With the weather having turned variously wet, windy and/or chilly I have not been walking either up or down hills. I find the damp gets into the bones and makes extended time outdoors distinctly unappealing. I've even had to turn up the heat a bit in the cottage and have turned a bit of heat on downstairs to hopefully waft upwards. It does seem to help. Then I have to personally waft back downstairs to turn off the light I left on. Wafting up and down those stairs has been my main exercise of late. Well, it's not really a 'waft', more like pouring myself up and down as it's very narrow. Unless I keep my arms at my sides, my elbows brush the walls as I climb or descend. Helps with balance.
After Martina's departure on Wednesday I wandered as far as the nearest laptop, which fortunately was my own, and started browsing the digitized version of various church records. It seems that some parishes were more demanding of legible writing than others. Perhaps it was the local doctor who, accustomed to scratching out prescriptions, volunteered to update the church records just to be nice. Some others had lovely large script with excellent dark ink - inscribed by a passing monk, maybe? However, I don't have any ancestors in those records. Mine are to be found in the part of the page that was torn, spilled upon, scratched out, or in the time period that they just didn't get around to writing stuff down.
On the other hand, I was able to piece together more of the Abraham family in Jim's line and learned about a few more townlands. What this country needs is a comprehensive book listing all the townlands in each parish. The Parishes are not exactly what a given church considers its territory, but sort of. There are websites of Irish townlands (townlands.ie) and there is a nice list of all surrounding townlands. However, on the little map provided it only shades the one townland, in mauve. It's a nice colour ,but really just a blob on a map. What is needed IMHO is the ability to select a group of townlands and have them all show up shaded in whatever colour they want to use, and with the borders outlined. That way you could see the proximity of one to another.
This is not quite as straightforward as it may seem. Townland names are far from unique. If you're lucky there will be only one townland with a given name in the entire country. In the case of my Fennells and Whelans, they lived at Barrowhouse and Monebrock, in County Laois - at that time it was Queens County. Their parish church was in County Kildare. Ducky! The maps at osi.ie do show townland names, not parishes, and I was able to see that these two above-named places are very close together. Quite feasible to go back and forth over time. This is important.
However, when it comes to my Byrnes, not only is the surname anything but rare, their townland of Coolross is one of four named as such. Two of them, including "mine" are just a few miles apart. They are in different parishes and different baronies. Please don't ask about baronies. I don't know.
However, in any given parish, there would probably not be a duplicate townland name.
Today, not much was accomplished. It was cool and rainy and sunny and as advertised, the weather changed about every 15 minutes. I had considerable running around to do - so I did it. Accomplishments were few. I did acquire a printer because I really don't work well with documents by opening and closing windows on the computer. It's a nice printer. The instructions came in 24 languages. Ah yes, I'm in the EU. I only needed one. However, I can't make the darn thing work as a wireless printer without connecting via a router, to which I have no access. So, tomorrow I shall set out to find a cable. I have two at home of the exact sort I need. Why did it not occur to me to bring one along just in case? Sigh!
Finding such a cable will not likely happen in Bunclody. They had none in Tullow where I got the printer. Perhaps a little visit to Enniscorthy is in order. Ah yes - a nice place in which I don't even know the name of a single store or where to find an electronics supply of any sort. My personal view is that Best Buy should hustle over here and set up in Bunclody. Preferably by noon tomorrow.
The day started badly when the two overhead pot lights in the living room both burned out within two minutes. I guess they have a very specific lifespan and were installed together. The landlord replaced one with no problem. The other is stuck in wrongly-threaded limbo. Now it won't unscrew or allow itself to be completely screwed in. It's just plain screwed, so I have to take a dim view of everything. On the other hand, I can't see the dust so there is an upside.
I had a short visit with Mairead and baby Kate. While there, a cousin of hers dropped in and although I'm slightly attuned to the Irish accent, I'm not sure of anything Peg said. I did catch the odd word and I know I've been invited to drop in to her place. She has Kehoe connections and I'd dearly loved to meet up with one of my Kehoe connections. Maybe. Fingers crossed again.
I just have to find a way to convince people that if should appear in their home I'm not starving and in need of huge quantities of food. I'm fine with a glass of water or a cup of coffee. I don't need the brown bread, scones, coleslaw, sliced ham and apple pie that materialize on a plate in front of me. Any suggested avoidance strategies are welcome. Polite refusals are not acceptable manners.
So, it's now quite late and I shall take one of the many books, which materialize about as often as the food, and from which I'm learning a lot. Mostly I'm learning there is little hope of finding the ancestors I so dearly want to find. But it's all about the journey.
So what shall it be tonight: The Little Book of Wicklow, The Wicklow Firebrand (from whom i could be descended), On Our Own Ground (about Co Wexford where I'm staying), Heritage Trees of Ireland (written by a Fennell but not one of ours), or ...
Checking out for now
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