I think this poem so truly expresses the feeling one has when they are at last "home".  I remember sitting on the stoop of the cottage we rented, just down the road from my familiy's homeplace outside Westport.  I was joined by my granddaughter and younger sister.  We all sat there that moring with a cuppa, enjoying the June sun and looking at Croagh Patrick.  Then, on the morning breeze, we heard the sound of pipes.  All three of us followed the melody, up the back boreen beside my Gran''s old cottage to the garden of my cousin's home.  Before us, in all his Scot regalia was the father of the groom practicing for the wedding at St. Mary's that afternoon.  For the first time in over a hundred years, many of the descendants of the emigrating siblings had returned for a wedding.  We had come from the USA, Canada, England and Australia.  We had come "home".   Mary Ellen Chambers   Mary Ellen Chambers --- On Sat, 1/10/09, Jean R. <jeanrice@cet.com> wrote: From: Jean R. <jeanrice@cet.com> Subject: [IRELAND] "Home, " Eileen McGOVERN (contemp.) NY - Roots Cos. Cavan To: IRELAND-L@rootsweb.com Date: Saturday, January 10, 2009, 7:32 PM HOME I come, So keen, To feel it all again, To climb the hill, Knowing the old house is there, And when I reach the top, So happy, and smiling I know, There is nothing there, Yet it is all there, And I know, I am home. No sound, But silence, The breeze, the birds, my past, All about me calls to me within, So loudly And yet it is quiet, All life, now gone, Yet so lively, And I know, I am home. Laughter, songs, Long ago laughed and sung, Small feet, in boots, All sound about me, The trees, the bushes, So old, There then and now I hear it all, And I know, I am home. So sad, Life past, All gone, No more, But who, Once I have gone, Will love this place as I And know That they Are home? -- Eileen McGovern, "Leitrim Guardian" (1998) Her parents, Terry & Breege (nee Dolan) were both from Doobally,Cavan. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRELAND-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message