Me Mother Was Irish You Know
Some Stories About My Mother: Blarney and Malapropisms
An Irish lass she was and as full of blarney as a full size bull was full of that other stuff. Mary Alice McCormack was her name, an auburn-haired beauty with green eyes and porcelain skin that still looked great well into her 70s when she passed. She was a hard worker, she raised five kids and managed to keep things afloat with a husband on the road in a one-car family and a full time job. She was really quite remarkable in many ways to say the least. Many things can be said about the old gal, but one thing is true, she was Irish through and through.
The daughter of James McCormack and Margaret O’Donnell she was fiercely proud of her heritage and lineage although she didn’t mention much about either. As I mentioned earlier, she was certainly capable of spreading the blarney and for those of you who are uninitiated, blarney is an Irish word that means smooth, flattering, or deceptive talk, often for the purpose of persuading someone to do something, or answering a question you don’t know the answer to. For example, you might say "Don't listen to any of his blarney.” In our house it was a polite word for B.S.
Ahh, yes, Mary Alice loved to spread the blarney and she spun her tales into stories for her grandchildren and could rant forever in her own special gibberish which was a delight to all. Sometimes her proclivity to stretch the truth came back to bite her. For instance, she worked for Sears most of her adult life and when she wanted to retire she couldn’t because she had fibbed a wee bit about her age when she joined the company. That little fabrication caused no end of grief and consternation with the Social Security Administration who was also confused as she had shared that bit of blarney with them as well.
Mary Alice loved to tell stories and put the fear of God in all of her children. Upon preparing for my First Communion she told me not to chew the host, or the blood of Christ would come squirting out my mouth. She told us that if we went into the basement the banshees would appear and drag us into hell. Our youth was filled with stories of banshees waiting to drag us to hell if we misbehaved, or leprechauns waiting to steal our souls or fortunes as opposed to the lucky charm guy waiting to lead you to the pot of gold. Yes, blarney filled our daily lives and shaped and formed the very basic fabric of our existence.
In addition to a storyteller, she was the queen of the malapropism (aka Spoonerism). She once told me that she and her friend had a lovely evening. They had a nice dinner and had split a giraffe of wine. On another occasion, she told me that someone had barged into the house just like the gazpacho. It made her just vivid. I’m pretty sure she meant Gestapo and livid. On the other hand she could complete The New York Times daily crossword puzzle in 30 minutes with no outside resources, an amazing feat that requires an incredible vocabulary.
In terms of family history it was either a state secret or a total mystery because when we asked about our family history we received cryptic responses or, out came the barney. I once asked about my paternal Grandmother. I was told she was French, turns out she was 100% German although born in the US. When I inquired where the McCormack family hailed from I got a variety of answers from County Mayo to County Cork, and from Galloway to Dublin but no one ever mentioned the truth.
It wasn’t until I went on a family excursion to Ireland that I started to discover the roots of the McCormacks and O’Donnells. It turns out that my mother’s ancestors all originated in or near a small village in Sligo County called Ballinafad in a historic region called Connacht.
I received this bit of family data a number of years ago when about 30 cousins from around the world got together in Ireland for a family reunion. The reunion was in Sligo, but featured a visit to the ancestral home in the little village of Ballinafad.
There it stood, a very humble 13-acre dairy farm with the original stone cottage still standing and the farm still occupied by a McCormack some 400 years after its origination. It seems that about 150 years ago our Great, Great, Great Grandfather, James McCormack, lived on the farm and had 10 Children. His oldest son Luke was to inherit the farm as was the custom. Since it was a small dairy farm it couldn’t support all the brothers and sisters so one-by-one they moved away. One sister married, and one became a nun. Two brothers went to England, married and had families. One brother went to Australia and also settled down and put down roots “down-under”, another brother went to South America never to be heard from again, and according to family lore, my Great, Great, Great Grandfather, Timothy, sailed to the US, but was warned he was wanted by the British for Sedition and would be imprisoned should he set foot in the US. Armed with that news, he changed his plans and changed his last name to McCormick as opposed to Mack and disembarked in Newfoundland where he lived for a number of years before entering the US through Chicago. Upon his arrival, he changed his name back to McCormack and joined his other two brothers in Milwaukee.
Research on Ancestry.com supports this version, but I’m sure that it has been romanticized a bit. Suffice to say that Mary Alice came from resilient stock and more than likely a group of men and women who “virtually” kissed the Blarney Stone and wove the myth and magic of their beloved homeland into their daily lives, politics and religions and probably added a healthy pinch of blarney, too.
The other thing that can be said about Mary Alice was that she was a good mother, loved by each and every one of her children. She was a hard worker with a dogged determination. She had a minstrel’s soul and a heart of gold. My sister Mary Jo added that the piece captured her essence, but somehow missed her incredible kindness to others as an important defining quality. I couldn’t agree more.
So I end with this….Mary Alice McCormack. A fun loving woman much loved, a woman capable of returning love. A complex woman of faith afloat in a complex world full of life. Me mother was Irish you know.
