I've tried not to get too uptight over the years, taking offense at green beer, leprechauns and debauchery passing for culture on March 17. I've also felt the tinge of pride, a sense of belonging, context and also deeper cultural wounds. I'm glad that the Irish have risen to a position in America where they can openly celebrate their heritage and invite others into the celebration. I also remember why the Irish marched, I feel it in my blood and in my bones. And year after year I largely bite my tongue to avoid raining on the parade.
This year, I raised the green, white & orange and I'll leave it up the flagpole while the weather is tame, while the rain falls gently upon my fields, while the wind be at my back, the season holding me in the palm of her hand.
And I offer the following family legend as a backdrop to why we march. I encourage us to march with others who still march in search of their human rights. My father's cousin was a Catholic priest in Ireland and swore to the veracity of the following. I did indeed visit the very spot my great uncles fell. Whether fully true or not, I was moved and I am moved by the human story that continues to play out, encompassing sorrow and celebration.
The blood on the barn wall
refused paint, year after year…
October 18th, 1920 blood dries in the Samhain season wind, shadows on the barn wall of two brave men.
Blood shadows cast behind Francis and Edward
O’Dwyer, two young men who would not be silent, who would not be still while misguided
English attempted to murder and silence forever
all things Irish – music, language, culture, a spirit that did not take well to kissing the arse of a racist king and queen who long ago labeled the Irish barbarians, traitors, terrorists so they could kill their culture and possess their land.
The blood on the barn wall refused paint, defied sun, wind, rain and time to mark the spot where two men were martyred for the cause of basic human rights.
October 21, 1920 the blood on the barn wall reflected the flickering flames of the family house a fire, the Black and Tans had returned looking for Jer, not finding him they kicked Kate from her own home and ate the dinner prepared from the family hearth and laughed like sick dogs in the night before the burning house, before the bloodstains that would outlast each and every bitter, twisted one of them.
The blood on the barn wall hardened and dried and faded, but never disappeared despite paint and sun, rain and storm, the blood remained a monument to two brothers who had been murdered in the night, they stood up for Ireland for Irishness
and were shot down, falling on their own land, blood staining the barn behind them, blood saturating the soil of the O’Dwyer farm.
Year after year the blood shadows, the tombstone stains of Frank and Ned remained with the memory of all those that fell so that the Irish would always know who they were and who they are and remember what it is like to be tormented for being different, for being proud, for being true not to a patriotic, empty cause, but to the defense of a people destined to be free.
Kate and Jer rebuilt the house the Brits burned down, and lived for years in the shadow of the Gaelty Mountains, farming the land, training greyhounds, baking pies, going on with a normal life for which the O’Dwyers throughout history had fought, preferring to be left alone to a quiet life in the Irish countryside.
Within the O’Dwyer blood flows the refusal to lie down to tyranny going back before Cromwell’s rape of the Irish countryside and Francis and Edward, Frank and Ned bled and died to fight those who would wage genocide against those wanting to live peacefully on their ancestral lands.
The blood on the barn wall disappeared suddenly one day in 1978, when Sean and Patty Hade, American relations through grandma Jane (O’Dwyer) Cassidy set foot on the family farm to bear witness to the great uncles who were not trying to be great, but merely answering the call of their conscious, the call of their blood line
to stand up against the misguided, to stand up against oppression so that the generations to come might know who they are, from where they come and the genetic imprint within them that calls upon them to stand up to impropriety where ever it raises it’s twisted head.
May we remember all those that suffered so that we might be proud to be Irish. And let not this pride ever turn to the misguided fervor that seeks to oppress another people. May our hearts always be open to those being oppressed, let us remember our own suffering and not become the oppressor ourselves. To do so is a stain upon our heritage, to do so is to tarnish the remembrance of Frank and Ned and all the ordinary, Irish heroes who just wanted to be women and men.
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