Mikey Ryan's Pub Window
This trip has been a lesson in serendipity. So much that is happening could not have possibly have happened had not other serendipitous unplanned things occurred minutes, days or even years before. It is a form of magic, with its own pace. The lesson for me is that most good things don't happen when you plan and force your will to reach some shallow analytical goal. Even the setting of goals can get in the way.
Many years ago, about 2006, I toured an old house that had once belonged to my great uncle in Chicago in the 1930s. I asked a complete stranger to show me her house, and when I produced photos of my family in it from the 1940s to give to her in thanks she told me she already had the whole set. She said some old man had given her the set when he had toured the house on an architectural tour two years before. "His name was Ray something." Ray Kane? I asked. "yes, that's it, he lives on Lakeshore Drive in downtown Chicago." There had been a rift in my family and the Kane cousins had been lost to us for almost fifty years.
This lucky break led me to my first cousin once removed. 92 years old, spiffy, mannered— with a Studs Terkel accent— he was the keeper of my father's generation family lore and back beyond. He had created a family tree 27 feet long and had visited Cashel in the early 1980s and had found the Phillips connection to the Butler line and had met three (living) cousins in person. I would never have known of the Irish flag story, who had married Mary Anne Butler, how my great grandfather had fared in his early years, nor personally how good whitefish is, and summer whites, and large cars and fedoras—without having known Ray. He is gone now but when I left Chicago I felt I owned my history.
A similar thing is happening here in Cashel. I thank and bless my fully engaged and warm cousin Ray first and foremost, and now I also thank the many unrelated people of Cashel who shared so much with me in such a short time. This is the next round of feeling at home and in ownership of my past.
This was to be our last day in Cashel. We were going to check out of the B and B and head for Tipperary's Family Research Center and see if they could sort out any genealogy for us at their computerized collection of church records (for a fee). I greeted Tom O'Brien as he cleaned up in the kitchen from breakfast and he asked where we were going. In a parting conclusion I remarked to him that so much had been evoked for me in the trip, that I could smell the dung of the cattle market and feel the lay of the land. I also mentioned that I had found out that the Philips man who'd married my great great aunt was a slater.
Tom said, " A slater? a roofer? then I do know which line of Phillips you are talking about. I think a Phillips put the slate on this roof. They were all chippies (carpenters) or slaters, tradesmen all of them. I was just talking to Mikey McCarthy about the Phillips. Yea - they owned the house where the Rock Restaurant is. You could see that. It is on the street that widens there, by the Esso station, back in the day the street held the Cattle Market day, hundreds of cows filled the street from the Phillips place all the way to Friar Street. Mind you I have only been here forty years, so I'm considered a blown-in, but I am pretty sure that's the Phillips you are related to." So here the mention of the word "slater" changed everything.
When we handed in the keys to Brid O'Brien, Tom relayed his theory. This opened a delightful memory of Brid's on the last of the Phillips that the O'Brien's knew —Michael Phillips. Both were very careful about what or rather how they would say anything about this flamboyant cousin, a sacristan, a poet, and a man quite susceptible to the alterations of mood that beer can produce. In the end she concluded with "He was an artist really, and they can be different and that is a fine thing" She then suggested if we had five minutes we should pop in on Johnnie O'Dwyer (Sean O'Dubhuir in Irish). He was friends with Michael Phillips and knew so much of Cashel history that it would be worth our while. I asked Brid "Do you really think five minutes will be all it will take?" We weren't in a hurry at all and I knew it would be a good tale. She laughed out loud and with a knowing smile said "no...:.
First off we went to the old Phillips home and toured around it, and in it and checked out the widened street and the vestigial traces of cattle pens in odd corners.
The old Phillips place
The widened cattle market area and old pen
We asked at the next door drug store owned by Sean O'Dwyer if he was in. They phoned his home and confirmed that yes he was out and about and to try one of his other two stores to find him. Tom O'brien had relayed earlier that if we didn't find him in the store we would probably find him in Mikey Ryan's pub with its excellent beer garden. He would be only having coffee at this time of day. Not only was this exactly where we found Sean but it was another example of everyone in this town knowing the habits of everyone else, where they lived, what they did and how to get what you need for them in the most humorous manner. There is no better directory in this town than to ask a local.
I am going to break this day in two because Sean O'Dubhuir deserves his own entry, his own page, and a medal for energetic enthusiasm in the service of our search. He is one hell of a guy.
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