passed down to them, and their mission is to share it with everyone.

I am currently taking the Beginner Irish Class offered completely online by The Irish Gift. It is a 10 week course delivered once a week through video chat, and more importantly, it’s a lot of fun. The goal is to be fluent in six months, and I feel that we are well on our way to meeting it! If you have not yet learned any Irish but have looked at a text written in it, you may think I’m crazy and that there’s no possible way anyone could learn all that in six months with just one class a week. The truth is, after just one session, you will be motivated to go out and learn on your own.

I read English words with Irish phonetic pronunciation inadvertently now. I watch television shows and documentaries completely in Irish and try to pick out the words I know. I literally have verb conjugation charts handwritten and posted on my wall, and yesterday, I wrote out numbers to over one hundred in Irish just for fun. It gets to you in the best possible way.

It’s often hard for people to understand why I am learning Irish. In fact, the normal response is, “Isn’t that just English with an Irish accent?” Once they learn that Irish is its own language with its own identity, history, and cultural ties, the next question is usually, “Why don’t you learn a useful language, like Spanish?”

I agree that Spanish is certainly a very well utilized language in our society today, and I find it very beautiful. In fact, it was my language of choice throughout school, and I spent years learning it. However, I can’t say that I personally find Irish any less useful. I can think of exactly zero reasons not to learn it and over 1,774,437 reasons why I should. 1,774,437. That’s how many people ages 3 and up were stated on the last Irish census as able to speak Irish. Theoretically, I could strike up almost two million conversations in Irish! Does that sound useless to you?

Not too long ago, I learned a new word: fernweh. It’s a German word with no exact English translation, but it can generally be thought of as a kind of homesickness for a place you’ve never been. That really resonated with me because it pretty much sums up the way I feel about Ireland. My life’s dream has always been to go there, and when that happens, I’ll be ready. Among my clothes and passport, I’ll be packing up my new Irish skills and taking them along. I may not get to all two million conversations, but I will make sure I get plenty of chances to take what I learn in my informative, stimulating, and often hilarious online classes and practice it in the heart of Irish-speaking country. Sure, my Appalachian dialect may make the words come out a little funny sometimes, and I’ll make mistakes as all language learners do, but if I can have just one friendly conversation with someone willing to let me try my hand at it, that will prove all those people who think this journey is useless wrong. After all, as Nelson Mandela once said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart,” and that is enough for me.

A Gaelic Journey in Nashville

How I began learning the Irish Language and More

by Lee McGill

My Beginning

I come from one of those families that strongly romanticized its Celtic heritage. My family tree holds many strong Irish surnames such as Donley and Kelly, but other than memories of our ties to Ireland and the occasional traditional Irish tune blasting from our stereo, much of the traditional culture of Ireland has been lost to my family through the generations of living in southern middle Tennessee. I am sure that the Welsh, Scottish, English, and German heritage hiding in the branches probably aided this slow evolution from our original culture.

In an attempt to revive a bit of this lost family treasure, I decided to seek out others with a drive to connect with Ireland and the many facets of its culture. Not only did I find Tennesseans looking to connect with the Irish, I found Irish men and women who wanted to connect with Tennesseans!

An Unexpected Journey

One of my favorite pastimes is language learning. I firmly believe in the statement spoken by Ludwig Wittgenstein which translates as ‘The limitations of my language are the limitations of my world’. Given that I wished to connect with a traditional Ireland, I began to search for a way to learn Irish Gaelic, thus diminishing the limitations of relearning my family’s lost culture. A few Google searches led me to Éilís Crean who was facilitating Gaelic lessons online from native Irish speaker Meaití Jo Shéamais Ó Fátharta of Connemara, and she had arranged a space for students to take the online class together in a room at O’More College of Design just south of Nashville in Franklin, TN. It was nearly too good to be true since I had recently moved to southern Nashville for school. I gathered up two of my friends interested in learning the language, and we were southbound every Monday to join our fellow Irish culture enthusiasts for an hour or so of relaxed language learning.

Nashville’s Smorgasbord of Irish Culture Classes

The Gaelic class was only the beginning. Éilís was adamant about spreading traditional Irish arts, language, and culture in middle Tennessee and beyond. Through her organization now known as The Irish Gift, I began taking fiddle lessons in the East Galway style. Having wanted to learn the fiddle for some time, I jumped at the opportunity to learn to play some traditional Irish music!

Irish Breakfast at Kavanagh’s Pub

The Irish Gift hosts a festival each fall where professionals in Irish language, arts, and music gather to share their trades with the people of Tennessee. Last fall, I attended lectures on the musicians of East Galway, lessons on the fiddle, sessions of Irish music, courses in Irish Gaelic, a lesson in Irish set dancing, a demonstration of Celtic art, and even a Celtic Christian service, as well as a full Irish breakfast complete with black and white puddings shipped from Ireland herself! I will be doing the same this November 15th with the addition of taking a jaunt in real donkey and cart, watching a game of hurling, and participating in the Irish and Scotch whiskey tasting!

The Irish Gift now offers online classes not only in Irish Gaelic but also in Sean-Nos singing, Sean-Nos dancing, Irish flute, and Irish fiddle. They are not going to stop there though. More teachers and disciplines are being added as The Irish Gift is expanding its reach to those all over the world who wish to preserve even just a small bit of the beautiful, ancient yet thriving culture of Ireland.

An Irish Whiskey and a Scotch Please

The Differences Between Irish Whiskey and Scotch

by Layne Hendrickson

Pot Still

I told a new friend over the weekend that I was planning on writing a blog entry on the difference between Irish whiskey and Scotch whisky. “That’s easy,” he said “Irish whiskey tastes like whisky and Scotch whisky tastes like Band-Aids.” I liked to have died laughing on the spot despite the fact that I love the peaty, medicinal taste of Scotch just as much as I love the smooth sweetness of Irish whiskey. If you try and force me to choose between the two, I will push you out of the way… and drink both. But they are quite different. The major difference is whether or not peat smoke is used to kill the sprouting barley during the malting process. As a rule, Scotch making involves peat smoke whereas Irish whiskey does not. Irish is also usually distilled three times – Scotch twice. There are exceptions to both these generalities of course. Scotland boasts of somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 distilleries, whereas Ireland can only claim five (although each makes a number of different brands of whiskey). So apparently someone other than myself likes the taste of Band-Aids now and then.

In the Beginning

Where did all this start? No one knows exactly when or where the distillation of alcohol began. It has been theorized that perhaps it was discovered accidentally by the heating of fermented beer in a cave somewhere. The hot, moist alcohol steam condensed on the cold stone ceiling. Perhaps some observant soul noticed a crystal droplet refracting the firelight in the darkness, reached out a finger, captured the liquid and bravely put it to the tip of his tongue. It must have been a religious experience. No one had ever tasted anything remotely like it. Liquid fire perhaps? The “spirit” of the fermented grain escaping in the vapor? A gift from the gods or poison? This last question remains unanswered. But like it or not, distilled beverages have played a central role in our culture for some time now and are likely to continue to do so.

Distillation of liquids for perfumes and medicines was documented by the Greeks, later by the Arabs and then by the Europeans returning from the Crusades. But the earliest definitive records of the distillation of alcohol itself are from 13th century Italy where brandy was distilled from wine. Monks, who had long been involved in the production of wine and beer, took up the process mainly as a means of helping alleviate the sufferings of those afflicted with small pox or colic. The practice spread through the monastic system of Europe and to the British Isles where there were few grapes for wine. As such, barley beer became the ready substitute for wine in the distillation process. “Uisge beatha” is Gaelic for “water of life.” Shortened to “Uisge,” this evolved into the modern word “whiskey.” The first extant record of whisky dates from 1405 Ireland, in which it is reported that a Scottish chieftain had died from “taking a surfeit of aqua vitae” at Christmas time. Perhaps that should have told us something then and there. Of course, the Irish and the Scots both claim to have invented whiskey. I’m just glad someone did.

Learning to Play Irish Flute

Learn to Play Irish Flute

by Jessica Dunnavant

Why Irish Flute?

I’m not Irish. I’m American, so it’s in the mix of my roots, but I’m also Scots-Irish, German, Dutch, Welsh, Manx and straight-up English—and those are just the family lines that we know of and can trace. I think it’s an important distinction to make, because we Americans tend to romanticize so much of our imagined Celtic heritage. My ancestors, real ones that I can name, climbed through the Cumberland Gap to claim a Revolutionary War land grant, and I as an adult live only 100 miles or so from the green valley where they settled. They weren’t Irish either, come to think of it, but finally, there’s the Irish—in some of their ancestors, people I can’t name, who boarded a ship and wound up in Virginia.

My Irish Flute

Before you decide I’m pointing my finger at my proud Irish-American friends, remember—I’m learning to play the Irish flute, meaning I’m just as capable of romanticizing! I can’t tell you in logical terms when I began to love traditional music. I have very little patience for pub songs, but I love the Bothy Band, Lunasa, Cherish the Ladies, Fiddler’s Bid (yes, I know they’re from Scotland!)…something about the whirl of notes, the combination of sounds as fiddle mixes with flute, with whistle, with pipes…it speaks to me clearly and calls me to play. Right now it calls me to play slowly, with lots of cursing and missed notes, but play I will!

I’m Cheating

I’m a cheater. I’m learning to play Irish flute, yes, but I’m a professional musician. Wouldn’t you think that would make it an easier thing to do? The problem is this: I’m a professional classical musician, meaning that I know lots of facts, historically speaking. I can tell you more than you want to know, ever, about music theory and the importance of many esoteric composers, people you’ve never heard of. It also means that as a performer, I am tied visually to a page of printed music. I am so used to reading the music I play that this world of Irish traditional music is a brand new place, far different from the musical world I’ve inhabited since the age of six. I love it! It fills me with glee to learn a new tune by ear, to play without a music stand blocking me from my fellow musicians or a prospective audience. This way of making music feels organic to me. The element of creativity required to deploy all the ornaments I’m learning into the tunes I’m learning is a breath of fresh air. So I only know six songs—so what!