The Emerald Isle
Apr. 29th, 2010 at 6:40 PM
I was 21 years old when the Gorta Mór (Potato Famine) of the Emerald Isle struck in the year of 1845. The memories are hazy, as it has been a while since I was actually there. But I will tell you all I can remember, so you can know my story.
From an early age, I can remember if I thought really hard about things sometimes, the situation would normally be turned in my favour. I convinced myself it was good luck and a coincidence.
We didn't have much as children, so materialistic things were never in abundance, we didn't know any different, so our plain clothes, did the jobs they were supposed to do, we ate what we had when we had it. I was working on my father's Potato Farm, to harvest more crop to bring more money in for my family.
We were a rather large family, as they were in those days, as the Infant mortality rate was phenomenally high. My parents Padraig (pronounced Paw-rig) and Meave (Pronounced Mee-ve) were the greatest contrast in human beings you could ever meet. My father was a rare breed. He very rarely struck us, preferring the "I am disappointed in you, get out of my sight" approach, which was unheard of. My mother was the typical Matriarch. Her flame red hair, matched a fiery temper. We did not cross my mother, as if we did we would have the paddle. I hated that thing with a passion. Many a time my rear was paddled bright red, so sore I couldn't sit down for a week. I was as feisty as my mother, which as you can imagine caused a lot of arguments. I was the eldest of my brother's and sister's, being Catholics, large family's were the norm. I am not saying I had favourites, as I loved them all very deeply, but I was closer to my brother Conor than I was to the others, he was 20. To them I was a nicer version of my mother. Conor had a passion for dog's, he loved dog's, and they seemed to love him, they would follow him home. Family life was pleasant enough, but hard work. We weren't hungry, but we had to work hard for what we had. My father as I mentioned before was a Potato Farmer, had a fair bit of land, but we all chipped in to help him. My mother stayed home and looked after the bairns as women did in those days.
It wasn't until I had gone through my transformation and lived for a few hundred years that I found out that our family name O'Connell, actually means "As strong as a wolf" which is why I have a ring with a wolf on it. Every century, I get it remade in the strongest metal, well it seems fitting somehow. The name Conor also means "Hound Lover", which is strange, it often makes me think, did he grow into his name, or did my parents know something. Anyway, I digress.
One morning as my father, my brother and I walked over to our potato fields, we got on to the subject of how arid the land looked, and that we were worried about the crop we were going to produce that year. What we didn't know at the time was that it would be the start of decades of misery and poverty. I would only suffer the famine for another 6 months. I would be living by another means.