Who was the Hannie May in your family?

Céad Míle Fáilte, and you are very welcome to this week’s Letter from Ireland. Here we are at the longest day of the year across Ireland, and a beautiful one it is shaping up to be! How are things in your part of the world today?

I want to begin today not by sharing an Irish record or the image of a cottage ruin, but with a woman in a chair by the fire in the kitchen. I’m having a cup of Lyons’ tea as I share her story, and I hope you will join me with a cup of whatever you fancy yourself as we start into today’s letter.

Her name was Hannie May, my grand-aunt, and she lived to a great age in a small house in County Galway where the kettle was never quite off the boil. Whenever the relations gathered, Hannie May held the room. She knew everyone, and not just the living. She also knew the dead going back generations: who had married whom, which brother had gone to Boston and which had stayed on the land, the maiden name of a great-grandmother nobody else could place. She was, though none of us ever called her this, our family’s own seanchaí (pronounced “SHAN-a-key”), the keeper of the old stories.

I was a boy back then, half-listening, and far more interested in the biscuit tin than any stories about the “old days”. I now wish I had the opportunity to drop back to that time with a notebook in hand, listening as she connected the people and places of the surrounding townlands and villages through her stories. Hannie May slipped away one winter, and the best part of a century of memories went along with her.

Now, I suspect you may be reading this with a familiar nod, as most of us do not come to family history until we are older ourselves. The interest arrives in our forties, fifties, sixties, our seventies, once the children are reared and there is finally time to wonder where we all came from. But by then, more often than not, the Hannie Mays of our families are already gone. The aunt who knew, the grandmother who remembered, the old neighbour who could place every family in the parish, have slipped away while we were too busy living to take an interest.

If you recognise this situation, then you are in plentiful company, but what’s gone is gone. Today, I want to share with you something that few people realise, and something that offers us a glimmer of hope.

The keeper of your family’s stories may not be gone at all, they may simply be somewhere you have never thought to look. Back in Ireland, in the very place your people left.

Most reading this letter are not in Ireland. You might be in Boston or Brisbane, in Toronto or Birmingham, several generations removed from the townland your family travelled from many years ago. And it is easy for you to assume that when your own elders passed, the door closed for good. But in Ireland, in the home place, that door is very often still open.

You see, as Carina and myself journeyed around Ireland over the last twelve years, we have never failed to connect with someone in every location who acts as the local “Hannie May” of the area.  In so many Irish parishes there is still someone who remembers the family that left. Sometimes it’s the neighbour whose fields bordered theirs, or a cousin of a cousin who stayed on the land. The woman who has lived in the one village her whole life and knows every family that ever emigrated and precisely where they went. Or maybe a man at the end of the bar who will tell you, without drawing breath, that your people were over the hill there, and sure didn’t two of them go out to America in the hungry years. These are the keepers of the old stories in the locale, and they hold facts that no record ever will: why the family left, what the house was like, which fields were theirs, who they loved, and what became of the ones who stayed behind.

If you are lucky enough to be planning a trip to Ireland, here is my best advice to you. Build in the time to find that person. The cliffs and the castles will keep you entertained, but finding the keeper of your story is the real journey.

Finding them is often easier than you might think. Here are a few good places to begin:

• The parish. The priest might be your first thought, however, most priests have moved into the area from somewhere else. But in the parish office you will often find whoever keeps the church and tends the graveyard, someone who knows who the old families are and how they are connected.
• The local pub, the shop, the post office. Ask, simply, who knows the families that went away. You will often be pointed towards the oldest person in the area and they may be delighted to have a chance to share their knowledge.
• The local history society or heritage centre. Nearly every county has one, and they are made up of exactly the people you are looking for, so do drop in and say hello. You can find a list of all of the local Heritage centres here.
• The neighbours. Knock on the door of the farm nearest your ancestral townland. Irish neighbours often stayed put for generations, and they remember, or they will point you in the right direction.
• The Ireland Reaching Out organisation do a fine job of connecting you with local volunteers in your ancestral area.

Also, you do not wait until you are standing in the parish to begin. A letter or an email ahead of time, to a local history society or a parish office, can have someone lined up and delighted to meet you before you ever step off the plane. However, sometimes we find that Irish people don’t always respond as well as you might hope to advanced appointments and emails. Take the chance and drop in on them when you arrive, and you will often be provided with an unexpected adventure for the day. 

When you do sit down with them, whether it is a relative abroad or a neighbour back home, have a few questions ready in your back pocket, for the best things often arrive sideways:

• Do you remember the family that left, and which house or townland was theirs?
• Who went away, and who stayed? Did any of them ever come back?
• Why did they go, do you think? And how did they fare after?
• Is there a story about that family that people round here still tell?

Whatever you do, record it. Ask their blessing first, then simply let your phone record. It is not only the facts you will treasure later, but also the voice, the accent, how an old neighbour might pronounce the name of your townland. The words can be written down, but the voice not so easily.

I have heard of so many readers and Green Room members that have connected with their own “Hannie May” by taking the above approach, it may even work for you.

So, let me leave you with one question this week. Who was the “Hannie May” in your family, the one person you would give anything to sit down with now, with a fresh pot of tea and a free afternoon?

Just let us know their name, who they were to you, and the one thing you wish you had asked them. That’s plenty.

Do let us know in the comments section below.

Slán for now,

Mike