Emain Macha,
Ancient Celtic Kings
and the Legend of
Finn McCool
Tracy Pretorius
O
ne of my personal travel
goals has always been to
see where I come from.
That, combined with an
overactive imagination, sends me on a
non-stop, high speed express through
time. I think of my great-grandmother,
who came to America at twenty-four
with her two-year-old son, working in
the ship’s laundry to pay her passage.
She never saw her mother again. And
my great-grandfather, Antonio, who
I never met. He left the Amalfi Coast
to escape the devastation of the 1906
eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the same
volcano that buried Pompeii and
destroyed Herculaneum in 79 AD
with a pyroclastic column a mile high.
Through textile mills and boarding
houses, from poverty into a newly
emerging middle class in Progressive
Era America. A distant ancestor who
survived the Battle of Gettysburg,
only to be shot through the window
of the train that was supposed to
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JANUARY 2019
carry him home. From Quakers to
Revolutionaries, fighting for their new
country all the way back to 1736, and
Armagh. The location of my latest
adventure.
called the FairyLands Country
House Bed and Breakfast. We took
a cab from the Belfast International
Airport, which I was able to book
ahead of time online. It was a great
experience and rather inexpensive.
For 80 euros, Ballycab took us all the
way from Belfast to Armagh; quite a
distance. We arrived a little after 7
pm and were greeted and checked
in by the owner, Maureen. By way of
description, Maureen is a lovely Irish
lass somewhere in her mid-sixties.
Warm, friendly and welcoming,
with a shy smile and a lovely, lilting
brogue. Also, it should be noted that
she makes a mean breakfast.
I had always dreamed of seeing
Ireland and became interested in
genealogy at a young age. Naturally,
I was excited to discover that my
first ancestor to come to the United
States was from Armagh, in Northern
Ireland, the home of Saint Patrick. As
one of the founding members of the
Quaker faith, he refused to pay tithes
to a church he no longer belonged to
and off he sailed, to the New World.
Almost three-hundred years later, my
plane touched down in Belfast, and I The website said “country inn” and
put my feet on Irish soil.
that’s accurate. We woke up the next
morning to green misty hills and
One of my main objectives in traveling peacefully grazing cows. We spent the
to Northern Ireland was to get some next five days lolling around, hiking
peace and quiet in the countryside. through hedgerows and eating farm
I booked a room at a country inn fresh eggs, thick stews and various