My grandfather Paddy Campbell turns 136 years old today and I decided on the spur of the moment to commemorate that auspicious date with the 4th blog of #mysongscapes this winter. Born January 9, 1884 to a blacksmith (also a Patrick) and his wife (my great grandmother Ellen) in Kilkinamurry, County Down, Northern Ireland, not far from Belfast, he was the eldest of 10 children. By the time this photo was taken of my great-grandparents and some of the other children and cousins at the house/blacksmith shop at Glen Corner, my grandfather had emigrated to Canada.

We visited Ireland in 2008 and made our way to Grandpa’s house on Glen Corner.

There was nothing left but a pile of roof slate in a sheep field.

But standing by the road there helped me to imagine his life here in the country. And we had some clippings from Irish ex-pats who’d visited my great-grandfather Pat Campbell. This one was written in 1938 by J.D. Morgan and published in New York in The Irish World and American Industrial Liberator:

“A fast disappearing feature of every country is the forge or blacksmith shop or smithy. It was immortalized by Longfellow in his “Village Blacksmith”. In no country was it more famous than in Ireland; it was the gathering place for the young people in the country. It was the library, the club, the news centre of whatever district it was located. The blacksmith was usually a witty character who could crack jokes, tell stories and amuse the boys. 

In my boyhood days one of those places was situated about a mile from my home; it was Pat Campbell’s shop at Glen Corner (County Down, northern Ireland). Pat was an uncompromising Nationalist and had played an active part in the Land League and the Irish National League movement. The boys used to gather at Pat’s shop to hear the latest news and when we first organized the Hurling Club it was there that we made the first hurleys. Pat was the father of ten children, and his oldest son Paddy (my grandfather) was a great athlete and was one of the organizers of the first hurling club in the parish. He also held the one and two mile championships in track in 1910.”

It was a lovely trip, in springtime when the gorse was in bloom everywhere….

….. and the weather changed every half-hour, from rain in Galway….

…. to a rainbow and the sun emerging outside our hotel window in Donegal.

The vistas were spectacular throughout the north. These are the Slieve League Cliffs in Donegal, some 2000 feet (609 m) above the sea.

The roads there were steep and twisty and we had a close call on one corner….

We often passed traditional peat brick harvesting for heat.

I did buy wool hats for my sons and a lovely throw for my sofa in Donegal.

Japanese cherry trees were in bloom throughout the north and I wore the blossoms behind my ears.

We gazed out at the crowded harbour in Killybegs, the largest fishing port in Northern Ireland, and later watched the fishmonger in the market.

William Yeats’s grave in Sligo was a must-see for visitors to the North.

We also visited Dublin on that trip and made the requisite trip to Temple Bar, where we had to push our way through a gaggle of drunken brides-to-be and their girlfriends…..

…. to enjoy the customary ‘Guinness pour’.

The National Botanic Garden at Glasnevin in the Dublin suburbs was a favourite destination for me. The bluebell woods were in full flower.

The glasshouses at Glasnevin are architecturally stunning….

…. and full of choice plants.

In Kildare, we stopped into the Irish National Stud and Gardens to see the Japanese garden…

…  and watch the very pricey stallions being led to the stud shed to earn their keep.

The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare were as dramatic as the tourist guides promised….

….. and I sorely regretted only getting this close to the limestone moonscape of The Burren, nearby. The alpine plants growing there are legendary.
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The Antrim coast was spectacular. This is the Giant’s Causeway, with its otherworldly, hexagonal basalt columns….

…. where tiny sea thrift (Armeria maritima) flourishes, true to its name.

At Whitepark Bay near our Antrim bed and breakfast, we took a path down to the ocean amidst wild primroses (Primula vulgaris).

The Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge tested my fear of alarmingly porous things swinging in the wind 80 feet above the ocean….

….. but I made it out to the little islets and back in one piece.

And we enjoyed seeing the incredible formations of the limestone cliffs at Portrush…..

….. and even notched a sighting of one of Ireland’s most famous golfers, Graeme McDowell, practising his chipping on the famous Royal Portrush Golf Club.

Now… back to Galway, for this is Grandpa’s musical connection to the Emerald Isle, as I recalled it so vividly as a child visiting my grandparents’ house in Saskatoon from British Columbia every few summers. On that spring day a decade ago in Northern Ireland, I needed to sit for a while looking out on Galway Bay, below, “at the closing of the day”. It was the song I remembered Grandpa Campbell singing in his soft, old man’s voice in his living room. “Have you ever been across the sea to Ireland….”  As a little child, I even tried to figure out the first few notes on his piano (when I wasn’t plunking Chopsticks or God Save the Queen) and he kindly sat on the piano bench beside me and sang it.

There were other songs we sang in Saskatoon on those summer visits. Irish songs. ‘Danny Boy’, of course, and other ones less well known.

O, they all went down to Mick McGilligan’s Ball,
Where they had to tear the paper off the wall,
To make room for all the people in the hall,
All the girls and the boys made a devil of a noise
At Mick McGilligan’s Ball

Grandpa emigrated to Canada in his 20s, ultimately becoming a blacksmith in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where my mother & I were both born. (My parents moved to the west coast when I was an infant.)  He always had his vegetable garden in the back yard.

We visited every few years, and I was pleased to be doted on by my mother’s younger sisters Veronica, aka aunt Bonnie (I’m on the left)….

….. and Dorothy, aka Aunt Dot.

Summers in the 1950s when my family visited Saskatoon meant that my brother Paddy (yes another Paddy) and I slept on the screened front porch, where early in the morning I’d hear the milk horses clip-clopping down the street and wonder if they had been shod by my grandpa.

There were always tons of cousins there in the summer, and we loved going down to Grandpa Campbell’s root cellar to find the orange crush and root beer he stored there. In the photo below, I’m the oldest, back row holding a cousin. I think there are 11 in that photo, which is just one-third of the “Campbell cousins”.

We didn’t talk about “the troubles” back in Northern Ireland, but I knew Grandpa’s stand on things through my mother. He rode his bicycle to his blacksmith shop, attended mass every day, and had a popular moonlighting gig as a “turf accountant” (that would be the name of the perfectly legal occupation in Ireland) or bookie (much frowned upon by the Saskatchewan constabulary).

He had a big vegetable garden in the backyard with lots of potatoes (befitting an Irishman) and leafy vegetables too, like the ones he’s harvesting here beside 12-year old me for my family to take back in the car on our 3-day camping trip back home to British Columbia. My Uncle Vic and cousin Debbie are standing beside our little Austin in the background, waiting to wave goodbye.

My Aunt Dot lives in the house now, and still tends her own garden there.  A few years ago, some of the cousins gathered to celebrate the memorial of another of my mother’s sisters, Lena, aka Aunt Lee.  We poured a few drinks that day.

So Galway Bay.  The lovely thing about Irish music is that anybody can celebrate and be Irish for a little while. Here’s Johnny Cash….

And Sam Cooke, too. Why not?

But the Irish love their sweet-voiced women, and here is Celtic Woman, herself. Happy Birthday, Grandpa Campbell. I think you’d like this version.

*******

This is the fourth of #mysongscapes which I’m reflecting on in these winter months, rather than gardens. Click on the back button to hear Protest Songs of Vietnam, Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’.