Ireland is magical and mysterious, an ancient place of fairy hills and holy wells, friendly pubs and pints of Guinness, green countryside and wild coastal tides. Irish you were here is what Anne Driscoll says.
At least 7 million people visit Ireland every year and in 2013, award-winning journalist Anne Driscoll was one of them. She was a stranger, alone in Dublin for a year when she arrived as a US Fulbright Scholar to teach law students at the Irish Innocence Project at Griffith College how to investigate wrongful convictions. She had no friends, no home, no phone, no car.
She was unsure of what to expect, either of herself or the country.
Anne Driscoll in Ireland
And her year unfolded with unexpected adventures, welcomed friendships, mishaps, hijinks, and hilarity, but right from the beginning she was charmed and beguiled by a country that loves stories, celebrates characters, and believes conversation is a currency more valuable than money.
In her mini-memoir, Irish You Were Here: My Year of Matchmaking Festivals, Fairy Forts and Mugging My Mugger in Ireland, recalled month-by-month on the anniversary of her arrival, Anne Driscoll shares her tales of rowing currachs down the Liffey, climbing two mountains in one day, visiting 1200 year old monasteries and 12th century pubs.
Irish You Were Here is for both the armchair traveler and active adventurer, the dreamers and the daredevils, the writers, poets and storytellers, and all the activists out there lead by their passions.
This is an Ireland you won't read about in tour guides and it's one you won't soon forget. It's for everyone who is Irish and for anyone who wished they were.
Check out Irish You Were Here at Amazon Kindle here.
To give you a taste of Anne's book here's an excerpt which Anne has graciously provided for me to share with you today.
Irish You Were Here Chapter One:
October 3, 2013
I arrived a month ago today in Dublin and in the last month I have laughed so hard it was cardiovascular, I have been inside a 1500 year old monastery, a Freemason Hall, and a radio studio.
I was proposed to by a farmer at the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival and have been sung to by several Irishmen.
I got an infected thumb from oar splinters while rowing currachs, traditional Irish canvas covered boats at a club on the River Tolka.
I have made great and already dear friends, many of whom I row with. I have been to a history lecture, a Ceili dance and a comedy show. I have drank discounted €3 Guinnesses on Arthur’s Day - a completely fake holiday which honors the founder of Guinness breweries - and eaten at Johnnie Fox's three times - a popular restaurant dating back to 1798 which claims to be Ireland’s most famous seafood restaurant but is located atop a Wicklow mountain (the highest pub in the country) and nowhere near the ocean.
I have 8 and ½ months of this adventure to go.
Irish You Were Here Chapter Two
November 3, 2013
I arrived two months ago today in Dublin. And since then, I discovered about myself that I love Love/Hate - the Irish gangland TV series, all the swans that grace the canal outside my deck, and Irish brown bread.
In the last month, I was on TV3 Ireland AM to discuss the Irish Innocence Project, I was ridden around the streets of Dublin on the back of a bicycle, I went to a production of James Joyce’s The Dead in the 1775 house at 15 Usher’s Island on the quay where it was set and moved about the rooms with the 19 actors as if I was part of the party scene and dinner, not part of the audience.
I stayed up until 4 a.m. chatting with two friends and it didn't seem weird or foolish - even after it turned into a pajama party, I made a beautiful beet salad and I rowed with my currach teammates and escorted the SS Hare down the Liffey during a reenactment of the delivery of food to the starving strikers during the 1913 Lockout as people cheered from the banks and marching bands played (it was a 10 mile row).
At work, it was a month of firsts: I helped begin plans for the first ever film festival devoted to wrongful convictions, forged a partnership with an American woman and Irish man both exonerated from death row for killing two cops, now married, living in Galway and hosts to the first ever sanctuary for exonorees, and expand the Irish Innocence Project to include the first journalism student.
I hosted a dinner party for my teammates and served lunch to a friend and the toddler she babysits, and at the suggestion of the "chemist", I cured my infected thumb with a magnesium sulfate paste. I sang my first "party piece" Mercedes Benz, joked and bantered with a Supreme Court Justice, and went to a costume party dressed up like one of The Dubliners wearing a beard and men's trousers, shirt and tie.
I celebrated Samhain, the Celtic Halloween - when it’s believed the membrane between this world and the next is the thinnest - by watching Mummers perform onstage at an Irish Folklore Center benefit and listening to stories about fairy forts and ghostly black pigs told in Irish and English.
In the same day, I climbed the 1250 foot Spinc ridge and the 800 foot Bray Head. The day before that I biked 50K through Phoenix Park and along the Royal Canal during gale force winds.
I have met a meterologist who cares little about the weather (if it rains, wear a raincoat and, anyway, you’ll dry eventually) but is devoted to yoga, a quarryman who admires my legs and the only state pathologist in all of Ireland.
I understand now that conversation is a currency here more valuable than money and that every conversation – whether it be at a business meeting or in a pub – is laced with wit, humor and fun.
I am lost to a culture that loves storytelling as much as I do. I am lost to Ireland. That is to say, I love Ireland.
I have 7 ½ months of this adventure to go.
Irish You Were Here Chapter Four:
January 3, 2014
It has been four months today since I arrived in Dublin and in the last month, I got drunk on mojitos with a Supreme Court Justice who still respected me enough the following morning to ask me to read his dissenting opinion on preservation of evidence, which had been issued that day. This country is so small that I’ve met three of the five sitting Supreme Court Justices, although I’ve only got drunk with one.
On my actual birthday, the Irish Innocence Project held its Christmas party which started out in a sophisticated hotel bar called Samsara and ended at 4 a.m. in an infamous late bar and pick up joint called Copper Face Jacks (known simply as Coppers) where groping is de rigueur. Or, in other words, you’re insulted if you do get groped but even more if you don’t. That morning I had to wake at 8:30 a.m. to ride my bike five miles to a dentist appointment and on the way, I thought, “Do I smell like alcohol because I’d really like to make a good first impression?”
I danced in the streets on St. Stephen’s Day in Sandymount going to see the Wren Boys, a traditional Celtic celebration when people dress in masks, straw suits and colorful clothes and sing the song,
"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
On St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze;
Up with the kettle and down with the pan,
Pray give us a penny to bury the wran."
At some point, I remember being whirled around the street with a leprechaun, which had nothing to do with the two glasses of hot port I drank.
I exhausted my three children dragging them all over Dublin to pull our first pints at the Guinness factory, learn about coopers (barrel makers) at the Jameson distillery, and hear stories of pookas, leprechauns and fairies (or in Irish, si, pronounced she) at the National Leprechaun Museum.
We visited the bog men at the National Museum of Ireland, roamed through Malahide Castle which is home to five ghosts, walked along the pier of Howth to see a resident harbor seal and also rambled through the deer park to find a dolmen – a 2,500 year old passage burial.
On New Year’s Eve, Dublin hosted its version of Boston’s First Night, which was billed as the Ultimate Gathering. The year of 2013 was called The Gathering and everyone in Ireland was encouraged to invite family and friends to visit and I realized, that the year of 2013 had concluded with me having my own little Gathering with my kids.
And so, the year turns.
And I have five and half more months of this adventure to go....
If you enjoyed this excerpt and you want to read one or all three memoirs in the series, you can find Irish You Were Here, by visiting Amazon Kindle here.
About Anne Driscoll
Irish You Were Here author Anne Driscoll is an award-winning journalist who received the 2016 Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice, was a 2013-2014 US Fulbright Scholar with the Irish Innocence Project at Griffith College Dublin and is the Senior Reporter, since 2006, at the Justice Brandeis Law Project of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
She has previously contributed regularly to the Boston Globe, New York Times and People magazine, is a licensed social worker in Massachusetts and is the author of a series of self-help books for girls called Girl to Girl.
She has spent the last three and half years living in Ireland. Her name Anne means grace or prayer and Driscoll means interpreter, intermediary or news bearer.
Thank You Anne
A big thank you to Anne for introducing her book to us today. Her writing resonates with a true sense of wonder and joy as she discovers Ireland's culture and the land of her ancestors.
I love how she experiences Ireland openly and unreservedly, and her love of Ireland and the Irish people shines through each and every paragraph.
Slán agus beannacht,
(Goodbye and blessings)
Mairéad -Irish American Mom
Pronunciation - slawn ah-gus ban-ock-th
Mairéad - rhymes with parade
Here are some other counties featured in this series which you may like to check out ....
Irishnannie
What wonderful excerpts from your book, Anne! And how wonderful for you to be a source of expression of the joy and spirit of the culture of the Emerald Isle and its daughters and sons...
And, thank God, Anne, for the work you do! God bless you!
Also thank you, as always, Mairead, and God bless you! Happy, happy Easter! Welcome back!
Irish American Mom
Happy Easter to you and yours too, Irishnannie. I too think Anne has captured the joy and spirit of what it means to be Irish.
All the best,
Mairéad
Patricia
Easter blessings to you and your family Mairead! Spring is finally upon us! Been missing your posts, glad to have you back. 😊
Irish American Mom
Good to be back blogging, Patricia. Thanks for stopping by to check out my posts. Happy Easter to you and yours.
Mairéad
Mary Ann
Happy Easter! God bless you and yours!