A Singing of the Blood

Aililiú Na Gamhna

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The skies are heavy with clouds, dark with the promise of rain. The air thick and soft and warm, like a damp blanket taken from the dryer 20 minutes too soon.

For now, at least, nothing is falling, so I leave my raincoat on the passenger seat and head into the store. The air has cooled with the coming of the storm, but it’s still balmy, and I can feel the sheen of sweat forming on my forehead as I lock the door. The jacket will only make that worse.

I’m only inside for about 15 minutes, but when I leave, the skies have already torn open, and water is falling in a torrent across the parking lot. I have a lot to load into the back of my van, and no means by which to cover it, but it’s clear to me that the downpour won’t be letting up any time soon, so I steel my resolve and push my heavy-laden cart out into the rain.

As the seconds pass, me trying to shake as much water from containers and boxes as I can as I load them in, the rainfall intensifies. Water pours off the bill of my baseball cap, and I’m drenched to the skin, my shoes soggy and limp. Finished with my task at last, I throw myself into the driver’s seat and shut the door. I have no towel, nothing with which to dry off the excess dripping moisture, so I turn on the seat heater, turn the air conditioner to lukewarm, and head out into the storm.

By the time I reach the highway, it’s coming down harder than I’ve seen in years. I’m reminded of a time when I was a teen working a Texas summer camp, driving a 15-passenger van full of rowdy boys back to Dallas from a storm-interrupted trip to Houston, the water falling in sheets so heavy the windshield wipers were useless. Or another time, longer ago, riding in the back seat of a station wagon with my uncle after a camping trip to Bigelow Hollow, the rain so heavy it looked like we were inside a submarine.

The van is hydroplaning nearly constantly, and I’m struck with the image of driving a puck across an air hockey table, its vectors of motion gliding in confusing and random directions. My phone, hooked into the stereo system, startles me with a loud, shrill tone as a tornado warning blasts across the screen. Every time the van begins to drift, I let off the gas until I feel the tires regain their purchase through the inches of water now blowing sideways across the road, my eyes scanning the skies for signs of a funnel cloud.

There’s no place for shelter. Vigilance is my only recourse.

The phone buzzes again, this time with a flash flood warning. I don’t know this part of the area, don’t know where the low-lying trouble spots might be in order that I can avoid them. I fidget with the radio until I find a news and weather channel, and they say the region I’m in has already received 8-9 inches of rain. In the desert southwest, I’d be looking for washes, especially the kind that cross the roads, but here in the Carolinas they have lakes and rivers and ponds that fill up first. I don’t even know where they are, let alone when they might overflow their banks.

I’m wary of the danger, but the green of the trees, the slate gray skies, and the cascading sheets of precipitation tell me I’m in the only kind of place that can ever feel like home. This is my kind of country, and it’s a deeper kind of belonging than mere preference.

Scenery like this causes a singing of the blood.

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Aililiú Na Gamhna

Aililiú na gamhna na gamhna bána (Aill-il-lu the calves,the pretty calves)
Aililiú na gamhna na gamhna b’iad a b’fhearr liom (Aill-il-lu the calves, I loved them the best)
Aililiú na gamhna na gamhna geala bána (Aill-il-lu the calves,the fine pretty calves)
Na gamhna maidin shamhraidh ag damhs’ ar na bánta (Dancing in the meadow on a clear summer's morning)

[1]

‘S inion d’aoire mé fhéinig gan amhras (I'm a herdsman's daughter, sure enough)
Do bhiodh ina cónaí cois taobh na Leamhna (Who once lived down by the banks of the Laune)
Bhí bothan agam féin ann is fuinneog i gceann dé (I had a cabin there, a window in the gable)
Fad a bhiodh an bainne ‘g téamh agam ‘se ghlaofainn ar na gamhna (While I heated the milk I called in the calves)

[CURFÁ]

[2]

Faightear dom cana is faightear dom bhuarach (Get me a can and get me a ladle)
Is faightear dom soitheach ina gcuirfead mo chuid uachtar (Get me a vessel to take all the cream)
Ceolta sí na cruinne bheith a’siorchur i m’chluasa (The magic music of the world always around me)
Ba bhinne liomsa géimneach na mbó ag teacht chun buaile. (But sweeter sounding still the lowing of the cattle to the parlor)

[CURFÁ]

[3]

Rachamid ar an t-aonach ‘s ceannóimid gamhna (Let us go to the fair and buy us some calves)
Is cuirfimid ar féar iad amach ins na gleannta (Put them to grass out above in the valleys)
Iosfaidh siad an féar is barr an aitinn ghallda (They'll eat all the grass and the tufts of the strange gorse)
Is tiocfaidh siad abhaile chun an bhainne i gcóir an tSamhraidh. (And come home for the milk at the start of the summer)

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The first time I heard real Gaelic folk music was 1998.

I was a student at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and it was the time of year when the big annual Irish festival was held in Pittsburgh. I had attended previously, but didn’t feel like going that year, so I was surprised when I heard that some of friends had prevailed upon some kind of remarkable Irish singer who had been up all night with them to go to the local Eat N’Park for breakfast and then make a visit to our campus. I headed off to meet them for food, and we all went back to the university together.

The name of the singer was Iarla Ó Lionáird, and he specialized in the revival of traditional Gaelic folk music. I had no idea how famous he was. As about 20 of us sat together in one of the small side rooms at the J.C. Williams center, he began to sing, acapella, and I found myself strangely moved.

As he sang songs like Aililiú Na Gamhna, above, I found myself involuntarily envisioning verdant, rainy landscapes in my mind, like a waking dream of a home I’d never seen.

The Welsh have a word for this: Hiraeth. “A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.”

It was the closest thing to actual magic I’ve ever experienced.

I felt connected to something deep and ancient. My last name is Slovak — from my father’s father, but my father’s mother was full-blooded Irish, her parents having been John and Margaret (Cooney) Sheehan of County Clare, Ireland, who came to America some time in the early 20th century, and settled down in Upstate New York.

My mother’s side of the family is a bit more of a mystery, as their emigration was longer ago — I had ancestors on the Mayflower, for example — but that part of the family tree is filled with names like Emmons, Moore, Stanton, and O’Brien. Names that are either English, or Irish, or some combination of both.

I later took Ó Lionáird, with a couple of others, over to the Portiuncula, the little stone chapel on campus where there was 24/7 Eucharistic adoration. I could tell, somehow, that he’d been away from the faith for the long time, but I also saw how captivated he was by the place.

Later, outside, I found enough courage to venture a sentence or two in my affected Irish accent for him. It worked well enough on Americans, but here before me was the real deal, and I was trepidatious. But upon hearing it, his kind eyes widened and he laughed.

“Ya’ sound like a fuckin’ bog-man from Sligo!” he declared.

I felt a surge of pride at his reaction, which came across as genuine, a small piece of connection, somehow, to an ancestry and a people I have never known, and about whom I still know next to nothing at all.

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The work of my deliveries now complete, I am wet from head to toe. My shirt clings to me and my shoes feel squishy and full of grit.

But I have managed to avoid the tornadoes — some apparently touched down at the airport, damaging at least one hangar — and have not come across any impassable roads. The seat heater is doing nothing to dry my shorts, but at least it’s keeping me from being freezing cold.

I spot a Dunkin Donuts across the road and make a U-turn. I order a hot coffee, with cream and one sugar, and thank the man when he hands it to me through the drive-through window. With the lid on, and just one little spout to drink from, the coffee is far too hot to drink, so I pop off the top and smile as the van fills with the aroma.

There’s something about being soaked while driving in the rain, a cup of hot coffee in your hand, a sad song on the radio, driving through a storm under ominous skies.

“These are some of your favorite things,” I say to myself, and force my scowl to soften, trying out a smile that feels unnatural.

“This is life. Feel it. Feel it. Just feel it. You’re alive.”

Over the speakers, the lyrics play:

It's crazy when
The thing you love the most is the detriment
Let that sink in

You can think again
When the hand you wanna hold is a weapon and
You're nothin' but skin

Oh, 'cause I keep diggin' myself down deeper
I won't stop 'til I get where you are
I keep running, I keep running, I keep running

They say I may be making a mistake
I woulda followed all the way, no matter how far
I know when you go down all your darkest roads
I woulda followed all the way to the graveyard

I call to ask what I need to get at the store for dinner. No need for her to go out when I’m already sopping wet.

We make a list.

I say I love you.

She laughs gently, and only says goodbye.

My nerves feel like they’re on fire.

The windshield wipers try to keep up, but they cannot clear the tears blocking the view.