Richard dropped me off at Enterprise Rent-A-Car early Monday morning and then drove off, brakes still making the dragging sound from time to time, to Carlow. It took a couple of hours for them to obtain an automatic car but Kathleen, Mike and I finally set off for Cavan at 10:30. We stopped for lunch at one of my favorite garden centers; the garden centers in Ireland often have great tea rooms and the Arboretum in Leighlinbridge is yummy for lunch.
We arrived at Riverside Farm, Enniskillen, Fermanagh, about 4:30. Molly Fawcett was there to greet us, looking a bit older and frailer (I last saw her six years ago) but as warm and welcoming as ever. And Vi was there too--82 years old, on Tamoxifen for cancer but still smoking. She is incorrigible. She had been feeling low because the day before had been the 41st anniversary of her daughter's untimely death in a motor accident while in the British Army. We took her out to dinner and she talked and talked about her life, funny stories about the men who were courting her in the early 1950s. Then back to the farm and we retired to our rooms. I had a small one that overlooked the farmyard, lowing of cows in the fields.
The next morning Molly cooked a HUGE breakfast and told us that the cows got out of the fence and had been wandering all over. Vi had given me a roadmap of Fermanagh but I couldn't read it--too used to GPS--so we decided to rely on Google maps on my iPhone. More narrow roads, more stress for poor Kathleen, but we did safely make it to Carnmore Lookout.
The heather was in full bloom. Odd that heather is usually associated with Scotland but it's on the hills here in Ireland as well. This is our ancestral land. Both the Reillys and the Gilleeces farmed here although my great grandfather returned to Cavan, about 30 miles to the south, after he married my great grandmother, to where his father had some land for him. They were only able to stay there about 10 years though because once child #5 arrived, they just couldn't support themselves on the land that they had been allotted. So they moved into a town, Belturbet.
We also stopped at the church where my great grandparents were married, St. Ninnidh's in Derrylin Fermanagh.
We wandered through the churchyard but although there are Gilleeces and Reillys buried there, I haven't been able to pinpoint any that I could say were part of our direct line. We are also linked to the Gunn family in some way, the Colgans and the Connollys. Probably through great grand aunts and uncles.
Our next stop deserves a page of its own--the Cavan County Museum at Ballyjamesduff.
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