Meredith

The Southwestern border city in Texas where I was born and grew up in is as far from the wee toon (now engulfed by the major city close by) in Scotland where my mother was born, grew up, and met and married my dad as can be.  But the Texas city is where my mom passed on the Irish stories she had heard from her mother, Elizabeth, nicknamed Lily.

As mom would comb out  my long dark hair after washing it,  I learned about Gubby Flynn, the Toothless Wonder; the Leprechauns and their pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow; and others.  The story that scared me the most, though, was the one where she encountered the Banshee in all its shrieking majesty!  By throwing a penny piece at it, my grandmother took the wind out of its wails!

Mommy told me her mother was from County Armagh in Northern Ireland but didn't know the name of her hometown.  I knew what she looked like because we had photographs but I never met her because she died in Scotland when I was 3 years old.  I used to pick "flowers" from what I now know is crabgrass for her.

Mom was able to tell me about her maternal grandparents, Robert and his wife Mary.  In Ireland he was an officer of the Orange Lodge and apparently carried his membership with him in Scotland.  In Scotland, he worked for a chemical works where he eventually lost his leg and life to the "dry gangrene." As he was dying in his bed, a black dog, which he saw, was in his wee garden.  He is said to have said, 'Wait for me, Mary, I'm coming to ye.'

Mom didn't know what her grandmother's maiden name was.  I wrote to my mother's sister, Aunt Sheila, did she know her grandmother's maiden name?  No.  Did she know the name of the town my grandmother was from?  When she wrote back, she had written the name of the town in her letter.  Jubilantly, I looked it up in an Atlas!  Well, uh, there were two places in Ireland that were similar to that name but none in County Armagh.  Some time later, I was able to find the town and realized that Aunt Sheila was writing the name phonetically as she heard it pronounced, Caddagh, not how it was spelled, Keady.  I was also able to tell my mother what her maternal grandmother's maiden name was.   It was on my gran's death certificate.  In Scotland it was spelled one way, in Ireland, it is spelled another.  Phonetically it is the same name but does show that my gran's ancestors were of Scots and English plantation stock.  If you want to know her maiden name, private message me.