157. A return to Ireland, Irish Herbalism.

I first traveled to Ireland in 2017. Catching sight of the coast from above, I felt as if I were coming home to a place I’d already lived in stories. Cork City’s river’s edge felt familiar, like I had walked its streets a thousand times. Kinsale’s shops, bathed in vibrant colors, shot adrenaline through my veins... rememberings. Old Head repeated its déjà vu… echoing stories of transformation. My parents’ voices threaded through these places: tales of fairies tucked into stony piles, of gardens and tending the land, of stubborn resistance in the face of colonial rule, of Grandpapa chanting “Fine, fine, fine”, of tiny acts that kept customs alive. Those small, insistent stories were a map; each narrow road I drove, each stone alignment I quietly walked amongst stirred an awakening, and in this countryside, I felt less like I had just arrived and more like I had come home.

An artist residency in Kerry further fed my desire to return. Stepping out the door, I took in a terrain that dropped off into pastures and then fell into the Atlantic Ocean. My eyes acknowledged the route my ancestors sailed to America. Morning creations, gatherings of food and wine, and hearing the old language in visits to the local pub stirred my sense of belonging. Comradery paired with biting wind, stacked stone houses and walls, cliffs and stony projections, and 5000-year-old stone alignments lit by sun bursting from clouds in streams of light. Climbing hills and fields, noting the variety of familiar plants, sheep, bones, and cows, had my lineage rapping on my chest in the pounding of my heart.

I learned about Connemara, that my mother’s family—the Lees (Ó Laoidh)—had been Hereditary Herbalists, keepers of remedies and stories, tending to Chieftains and neighbors alike. I read about my father’s family from Munster, the Troys (Ó Troighthigh), another Hereditary Herbalism Family, and their 300-year legacy of an Herbal Medical School. Skibbereen connected me with an Irish Herbalism Scholar who shared memories and became a friend - in the town where my father's family had lived.“Coincidence” after coincidence created an air of magic that swirled around me. The places and names were porous with history. Both branches of my family carried plant knowledge, mythical stories, lore, and an ethic of tending that survived emigration and forgetting.

Healing wisdom was present in the hawthorn trees standing guard near homes, called crann na beatha - for protection; elderflower and elderberry, produced sweet summer cordials and winter medicines; meadowsweet for stomachs; lemon balm and lavender for skin and minds. The ever-present Rook - Raven’s cousin, a messenger that traveled between worlds, provided guidance and insight. Sacred wells and Clootie trees invited me near.

There was grief there, too—roughly 8 million people fled Ireland in the 1800s, when my family departed. The population still hasn't returned to its pre-famine numbers in over 170 years. Young people escaping the appropriation of ancestral land, ever-mounting oppression, in search of freedom (Ssaoirse), a chance at prosperity, and respect. A million people starved to death as the food they produced was shipped overseas. Famine and dispossession shaped departure and a diaspora—but they also created a stubborn insistence that people and plants can be coaxed back into belonging.

Emigrants did not always leave empty-handed—their pockets and trunks sometimes held seeds, cuttings, recipes, and charms that could be pressed into new soil. My ancestors sailed to Newfoundland and then to Boston - we are Boston Irish, or what a shop owner called, "The Other Ireland". We held fast to the stories, the music, the lore, and magic in a new land that didn't welcome us, but we stayed and started afresh. Walking those places, I felt the need to reclaim a patch of earth and plant the same medicines my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers might have loved—an act of renewal and a ritual of return.

I want to learn the names of plants in Irish, to listen again to a Seanchaí telling a story that matches the fragments that echo in my mind. Returning will be a slow, steady tending: reclaiming land, re-learning pronunciations and place names, and expanding on the practices my families kept—herbal knowledge, stories, history, and the small rites of protection and welcome that surround a life.

I hope to hold this history—acknowledge, name, and tend to it—to walk into it with curiosity and respect. For those of us who are not native to America, this land of immigrants, who hear the call of return... and choose to listen... tend the seeds gently. Learn the old ways and names, plant what will grow, and let the land teach you how to keep remembering.

Interested in learning more about Irish Herbalism or Herbalism in general. Join us - check out our Classes page and send me an email at spiralherbalrem@gmail.com so I can add you to our list.