Richard Edward Devlin
In a caravan set on a hillside amidst the tumbled ruins of an ancient British cavalry barracks in the old land of Tir Eoghain, the author has lived out the dream of Irish America, to return to the land of his ancestors after generations of separation. Welcomed there as if he was a native son returning to see that his fields and animals were being well-tended in his absence, what impressed Devlin most was the seemingly endless reservoir of stories and tales of days gone by which his newly-discovered relatives and friends told to each other, over and over. As the older generations die away. the author senses that these stories may never be heard again.
“The Irish today,” warns the author, “Especially the young Irish, are rushing towards modern life at such a rapid pace that within another generation, memories of the old ways and those sweetest of people, the Old Irish, will disappear forever.” With a keen ear and the instinct of the old Celts for oral history, Devlin has spent the last ten years writing many of these down and now passes them along to you.
Mr. Devlin brings a broad range of experiences to bear in this beautifully crafted book of stories about the Irish in the north of Ireland. He has traveled extensively in Ireland and owns a second home in his ancestral county of Tyrone. Mr. Devlin worked in the book publishing industry for many years and honed his writing skills in his younger days as an advertising writer for J. Walter Thompson in New York. His published works have ranged from a book on salmon fishing to a series of articles in Irish genealogy magazines like Irish Roots and The Septs. In the last several years, Devlin has represented the Shannon Development Agency and the Irish Tourist Board in America at a variety of outdoor expositions and shows.
The author is a member of several Irish genealogy groups such as the Irish Cultural Center and The Irish American Research Association ( T.I.A.R.A.) in the Boston area, the Irish Genealogical Society International in Minneapolis and the Irish Seacoast Cultural organization. As head of the Devlin Clan, Mr. Devlin is an active member of the Clans of Ireland organization in Ireland.
...from Chap. 6, "The Collection Plates."
I actually remember seeing the collection plates. On my first visit back to Tyrone after discovering my lost Irish family, I was hurrying into Sunday mass at St. John’s Chapel in Galbally, and there on the steps, unattended, were two circular tin trays, each with a small amount of money in them. After the service, I noticed that the trays had disappeared and asked some of the relatives what the collection plates were for. Knowing smiles and lifted eyebrows were the only answers they gave. Shortly after that period, the trays were seen no more outside the chapel.
If you are looking for a stereotypical IRA shoot-‘em-up, blow-‘em-up type of narrative, this story will disappoint you. What I found more intriguing was the subsurface turmoil going on beneath the open shooting war in my part of Tyrone, and presumably throughout the rest of the Six Counties, which created a dissonance from time to time between some members of the Irish Catholic population and the more radical inclinations of the IRA itself. It was a place where it was not always a simple matter to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
This a true story, but I’ll tell you up front that the names of people and descriptions of home places in this story have been changed to mask the identity of the individuals involved. You may be under the impression that the IRA has gone from the scene in Northern Ireland, but you’ll have to trust me on this one …they haven’t gone very far and these are a people with long memories.
(May 1995). The dark-haired woman looked into the mirror, turning her head from side to side as women will when arranging their hair. Dressed in a black slip, she stood in the first-floor foyer of the old farmhouse, primping and polishing her appearance for the upcoming night out. She and her husband, Eamon, usually enjoyed a Saturday night at a local pub over in Loughmacrory. It was not the most convenient place in the house to apply her makeup and arrange her hair, but she had no large mirror upstairs in her bedroom, and had fallen into the habit of using this mirror for her final inspection before going back upstairs to put on her dress.
She moved slowly, at a languid pace. Her husband was still in the milking shed tending to his herd of cows, so there was no need to hurry. Her four young children were watching television in the living room behind her. In a happy mood, she hummed an old Beatles song to herself as she poked and patted her hair. For Mary Bridget and Eamon, Saturday night was one night out of the long work week on the farm they reserved for themselves. It was usually a late night filled with dancing and socializing with friends, but this particular night would turn out to be vastly different than the one they had planned.
The light from the overhead fixture in the front hall was typical of lighting in Irish houses. It was of a low wattage, which threw a dim and yellowish glow that was not quite strong enough to illuminate to her satisfaction all that she wanted to see in the mirror. With a frown of concentration on her face, she leaned toward the mirror to gain a better view, intent on taming an unruly lock of hair. A movement behind her caused her to look up. Almost uncomprehendingly, over her shoulder she realized she was looking into the eyes of a strange man, an intruder, who had moved silently up behind her through the doorway of the television room. She spun around.
The man was dressed as if he were appearing in a James Bond movie: dark pants, a heavy black turtleneck sweater, and a dark-colored balaclava pulled over his head. In his hands he held an automatic rifle, the steel-blue sheen of the barrel glowing in the yellow light. It was pointed directly at her. From the holes in the mask, flat dark eyes glared at her, and the thin slash of a mouth showing through the small opening in the mask ordered her to be silent. Behind him, through the open door leading back into the television room, she could see her children in their pajamas standing wide-eyed with fear.
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