OH, THE DAYS OF THE KERRY DANCING......

It was said around those parts that young Megs had always had ideas above herself, that she loved herself a little too much, what with her thinking she was better than the rest of the folk reared around there.

Margaret Bridget Ellen was born in a tiny stone cottage that her grandfather and his brothers had built by hand.
The cottage was on her Uncle Jimmys farm.
The farm was in a small rural hamlet in the West of Ireland.
It was a cold, damp, dark, overcrowded and isolated home with no electricity, toilet facilities or running water.
It was a home where everything, both inside and outside, had to be done by hand.
It was a home where as much care was taken, by necessity, of the cow and the donkey as was taken of the family.
It was a home with few comforts, and one where life was exceptionally hard.
It was, however, also a home filled with laughter, story telling, dancing, music...and a lot of love!

Megs father, John, was an illiterate agricultural worker on his brothers farm.
Jimmy was the oldest of the seven brothers and had inherited the farm from their father, along with the slightly larger of the two small stone cottages.
John had been given the smaller one.

Jimmy and John had an extremely close brotherly bond, after all they had been born less than ten months apart.
It was taken for granted that they both would remain on the farm even though, in truth, there had barely at times been enough work for one man.
While John had been a necessary pair of hands before the brothers married, that was no longer the case once Jimmy had his own growing sons to help out.
Their younger siblings had no choice but to leave as soon as they were old enough to make their own way in the world.
But Jimmy always said that he would not see his brother put out on the road.
The reality of this meant however that John, accompanied in time by his older sons, would be forced to leave the home each year, mostly for Scotland, in search of any paid unskilled seasonal work in order that his family were fed through the desperate Winter months.

 

Bridget Mary was known to everyone as Bridie.
She was also known as a bright and vibrant flame haired beauty, always ready to help others with with her literacy and numeracy skills.
Bridie's father owned a large neighbouring farm lower down the valley by the river where the land was sheltered and more productive.
Bridie had just one brother, a fact that eased the financial pressure on her family immensely.
John was considered to have done very well for himself when Bridie agreed to become his wife.
It was a good marriage until, weighed down with drudgery and fever, Bridie died in her thirties struggling to bring her twelfth child Megs into the world.

Megs was different, even as a wee girl.
Perhaps this was because she grew up without a mother, or more likely because she was surrounded by the captive audience of her attentive near adult family, who adored and indulged her.
Whatever the reason young Megs grew up with big expectations for her own place in the world.

The story has been embellished somewhat through the mists of time, and it seems that nobody is exactly sure how or where Megs met her dashing and sophisticated 30 year old Frenchman.
But it is fact that she did.
It is also fact that, at only sixteen years old, Megs disappeared one misty March night with Guillaume while everyone thought she was sleeping, and nobody saw or heard her leave
And it is fact that she reinvented herself in order to leave her family and her past far far behind her

Her Frenchman took her to a life of privilege that Megs could only have imagined in her wildest dreams, so far was it from that dark damp cottage where she was reared.

Guillaume took Megs to a substantial ivy clad property situated beyond the lake and within the manicured grounds of a prestigious fee paying boarding school, an establishment that had been founded to educate the privileged sons of Ireland's wealthy elite.
He was the Head Master of that school, and by the time he introduced Megs to her new home she had acquired a position of some status ....as his wife
And the Head Masters wife was no longer known as Megs!

The distraught family looked for Megs all summer long. 
Her father, who had never truly recovered from losing his wife, searched every field and barn for miles.
Each morning John left the cottage in the rickety old donkey cart, returning each evening only as darkness fell.
They said that John aged a whole year with each day that passed.
It was only as the winter tightened its grip on the land that John was finally forced to stop searching.
There had been no sight or sound of his Megs!

John didn't survive to see the spring.
They said that, having already lost Bridie, the poor man couldn't carry on without his precious Megs.
They said that Megs had broken her poor fathers heart.
But they didn't know that his Megs didn't actually exist anymore.
Her official name was now Ellen Bridget, a subtle switch of the truth that, when added to her new married surname, had succeeded in making his Megs disappear forever.

And a switch that, for many many years to come nobody ever thought to check!