Interview of Vincent Salafia: Family History Up to Carrickmines Castle Campaign

How can Ireland balance its growth and improvement with the need to preserve its heritage and its environment?

Vincent Salafia has been in the forefront of several important instances in Irleand where many argue there was an imbalance toward growth without proper consideration of heritage and the environment. As we will see in the following interview, Vincent was uniquely equipped by his background in the US and Irish cultures, with his knowledge of the legal heritage, millennia old, in Ireland, and by his own personal commitment to see things done right.

But before we go to the significant instances that have drawn worldwide interest, let’s hear about how Vincent came to live in Ireland.

Question: What is your history with Ireland?

     Brief family history: Our family has had a long tradition of emigrating and returning to Ireland. Starting with my grandmother in the mid-nineteen twenties, she left Ireland.  She was one of ten children. One of the McGees from the Longford area. Her brother was supposed to go to America, but got pleurisy after playing Gaelic football. So the ticket was given to her and she came into the lower east side of Manhattan at 16 years old. She had a tough time working in sweat. She married an Italian-American called James Salafia. They had four children there in the States. She always wanted to return to Ireland. They did pretty well over in the US. He was an electrical engineer and built houses, army bases, and other structures in New Jersey. She moved back to Ireland in 1957, and bought up some property in Wicklow. My mom was put into school and my uncle, who had done a year in Georgetown, was here. There was my mother and her three siblings. Three of them went to university here.

     My mother, when she was in the town of Arklow, she met my father who was an O’Toole. The O’Tooles had this farm across the way. They got married and I came along. They didn’t seem to get along too well, so she ended up going over to England to study to be a nurse. I was raised by my grandmother on the farm down in Wicklow.

     After being raised and going through boarding school, I graduated in 1983. By then my mother had moved back to the States. She was living in upstate New York working as a nurse. She was in the Finger Lakes district, Hammondsport, New York, which is gorgeous country. I visited there a few times. She got married again and they bought a motel in Florida.

     When I headed over in 1983, I landed in Florida. I did a year in High School there to kind of integrate a few areas and sort myself out. I went to Saint Leo College, a small Catholic College, which is about an hour north of Tampa. I had a lovely time there. Studied pre-law political science and also worked as a DJ part time. I took a year off before graduating, went to Pittsburgh, worked as a DJ, came back and graduated.

     Then I went to work in the family business for a while. Then I went up to New York and worked in some law firms to see if that was what I wanted to do. Entertainment law was what I wanted to do.  I went to law school in Fort Lauderdale in 1993 and graduated there in 1996.

     I worked for a while in Florida.

     I got married and moved up to the Indiana area, Carmel, outside Indianapolis. That went well for a while and then not so well. Around 1999 I decided I’d leave America. I’d always wanted to get back to Ireland. Seeing that certain things had come to an end, it would be nice to get a fresh start. I hadn’t seen a whole lot of my grandmother while living in the States, so I’d decided I’d see a lot more of her on this side of the Atlantic. I came back.

Question: When did you return to Ireland?

     The year 2000 is when I started to settle back in. Almost immediately upon my return, I started working on this project called the Brehon Law Project, which I’d started in Florida (Ireland’s own indigenous system of law dating from Celtic times, which survived until the 17th century is known as the Brehon law. Written down in the 7th century AD for the first time, Brehon law was administered by Brehons (or brithem) who served more as arbitrators.) I”d had an amateur type interest in the early Irish legal system. I’d done a paper in an art, literature, and law class. The Internet was just getting started then, so I made up a web site and got in touch with various professors who were working on translating the Brehon laws. I started to put on a series of symposia where I gathered together a lot of different scholars and judges. I did that three years in a row and focused on various aspects of early Irish law.

     During that process I got to know more and more people in Dublin and was fitting back in. I was interested in the O’Toole history as well and part of the reason for studying Brehon law was the tie in with my own family history.  The O’Tooles had been chieftains of Leinster. They had been great warriors against the British in their day. There was the history of Saint Lawrence O’Toole who was the patron saint of Dublin. I studied his involvement going all the way back to the Northern invasion. Strongbow, when he came over, married Aoife of Leinster. She was the daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster and Mor O’Toole. The marriage was performed by Saint Lawrence O’Toole.

Question: So you really liked that history?

     This history fascinated me. I read in the paper there was a Norman castle, known as Carrickmines Castle, outside of Dublin, being attacked by a motorway proposal for the ring road around Dublin. The Castle had been blown up in 1642, so there wasn’t a whole lot of it left, but the huge defenses around the Castle were being excavated in preparation for the motorway to go through. The motorway had been built up to either side of the Castle by the time these protests broke out. It was the tail end of the excavation. The archaeologists were being rushed out of the site. They were furiously objecting, saying they’d made these important discoveries, the site should be a national landmark, and it shouldn’t be destroyed.

     A bunch of us went in and occupied the castle site. We were called the Carrickminders. I got together a legal team and we proceeded to the High Court (In the Republic of Ireland the highest court is the Supreme Court. The court just below that for civil cases is the High Court). We lost in the High Court but won in the Supreme Court obtaining an injunction which held up the road to the dismay of the Taoiseach and many others (The Taoiseach (pronounced approximately TEE-shock) is the equivalent of a prime minister in the Republic of Ireland).

Next Post: Interview of Vincent Salafia: Carrickmines Castle Campaign to Hill of Tara Campaign

Rhino Heads Stolen

From the Weird News Department: Rhino Heads Stolen From An Irish Museum

Sometimes the global economy has unusual consequences.

Masked men stole four Rhino heads from a storeroom of the Ireland National Museum in Swords, north of Dublin. The masked men tied up a security guard who later freed himself and reported the theft.

The century old horns had been placed in guarded security after a spate of such thefts across Europe in recent years.

Powdered rhino horn is sold at high prices in China and southeast Asia because it is alleged to be an aphrodisiac and to cure cancer. Scientists have found no such properties, which isn't surprising given the horns' content. Rhino horns are made of keratin which is the same major ingredient in skin, hair, nails, claws, and hooves. The fibrous structural proteins in all these items are similar and there is no reason for the proteins to have medicinal or specific interactive value with cellular biochemicals.

However, because of the persistent perception of their medicinal value half a world away from Ireland, the eight horns are suspected by the guardi (police) to have a value of up to $650,000.

Investigators wonder if the heist was conducted by an organized crime gang with links to the County Limerick town of Rathkeale. This group is suspected to have conducted the thefts across Europe.

Obviously this theft has deprived museum visitors of the opportunity to see in person the heads of these powerful beasts to gain an appreciation for their unique size and body form.

Rhinos have been hunted across Asia and Africa near to or into extinction. One of the stolen heads was of the extinct white rhinoceros from Sudan in North Africa.

At least the stolen rhino heads were from animals long dead.


And the thieves may have an issue in that the eight horns (two per head) were coated with arsenic a century ago as a preservative and arsenic has well known poisonous properties.

Tips and Tales from an Irish Genealogist

   Finding records of ancestors in Ireland is difficult. Fire and other means is suspected of destroying the vital statistics records stored in Dublin. Read more about the destruction of Irish Census Records here. Also, many Irish were tenant farmers whose lives left little in the way of a paper trail.

   Donna Vaughn has over 40 years of experience in genealogy and will share her valuable tips including websites and other avenues to help people trace their Irish roots.

Date: March 2, 2013
Time: 2:00 to 3:30 PM
Place: St. Agnes Cemetery Newly Renovated Map Room
             48 Cemetery Avenue, Menands, New York

PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED as seating is limited.

Contact:  Email: KellyAnn.Grimalid@rcda.org
                 Phone: 518-463-0134 ext. 110

A Quarter Million Signatures Provides New Clues on Pre-Great Hunger Ireland

Deb and I went to the Victorian Stroll in Troy this past Sunday.  We went to the Greens Show at the Rensselaer County Historical Society which is put on by the Van Rensselaer Garden Club. At the entrance, the Troy Irish Genealogy Society had a table.

That got me thinking about this article I saw on Irish Central News about a petition in the form of a scroll which was signed by thousands of Irish in approximately 1841.

Over 250,000 signatures cover 652 sheets of paper that were glued to a linen cloth.

Those signing were in support of English Lord Morpeth, George Howard, the chief secretary of Ireland, in 1841. He belonged to the Whig party and he opposed religious discrimination.

Morpeth's family kept the scroll for almost 170 years in the basement of Castle Howard, Yorkshire, England.

Many of the signatures seem to be grouped by region, so researchers of particular families might be given clues of where to look once some of the more well known names are used to orient which regions tend to be signed where.

Reportedly, the scroll itself will start a tour from National University of Ireland at Maynooth beginning in February through Farmleigh house in Dublin, Derrynane in Kerry, Kilkenny, Clonmel and Belfast.

Ancestry.com is digitizing it.

Maybe someday I'll find a relative signed the scroll.

Will you?

What's a Wattle Bridge or Causeway?

If you cruise around the Republic of Ireland's newest “M” roads, you'll see the name of Dublin in Irish: Baile Átha Cliath.

Baile stands for “town” and this word in the name is an understatement considering Dublin is the island's largest city.

But what do the other two words stand for?

Átha means “ford” which is a low point in a stream often used for crossing by people or livestock.

Cliath means “hurdle” or “wattle.”

The Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology relates:

The usual Irish language name for the city, Baile Átha Cliath [Irish, settlement/town of the hurdle ford], denotes the narrowest point on the Liffey, forded in pre-Norse times by the road between Tara and Wicklow, near the Wood Quay area, west of the modern commercial centre. It was a ‘hurdle ford’ because of a causeway built of woven wicker, boughs, or hurdles. The ford was known by different names in Irish tradition, including Áth Liag Mairgene [Ford of Margenn's Sling Stone], after the killer of Dub(h).

A hurdle, besides being a barrier over which racers must leap, is a portable panel usually of wattled withes and stakes used especially for enclosing land or livestock.

A wattle is a fabrication of poles interwoven with slender branches, reeds, or withes used formerly in building.

A withe is a slender flexible branch or twig, more particularly one used as a band or line.

Here is my personal speculation without any research beyond the above:

I visualize branches bundled together in a manner similar to a sheaf of corn stalks or wheat stems, but larger diameter stems. Probably they used material held in a manner similar to thatched roofs. I'm speculating, but willow is a common brush size plant that grows along stream banks and many have straight stems. If sheaves of willow were laid down with the mass of stems parallel to the current, they would be permeable to the flowing water.

If the sheaves were laid down thick enough to create the necessary height, it would create a structure looking like a permeable dam.

Then more tightly bound stems or reeds could be woven into tight mats and laid on the top. These might support feet and hooves, although it would seem the relatively high loads would tend to wear out the mats and allow penetration. Soil or sod might be supported by the top layer, especially if the top layer was formed tight and if it was above the water. The soil would tend to prolong the life of the mats or stems and would keep the hooves and legs of livestock from penetrating the wattle.

Larger diameter wood could be used atop the wattle to make for firmer footing. Corduroy roads of tree trunk diameter pieces have been laid down around the world to make soft, wet soil passable.

This must have been a civil engineering structure of great utility at the time and was laudable for being made of sustainable materials. Also, it appears to be appropriately scaled in that everything in it can be accomplished by humans working with relatively primitive tools. Willows and other branches can be cut. Reeds can be cut. All these materials can be collected and transported. Tying materials exist and can be manipulated by human hands. Sheaves can be made light enough to be transported and placed by a few workers.

Something fun, at least for me, is that I found a brief note about the investigation of an old wattle.

The source is: Oxford Journals, Life Sciences, Annals of Botany, Volume os-45, Issue 1, Pp. 207-210 dated 1931. The title is, “Note on some plant remains from an old causeway in essex.” The wattle layer in the causeway found in the Thames estuary in Southchurch, Essex, England was made up of hawthorn, alder, and willow branches. The causeway was determined to have been built in 800 to 500 BC. The branches were approximately 2 ½ inches or 6 centimeters in diameter and smaller. The wattle layers were approximately 6 to 8 inches or 15 to 20 centimeters thick and were separated by about 12 inch or 30 centimeter thick layers of soil. From one to five wattle and soil layers existed. The branches in the wattles were perpendicular to the length of the causeway.

At the top of the wattle layers was a layer consisting of oak saplings approximately 4 to 5 inches or 10 to 13 centimeters in diameter placed approximately 16 inches or 41 centimeters apart placed parallel with the length of the causeway. These saplings were embedded in and overlain by black mud.

I had some ideas that really were used, apparently.

I'd love to see one of these wattle bridges built and tested. Maybe some Dublin folk would like to demonstrate the basis for the Irish name of their "town"- Baile Átha Cliath.

Irish Singing and Language On the News Via Liet

  National Public Radio (NPR) in the USA has a wonderful segment about the Liet International Song Contest, a singing competition designed to emphasize the minority languages of Europe. The Segment is: A Televised Singing Competition With A Mission.

  Aoife Scott from Dublin is singing in Irish in the competition finals and she is featured at multiple stages of the segment. Minority languages around Europe are discussed, and Aoife talks about how at 18 she realized her parents had given her a gift in teaching her the Irish language.

  Dol Eoin and the six-piece band Macanta from Scotland, will compete performing in Scottish Gaelic (pronounced gallic). Irish and Scottish Gaelic were essential different dialects of one language until the 1700s. Although between the ages of 0 and 5 his grandparents and parents spoke Gaelic around him, they and he let it fall into disuse as he got older. But then he had a dream in Gaelic, and this prompted him to spend two years recording an album all in Scottish Gaelic.


______________________________________________
More Irish Musicians in Shamrock Road blogs:

- Brían Ó hAirt (Brian Hart)
- Bernadette Nic Gabhann
- Aoife Clancy
- Matt and Shannon Heaton

Tracking Gibberish: JYPQ83SXNGAD

9/11 In Ireland: The Tenth Anniversary

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Crowds gathered to pay their respects outside City Hall in Belfast, and at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin.

The City of Belfast in Northern Ireland joined with those New York and around the world by observing 1:46PM, the time it was in Ireland when ten years ago the first passenger jet slammed into north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The Belfast Telegraph reported Isobel Gallagher from New Jersey and her sister Geraldine McGeown from Belfast, at the city hall memorial, recalled the death of their cousin Jean Andrucki.

Isobel related, "She was in the Port Authority building,"Her mother phoned her to tell her to get the heck out. She said she just had to get two older ladies on to the stairwell and then she was going to leave. But it turned out the stairwell was full of smoke. That was the last time her mother talked to her."

Niall O Donnghaile, the Mayor of Belfast said: "We are not strangers to the circumstances where a loved one leaves the house for work and never returns home again. There are so many people in this city and across Ireland who live with that experience every day of their lives. So we share a common bond of hurt, of bewilderment, of loss between the people of New York, and across America, and Belfast."

A recorded message from the Fire Department of New York's Edward Kilduff was broadcast to those assembled. He thanked the people of Belfast and the emergency services in Northern Ireland for their support.

Mary McAleese, the President of the Republic of Ireland, spoke at the ceremony at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin, and said, "The television pictures are etched on our minds and the tide of grief has never ebbed.

Ireland stood then, as we stand today, shoulder to shoulder with our friends and family in the United States.

We share our remembering as an act of solidarity with all those who were bereaved or injured and with all those who gave their lives or sacrificed their health in order to help, for if terrorism manifested the meticulously planned worst of human nature that day, there were surely so many others who with no more than a heartbeat to decide, displayed a selfless generosity and spontaneous courage of astounding depth."

She ended with a plea. “May love triumph always.”

Financial Crisis in Ireland

I have only been to Ireland twice and know only a handful of people there.

So, I do not have many special insights into the recent news that Ireland is facing a financial crisis of immense proportions. Sure, when Greece got really bad last spring, Ireland was mentioned, along with Spain.

What is the perspective of the average Irish person about this economic crisis:

• spitting with rage (In Ireland, The Death Of 'The Celtic Tiger' Leads To Anger, Populist Uproarby Philip Reeves)
  


• "Ireland needs a new credit rating agency: Moody & Poor!" - Colm O'Regan, a former IT consultant, now comedian (Comedians Feast On Ireland's Whopping Debt Crisis
  by The Associated Press)


• "Indeed, nobody asked why is it worse to allow banks to collapse than to allow societies to collapse or why it is worse to allow banks to be broken than to allow lives to be broken. "(Vincent Browne, The Irish Times - Wednesday, December 1, 2010)


• "The decision of Fianna Fáil/NRA to desecrate Tara’s immediate landscape, the Gabhra Valley, in July 2007 was a bad judgment. The M3 opened this year. We have lost our sovereignty. What did we unleash?" (Dr Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin, Irish Examiner Saturday, December 04, 2010)

Now keep in mind, this discussion is about the Republic of Ireland. The North is facing it's own issues, which are tied into the belt tightening of the United Kingdom.

I know in 2005, houses in Dublin, which, of course, is in the Republic, were millions of euro each. Mortgages were 50 years or more to make the payments somewhat affordable. But the streets were jammed with vehicles, the stores were packed with people, and the skyline was filled with cranes. Basics were high cost and the exchange rate made me feel like the US was a struggling nation. Lots of eastern European immigrants or foreign workers were working in Dublin.

If the Irish have to bail out the banks, the estimate for that alone is: €50 billion.

There are 4.5 million people in the Republic.

That's 11,111 euro per man, woman, and child, just to keep the banks from tanking. Or in USA dollars: $15,331 per man, woman, and child.

That's a lot of doing without to scrape up enough to pay back that amount of debt, eh?

What about the basic fairness of supporting the Irish banks?

With the government having made a commitment to the banks, all the taxpayers are keeping the bank's investors afloat, while those investors are not being asked to "take a haircut" as the phrase goes for incurring a loss on a bad investment. And the banks don't have to close down, or fire anyone as far as I've been able to determine.

This “take a haircut” concept was contemplated in a way as you can read about here.

Why would any investor do this? Reduced risk, I suppose. Getting out of a situation now rather than face disaster later, or a long period of uncertainty and stagnation. The article notes that Standard and Poors has downgraded the four big Irish banks' long term credit ratings.

But the 85 billion euro bailout package for Ireland which was approved by Europe’s finance ministers has been described as not requiring banks or bondholders to “take haircuts”.

Are the european leaders unwilling to spread the hit to any investors? Are they afraid investors would bring down the economies of Portugal and Spain in a flash?

I wonder.

Randall Parker (But Who Caused Irish Financial Crisis? 2010 November 24 Wednesday) has tracked who the bondholders are in Irelands banks:

British banks provided

$42bn,

German banks provided

$46bn,

US banks

$25bn and

French banks

$21bn.

Total lending of
non-Irish banks
to Irish banks is approximately

$170bn

So these non-Irish banks invested in the Irish property boom, I mean bubble, and now, rather than take any loss, even when the interest rate was higher than for non-risky loans, the Irish taxpayers must pay all these other countries back because their government and now the IMF are insisting the government must make good on all these bonds.

Why don't they tell the truth? They are hoping to stave off a greater collapse

Here's a link to more about the money side of Ireland's problems:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131215410&ft=1&f=1004

I know last spring (May 2010) as many of the eastern European workers had left as could afford to leave - there were no new jobs in Ireland.

Apparently now, the Irish themselves are leaving to find work, reminiscent of hundreds of years of colonial rule and the majority of the period of the Free State and the Republic.

Here's a link to a story about the Irish looking elsewhere for work:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130317598&ps=rs

I wonder if they will send money to their former home? The Irish government better hope so!