by Amy Harmon
When I arrived at the Great Southern Hotel—a stately, pale-yellow establishment built a few years after the Irish Civil War—in Sligo at sundown, I sat in the crowded parking area and said the Rosary for the first time in years, grateful to be alive. I stumbled into the hotel, bags in tow, and after checking in, I climbed a staircase that reminded me of pictures of the Titanic, which was strangely symbolic of the sinking feeling I’d been battling since leaving New York.
I collapsed onto the big bed, which was surrounded by heavy furniture and papered walls in various shades of purple, and fell asleep without even removing my shoes. I awoke twelve hours later, disoriented and starving, and stumbled to the bathroom to huddle in the ridiculously narrow tub, shivering while I tried to figure out how to turn the hot water on. Everything was different enough that it took a moment to adjust but similar enough that I grew impatient with myself for the difficulty I was experiencing.
An hour later, washed and dried, dressed and pressed, I took my keys and headed down the ornate staircase to the dining room below.
I walked down the streets of Sligo in tragic wonder, the girl in me gaping at the smallest things, the grieving woman devastated that I was finally there and Eoin wasn’t with me. I walked down Wolfe Tone Street and over to Temple, where I stood beneath the bell tower of the enormous Sligo Cathedral, my head tipped back as I waited for it to ring. William Butler Yeats’s face—with white hair and spectacles—was painted on a wall next to words that proclaimed this “Yeats country.” The painting made him look like Steve Martin, and I resented the tacky display. Yeats deserved more than a shoddy mural. I passed by the Yeats museum in stony protest.
The town sat higher than the sea, and here and there, the long strand, glistening and bared by the tide, peeked out at me. I’d walked too long, not paying attention to how far I’d gone, my eyes gobbling up what was immediately around me. I ducked into a candy shop, needing sugar and directions back to the hotel and to Dromahair if I was going to attempt another afternoon behind the wheel.
The owner was a friendly man in his sixties, selling me on sour licorice and chocolate caramel clusters and asking me about my visit to Sligo. My American accent gave me away. When I mentioned Dromahair and an ancestral search, he nodded.
“It’s not far at all. Twenty minutes or so. You’ll want to take the loop around the lake—stay on 286 until you see the sign for Dromahair. It’s a pretty drive, and Parke’s Castle is along the route. It’s worth stopping for.”
“Is the lake called Lough Gill?” I asked, catching myself just in time and pronouncing it correctly. Lough was pronounced like the Scottish loch.
“That’s the one.”
My chest ached, and I pushed thoughts of the lake away, not ready to think about ashes and goodbyes just yet.
He pointed me back in the direction of the hotel, telling me to listen for the bell tower on the cathedral if I got turned around. As he rang up my purchases, he asked me about my family.
“Gallagher, huh? There was a woman named Gallagher who drowned in Lough Gill, oh . . . it had to be almost a century ago. My grandmother told me the story. They never found her body, but on a clear night, folks say you can sometimes see her walking on the water. We’ve got our own lady of the lake. I think Yeats wrote a poem about her. He even wrote about Dromahair, come to think.”
“‘He stood among a crowd at Dromahair; his heart hung all upon a silken dress, and he had known at last some tenderness, before earth took him to her stony care,’” I quoted, lilting immediately into the Irish accent I’d perfected in my youth. I didn’t know the poem about a ghost lady—it didn’t ring any bells at all—but I knew the one about Eoin’s beloved Dromahair.
“That’s it! Not bad, lass. Not bad at all.”
I smiled and thanked him, popping a piece of chocolate in my mouth as I traipsed back across town to the hotel that reeked of time and bygone eras.
The candy man was right. The drive to Dromahair was beautiful. I plodded along, gripping the wheel and taking the turns slowly for my own safety and the safety of the unsuspecting Irish traveler. At times, greenery rose so thick on either side of me, I felt goaded by the canopy that threatened to enclose the road at every turn. Then the foliage broke, and the lake glimmered below, welcoming me home.
I found an overlook and stopped the car, climbing onto the low rock wall that separated the road from the drop so I could drink it in. From the map I knew that Lough Gill was long, stretching from Sligo into County Leitrim, but from my vantage point, looking down on her eastern banks, she seemed intimate and enclosed, surrounded by squares of stone-lined farmland that rose from the banks and onto the hills on every side. An occasional home dotted the hills, but I didn’t imagine the view could be much different from what it had been a hundred years before. I could have easily climbed the wall and made my way down the long grassy slope to reach the shore, though it might have been farther than it looked from above. I considered it, knowing I could take the urn with me and have the dreaded task behind me. Part of me wanted nothing more than to dip my toes in the placid blue and tell Eoin I’d found his home. I resisted the call of the water, not knowing if the terrain to the lake’s shores was marshy beneath the grass that stretched below me. Being stuck up to my hips in boggy mud with Eoin’s urn was not in the plan.
Ten minutes later, I was pulling down the main street of tiny Dromahair, searching for signs and symbols. I was not sure where to begin. I couldn’t start knocking on doors, asking questions about people who had lived so long ago. I walked through a church cemetery, eyeing the names and dates, the clusters that indicated family, the flowers that indicated love.
There were no Gallaghers in the small graveyard, and I climbed back into my car and continued down the main street until I saw a small sign that said “Library,” underlined by an arrow pointing down a narrow lane no bigger than an alleyway.
It was little more than a stone cottage, with four rough walls, a slate roof, and two dark windows, but libraries were great for research. I rolled to a stop in a gravel space not big enough for more than three patrons and turned off the car.
Inside, it was smaller than my home office in Manhattan. And apartments in Manhattan were notoriously small, even when they cost two million dollars. A woman, maybe a few years older than I, hunched over a novel, and books that needed to be reshelved were piled on her desk. She sat up and smiled vacantly, still lost in her story, and I stretched out my hand in greeting.
“Hello. I know this is strange, but I thought maybe the library was a good place to start. My grandfather was born here in 1915. He said something about his father being a farmer. My grandfather went to America in the early thirties, and he never came back. I wanted to see”—I waved my hand helplessly toward the broad window that gave me a view of a little alleyway and not much else—“where he was from and maybe see where his parents are buried.”
“What was the family name?”
“Gallagher,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t hear the story of the woman who drowned in the lake again.
“It’s a common enough name. My own mother was a Gallagher. But she’s from Donegal.” She stood and made her way around her desk and the piles of books she clearly had no room for.
“We have a whole collection of books written by a woman named Gallagher.” She stopped in front of a shelf and straightened a stack. “They were written in the early twenties but professionally reprinted and donated to the library last spring. I’ve read them all. Delightful, really. All of them. She was ahead of her time.”
I smiled and nodded. Books by a woman with a common last name weren’t exactly what I was looking for, but I didn’t want to be rude.
“What townland?” she asked expectantly.
I stared at her blankly. “Townland?”
“The land is divided up into townlands, and each one has a name. There are roughly fifteen hundred townlands in County Leitrim. You said your great-grandfather was a farmer.” She smiled ruefully. “Everyone i
n rural Ireland was a farmer, lovey.”
I thought of the painfully small village I’d driven through, the cluster of homes, and the little main thoroughfare. “I don’t know. Isn’t there a cemetery? I thought I could just explore a bit. It’s a small county, isn’t it?”
It was her turn to stare at me blankly. “There are plots in every townland. If you don’t know the townland, you’ll never find the grave. And most of the older graves don’t have headstones. It required money to have a headstone, and nobody had money. They just used markers. The family knows who is who.”
“But . . . I’m family, and I have no idea,” I blurted, oddly emotional. Jet lag, near-death experiences, and needles in haystacks were catching up to me.
“I’ll call Maeve. She was the Killanummery parish secretary for almost fifty years,” she offered, her eyes widening at my distress. “Maybe there are some church records you could look through. If anyone knows something, it will be Maeve.” She picked up the phone and dialed from memory, her eyes flitting uncomfortably between me and the stack of books on her desk.
“Maeve, this is Deirdre at the library. The book you’ve been waitin’ for is available. No, not that one. The one about the bad-boy billionaire.” Deirdre was silent, nodding, even though the woman she was speaking to couldn’t know she was being agreed with. “That’s right. I peeked at it. You’ll like it.” Her eyes swung to me and away again. “Maeve, I’ve got a woman here. All the way from America. She says she has family from the area. I was wondering if there are parish records she could look at. She’s wantin’ to find where they’re buried.” She nodded again, sadly this time, and I guessed Maeve was telling her what she already knew.
“You could go to Ballinamore,” Deirdre said, moving her mouth from the receiver, as if Maeve had instructed her to tell me immediately. “There’s a genealogical center there. Maybe they can help. Are you stayin’ in Sligo?”
I nodded in surprise.
“There’s really nowhere to lodge around here, unless you’ve rented a room at the manor by the lake, but most people don’t even know it’s there. They don’t advertise,” Deirdre explained.
I shook my head, indicating I had not known either, and Deirdre reported this to Maeve.
“The family name is Gallagher.” She listened for a moment. “I’ll tell her.” She pulled the receiver away from her mouth again.
“Maeve wants you to bring her the book about the billionaire and have some tea with her. She says you can tell her about your family, and maybe she’ll think of something. She’s as old as the hills,” Deirdre whispered, muffling the receiver so Maeve wouldn’t hear her commentary. “But she remembers everything.”
The woman opened the door before I could knock. Her hair was so fine and wispy, it created a gray cloud around her head. Her glasses, rimmed in black and as thick as the palm of my hand, were wider than her face. She peered up at me through them with blinking blue eyes and pursed lips painted fuchsia.
“Maeve?” I realized suddenly I didn’t know her last name. “I’m so sorry. Deirdre didn’t tell me your full name. Can I call you Maeve?”
“I know you,” she said, her brow—already a topographic map of grooves and valleys—wrinkling even further.
“You do?”
“I do.”
I stuck out my hand in greeting. “Deirdre sent me.”
She didn’t take it but stepped back and waved me in. “What was your name, lass? Just because I know your face doesn’t mean I remember your name.” She turned and tottered away, clearly expecting me to follow. I did, shutting the door behind me, the smell of damp and dust and cat dander wafting around me.
“Anne Gallagher,” I said. “I’m Anne Gallagher. I suppose I’m on a roots trip of sorts. My grandfather was born here, in Dromahair. I would really like to find where his parents are buried.”
Maeve was heading for a small table set for tea tucked next to a pair of tall windows looking out on an overgrown garden, but when I said my name, she stopped abruptly as though she’d forgotten her destination entirely.
“Eoin,” she said.
“Yes! Eoin Gallagher was my grandfather.” My heart cantered giddily. I took a few steps, not certain if she wanted me to sit for tea or remain standing. She was perfectly still for several moments, her back to me, her small figure framed by the afternoon light and frozen in remembrance or forgetfulness, I didn’t know which. I waited for her to offer instruction or extend an invitation, hoping that she wouldn’t forget she’d let a stranger into her home. I cleared my throat gently.
“Maeve?”
“She said you’d come.”
“Deirdre? Yes. She also sent your book.” I dug it from my purse and took a few more steps.
“Not Deirdre, goose. Anne. Anne said you’d come. I need tea. We’ll have tea,” she muttered, moving once again. She sat at the table and looked at me expectantly. I debated making my excuses. I suddenly felt like I was caught in a Dickens novel, taking tea with Miss Havisham. I had no desire to eat ancient wedding cake and drink Earl Grey in dusty teacups.
“Oh. That’s very kind of you,” I hedged, setting the bad-boy billionaire book on the end table nearest me.
“Eoin never came back to Dromahair. Not many do. There’s a name for that, you know. They call it an Irish goodbye. But here you are,” Maeve said, still staring at me.
I couldn’t resist the lure of Eoin’s name. I set my bag down next to the chair across from her and slid into the seat. I tried not to look too closely at the little plate of cookies or the flowered plates and teacups. What I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.
“Will you pour?” she asked primly.
“Yes. Yes, I’d be glad to,” I stammered, trying to remember a moment when I’d felt more uncomfortably American. I mentally scrambled for the etiquette, trying to remember what came first.
“Strong or weak?” I asked.
“Strong.”
My hands shook as I held the little strainer over her cup and filled it three-quarters full. Eoin had always preferred tea. I could serve tea.
“Sugar, lemon, or milk?” I asked.
She sniffed. “Plain.”
I bit my lip to hide my gratitude, splashed a little tea in my own cup, and wished for wine.
She raised the tea to her lips and drank with disinterest, and I followed her lead.
“Did you know Eoin well?” I asked after we’d both set our saucers down.
“No. Not really. He was much younger than I. And a little scamp at that.”
Eoin was younger than Maeve? Eoin was just shy of eighty-six when he died. I tried to calculate what “much younger” might mean.
“I’m ninety-two,” Maeve supplied. “My mother lived to be one hundred and three. My grandmother was ninety-eight. My great-grandmother was so old, no one really knew exactly how old she was. We were glad to see the auld wan go.”
I hid my snort of laughter in a demure cough.
“Let me look at you,” she demanded, and I raised my eyes to hers obediently.
“I can’t believe it. You look just like her,” she marveled.
“Like Eoin’s mother?”
“Like Anne,” she agreed. “It’s uncanny.”
“I’ve seen pictures. The resemblance is strong. But I’m surprised you remember. You would have been a very little girl when she died.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Oh no. I knew her well.”
“I was told Declan and Anne Gallagher died in 1916. Eoin was raised by his grandmother, Brigid, Declan’s mother.”
“Nooo,” she disagreed, drawing out the word as she shook her head. “Anne came back. Not right away, mind you. I remember how folks talked about her after she returned. There were some rumors . . . speculation about where she’d been. But she came back.”
I stared at the old woman, stunned. “M-my grandfather didn’t tell me,” I stammered.
She considered this, nodding and drinking her tea, her eyes cast down, and I gulped my own, my
heart racing from a sense of betrayal.
“Maybe I am confused,” she retracted softly. “Don’t let the ramblings of an old woman cause you to doubt.”
“It was a long time ago,” I offered.
“Yes. It was. And memory is a funny thing. It plays tricks on us.”
I nodded, relieved that she had withdrawn her assertion so easily. For a moment, she had seemed so sure, and her confidence had made mine crumble.
“They’re buried in Ballinagar. That I am sure of.”
I rushed to retrieve my little notebook and a pencil from my bag. “How do I get there?”
“Well now. It’s a pretty walk from here. Or a short drive. Maybe ten minutes or less. Go south on the main street—just there, see?” She pointed toward the front door. “It’ll take you straight out of town. Go about three kilometers. You’re going to veer right at the fork and continue for, oh . . . for half a kilometer or so. Then go left. Go a wee bit farther. Then the church—St. Mary’s—will be on your left. The cemetery is there too, behind it.”
I’d stopped writing after she said to veer right.
“Don’t these streets have names?”
“Well, they’re not streets, dear. They’re roads. And people around here just know. If you get lost, pull over and ask someone. They’ll know where the church is. And you can always pray. God always hears our prayers when we’re wantin’ a church.”
15 May 1916
The drive to Dromahair with Declan’s body wrapped and secured to the running board of the car was the longest of my life. Brigid would not speak, and the baby was inconsolable, as though he felt the black of our despair. After I dropped them at Garvagh Glebe, I took Declan to Father Darby for burial. We laid him to rest in Ballinagar, next to his father. I purchased a stone that will be laid when the engraving is done. If Anne is dead, as I fear, we will bury her beside Declan, and they will share the stone. It is what they would have wanted.
I returned to Dublin, though getting back into the city proved arduous. The British army had declared martial law, and all the roads were cordoned with armoured vehicles and soldiers. I showed my papers and my medical bag, and they eventually let me pass. The hospitals are full of injured insurgents, soldiers, and civilians. Mostly civilians. The need is great enough so they let me through when others were turned away.