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The
McNulty's of Swinford, County Mayo, Ireland. This
picture
was taken during my visit in 1992. From left to right in the
back,
my Dad's First Cousins, Veronica Sheeran, Patrick McNulty, James
McNulty, and Mary O'Brien, along with me and Dale, my girlfriend at the
time. While growing up, Patrick spent a few summers visiting us
in
America. He was studying to be an electrician. He now runs
his business from the first floor of his house, and lives with his wife
Kitty and daughter Sandra upstairs.
The very day I drove into Swinford,
one of my Grandmother's sisters
passed away. My relatives were convinced that it was God's will
that
I should return to the homeland on the same day that Aunt Mary went off
to heaven. I went through a very interesting Irish Catholic
funeral,
including an open-casket service where Aunt Mary had a striking
resemblance
to my Grandmother who had passed away 13 years prior. The
McNultys
insisted that it was also God's will that I play my violin at the
funeral
mass. I took the spiral staircase in the musty old church up to
the
chior loft, where I played Amazing Grace. The acoustics inside
the
church were awesome. The notes just kind of floated off my fiddle
and filled the air in the church which had a very similar interior
design
to St. Francis Cathedral here in Santa Fe. I played lots of
double
stops where I would drone an open string, while fingering notes on
another.
The tune is an easy one to play, and I sounded pretty good. It
was
a once-in-a-lifetime experience. After the funeral mass, we
carried
her casket to the cemetary, and spent the rest of the day in a local
pub,
where I got to meet all kinds of other relatives who had come to town
that
morning for the funeral.
Dad and Jim visiting the McMulty's.
James and Family.
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