I grew up on Long Island listening to my Irish grandmother's tales and songs of her homeland which told of the thatched cottage in Mayo with flower gardens all around it like a sentimental greeting card, the hay loft from which her sister Julia jumped and broke her leg, the workhouse where destitute families would have to go, the cutting of turf in the bog at Garrywadreen with her father and vague stories of banshees in Ballyhaunis.
          When requested to talk "Irish" she would recite the Our Father in Gaelic. As she sat in her chair, her arthritic feet stepped lively to Father O'Flynn's Jig or Haste to the Wedding. Tears would come to her eyes when we played old records of Henry Burr singing The Ould Plaid Shawl; Hugh Donovan, Come Back to Erin; or John McCormack, Mother Machree. Her record of John Griffin singing The Real Old Mountain Dew, which Columbia recorded in 1913, took her back to the Irish countryside as she talked of poteen, the potato whiskey made by the farmers. She loved potatoes and everyone loved her homemade soda bread and marmalade and handmade quilts and crocheting. She didn't know why God put the English on earth!
She had a jingle she would utter in her little brogue:

Shake hands brother John
You're a rogue and I'm another
You'll be hanged in Ballinrobe
And I'll be hanged in Ballintubber
I'll break the rope and run home to my mother.

          Catherine Burke Fitzgerald lived to be 98 and never returned to Ireland. Little did she know how complicated it would be, one hundred years after she had left the land of her birth, for her family to retrace her steps and find her old home in Garrywadreen.
          In June 1979, my mother, my sister, my son and daughter and I set out on this venture. We began our pursuit for our Irish ancestors with few clues: a church named Kilcolman, a birth date of 1860 and the place named Garrywadreen.
          We did not realize how nebulous a clue "Garrywadreen" was. We had not reckoned on the linguistic complications involved. The various formations of the Irish place names are complicated and may tend to confuse the stranger. But the confusion may lead to interesting discussions with the Irish which often bring about gracious invitations to tea.
          The Gaelic spellings and pronunciations, combined with the English, may perplex the outsider, but they also make a new friend or help find unknown cousins. We were searching for Garrywadreen and discovered that "garrai" means garden. We learned of Garranlahan, Garryfine, Garrycloonagh and Garryvoe, but our enquiries about Garrywadreen led nowhere. "Baile" in Irish means town and there are over two hundred villages and towns starting with "Ball." There are two Ballina's, three Ballyduff's (and a Barryduff). There is a Ballygar, Ballymote, Ballyvasry, Ballygannon, Ballycastle, Ballycoyle, two Ballygawly's, three Ballygarry's and a Ballingeary. And a Ballaghadereen, which had the closest cadence to Garrywadreen.
          My grandmother had always said that she came from County Mayo from a town which sounded like Garrywadreen. Ballaghadereen is just over the Mayo border in County Roscommon and after all, Catherine Burke had left Ireland for America in 1879. As the years passed county lines could have changed, or her memory dimmed. Grandmother was baptized in Kilcolman (Church of St. Colman) in 1860 and Ballaghadereen has a cathedral of Kilcolman which was dedicated in that year.
          Surely we had found her hometown. We recorded it on film: the cathedral and the village homes. We searched the shops for postcards in an attempt to find old ones. The most memorable shop was P. Mulligan's Hardware. It gave a feeling of being in Roscomon, the county of "sheep stealers". Chicken wire kept customers' hands out of the loose vegetable seeds and out of the tool shelf! Cards of the Cathedral? No. Of the town? No. Not even the county.
          A visit to the rectory changed our enthusiasm when the pastor told us there were no Burkes in the parish and he had no record of any ever having been in that area. He did give us another clue. Claremorris also has a Kilcolman!
          Back at our rooms in Roscommon, we planned ahead. We visited the Molloy Grocery owned by cousins Noel and Barry Molloy with whom we share the same great-great-grandparents. They referred us to the Goggins and Waldren families on the Knock Road two miles out of Claremorris. We decided if we had no Irish luck in Claremorris, we would go to Archbishop Joseph Cunnane's office in Taum on Monday.
          Sunday was a soft calm day with a placid sky as we headed through the hedge-lined roads of Mayo, God help us. In Castlerea we saw the name Burke in the village and that was a good feeling. In the small town of Ballinlough the shops and homes were decorated with flags, ribbons, flowers and religious displays. Little girls were dressed in white for the Corpus Christi procession which was about to begin.
          Ballyhaunis is a name we had heard my grandmother use. It has its great ruins of castles, abbeys and monasteries; and there is a shop signed undertaker and joiner. Could it be a firm that handles funerals and weddings? We passed evergreen farms looking as if they were waiting for Christmas trimmings and were soon in the pleasant town of Claremorris (the level place of the family of Maurice). It is a town of about 2000 set in the Plain of Mayo.
          In any town in Ireland, to find the Church just raise your head, spot the steeple and go. Through the old gray stone town our eyes directed us to the highest spire and an inscription said this one was dedicated in 1912. Across the street were church ruins of what must have been a magnificent structure. Maybe Catherine Burke was christened there. We were surprised to find that there was no indication of the name of the church. Churches in the United States have signs in prominent places with the name, denomination and times of services. But not in Ireland. The people know and strangers can ask.
          An older man strolling by confirmed our hopes. It was Kilcolman. He also pointed out the rectory and added that all the priests had gone to Knock because it was Sunday. Knock is the scene of an apparition in 1879 of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and St. John and is now a place of pilgrimages. The Blarney showed in this man who loved to talk and thoroughly enjoyed it. The door bell was answered by soft-spoken Father John Sweeney, the pastor, who shrugged about the strollers' comment that the priests were not at home.
          After introductions, we talked about the glories of Ireland and being "home" to look up the grandmother's homestead. Father Sweeney took out the ancient register and we were able to see the entry of February 15, 1860, when the baby daughter of Ulick Burke and Catherine Goggins was baptized Catherine. That baptism actually took place in the old Kilcolman church which was situated across town in 1860 and is now the location of a dance hall. We were learning of the old days as Father Sweeney said, "Ye are walking on thousands of years of history."
          Father Sweeney did not know of any descendants of any part of the family. If we had hours to spend we could search through all the registers and look for brothers' and sisters' births, deaths and marriages. He was not encouraging because the records were not always accurate. Through the years of the bitter English domination, the Irish feared the English and wanted no written record of their lives that would help the British acquire information which could be used against them.
          When we told Father we had gone to Kilcolman in Ballaghadereen because it was the closest we came to a Garrywadreen, the pious man's face lit up. Yes, he knew Garrywadreen. It means "garden of the rosary" or "garden of prayer" and is a village just out of Claremorris that used to have twelve families and now has five.
          He led us by way of the road to Castlebar. We took the narrow one-lane paved roadway past two abandoned thatched cottages to a rather recently built home of the O'Briens. Not far from the "new" house, the "big" house, stood the tumbling down once-thatched cottage. It stood as a reminder that the O'Brien family had been in Garrywadreen many generations. Mrs. Mary O'Brien, who greeted us, was young, had married into the family and did not know any of the Burkes. She referred us up the road to Babs O'Connor, who was seventy-five and would know. Before parting she invited us all back for tea, that exquisite Irish custom.
          A few hundred yards along the same little winding lane we came to a neat little cluster of whitewashed, walled-in stone buildings whose tin roofs had replaced the earlier thatch. We pulled in between the stone barn and the back door of the little cottage. It had two chimneys, three small double-hung windows, a green door and the usual bed alcove jutting into the yard where the hay was drying.
          Two ladies appeared at the open door to greet Father Sweeney. Father introduced them as Babs O'Connor, who lived there and her sister Aggie Cunningham from Ballykinave six miles away. Babs had a wirey slight frame, fluffy white hair and was dressed in neat slacks and blouse and delicate earrings. Her gentle blue eyes were vibrant with excitement. Aggie had softer round features and both ladies had rosy pink cheeks.
          When my mother was introduced as "Mrs. White from the United States", there was a meeting of joy and tears as Babs and Aggie cried out "Lottie White". "Welcome home." These were the first of the unknown cousins to come into our life while looking for places in Ireland.
          Distant, but cousins indeed, they are. They used to write letters in the 20s and 30s for Thomas Burke, my grandmother's brother, to his sister Julia. Julia was the sister who broke her leg as a child, eventually lost the entire leg and became Sister Rita in the Good Shepherd Convent in Brooklyn. With her disability this was the only order which would accept her.
          Father Sweeney, thrilled to be instrumental in affording us the pleasure of finding Garrywadreen, returned to his parish and left us to pursue our heritage.
         We entered the little cottage through the middle room. It was a family room of Irish charm: kitchen, dining room and parlor all in one with whitewashed walls. A small turf fire was burning in the large but shallow fireplace. The ceiling followed the roofline and was finished with dark brown wainscoting. The windows were curtained in lace; the bed alcove next to the fireplace, in gingham. China was displayed in the traditional Irish dresser. In a comfortable rocking chair by the hearth sat Tom O'Connor who also lived in the house with his sister. Tom had a round rosy face, no teeth and a receding hairline. He stood up to greet us, leaning heavily on his cane.
          Babs and Aggie told us what they remembered of the Burke family. Thomas Burke was fourteen years older than Catherine, my grandmother and had gone to Florida many years ago with his Irish bride. They were not blessed with children and when his wife died, Tom returned to Mayo to the family homestead and married a young bride Rose. Old Tom was quite the man. In his 70s he fathered three children by Rose. Rose died in 1922; Tom in 1933 at 87, leaving the three children in their early teens. His young daughter Mary was sent to be raised in a convent, later married and settled in London. Sons Ulick and Eugene went to Dublin as carpenter apprentices. Ulick died a few years ago and Eugene still lives in Dublin and often visits Garrywadreen.
          Aggie and Babs could go on and on with stories but took time out to walk up the road, now changed to a dirt and stone path, to the site of the old Burke farm.
          Looking on the enchanting site of the Burke homestead for the first time was an emotional experience. Time has covered with grasses and plants the foundation stones that so long ago had divided the rooms. Grassy mounds overlay the two fireplace locations. You can almost see mysterious wee people peeking out to glimpse those disturbing the tranquil scene. Small delicate wild flowers were clustered where roses, petunias and daisies once flourished.
          A mortarless stone wall edged the area of the home and barn. The pastoral common ground lay in the distant fields as a meadow of summer. The timeworn old turf bog beyond looked abandoned, but I looked hard and could see Grandma cutting peat with her Da.
          We returned to the O'Connor cottage to absorb all we had seen and enjoyed a sweet warm cup of tea with homemade rhubarb scones, cakes and brown bread with jam, while Babs and Aggie continued the family stories.
          They also referred us to Molly Goggins Waldren on the Knock Road for more information and pointed out the rooftop of her home, in the distance, when they led us to Ballinsmalla Cemetery and the graves of Thomas and Rose Burke and others. Weathered rocks of stone walls mark the position of the cloister, courtyard and aisles of the Ballinsmalla Abbey founded in the 13th century by a DeBurgo family as a Carmelite Friary. The grounds and medieval altar were being spruced up for some special forthcoming occasion on July 16. We were told that my great grandmother, Catherine Goggins, had worked in the abbey as a young girl. This could have been the inspiration for young Julia, Grandma's sister, who had wanted to join the Carmelite order but was turned down because of her leg.
          We spent several weeks in Mayo checking leads and thoroughly enjoying the almost venerable land. We walked Claremorris to see the places Grandma must have walked. The workhouse of her day was closed in 1918 and now is occupied by the Claremorris Bacon Company.
          The drive out the Knock Road brought us past many Goggins' homes and we found Molly Goggins Waldren off the road in Cartownacross. We were able to place Molly as cousin to my grandmother.
          Again we faced the most fabulous "long lost cousin" welcome. Molly is 85 and lives in the modern little house with her son Martin, his wife Marie and their single daughter Mary. Pots of brilliant flowers were artistically arranged in the paved yard within the stone wall. More were in the entrance hall which was decorated with hanging plants. They always have the kettle on and invited us to "have a potato" which is dinner with the meat and vegetable added.
          They filled us in on many of the Goggins' clan and the Molloy clan but could not give any concrete information about the earlier members of the Burke family. Martin directed us to the old Kilcolman cemetery by way of the road to Kiltimagh. "After the railroad crossing look to the right up on a hill." You could see it all right, but how could you get to it? We took the next right rugged path and came to a thatched cottage. "Sure and why would ye be wanting to go there?" said a little woman as she sent us down the way which seemed to be through her farm. We climbed and crawled through this neglected old graveyard filled with markers of all sizes. Some were even the size of a large stone door. Not many engraved names were still legible and the weeds and thorny bushes were inhabited by stinging little gnats who prevented us from further searching for ancestral graves.
          Although we were not able to delve more deeply into the history of the Burke family, this trip to Ireland and the discoveries in County Mayo led to the meeting with Mother's first cousin, Eugene Burke in Dublin. Neither knew of each other. There is almost twenty-five years difference in their ages. Eugene, aged 62, is six foot four inches and weighs about 200 pounds. His pink face and balding head is fringed in reddish brown hair. His large features glow with a mixture of happiness and childlike impish anticipation. He and his wife Margaret were a pleasure to meet. High tea with them is like a Thanksgiving day dinner. They told many stories of banshees and goblins and of Eugene's youth in Garrywadreen. As he was six when his mother died and fourteen when his Da passed away, he knew very little about his family. He had worked as a carpenter's helper until he was old enough to join the army, which he made his career. On retirement he became a guard at the National Museum in Dublin.
          The verse Grandma recited "Shake hands, brother John..." was also heard by Eugene as a child. So we went to see Ballinrobe and Ballintubber in County Mayo. Ballinrobe in the lake district, has its cairns and ringforts and the DeBurgo Castle ruins, which date back to 1480. It was notable to us because DeBurgo is the ancient form of Burke. The Creevagh Castle and the Neale Castle were also DeBurgo fortifications, all in Ballinrobe.
          Ballintubber is nine miles from Ballinrobe and had "the Abbey that refused to die", Ballintubber Abbey. It is interesting to note the confusion of place names. There is another Ballintubber in Roscommon and it was there that the original abbey was built in error and is now a ruin. When the mistake was corrected, a more magnificent church was built in Ballintubber, Mayo and still stands. Mass has been said continuously in this 13th century abbey for over 750 years. The present sacristy was originally the mortuary chapel of the Mayo DeBurgos.
          A girl working at the abbey told us the story of Sean na Sagart who was a "priest catcher" in the early 18th century. He would turn in priests' vestments to the police who would then locate the priest and execute him. John Mollowney (his real name) was caught by the parishioners and tied with rope and drowned. The people, full of remorse, brought his body back and buried him on the abbey grounds. An oak tree grew over the gravesite, but all the branches droop down.
          Storybook Ireland has come to life. From the boggy marshlands to the moss-covered monastery ruins, from the wayside grottos to the magnificent abbeys; from cousins in cottages to cousins in elegant homes in Dublin, all with the same black bricks of turf in the fireplace. We had come "home" to Garrywadreen where Grandma said she would stop on her way to heaven.
          Ireland is pages from Grandma's life and a beautiful patch worked memory that we will return to many times. God willing.