What and Who We Are

My grandfather was a dear man. Small, with dark brown eyes and the sweetest smile you’ve ever seen. He’d cup our faces between his warm hands when we walked in the door and kiss our cheeks, tears in his eyes, overcome with love and delight in seeing us at last. And my Conroys cousins are equally dear: petite with freckles, funny, fun, animated, and amiable. I expected our family name to be a calling card in Ireland. My people would be easy to recognize. Their voices would hold tat same unmistakable deep timbre and lilt in the voices of my uncles. I would recognize their ready mischievous laughter, their quick wit. And they would be overwhelmed with emotion when they met me and welcome me, embrace me joyfully as my Papa always did. Like Frodo returning to the Shire.

And so, I wasn’t prepared to encounter hesitation, a palpable suspicion, when I began making inquiries. “Do you know any Conroys?” I asked happily, expectantly. But I was met with raised eyebrows and a wariness. Followed by a cagey, somewhat formal inquiry, that honestly, felt like they were buying time to craft an indirect response.

“Where are they from?”

What kind of a question was that. Like other families in Scotland and Ireland, the Conroys are a clan. They are all from the same place initially. I hadn’t yet confirmed that. It just made sense to me. T

We are, every last one, a descendent of Con Mac. Sure over the years they’d spread out. But they were still my ancestors no matter where they’d settle, so this import people gave this query confused me.

The first person who didn’t deny knowing any, before quickly looking away was a lady at the bus station in Charlestown. She wasn’t satisfied when I didn’t know, but evident,y felt safer with that answer than other dicier ones I might have offered, so she backtracked and said, ‘Well, Helena Conroy Lather lived up the road past the fire station in the second phase of Lacey Manor. And her husband might still work at the tire place up the next street. This information was delivered as I was stepping on the last daily bus out of there, so I really couldn’t pursue these possible leads. There was something in her made me feel she didn’t want any part of this reunion and that our parting ways was perhaps a relief. I also felt that she was intentionally withholding some information teeming in her brain, but she was too tactful to share. I try to gauge where my thoughts originate: was this a lack of self-confidence or paranoia? There are occasions where there can enter in, but honestly, I couldn’t feel any traces of either. I truly feel that women have developed intuitive skills in reading and assessing situations, first developed long ago and fine-tuned over the many years during which left to hunt and women were solely responsible for managing the tribe, no mean feat itself but compounded with being ever-prepared for attacks, food shortages and medical emergencies, along with ready exit strategies for an entire village including the elderly, infirm and children with survival equipage. In short, women have a skill set better for running businesses and global relationships than men and should be the ones in these positions. It is especially important now that the world is on a trajectory focusing only on money and control, childish male priorities and not only blind to the need for long-time survival on this player, but lacking the sensitivity and compassion required to ensure it.

I’m not bashing men. I’m fond of many. But they should not hold the positions of power they do. Their skills lie elsewhere. And they’d suffer fewer heart attacks and get a handle on their obesity and poorly focused aggression if they’d find their way and accept it.

How many times did I find myself in the village of Clifton? It’s a small, unremarkable village except that a few local buses connect there and they were ones I took on day trips, both from Westport and Galway. It’s situated on the western coast in Connemara, in County Galway. On a day trip to Roundhouse and Dog’s Head Beach, both breathtaking,  I passed some old graveyards…as where in Ireland don’t you? The ones there are filled with Connellys, Connors, Conways…I felt that as I wandered around trying to decipher the worn and weathered inscriptions that I was bound to find a Conroy. Connemara literally means the tribe/descendents of our possibly mythical ancestor, Con Mhac, living by the sea.

I didn’t find any Conroy headstones in Connemara.

When I arrived in Clifden the first time, I approached a rather grumpy looking old man sitting in a bench outside the grocery store. There aren’t many grumpy people, so that was a bit unfortunate, but he was a captive audience, overweight and leaning glumly on his cane. He looked like he was turning into sea salt sitting there, and unlikely to spryly leap up and spirit away should I query him. “Do you know any Conroys?” I asked. 

He quickly cast me a mean glare, abruptly said “No!” And looked down at the sidewalk.

 “Okay,” I thought. “There’s something going on here.”

A few days later, back in the area, after hiking in the lovely Connemara National Park, I rode the bus back to Galway. I had a lot of quiet time for reflection. Everyone I know has a running monologue in their head, but it was a day when I was largely successful in silencing mine to better hear the birdsong and wind.  And during my peaceful interlude, I noted a voice in my head no less than three times insisting, “We’re taking you where you need to go. You’re going ton find what you’re looking for.”

I hadn’t overtly asked anything I could think of, so I was a bit unclear of the genesis of this thought,  but I am comfortable with thoughts that might be inner guidance and figured that if it emerged, it would. I had an hour between bus conditions at the end of the afternoon, again in Clifden. And again, the town piqued my interest. This time I was even more convinced of something in the air calling to me.

When I suspected there was a dynamic I did not know about here,  after the encounter with the grumpy old man on the earlier stopover, I’d done a brief reconnaissance tour of the pubs. Turns out though, it being a day of mass confusion for local link bus operators, my connection arrived early that day and I had to leave without further exploration of the interior of any of the pubs.

This time I had an hour though. So I strolled down the streets past pubs until I was guided to the right one. My method is personal and fine tuned to my own consciousness. So while I was fairly confident this was the right one, I was confronted with a problem. I was standing in front of a closed heavy black wooden door. It was too early in the day to open the door to Mullarkey’s Pub.  Still, I meandered around the corner past another shop tucked in between before coming to the more grand, formal entrance to said pub, the lobby to Foyle’s Hotel. A tall young man smiled and acknowledged that indeed there was a pub in the back and he walked me down a corridor to a dark, elegant space, which was Mullarkey’s Pub. If you haven’t been to Ireland, you might not realize that many of the pubs contain a maze of other pubs within them. You might think you’re just heading back to the bathroom. But actually, there’s another party going on surrounding another bar. You go further and it’s not unlikely to find the scene on repeat. Some have more bars upstairs, downstairs or to a room to the left or right. It feels sometimes, especially when you really have to pee and are still searching through crowds of glowing faces that the party never ends.

The bartender charged with manning Foyle’s pub was absent. The bar stools and tables stood empty and waiting. The space was a visual feast as most Irish pubs are, jam packed with interesting photos from Doc Watson to Jimi Hendrix to Frank Sinatra, (don’t fact-check me on the particulars, but that was the vibe). There were velvet settees, and both artsy and ornate old fashioned softly glowing lights. It was just all-round pleasant. The young man who escorted me down into the lovely cozy cavern was on duty out front, but was gracious enough to pour me a cold pint. I sipped it, content alone, looking around, smiling and humming. The soundtrack was bluegrass music I knew well.

A few minutes later the owner/bartender came in, briskly doing his management thing. Nonetheless, I took the opportunity to ask him if there were any Conroys here.

“Not here!” He answered defiantly. “The Travelers aren’t allowed in here.” Then he muttered something like, “They are the same race. We’re all Irish.”

When I asked him what he was talking about, he said ‘Oh yeah. There are plenty of Travelers around here.’

“Travelers?” I asked.

“Yes, the Conroys. The Travelers. There are plenty here, but they can’t come in here. They’re not allowed in here. No, they are not.”

I glanced a bit guiltily at my backpack on the next stool. No hiding that I was a traveler. But is that necessarily a bad thing?

I raised my eyebrows in inquiry.

“They can’t hold their drink,” he answered defiantly.  “They get into fights. They are a clan and if one gets in a fight, all of his brothers and cousins  show up. They don’t forget... and they are vengeful.” 

Anger and resentment hung in the air. I opened the door for him to vent.

“So did something particular happen in here?”

When he last threw them out, they called him racist. And spread the word across town. He repeated defiantly, “We’re the same race. We’re all Irish.”

Turns out, the bartender was a brilliant historian and was able to explain clearly just what he was talking about.

You might know that during The Hunger, the Quakers came in and helped to establish a program to feed the starving. The Quakers set up famine pots in front of the workhouses and in other public spaces to help feed the starving. You might not know that other philanthropists abroad were sympathetic to the plight when they witnessed the starving who made it across the Atlantic in the aptly named coffin ships, including a tribe of Choctaw Indians who likened their condition to that of its own people who starved to death along the heart-sickening journey the US Government forced them on known now as The Trail of Tears. The British government, guilty of a good number of crimes contributing to and exacerbating the Potato Famine, including exporting what little food Ireland had to England which was not experiencing hunger (just to give you a snapshot of the imperial attitude), the British government already had in place a system of workhouses, where people, including young children lived and were set to work so they could earn their keep and pay for running the establishment. Conditions were not pretty. They worked in intolerable and unhygienic conditions and many, many, many of them died from starvation, fever and disease as well as work-related injuries. The workhouses became super overcrowded with the addition of the starving. Most have mounds of mass graves surrounding their sites where bodies were unceremoniously tossed daily. There are no markers, no memorials. When the famine was at its peak, there were hardly enough people with strength to dig the holes and throw the bodies in.

Rumor has it that those in the UK government running the program felt that people were abusing the welfare system. Staying at these godforsaken hellholes to escape honest work. Living high on the hog eating a spoonful of gruel from the famine pot. And so they shut down the famine pot program. 

Many emigrated to England, specifically Newcastle. The Conroys were among them. In the 1850s Newcastle was a crowded city overpopulated with the poor. Traveling fairs came up from North Africa and stayed for as long as profitable. They were a welcome diversion in Newcastle and well-attended. Traveling with the fair were the Dom gypsies: the tinkers who sold housewares and trinkets they’d traded for in their travels, the psychics who were the fortune-tellers, the Tarot card readers, the astrologers, and the dancers. I go to pains here to describe this strain of gypsies as there are two others familiar in a Ireland, one that merely passes through on occasion, the Romani gypsies from northern Europe and a small breed of indigenous Irish gypsies, also Tinkers but with a unique DNA found nowhere else in the world yet.

It was in Newcastle that the Conroys mingled and mated with the gypsies from North Africa. It is believed that they were from Rajahstan, India and then passed through Egypt, Tunisia and Tangier before veering north. The connection of the Irish to their homeland is a strong bond. Some of the Conroys, their children and grandchildren Irish with  gypsy blood, returned  to Connemara where they live today. Some Conroys never left and others “settled down” and merged with the population, but the others remained wild outcasts. And according to the nice, but rather embittered bartender, the wild strain of Conroy Travelers returned and are now living “on the roll” (the welfare system) when they are perfectly able to work.

Although I was going mildly nuts recognizing synchronicities within myself as his story was unfolding and  my story was taking shape, I was also aware that the reputation of my kin was taking a deeper and deeper plunge with each word he spoke. He’d been holding in a lot of resentment and I was going to hear it all.

Still, I was thinking of northern India, of Rajahstan, a place I’d dreamed of belly dancing there. I took belly-dancing lessons when I lived in Los Angeles. I would be visiting Rajahstan in a couple weeks. Egypt. My mother swore she was a reincarnated Egyptian. Did she get that expression in her DNA? Tunisia. What did the lads see in me as I stepped off the bus in Donegal and guessed I was from Tunisia? Tangier - where I was inexplicably drawn to the shadows in the dark alleys in the worst part of the city down by the docks. 

“You can find their tombstones in the cemetery up the hill,” he interrupted my thoughts. “You’ll know you’ve found it because they are huge, more elaborate than any of the other tombstones,” he said. 

“It makes you wonder how people living off Welfare could afford that.”

I took the bait. “Well, how can they afford that?”

He lowered his voice. “Cocaine,” he said. “They are mean people. Cruel. The godfather (and he named him)* lives in ******.”

Are you telling me the Conroys are like the Mafia and running cocaine?’ I asked in disbelief. He was decimating my delightful vision of being embraced like Frodo returning to the Shire. 

For God’s sake, I was still in denial over the postulation that my paternal grandfather was a Grand Wizard of the KKK. 

And now this?  

“They are Mafia?” I asked again.

“Worse,” he answered grimly. “Worse than the Mafia.”

I didn’t have time before my bus connection to check out the cemetery he’d suggested as it was almost time for my bus connection and it was the last bus out of Clifden that day. Nor would I return. I was heading east from Galway the next day.

“You can probably find Conroys buried in the graveyard overlooking the harbor in Galway,” he suggested.

I wasn’t even sure why, but the next morning I rounded the ivy covered thirty foot high rock wall down by the port, pulled open the heavy iron gate of the old cemetery and crept in. The gate to the crypt was locked but you could see the alter and Jesus hanging in his bleakest of poses just above it, replete with bloody feet and forehead. I said a quick prayer and gingerly slipped up the crumbling stone steps. An old man was weedeating. I made my way through the cemetery, cringing as I do in cemeteries, trying hard not to step on bodies. Many of the stones were too old and weathered to decipher what the etchings once said. 

The old man had stopped his weed eater and was fooling around with a skein of string, so I approached him in the interlude of silence. “I’m looking for Conroys. Would you know if any are buried here?”

“This is a private cemetery for families,” he answered. I think that was meant to dismiss me. But I was looking for my family, so I offered that up again. “I might have family here.”

“How do you spell that?” he asked. “C-O-N-R-O-Y.” 

He shook his head no. Still, I wasn’t altogether convinced, even though the cemetery wasn’t that large and I’d covered a decent amount of it. So I remained standing there. I asked him about himself. About his position as caretaker. I would guess that Tony Donoughey is in his mid-to late 70s. His father tended the cemetery until he died in 1977, and then Tony and his brothers took over. They’d accompany their dad so their mom could get some housework done without kids underfoot. Tony was intimately familiar with every one of those graves. 

He told me proudly that they paid special attention to the ones who didn’t have family to tend them. 

His brothers both died and now Tony and his sons and grandsons take care of it. 

After all of that history, along with some anecdotes - his dad put up a swing in there once for the boys - he said, “Well, I’ll show you three.”