My Irish Connection

I’ve been thinking of taking a trip to my ancestral hometown of dromahair Ireland. It’s been calling to me since I read a quote from great Native American writer Vine Deloria who said that until a white man stands on the soil of his ancestors he will never know what  this land means to native Americans.  I’d really like to experience that feeling. 

So I’ve been looking into the town on social media, Wikipedia and even watching YouTube videos of a local trad music session in dromahair. While looking into other videos I found an archeologist speaking of a burial mound on a nearby hill called Sheebeg. It’s thousands of years old and part of a series of mounds in the area associated with fairie queens. One of which was sheebeg.  Across the valley was a similar site called sheemore, home of another fairie queen. He then mentioned that in the 1500’s legendary Irish composer O’carolan wrote his well known tune Sheebeg and Sheemore while standing on this hill.

  I about jumped out of my chair! That tune is one of a handful of Irish tunes I play and I played it as a lullaby for my boys when they were youngsters.  It seems that I have some kind of unseen ancestral connection to that song. Amazing to say the least.  With further digging around I learned it is said that o’carolan was given the gift of music by the fairies on that very hill. 

 The world is a great big mystery of interwoven people and songs and I’m so happy to have found this deep connection surfacing to my ancestral hometown that now I really have to go stand on that  hill and play that song. Here’s to the beauty all around us. I hope y’all are feeling it too.