It is a strange feeling to hear Irish music. It does things to one's soul and sinew. To hear bagpipes remind me of the wind's screaming through the spruce and fir of Bacon Cove, where I can sit on a rock, in a green meadow, to watch the sea crash upon the rocky cliffs, and cobblestone beaches of Upper and Lower Bacon Cove. While looking down the bay, see Kelly's Island with a variety of boats across the horizon stretching from Kelligrews and Upper Gullies shoreline, to the headland of Brigus. The rock under me has been Kelly land, and the heritage of my mother. The land I view is either Kelly or Gushue land for hundreds of years where the heritage is the same and spoken with an Anglo-Irish tongue for centuries. I am home, this is my heritage: the sea, the land, the trees, the air and smells are all my heritage, and youthful memories of running across field, stream, bog, and rocky shore. This is Newfoundland! The same as it was in 1889, in 1789 and before that 1689. Family members walk the same roads, trails and paths as I do today.

It is one thing to relearn your culture, it is another to grow up in a way of life, you take for granted, that others should know and understand, but, do not. One does not have to prove how Irish one is, if one's sinew is Celtic. Up the Codfish Republic!

Copyright 1998 - Patrick F. Gushue

Picture: Corel Gallery(tm) Magic 200,000

Music: The Banks of Newfoundland from Traditional Canadian Tunes in midi format