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| Rainbow over the fortress of my ancestors |
"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all beauty came from...Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but going back."
-C.S. Lewis
I'm often asked if I would ever like to live in Ireland as half my family are there. Would I ever like to live in one of the most beautiful places I have seen, walking the same soil as my ancestors, slowing life's pace to that synonymous with rural existence? I think certainly. America is the greatest nation in the world, but yes - one day in Éireann is enough to say it feels like home. And maybe....possibly..... one day, when I'm much older, I would.
Caisleán na dTuath - Castle Doe
Doe Castle sits on the coast of Sheephaven Bay near Creeslough, Co. Donegal. It was a stronghold of the MacSweeney Clan for about 200 years (1400-1600 approx). They came from Scotland as Gallowglasses or Gallóglaigh, mercenaries, fighting mainly for the O’Donnells and settled in Northwest Ireland in the fourteenth century. They became known as Clan Suibhne na dTuath (Sweeneys of the Territory). Their fortress became Caislean na dTuath, anglicized as Doe Castle.
It is an incredible feeling to stand on the same ground between the same stones laid by one's own forefathers. Would they have ever imagined their descendants would travel from the New World they had only heard about in legends to return 500 years later to this place, their home, to remember them in gratitude and reverence?
More on the history of the Scots-Irish Clan Sweeney can be found here.
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| View from the barmkin, built approx. 1425 |
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| Castle Doe Towers overlooking Sheephaven Bay |
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| Caisleán na dTuath - Castle Doe |
Trimragh
Even in a cold Irish rain, I will go on a daily walk when visiting my family in Trimragh, a small township in Donegal. And one walk through the rolling hills along Lough Swilley and the farms of the same families who have worked that same land for a thousand years convinces me that I could adjust to rural life in a place so idyllic.
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| Ancient Standing Stone in the middle of a cattle field |
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| Ancient Chloch Mhór (Standing Stone) - Trimragh |
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| My family's yard |
