Galway Girl

June 15, 2019

Galway Girl

Today, I was a Galway Girl. I set out to find the site of the former Sisters of Mercy convent and laundry. I got a cab at the hotel, driven by an older Irish man, maybe in his late 60’s. He asked what I was doing in Ireland, and I told him I was researching the Magdalene laundries. He said, “Aw, those were bad, bad times in Ireland.” I agreed and said I was doing research to write a book. He said, “I could write a book, but I don’t know how. How do you start?” I said, “What would your book be about?” Then, those floodgates again.

He said, “I was abused by those priests back then. Not sexually, but psychologically and intellectually, you know. What they did to me, they ruined me for life. They were brutes.” He went on to give me a brief history of Ireland under British rule. He told me how oppressive it was, and that the Irish weren’t allowed to practice their Catholic faith. He said then they got independence in 1922, “and the Church was much worse than the British. They controlled everything. They were terrible.”

His voice was getting louder and shakier. It seemed like he might cry. I said it seemed like the same kinds of abuses had happened to the Magdalene girls, and that there were laundries in the U.S. too, so it wasn’t just Ireland. He said, “I’ll bet those nuns in the U.S. came from Ireland, didn’t they?” And I had to admit they did. I said, “Well, I only write poetry. I’m writing poems about the Magdalenes.” He said, “I love poetry, too,” and he started reciting lines from Yeats’ “Lake Isle of Innisfree.” I told him he was lucky to be from the land of Yeats, and then he pointed. “That’s the old convent, behind that wall,” he said. By the time he dropped me around the corner, he seemed calm again. Before I got out, I said, “I hope you write that book.” He said, “Maybe when I retire,” and I said, “Oh please don’t wait. Just start writing.”

I tried to find a way into the old laundry site, but the old laundry building had been torn down and was replaced with apartment buildings. Although I could SEE the old church, I couldn’t get at it. The original stone wall around the convent and laundry property was still in place, EXCEPT where it was interrupted by the apartment buildings, and there were iron fences there with no gaps through. I walked around the block trying to get through from the back, but the back had one gap closed off by locked iron gate. I’m meeting up with someone tomorrow who can get me inside and knows where the gravestones are on the property, too, so better luck tomorrow.

For the rest of today, I walked downtown to the Galway Market. It’s a wonderful open-air market with food and handicrafts and street musicians. There was a little girl busking with her gee-tar, she appeared to be about 14 or 15. There was a trad Irish group playing old Frank Sinatra tunes (for the American tourists, I suppose). I picked up some homemade garlic hummus for dinner, looked at the Irish kitsch in a couple of gift shops, and ducked in a music shop. I pretended to browse, but I was really listening to an older Irish trad player sample guitars and mandolins.

On the cab ride home, my driver, a man from Congo who’s lived in Galway for 20 years, told me that he left Congo because of conflict, and then he talked the rest of the way to the hotel about the need for us all to be less materialistic. He said we only need, “Safety, shelter, health, and a little bit of food.”

Before I came to Ireland, I worried a bit that people wouldn’t talk to me because I’m an “outsider.” But I’m starting to think that people talk to me BECAUSE I’m an outsider. I’m not someone they know or will see again, and maybe that makes me a safe listening post. And it seems there are plenty of folks here with a few bottled-up things to say…

And here's a look and listen at Galway and the song "Galway Girl." Aw sure and it's gonna give ye goosebumps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNs0vKDvs0g