My Name, My Blood

Cian McGillicuddy

Before I learned of plasma and red blood cells, I was told that my blood came from somewhere and it meant something. When asked how I got a name as Irish as mine, I liked to emphasize that though my mother was born in Dublin and my father’s last name was McGillicuddy, part of my blood was Italian. But I was aware that by spelling out C-i-a-n I was also writing out the Gaelic for eon, and that my blood came from a long, long, time ago, old as the mountains in Kerry that bear my last name– Mac Giolla Mochuda. I, Cian Michael McGillicuddy, am Irish as the day is long. 

My little corner of Ireland is West Cork. Memories are strewn about Leap, Glandore, and the surrounding parishes along the coast under fluffy clouds and soft damp sun. Leap is my home for a month every summer. I recently found out that the saying goes, “Beyond the Leap, beyond the law.” Apparently an old chieftain named O’Donovan was in a bit of trouble with the English gentry (as any upstanding Irishman would be), and when pursued, he and his horse leapt to freedom over the small waterfall next to where my cousin’s house now stands. The first time I passed the sign that reads “Léim Uí Dhonnabháin: Welcome to Leap” with my cousins from Dublin, I couldn’t get an explanation as to why it’s spelled “leap” but pronounced “lepp.” The second day there, I met my uncle Kevin’s brother. There I found my answer. Kevin and Dan had grown up together “Up Back Lepp” in Abbeymount, the house I would stay at for my first three summers there. Kevin moved to Dublin many years ago, but Dan never did. Kevin’s accent was thick, but Dan’s words were rich with cut hay and salty air and stumbled confidently out of his mouth, rolling up and down like the green hills. 

“Ah Cian boyhowayadoeing, dapleinovarfrumdashtatesmustabinlong butye’re downdacountryboy,ndyillbedoinloadsatingsI’msureye’llbehappywityourtimenweshtcork, dja like it in lepp so far?”

I turned to my cousin Shane with my eyebrows raised and eyes wide. He returned the expression and shrugged. 

“Yes,” was my unsure answer.

At the top of the village up the hill sits the church, an old structure of impressive size, which has a parking lot that seems much too spacious and empty every day of the week except for Sunday and stairs up to the gallery that creak. Irish mass is funny to me. All of the pious Catholics sit towards the back, far away from the altar and below a glass mosaic of blue emanating light. The front rows are empty except for a few old hunched women cloaked in shawls, anxiously running rosary beads through their hands. At the back the rows are full, and men line the back wall– there’s nowhere to sit. My uncle, like the other men, has his polo shirt tucked into dark jeans, and the heavy scent of aftershave reminds me that all of the men have taken the same ten minutes before mass to shave. The saints look momentarily up from their various beheadings, prayers and encounters with God to observe the mass. None of us can decipher the thick mumbling rising from the pulpit, but we all sit quietly and kids play with the coins they will put in the collection basket. Irish women kick their children in the foot and glare with stern eyes to prevent another giggle at the expense of the lonely choir. My aunt Fiona wears tall wedges on her feet, and her colored shoulder-length hair is nicely straightened. The young ones wear Canterbury of New Zealand or Adidas track pants and a T-shirt or the red Cork GAA jersey. My cousin Emily and the preteens wear the words Hollister and Abercrombie as much as they can. Shane and I represent the minority as young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty. 

From our perch high in the gallery we spot an elegant flow of hair on a girl roughly our age. Shane drives his knuckle into my thigh,

“Cian, she’s fit.”

Mockingly I respond, impersonating my aunt, “Jaysus Shane! We’re in the house of god, get them thoughts of your head, you’re eighteen for god’s sake, wouldja act it for once?”

A face that, though kind, falls well short of attractive accompanies the head of flowing hair. Shane jeers back in a low rolling drawl, “I’m tellin ya, West Cork’s finest there– the Rose of Kilmacabea,” I chuckle. Unwarranted judgment in the house of God? That couldn’t be right.

The saints look unimpressed as the congregation mumbles the Apostles’ Creed. The gallery empties for communion. Before I reach the front of the line, I remember to place my left hand over my right. 

“Da body uv crisht”

“Amen”

The walk back to the gallery is cold and brisk. My loose-fitting brand-less clothing is obviously out of place. The saints look down from my right. Blood oozes down the stained glass from Saint George’s slain dragon. It’s been there a long time. 

And so we all sit under the highest roof within thirty kilometers every Sunday out of understood obligation. By the end, the saints could use a pint themselves. The mass ends in half an hour, and everyone files out. Uncle Kevin seems to be the mayor at his weekly social hour, vigorously shaking hands as stories and jokes flow about. One time, Kevin asked a down-on-his luck farmer named Pat, “How’re tings?”

“Ah sure kivin, Im jesht draggin da divil by da tail.”

“And how’s yer business goin there Pat boy?”

“Ah sure kivin I’m jesht eaiting a bitta bread, and making the auld pound.”

In West Cork, conversation has yet to be robbed of its poetry. 

My cousins and I look pleadingly at Fiona and Kevin, and they slip us ten euro for ice cream in Cowhig’s shop and petrol station across the street. My cousins order a “ninety nine” and I a “ninedy nine.” My half Irish accent clunks across the counter with the euro and ten cents. The ice cream drips slowly as we wander to the playground. My cousin Shane and I play on a strange toy that resembles a large scale– Shane hanging from one end of the elevated pole on a dangling rope and I from the other, our weights flying toward the clouds and then back down to the spongy black matting. 

Leaving the playground, we stroll back down the hill towards home. We pass Cowhig’s and the church again on the way. The crowd is still gathered in the parking lot, the men talking about the Gaelic games championships and the women about their children, whether any of them want to or not. Squat, colorful concrete houses descend slowly with us on either side until the junction of the road to Glandore and Union Hall. From cracked, pale gray and grainy sidewalk we watch the little cars buzz up and down. 

At the bottom of the hill is the other spiritual center of the town. When the parishioners are done catching up in the parking lot for the week, they’ll migrate down the hill. Sitting on the bend just on the way out of town are the pubs. The Leap Inn leans down the hill on one side of the road and the newly finished Harbour Bar stands next to Shanahan’s on the other. Some nights, Shane and I wander into the Leap Inn, through narrow oak doors bearing panes of stained glass that read, “Murphy’s Irish Stout.” Our friend John Patrick might be behind the bar, quietly doling out dark pints to the six backs atop bar stools that face us. Thin brown light makes the red velvet benches to our right mellow and inviting. Sometimes we walk across old carpeting to sit there, other times we nod to JP and leave quietly. It feels old in there, what is unsaid speaks, and time moves steadily. The Harbour Bar is different. It’s just a few years old, and it feels that way. The wood floors still reflect the glow of the big round ceiling lights, the taps are shiny, and there is a TV screen for the Gaelic Games. It’s the most popular and most profitable– they also have Wi-Fi. I have only been to Shanahan’s once. Inside the door are two steps leading down into the old concrete structure. A long bar extends to the left. The local men, John Collins, Fachtna, Small John, Ger, Bertie Hourihane, Dan Hourihane, and my uncle Kevin Hourihane fill the place with mumbles and chuckles and occasionally a low out-of-tune croon of “The Parting Glass.” A woman is behind the bar ironing. Stories trickle from the low ceiling. 

When Shane and I step out of any one of these doors to go home, we pause for a moment in the cool night. Sometimes the sky is filled with little pinholes, letting light whose source has long ago been extinguished and whose conception was hundreds or thousands of years ago seep through the dark fabric of night and stain my eyes with stars. Sometimes I think of all the people who have drained dark jars while sitting on stools in the village. Time has passed since I first met West Cork, and a longer time since O’Donovan made his leap. Here time and rhythm flow out of mouths and through stories as naturally as the rain falls. Here I think of my name and I think of time. I think of blood– blood that connected me to Ireland before I ever arrived here, and blood that flowed through my ancestors, across oceans and through the veins of time.