Mary Pat Kelly's return to Ireland

A trip to discover the homeland of one's ancestors

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Mary Pat Kelly and her tour group on St. MacDara's Island.

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I had connected with Erin and Ned because my great-great-grandmother Honora was the daughter of John Keeley, a fisherman, in Barna, County Galway. But I couldn’t find any more Keeleys in the area. When I discovered that a cluster of Keeleys who emigrated to Chicago were from the Ard peninsula near Carna in Connemara I went to investigate. The Keeleys were once lords of Connemara and when I saw the beautiful area that was their stronghold, I decided that I’d love for these to be my kin. I met Padraic Keeley who graciously allowed that, yes, we could be cousins – somehow. Another visit brought an e-mail from Erin Keeley Gibbons who was related to Padraic and married to Ned Kelly. She is working on a history of the Keeleys and has excavated many significant sites in the area and throughout Ireland. She arranged for Ned to give a presentation on the Bog Bodies, one of the many subjects on which he is an expert. The most famous corpse, the Gallagh Man, comes from right near the ruins of the stronghold of 14th-century William Boy O’Kelly, famous for the nine-month party he hosted. In Irish “Fáilte UíÌ Cheallaigh” still means a very warm welcome. I chose Gallagh, now Castle Blakeney, as the home place of Michael Kelly, the character based on my great-great-grandfather. Our group had that day visited the Heritage Center where its director, Valerie Kensella, true to the tradition of hospitality, gave us apple tarts and a concert by the All-Ireland contestant singers of St. Cuan’s College. And now Ned Kelly, a renowned authority and editor of a forthcoming book on the Bog Bodies had travelled to us to share his knowledge. Fáilte UíÌ Cheallaigh, indeed! For me, who’d been piecing together my understanding of Ireland bit by bit over forty years and had often struggled with text, alone and confused, Ned and Erin were a gift and a revelation. Our whole group felt it. They have the knowledge in such an organic way, and combine scholarship with deep personal connections, that they seem to illuminate every subject. They made us see the landscape itself differently. Through her friend Martin O’Malley, Erin even arranged a boat trip to MacDara’s Island, site of an important scene in Galway Bay. And then she told me that another scene I had set on an island on Ballynahinch had more relevance than I even realized. I’d emphasized the castle belonging to Grace O’Malley situated there without realizing that that same island had once been a Keeley stronghold.

Another one of our guides was Sister Maire MacNiallais, the keeper of the church archives in Galway, who had found Honora’s baptismal record in an 1822 ledger. She spoke to our whole group about the responsibility she feels to help Irish Americans connect to their ancestors. They deserve to be remembered.

So even if the resting places are unmarked, and if some of our great-great-great-aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers lie in the mass graves with other victims of the Great Starvation, when we return we honor them. Just as the kings of Ireland found strength standing on the bones of their ancestors, so will we.

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