SNIPPET: The Jan-Feb 2001 issue of "Ireland of the Welcomes" magazine published in Dublin has a charming story with wonderful photos of Stella (Brassill) WEAVER's sentimental trip back to Co. Kerry, Ireland, after an absence of 60 years. She met her cousin Mikey's widow, Mary BRASSILL, Mary's son Dinny and wife Deirdre and family at Rahela and spent a wonderful afternoon with "pot after pot of tea as brown as bog water," and cobs of Mary's coarse soda bread spread thick with butter and jam. The visit was a very emotionally satisfying one for Stella and son Fran, currently a freelance writer based in Finland. Grey-haired Stella seemed to reflect wistfully on how different life was here in Rahela compared to the hectic existence in Manchester, where she had raised her own family since the 1950s. If only her parents had not been forced by the lack of opportunities in the SW of Ireland to settle permanently in England.... Stella had last come this way in 1939, as a 12-year-old girl evacuated from wartime Liverpool with her mother and sister to her father's former home at Rahela in North Kerry. Although there had been recent changes, Stella was delighted to see that many of the lanes and fields were still bounded by ancient drystone walls or thick fuchsia hedges of crimson flowers, "ripe to be popped open by a new generation of small fingers." Old photos in the article included Stella at age nine with her cousin Kitty, sister Molly, Aunt Lena, Aunt Ruby, her mother Mary, cousins Angela, sisters Pat and Norah behind the house at Rahela. Another was of "Grandfather Tom" with Fran's cousin Danny in Co. Kerry circa 1960. On the straight road to Ballyduff lined by high, dark hedges, the first sight she had recognized was the ancient Round Tower of Rattoo, a slender stone finger pointing up towards heaven from a field of cabbages just off the main road. The only possible entrance appeared to be a narrow window high up in the wall. They took a stroll to look for the house where Fran's "Granddad Tom" was born in 1876. He lived to the age of 92 and somehow managed to keep his rich Kerry accent the whole of his life, although he had left Rahela, and his five brothers and four sisters, to take the King's shilling and travel the world with the British Army in his mid-teens. Fran could still picture the old man with his gnarled walking stick, his pale eyes and trim moustache, sitting in the parlour of the small brick terraced house where he eventually settled, just round the corner from the Liverpool football ground. Stella (Brassill) WEAVER was anxious to see the strand at Kilmore, where the small River Cashen empties itself across the sands into the vast mouth of Shannon. This place held special memories of outings by donkey-cart on warm summer days, sand between the toes and salty, wet hair. They also paid a visit to a "sort of cousin" from some obscure branch of the sprawling family tree, Father Brendan QUILTER, who had spent many years as a priest in Manchester and was apparently the last living link between Stella's family across the water in England and the clans in Ireland. Virtually retired, he spends much of his time in a small cottage behind the dunes at Bann Strand. After lunch they strolled around Ardfert Cathedral, rediscovering amongst the ruins the overgrown graves of Brendan's own grandparents.