“Lucky”                                                                                                                                                  March 15, 2023

This week’s prompt is LUCKY! I’m guessing it’s because St. Patrick’s Day is coming up and everyone knows the saying, “The luck of the Irish”! So, let’s talk about those Irish!!

Picture it – Ireland, March 2020, just before the world shut down from a Covid-19 Pandemic. I’m sure that conjures up a great deal of words and memories for those of you reading this, the least of which “lucky” is NOT one of those words, but we were in Ireland looking for more ancestors of the Gallagher clan.  Our trip was planned for March 8- 20^th. Here we go!!

We arrived in Dublin early in the morning Monday March 9^th, 2020 – the red eye flights suck! We were tired but rented a stick shift car that drives on the left-hand side of the road and drove into Dublin during morning rush hour.  Getting to our hotel was like going through a maze making all left turns when our hotel was on the right.   Silly us, we thought we had to follow the rules of the road and continued making left turns, until we made a U-turn in the middle of the road and finally made it into the hotel.  The question was, would they let us in so early in the morning when check in was about 4pm? We got LUCKY – our room was ready, and we got some sleep.  

We were in Dublin for 2 days, went to the National Library of Ireland and did some research. LUCKILY, we were able to find the civil marriage record of Mark’s great grandfather, James Gallagher and his great grandmother, Margaret McGloin which had the names of their fathers!! This was a great find!

The saying, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb” seems to hold true for Ireland.  It was cold and rainy and snowy.  We left Dublin for the town of Bundoran in the county of Donegal to find our B&B. Driving was a bit of a challenge when it was snowing and the roads were narrow.  Mark kept getting stuck in 1^st gear. After a while I just started laughing at the whole situation.  We safely made it to Bundoran.

By Wednesday, we started getting notifications from our daughters that this Covid thing was getting bad and we needed to be careful. Word was it was highly transmissible and caused death.  I felt we were pretty safe. Who in their right mind goes to Ireland in March when the weather is this bad!! We were the only ones in our B&B – we even got to pick out which room we wanted.

Thursday, March 12, we went to St. Patrick’s Church in Ballyshannon – the Gallagher’s hometown in Ireland.  The church is in Kilbarron Parish and it was beautiful! And right in the center of Ballyshannon, so walking around was easy.  The Parish office was on campus and we walked in and found a young man named Ray who was in charge of digitizing church records.  We explained to him that we are in search of Gallagher ancestors.  He was able to give us the baptismal records for Mark’s grandfather, Charles Francis Gallagher as well as his siblings and the church marriage record for James and Margaret!! How LUCKY is that!! Now off to the Abby Catholic Cemetery in Ballyshannon, we were sure to find some Gallagher’s there, right???

If I were Steven King, I would have the right words to describe the Abby Cemetery on March 12^th in the afternoon. So, instead I will say, “It was a dark and stormy” afternoon! The wind was whipping through us and the rain was cold and almost horizontal.  The cemetery was very old and the older graves were towards the back of the cemetery.  The graves were right next to each other all with rocky boarders wet with moss and dirt. Since Mark’s family would have been buried there in the late 1800’s we had to trudge over these graves and read each one to find a Gallagher or McGloin.  We did find some, but none of the names looked familiar.  Mark gave up quickly – it was not a pleasant experience.  I want to go back. He says he’ll never do that again.  We were LUCKY there were no ghosts!!

We also found a museum in a small section of a department store and met two men who were self-

proclaimed historians of Ballyshannon. They were a wealth of information.  We knew of a public house that Mark’s Uncle Pat McGloin had on Eastport called the Railway Hotel in the 1800’s. The day before we walked up and down the street looking for what might have been Pat McGloin’s public house to no avail.  The guys in the museum picked up the phone to find out who owned the Railway Hotel and who owns it now. That’s how we found the “Bullfrog” Bar – the current name! This bar was named for the “Bullfrog Blues” by famous rocker Rory Gallagher. No direct relation.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GvQ5gNKsQ4

Another LUCKY find!!

We were able to see a wee bit of Ireland but realized that the United States would be issuing a travel ban starting March 13.  We were not able to reach anyone to change our tickets despite Mark being on the phone on hold for hours, but we were able to purchase one-way tickets back to the US for Saturday, March 14, 2020.  We left before sunrise to drive across the country from Bundoran to Dublin.  We dropped off the car and got into the airport only to find the line to go through immigration and customs for the US (in Ireland you go through customs and immigration on their side when coming to the US) was about ½ mile long.  No masks, no distancing, just a lot of confusion and thousands of wayfarers trying to get home, all huddled in narrow security lanes.  We finally get to immigration and I passed through without any problems. Mark is pulled off into a closed room and I’m waiting outside that room unclear what was going on.  After about 30-45min he finally comes out and says that he was quizzed as to what other countries he was in this past week.  He let them know it was only Ireland, but they wanted him to PROVE it.  LUCKILY, he had pictures on his phone everyday we were in Ireland – including when we went to the Beleek factory which is a stone’s throw from the Republic of Ireland and is technically in Northern Ireland – supposedly a different country.  They finally let him out and we were able to catch the plane which was delayed due to the backlog at the airport. 

WHEW!! What a trip!! Although it was a whirlwind, we had a good time and were LUCKY to find the info we found and to get out safe and sound without covid!!