In A GOOD CONFESSION Cathleen takes her daughters to visit Farran, a fictional village in south west Ireland where the Brogan family fight together and pray together.
Farran - the name of my grandmother’s Kerry childhood home - means land. I have always liked its simplicity. It's like calling somewhere home.
Click here to find out more about Currans and this part of County Kerry.
- County Kerry is the most western part of Europe.
- The current popoluation is about 140,000.
Just before the famine it
was 293,880 .
- Thousands of years ago Ireland had two glaciers. One that carved out Kerry and one that covered the rest of Ireland.
.
|
Looking towards the mountains from Castleisland - photo by Bill Strong
Although Farran is fictional, it does occupy the same space
as Currans,a small village about four miles from the market
town
of Castleisland in the heart of Kerry.
It is where I went every year as part of the great exodus
that erupted out of England as soon as the schools closed.
We were
London born, Birmingham born, living and growing
in the streets
of Manchester and Liverpool. We spoke in
different
accents, played different games and were travelling
to different
destinations, but as
children
of the Irish Diaspora
we crossed
the Irish Sea every summer.
We were all
going to the
same place: we were all going home.
I don’t know Currans: not like someone who learnt to read
at the
National School knows it, or who
caught
their first
salmon
in the Brown Flesk,
or had their first kiss at a
Young
Farmers’
dance…I was
always the visitor.
But it was the place I first called home.
|
