Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
Thomas Moore
One Irish Rover is a long look back at the history and the people of the corner of the North where I grew up — the Portglenone, Kilrea, Maghera, Bellaghy, Innisrush and Tamlaght areas, spread across Counties Derry and Antrim. It’s not a grand sweep of kings and battles; it’s the smaller, truer stuff — the families, the farms, the characters, and the odd ghost who never quite settled.
The heart of it began at home. My mother was a great one for keeping things — pasting old photographs and newspaper cuttings into scrapbooks, and writing beneath each one in her careful hand: the names, the place, the year. She knew, long before I did, that a face without a name is only half a memory. I’m glad of it now, more than I can say. My grandparents left a fine archive of family photos too, so a good deal of what you’ll find here was handed down rather than hunted out.
I’ve learned, the slow way, that the people in the photographs don’t wait. You always think there’s more time to ask them the names — who’s that at the back, what year was the fair, whatever became of him — and then one day there isn’t, and you’re left holding a face you can’t put a name to. An only child gets used to being the last one who remembers; you become the keeper of the box by default.
Which is where you come in. If you’ve old photographs or stories of your own — names, faces, half-remembered tales worth the saving — I’d be glad of them. Drop me a line by the Contact link up on the top menu, and between us we’ll keep a little more of it from slipping away.
My thanks to everyone who’s shared something already. The record’s the richer for you.
Yours from across the miles and the years,
— Trudger