Before I left for Ireland, I visited my friend on the Isle of LaMotte in Vermont. She and her husband live in a stone house built in 1829 with an orchard of apple and pear trees. She is a flower gardener at the master level and he is a vegetable gardener growing everything from seeds. Amazing. The island only has a few winter residents but many more summer residents. Hundreds of bicycles are along the roadways enjoying the twisted narrow Vermont roads and incredible views of the lakes and mountains. The house is three stories with a wrap around porch and sun room looking out over the lake. We walk, we talk, we drink Haitian coffee in the morning and have a Haitian liquor before bed. We sleep well tucked into the stone house looking out over the lake.
I take the train back to New York tomorrow and will spend the weekend celebrating my daughter’s and my granddaughter’s birthdays. I met people on the train coming up to Vermont headed to Montreal (we are only 10 minutes from the Canadian border) who owned race horses in California. It was a long, tedious travel to Vermont but the scenery was spectacular with the Hudson River on one side and then after several hours the lakes on the other.
My posting may pause until Monday when I arrive in Shannon. Until then, please tune back in and keep up with my summer. There are many more stories to tell. I will be just outside of Galway, Ireland. There are two stories of how Galway got its name. First, there was a legend that the Fir Bolg chieftain’s daughter drowned in the river. Her name was Gaillimh inion Bresail. The second story was the Gaelic description of the fort at the end of the river: Du’n Bhun na Gaillimhe. Both use the Gaillimh/e name for Galway. Both stories work for me. The town was settled when the Anglo-Normans under Richard de Burgo (Burke, Burch) captured land from the local O’Flahertys in 1232. Interesting that a O’Flaherty is mayor of Galway today. In 1396, Richard II granted a charter transferring power from de Burgos to 14 merchant families often referred to as tribes. The Gaelic word gaill means “outsiders” or “foreigners.” Thus the name Gaillimh also refers to the merchant foreigners who founded the town. The 14 tribes were the following: Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Brown, D’arcy, Deane, Font, French, Joyce, Lynch, Martin, Morris and Skerritt.
I am looking forward to learning more about the 14 tribes.
Leara Rhodes 