Posting the Night Away
February 3rd, 2010~ A new twist on an old theme.
It has been three months since I posted last. I have probably lost all my regular readers. In the web world this means one starts again, rebuilds the ruined words with new words, new mortar, new dots and dashes and periods and commas and the ever ready semi-colons that I like so much.
A hiatus is a good thing; like summer vacation or winter holidays or a Fourth of July picnic - it is not just a break in the year, it is an event into itself - it is perhaps even and only that which makes the whole year worthwhile, worth looking forward to. Breaks are what one gets when a chance to get better presents itself, “a lucky break” (as if not all breaks are lucky). Or, do you believe in “luck”.
The above mentioned break has not yet brought me a new roof (I’m still working on it), but it did bring word from a long lost relative that posted me in response to a post (on this site) that I posted long ago. It was just the mention of a name, and the name was known and recognized and brought the possibility of hope - at least the hope that is entailed in the possession of new information, the clearing of deficits and mysteries, the finding of missing links.
A part of my family it seems came from Ireland. It is a common boast, or lament; depending upon the politics, the interest in literature and pints - the intensity of feeling about religion and death and famine and the causes of it all, or the causes created by it all. Or maybe as it’s Ireland; it’s really just all about the dancing, or the jig, or the blarney which is just another name for the yarn. Life is like that; a fabric for the weaving, homespun fibers with warp and weave and the sometimes push of pedal and all the ups and downs that are as repetitious as the hills and as predictable if you know them.
I know a hill or two. I’ve lived life long enough. My eyes were not always just looking at my feet, watching each slow step in the march or walk ever forward - I did look up occasionally, if only just to see the sun. It seems that my Irish forebears were “driven out of Ireland”; as if the need to eat is not motivation great enough, Catholic mouths always hungry, families too large to feed, there is little sympathy for that; or there was too little sympathy in England once for the plight of the poor, the occupied tenants of lands occupied by greater force and forces (military even) - but, has time changed so much?
But my forebears were not Catholic. “It was the Catholics that drove them out, tried to kill them, followed the fleeing brothers to America even to harm them.“ Death squads they would call it if it happened today. The year was (about) 1799, not 1845 or later. It was not about the hunger perhaps, but more about the occupying armies, the foreign businesses and estates, the presence on the land by those who perhaps did not belong; or was it just about religion - some feel more deeply, more passionately, more murderous about their faith.
The words about “the Catholics” were passed down through succeeding generations. The enemy was a religion, a people, not real faces. The brothers though had faces. They were relatives, unnamed perhaps, but relatives just the same, made better perhaps by the absence of real names; they could be anyone, even relatives of yours - provided that “the Catholics” never get them. I’m bothered about “the Catholics”.
It’s the notion of Catholics of course that bothers me the most. My relatives were people, not “Protestants”, they had lives and faces and hopes and dreams and evidently fears (which is why they left (old) Ireland. Why cannot “Catholics” be the same, each person different, some good, some bad. Was it “all the Catholics” that drove the Martin brothers out of Ireland? I think not. It was not the Catholics that were arrayed into squads of death; it was a religious passion too passionate that was bound to kill, not the many of the multitude.
So do we condone our Christian brothers for stealing babies to save them from a “Voodoo” fate? Are our Moslem brethren not unlike “the Catholics”, too unspeakable to be despised? Are Christians so lesser in the eyes of the Jewish faith? When can all this religious rancoring just go away? I’ve had enough. I have no time for faith-based squabbling, or the cat-calls of scientists too inexperienced to earn their wings. We all have so many better things to argue about, on which we might disagree; each person’s approach to God is not one of them.
So I’m looking for the bad guys; not Catholics, but people that would drive one away from home. But, then again the bad guys might have been the Martins, my own blood in part, for others were in Ireland before them, first, and it is unlikely that the Martins were invited to the land - they probably just invaded, were invaders, had a message and a method. It was not unlike Afghanistan after all - just a little closer.
Would you love me more if I were Jewish? Would you hate me less if I were black? Does it matter that “the three brothers Martin” were Protestants or Hindu; was the journey across the sea so necessary or so bad? Would you like this post better if I were writing from Ireland, of Irish blood? Isn’t it all just history, and isn’t most history just about the same?
So if you know of Irish history and can make any sense of any of this all - please write. It might have been William Martin and his brother Michael (Michael Martin) and another brother yet unknown that were the victims (or causes) of such a vendetta as to raise passions to a murderous pitch. The year was circa 1799 or thereabouts, maybe just before. These boys fled to McKeesport, Pennsylvania if the story might be true; but, it’s from where they left that is of interest to me now. These are my Irish roots. If I’m not Catholic should I be sorry? I think the greater loss is not to know your grandfather’s home.
[Note: On page #206 of the History of Butler County (online) is more information about the William Martin family in question. There is also the possibility that the story originated with Thomas Wilson (information on the same page), since he was called a Squire. William Martin married Ellen Wilson, so it is possible that the “Martin family story” really originated with the Wilson family and the three brothers were really “Wilson’s”. In this case the “Wilson outrage” (if it existed) would probably have occurred in Ireland sometime after 1760 and before 1790.]
[2010.02.03 / Wednesday - Posting the Night Away]