Pilgrimage to Ireland: Finding a true home

Ireland's Dingle Peninsula is the western-most point of Europe, a rocky finger of land that juts into the Atlantic at the wild, remote edge of the world. I have dreamed of Dingle for most of my life.

When my grandmother was young, people looked out at the sea from the end of the peninsula, peering at the endless ocean, and said, "The next parish is America." Her name was Hanna Kennedy, and she made the crossing in 1920 as a 17-year-old. She traveled with her uncle, a newly ordained priest who was about to get a parish in St. Paul.

Fifty-five years later, it was almost as if she hadn't left. When I made my first trip to her home village, Castlegregory, in 1975, people still remembered her, and it was a point of pride that her first-born, my father, had made a name for himself in America. He was a state senator, but in Castlegregory, they did not understand the difference between a lowly state senator and an important United States senator. And they couldn't believe young Hanna Kennedy had been gone so long that a grandson had now shown up in "Castle."

I was just 25, though, too young to know where I was going, let alone to be interested in where I had come from. Over the years, however, I would come to realize that in order to know myself, I would have to know the roots of my family tree, and that one of the largest roots was planted in Dingle.

I heard a lot about Dingle as a kid, and about my "relative," the mythical giant Finn McCool, who led his warriors in a battle against invaders that lasted for a year and a day. But I was young and foolish in 1975. I left Dingle after only a couple of days, only to be haunted by it for 26 years. All those years, I kept seeing it in my dreams: the dark Mount Brandon that dominates the peninsula, the wild waves, the wind-shorn palm trees, the ruins. I knew I would go back. I had to go back.

When I did, I found that Dingle was not just my grandmother's home. It would be a home, of sorts, for me as well. At a time when I badly needed one.

On Sept. 11, 2001, my wife, Laura, and I were beginning a visit to Ireland. We were planning on a stay in Dingle, but we had just set out from Dublin. On 9/11, we were at the Rock of Cashel, where Oliver Cromwell's army had slaughtered hundreds of Catholics in 1647. Now, on another day of slaughter, we were walking among the scenic ruins when we saw several couples collapsing onto the grass, sobbing. We had no idea what to think until someone came up and said he was sorry. For what? we asked. For the twin towers, he said. Haven't you heard? They've been blown up.

We drove toward Dingle in a daze, listening to Irish voices on the radio grieving for family members or friends lost or dead in America. We were far from home, but we were part of a shared sorrow, and whenever the radio paused for the bells of the Angelus, we couldn't keep from crying. Coming back to Dingle would turn out to be like coming home. Home for a funeral.

A shared grief on 9/11

Everything in Ireland shut down during a day of mourning for 9/11: Shops, offices, even the pubs. We attended a memorial Mass in St. Mary's Church. After Mass, our hotel pub opened, but in a subdued manner. The bar was crowded, but everyone was talking in low whispers, as you would at a wake where a young person had died tragically. We ordered pints of Guinness while people nodded in our direction with sympathy. Then the hotel owner, a woman named Patty, came up to offer us the use of her wash machine (our suitcases had been lost by the airlines, and our clothes were past their freshness date). I tried to joke about feeling at home in Ireland in musty clothes. Patty made a fist and punched me in the arm. Hard.

My grandmother would have called it a clout. But I was glad for it. It meant Patty and I were part of an extended family. I was where I was from. And where I belonged.

The word Dingle, by the way, is an Anglicization of the Irish "Daingean Ui Chuis (Cush's Fort)." Last year, officials in Dublin decided to end the constant giggling over the English name by switching back to Irish, changing it to An Daingean, "the fort." Dingle is a "gaeltacht," an Irish-speaking area, and although most people also speak English, they passionately defend Irish. Still, they were afraid that the summer tourism upon which they depend might wander away if Americans couldn't find "Dingle" on the map anymore. So the government held a referendum, and a 90 percent majority voted for a hybrid.

The result was a typical Irish compromise: Welcome to "Dingle/Daingean Ui Chuis."

Castlegregory is over the mountain from Dingle town, over the highest pass in Ireland. It had changed much since I saw it last: Surfers have discovered the village, which is near long sand beaches and good waves. I was told that the relatives I met in 1975 were all dead, so we went on a hunt for my grandmother's birth certificate. With her birth certificate in hand, I would begin another journey: acquiring Irish citizenship.

A proud dual citizen

The Republic of Ireland offers dual citizenship to anyone whose parent or grandparent was born in Ireland. Today, I can live in Ireland or any other country in the European Union. But if there is a place for me, aside from Minnesota, I know it is in Dingle. I mean in "Dingle/Daingean Ui Chuis."

I still haven't had enough of it.

My wife and I went back again in 2003, taking my daughter, named for her grandmother Hanna, and our small son, who was just 15 months old. He took his first steps in Dingle. For the first time, on that trip, I had time to explore Dingle closely. And, for the first time since 1975, I bumped into a relative.

We had gone to see a Gaelic football game in Castle. It was a gorgeous evening, with the sun setting over mountains draped with purple clouds as a crowd jammed into tiny Castlegregory.

We couldn't find a place to park until a giant, wild-looking man with a beard that was half-shaved beckoned us into a narrow lane 6 inches deep in pig manure. It was starting to feel like a Hitchcock movie when he pointed to a squishy place to park and charged us three euros. I stepped gingerly into the muck and tried to make small talk. He stood about 6-foot-6 and wore zippered overalls covered in pig flop.

"Beautiful night, isn't it," I said. "Say, sir, did you ever know anyone named Hanna Kennedy?"

He looked like I had struck him with an ax.

"Hanna Kennedy was my mother," he exclaimed.

His Hanna Kennedy was married to a cousin of my grandmother's. I had met her in 1975, when she let me stay in the house where my grandmother grew up. She was gone, but this was her son. What is your name, I asked.

"Tadgh," he said, using the Irish word for Timothy. "My name is Tadgh, but they calls me 'Tiny.' "

Beautiful. I still have a cousin in Castlegregory: A farmer named Tiny Tim Kennedy. God bless us, every one.

'Colman the pilgrim'

I don't like pigs, though. So as we squished through Tiny Tim's barnyard, I thanked my grandmother for looking out across the western ocean and leaving Dingle. But that doesn't mean I won't return, again and again, as long as I can.

My name is written in the hills there. Literally.

It is among the ruins of an eighth-century monastic settlement called Kilcolman. The Church of Coleman, that means (Colman, a common Irish name, had an "e" added by the English). There is a large boulder among the ruins, carved with a cross and inscribed with an ancient Irish script called ogham that says, "Colman the Pilgrim."

That's me. I wish I would have known it long ago, in 1975. I had never even heard of Kilcolman before that last trip to Dingle. But gazing down the hills to the sea where my relative Finn McCool fought for a year and a day, I knew I was where I needed to be.

And I knew my own pilgrimage had just begun.

Nick Coleman • 612-673-4400 • ncoleman@startribune.com