X-Man

Hmm, this title’s misleading because they are not my roots at all, I’m a New
Yorker, born and bred and proud of it. No, they’re my Dad’s roots. For more
years than I care to remember, he has been recounting the circumstances of when
his great, great granddad arrived here in the United States from Ireland . It
was around 1850 and the potato famine had hit Ireland . The people of Ireland
relied on the humble potato, not only as a staple food item but also as a crop
that they exported to England . A variant of potato blight hit the crop for
several successive years and a million Irish people died from malnutrition and
related diseases. Another million people left their home country and travelled
to England , Canada and the United States to start a new life. I’m not sure if
it was the Irish authorities trying to reduce the numbers of people dying over
there or the ship owners trying to make a profit from misery but false promises
were made to encourage people to start a new life in North America and the
travellers endured horrendous conditions aboard the so-called “coffin ships”.
I’ve seen estimates that as many as 25% of the people that started that journey
from Ireland did not survive the trip.

Great, great Grandpa was a fighter and survived the trip. He settled here in
New York and married a fine young woman from Poland and together they started
the New York chapter of our family tree.

My dad was yearning to take a trip to Ireland to see if he could find the
little village in County Cork where great, great Grandpa had lived until the
famine. So, plans were made, suitcases were packed,
advice to travellers was checked, flights were booked and
the great voyage of discovery began.

We flew from JFK to London ’s main airport, Heathrow, and then took a bus to
another of the London Airports, Gatwick. We had booked a flight to Cork from
Gatwick early the following morning so had decided to stay at one of the hotels
near to Gatwick ready for our early start. We stayed at the
Copthorne Hotel which is about 10 minutes drive from the
airport. What a wonderful hotel it was. Set in stunningly beautiful grounds, it
is built around a 16th century farmhouse. We had a marvellous time exploring the
hotel and grounds and after a delicious meal it was time for bed.

The flight went smoothly and bearing in mind that public transport is fairly
sparse in Ireland we decided to
hire a car at Cork Airport . In no time at all we were on
the open road and I now know the true meaning of that phrase. Once out of the
airport we were driving along deserted country roads where we were more likely
to come across a herd of cows in the road than another vehicle. Our initial
destination was a small town called Mallow, which seemed to be the nearest one
to the village that we were searching for. Having checked into our hotel, we
went for a walk hoping to meet some of the local people who might be able to
help us in our search. In no time at all we came upon a delightful old man who
was able to tell us the exact location of the village that we were searching
for. Sadly, it was now little more than a small group of ancient derelict farm
workers cottages; all signs of life had long since left the scene. It was heart
breaking to realise that our journey had achieved so little and we returned to
Mallow with heavy hearts. We had been lucky enough to find an amazing hotel
called the
Springfort Hall just a couple of miles outside of Mallow.
It was hidden away in a beautiful country estate that dated back to the Norman
invasion of Ireland in 1169. The hotel itself was the 18th century manor house,
a stunning, magical building that conjured up memories of a bygone age. Later
that evening we were sitting in the lounge bar appreciating why people swear
that Irish Guinness is different to any other variants found throughout the
world. We entered into a conversation with a gentleman called Seamus and it
transpired that he was one of the officers of the Mallow Historical Society. He
knew everything there was to know about Mallow and the surrounding area. He knew
of the deserted village that we’d seen earlier and was able to tell my dad the
complete story of how almost 50% of the villagers died during the famine and the
remainder left to start a new life elsewhere. Seamus was delighted to hear our
stories of how great, great Grandpa had made it to the United States and how the
family had blossomed from that time. We had a delightful evening listening to
the tales told by Seamus (all Irishmen are wonderful storytellers) and we were
so sorry to have to say goodnight to our new found friend. The decision had been
made to leave Mallow the following day and to spend a couple of days sightseeing
around the South West of Ireland. Imagine our surprise when Seamus appeared
early the following morning clutching a pile of magazines for my Dad. It seems
that there’s an annual journal published by the historical society and he’d
brought at least a dozen back issues as a gift for my Dad to read. The books are
brim full of the history of Mallow and the surrounding areas and tears welled up
in Dad’s eyes as he thanked his new friend for the simple gift that meant so
much to him.

We had to keep the journals under lock and key to stop Dad reading every one
of them before we continued our travels. We promised to let him read a couple of
them on the long flight home to the U.S., but in the meantime we still had a few
days of our trip to Ireland remaining and we were determined to make the most of
it. It was decided that we’d visit the beautiful South West corner of Ireland
with the lakes and mountains of Killarney and Kerry. En-route we stopped off at
Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone and gain the gift of eloquence (now you
know why I talk so much). Later that day we booked into
The Lake Hotel in Killarney, a magnificent, majestic hotel
with the most amazing views. Built in 1820, it still features the original
elegant lounges with open log fires. England’s Queen Victoria stayed in the
hotel in 1861 during her tour of Ireland and the hotel has been sympathetically
updated since those times to give a combination of modern amenities coupled with
old world charm and service. The hotel was a wonderful base to enable us to
discover this very special part of Ireland and the time simply flew by. Before
we knew it, we were back to Heathrow and the flight home to New York .

Let me finish by suggesting two websites that we found very helpful during our
trip. The
Tourism Ireland website offers a wealth of information for anybody
visiting that country from overseas and we found a superb selection of hotels in
UK and Ireland on the online
hotel bookings website.