A Rift as Perspective
The Bog Runner
By Ceara Gilmartin-Donohue
In February of 2018, I visited Coolrecuill, County Sligo, Ireland with my uncle Ted and his wife Olive. Ted grew up in Coolrecuill. Ted’s wife is a native speaker of Irish. Olive told me Coolrecuill roughly translates to “behind the bog” in English.
We drove along the dirt roads that were one way only. As soon as we arrived in Coolrecuill we stopped at a house. We pulled into the driveway of a man named Tommy. Tommy spoke Irish and broken English. He was the region’s Seanchaithe or storyteller. Olive asked Tommy if he had known anything of a woman named Catherine Nealon. He said his grandmother had been friends with a woman who was set to sail to America on the Titanic but didn’t go and then disappeared three weeks later after nearly being arrested. While there is no direct translation for Titanic, Tommy said, “massive boat crash, movie, 1912” and my aunt Olive had put it together. There was a lag in translation when he must have said arrested because Olive looked at Ted said something to in Irish. Ted asked me if I had known of anyone in my family that made grain alcohol.
I said “I think my great-grandmother ran away from the police while trying to make it”
Ted sighed with relief and said, “I wasn’t sure you knew.” Tommy preceded to tell the story.
It was late in the day during the spring of 1912, Catherine, my great-grandmother, had been cutting out parts of the bog to use to make Poitín. Ted would stop Tommy to explain that Poitín is a grain alcohol that is common in rural Ireland. He said his family would make it when the months were rough on the farm. Like Ted, Catherine’s family would sell it when they needed money. After being caught, Catherine said her feet hurt and asked if she could take her boots off and the men obliged. Seconds later, she had darted across the bog stepping in all the right places so she wouldn’t get stuck. She was never to be seen in Coolrecuill again.
She would arrive in New York three weeks later to no family, no job, and no place to stay. She must have thought to herself how lucky she was since she surely would’ve perished on the Titanic or be in prison back in Ireland if she hadn’t escaped. Years later, an Irish politician named Thadeus Nealon, who was her nephew, would visit New York. He would meet her, and she would mention having escaped from the police. She would tell him how her grandchildren were superior runners because she has escaped from the bog all those years ago.