The “Seanchaí were servants to the heads of the lineages and kept track of important information for them – laws, genealogies, annals, literature.” They were the memory keepers. Recently during a group family chat, we were discussing roosters vs. goats as our mothers/aunts childhood pet, we quickly put together what we knew, which led to other stories, and those said mothers and aunts chiming in to verify the facts. This conversation in fact led me to think about who are the memory keepers of our family. Who would share stories of our grandmothers and grandfathers and the greats before them? I wondered does our next generation even know some of those stories we were piecing together in our chat.
Growing up, my cousins all lived within driving distance. We often got together for weekends, holidays, and summers. I remember playing hide and seek in wheat fields, chasing calves around the byre and walking along a country road, late at night, while my New Ross cousins told scary stories. All these cousins are now scattered across two continents, some have married and had children and those new cousins due to distance don’t regularly meet.
That’s why when we reunited to celebrate the “0’s” in 2018, it was a sight to see, cousins meeting for the first time, or re-meeting after some time, playing catch up, sharing stories, laughing as if time hadn’t passed. However, even this event reminded me to remember the stories. It is important to pass the histories along whenever possible to the next generation, just as my parents have shared their stories with me. My father catching frogs for the local circus to feed some of their animals or the fact that he worked for Quaker Oats in London. That my Mum stood on a toilet, during a pub raid, so that her gardaí brother-in-law wouldn’t catch her or that she worked in a busy Dublin restaurant at sixteen. There are stories of ghosts, working for the railroad, drinking liqueur so that the bottles could be used for salad dressing that night at dinner, and travelling by train across America. There were bomb scares, goats that knocked old ladies over, sweet stealing that got some little girls in trouble, and repaired teacups which left their handles, finding a home in the lap of a strict elderly aunt.
Stories are important to families; they create the backbone and are the glue that holds them together. However, don’t forget they need to be shared. Told over and over again to the upcoming generations, as they wouldn’t be who they are, if the preceding generations didn’t do what they did. They now are the memory holders.
At a memorial I heard the speaker tell the congregation that we actually die two deaths. We of course physically die, but our second death occurs when people stop remembering we existed because we stop telling the stories. Those stories within a family should never cease so our ancestors never experience that second death. Be the keeper of your family’s tales, be the Seanchaí.
