WRITERS ABROAD MAGAZINE: THE THIRD SPACE
Let Your Adopted Home Enrich Your
Storytelling
BY DIANNE ASCROFT
For a writer, moving to a new city or country can be fortuitous, providing the inspiration
for stories you never imagined you would write before you arrived at your new home.
I’m a Canadian and, for more than a quarter of a century, I have lived in various cities and
towns throughout Britain. Twelve years ago my husband and I returned to his childhood
home in rural County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Since I settled here with him, the
ideas for many of the historical stories I write have been sparked by snippets I hear or
read about past events in my adopted county.
For example, not long after we moved to County Fermanagh, I first heard from
neighbours the tale of the Coonian or Cooneen ghost, a poltergeist that local lore says
drove a widow, Bridget Murphy, and her six children from their farm cottage and across
the sea to America. The events happened at the beginning of the last century in a farm
cottage only a few miles from where I live and one Sunday when my husband and I were
out for a walk, we went to see the house. At the time, it was in the middle of a forestry
plantation and could barely be glimpsed from the road (the forest was felled this spring,
leaving the house starkly visible amidst the stubbly, deforested fields).
We jumped over a small ditch, or sheugh as they call them here, beside the road and
picked our way through the trees until we came to a greying, run-down yet rather
forbidding building in a small clearing. Although we saw nothing otherworldly that day,
the house had an eerie atmosphere and I wouldn’t have wanted to remain there after dark.
21 | November 2016