Before I begin, there’s one thing that I have learnt about myself from this whole thing – and it also explained something to my wife about me. I tell long, tortuous stories where the story itself is less important than the ending.
I always have, tá brón orm faoi sin (I’m sorry about this). Apparently this is an Irish take on storytelling, or so a chap in a pub in a place called Fethard-on-Sea in County Wexford told me before skinning me at pool.
So, please bear with me. I was born in the UK to English parents, one of whom was called ‘Murphy’. Brexit happened, much against my wishes. I loved travelling around Europe as if I actually belonged there. So, I started looking at the mythology-drenched Murphy side of the family.
This has been largely a lone hunt. My parents are dead. My grandfather and grandmothers on my mother’s (Irish) side are dead. My aunts are now dead. It was like the end of Hamlet there in terms of mortality. So, no oral history aside from one.
All families have their myth makers, and Aunt (Patricia) was ours. Patsy was a hardcore ‘Roman’ Catholic who lived with her longtime companion, Charlotte. Patsy attended Mass three times a week. She smoked copious fags and sank gallons of scotch whisky. So, I started with the dear lady.
Over the phone what she told me about our heritage was explosive, stunning and changed my entire perception of my bloodline. It was deeply inserted into the history of the proclamation of the Irish Republic (Poblacht na hÉireann) and the 1916 Easter Rising in particular.
She told me we were related to Count Joseph Mary Plunkett. A Count! Like Dracula or Fosco or Arthur Strong. Nope, none of that nonsense, he was a Papal Count no less. We were important.
Aunt Patsy Murphy in a hat, drunk and smoking a fag.
I wasn’t to know that Patsy was aggrandising our family history – although I should really have guessed. So, off I went down a false trail for my Irish nationality citizenship… for a year.
Patsy was wrong. Very wrong. Our Plunkett didn’t sign the proclamation on the steps of the Dublin General Post Office. He was probably doing his other job around that time.
We are indeed related to the Plunketts. However, the branch who I shared DNA with was a coal merchant from one of the less salubrious parts of Dublin. Not only that, it was a part of Dublin that held both a major gaol and a British army barracks.
Even worse from the perspective of my grand and glorious Irish heritage was that his daughter – my granny – had left Ireland with a British soldier. She’d only married him.
The history of Ireland has a special place for British soldiers who were in Dublin around 1920, but more of that later. Suffice to say that special place was not in heaven.
Now, ever let it be said that a year researching something entirely based on a mostly drunk aunty’s ramblings can’t be useful though.
I discovered that many of the records that I would have expected to find; births, marriages, deaths, basic stuff, were not available via a central office. Not even the many pay-for-your ancestral records sites had all the records. Why?
Well, the Public Records Office in Dublin was destroyed by fire in 1922, during the Irish Civil War. So, this meant finding alternative routes. It was time to hunt down the Parish registers. At this point in the story, everything becomes a laborious and labyrinthine series of hunts and phone calls. I won’t bore you here.
I managed to discover my coal merchant background and also about my Granny Murphy née Plunkett. It was time to consult the English records and to follow her life in, as it turned out, Camberwell in London.
What I learnt was that my ‘dear old gran’ had died at the age of 35 in 1940. Her death was caused by something terrible called mitral stenosis and atrial fibrillation. She had only two children, my mother Teresa and another aunt, my beloved and departed Aunt Grace.
My Grandad ‘Auld Bastard’ Murphy and his mother. He’s in his British army uniform. She looks stern.
It was time to head back to Irish records. Along the way, well the side ways (as it were), it became clear to me that the Irish language (Gaeilge) was fascinating. It called to me. Not for anything particularly mystical. No, it’s fascinating to a curious mind brought up in English. The two languages bear next to no similarities to each other. It was when I discovered that there are different numbering systems for ‘things’ and for people.
I had to find out more. That’s what this series is about. Please be warned though, I don’t have nice things to say about Duolingo. I do have very good things to say about the Irish national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and its Gaeilge offshoot TG4.
Next time: DuoLingo sucks, and some good stuff.
