It Occurs To Me: Spreading the love

 The lady from Eastern Europe had little or no English. 

I was standing outside The Abbey Hotel in Donegal Town waiting for the Derry bus, when she approached me, smiled, and showed me her mobile phone. It simply read “293…Carrick…I love you!” 

Ah, says I, she’s looking for the Glen bus and her translator has converted ‘Thank You’ to an expression of profound endearment. Anyway, I ensured she got on board to which she responded “You are magnificent, I love you”. Being an ould softie, I reciprocated…

‘Bus Éireann…you are not magnificent…I don’t love you!’

“I love you too!” I hope she had a wonderful time ‘In Through’, and that certain bucks didn’t get too over-excited when her phone advised them that they were the object of her undying and eternal affections. 

As for the Derry bus…in fairness, it was only 20 minutes late arriving from Sligo, so I lived in hope. 

READ NEXT: John B Keane’s enduring classic Big Maggie coming to the stage in Donegal

Those hopes were dashed when we sat in those infernal roadworks between Listillion and The Dry Arch for some 15 minutes. 

That, coupled with the usual nightmare between The Clanree Hotel and The Polestar Roundabout, ensured an additional 35/40 mins delay by the time we landed at the depot. Then, as if Basil Fawlty was in charge for the day, we were told that the bus had a flat tire, and we had to change over. A so-called service that was supposed to land in Derry at 11.10 eventually made it at 12.05 pm. 

“Bus Éireann…you are not magnificent…I don’t love you!”

                                    Storm in a teacup?

You’ll all be familiar with the line around December 27/28th - “Well, how did you get over the Christmas?” After last week, there’s a new one - “Well, how do you get over Storm Floris?” As a journalist friend remarked: “Easy knowing it’s still the silly season in the media…Floris was blown out of all proportion!”

I don’t think the pun was intentional, but travelling through Derry, Donegal, Fermanagh and Cavan on the two days that all hell was supposed to break loose (apologies to those who lost electricity, however) I was struck by the relatively ‘normal’ winds in the region. 

In summary, you’d get more wind in Leinster House. 

                                Before the Armada

A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago. 

DNA analysis reveals they have an almost identical genetic ‘fingerprint’ to the inhabitants of coastal regions of Spain, whose own ancestors migrated north between 4,000 and 5,000BC.

The discovery, by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, will herald a change in scientific understanding of Britishness.

People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended from tribes of central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is soon to publish the first DNA map of the British Isles, said: “About 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to push up the Channel. Before they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain but only a few thousand in number. These people were later subsumed into a larger Celtic tribe... The majority of people in the British Isles are actually descended from the Spanish.”

Professor Sykes spent five years taking DNA samples from 10,000 volunteers in Britain and Ireland, in an effort to produce a map of our genetic roots.

Research on their ‘Y’chromosome, which subjects inherit from their fathers, revealed that all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers were originally descended from one of six Spanish clans who arrived in the UK in several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest.

                                 The land of the free?

An American friend, a retired Professor of English and an accomplished writer, sent this to me recently. 

“If only you could take on the task of changing our current President into a leprechaun, selkie or pillar of salt!! We are completely apoplectic at his behavior and the impunity his sycophants are offering him. Our hope is that the rest of his Maga followers will come to their senses at the mid-term elections for our House of Representatives and Senate. Then, he will lose his majority votes, executive order power and dictator momentum. Better yet, he may recognize his impotency...which would certainly drive him more crazy than he already is. We need to stop the hemorrhaging of democracy. That's for sure!  Until then, enjoy living in a much freer country than ours.”

                                 A new Duffy’s Cut

On Saturday, March 2, 2013, the remains of John Ruddy were buried in the graveyard of the Church of the Holy Family in Ardara.

The plot was donated by Vincent Gallagher, president of the Commodore Barry Irish Center in Philadelphia. He and his family are from Ardara, and they gave up one of their plots for John. Vincent also put the Watsons in touch with local funeral director Seamus Shovlin and parish priest Canon Austin Laverty. The casket was carried to its final resting place by Earl Schandelmeier, a historian at Immaculata University, who, along with William Watson, a history professor at Immaculata University, and his twin brother Francis, a Lutheran minister, were the driving force behind the Duffy’s Cut project. 

Three pipers were followed by Sadie Ruddy, who lives in Portnoo, and her first cousins James and Bernard Ruddy from Quigley’s Point, all three of whom are direct descendants of the deceased. Canon Laverty told those assembled that “this brings a form of closure to a sad and shameful chapter of American history and re-enforced how desperate times were in this country at the beginning of the nineteenth century.” 

Looking out across the graveyard towards Loughros Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond, Canon Laverty noted that Slieve Tooey – visible in the distance – was possibly the last piece of Ireland that Mr Ruddy and those who left Derry in 1832 saw through the mists of their tears.

William Watson, who led the first excavations, has revealed in an academic paper that his team discovered human remains that suggest a second Irish immigrant railroader mass grave lies nearly 18kms west of Duffy’s Cut. 

Mr Watson, a professor of history at Immaculata University in Malvern, Pennsylvania, said historical records led his team to the second mass grave at Downingtown, which is in Chester County. He said the skeletons had been buried in coffins sealed with “an exceptional number of nails”, perhaps in the hope of containing the spread of the cholera. 

As reported in the Examiner: “Analysis showed evidence of violence to each of the skulls. One skull had both an axe wound and a bullet hole wound. Researchers found there was no evidence of defensive wounds to the arms or legs of the victims, suggesting that they were likely to have been tied up before being murdered.

“After our team analysed the remains, we came to the startling conclusion that the men didn’t die from cholera. They were massacred. I believe that fear of cholera, an epidemic that some clergymen in America and England called ‘a chastisement for the sins of people,’ and anti-immigrant sentiment fuelled violence against them by native-born populations…: We came to the startling conclusion that the men didn’t die from cholera. They were massacred.”  

Mr Watson added: “We came to the startling conclusion that the men didn’t die from cholera. They were massacred.”  

Work is now only starting on analysing the remains of the Irish labourers found at the new Downingtown site. It seems that the railroad workers buried there could well have met the same grisly fate as those who were killed at Duffy’s Cut and many could be from Donegal.