The Haunts Confer at Gorttoose

Abstract

I first met Farrell O’Gara on June 13, 1994. An elderly farmer, Mr. O’Gara embodies rural Ireland. He is a quiet, deeply religious man. He is the sort of person from whom you can learn volumes in a few moments. He projects a quiet strength and a deep understanding of the Irish soil. I visited him at his neat farmhouse on the land that once contained Gorttoose, a late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century village almost 5 km (3 mi) east of Strokestown in the north-central part of County Roscommon (Figure 4). His house was surrounded by a rich vegetable garden, a well-tended and colorful flower garden, and a yard of emerald green. Upon meeting Mr. O’Gara, I immediately felt that I had encountered Ireland itself. O’Gara’s Ireland is not the playground of the tourist. It is not blarney stones and leprechauns, shamrocks and shillelaghs. It is the Ireland that is lived every day, the Ireland of actual history.