SPUDS ARE US? by Donal Kennedy

 

 

The media recently reported in apparent astonishment. that a woman in her nineties could remember hearing of the death of her father some seventy years ago and of her own accession to the throne of England.

 

Though unaware of any family connection at the time (I was ten years old) I can clearly  remember the occasion and the sinking of the Freighter “Flying Enterprise” without loss of life on January 10 1952, and the fatal crash of an Air Lingus Dakota in the Welsh Mountains on the same day. I can remember also my 10th Birthday on 28  December 1951 when a couple of youths in Dublin, armed with a starting pistol, robbed a Dublin bank. I had never before known of such an incident in Ireland. The next such incident, with lethal weapons, was not reported until 1970 in the region misruled by her Majesty’s agents.

 

I remember the British Coronation being reported in 1953 and was interested to hear that Her Majesty claimed kinship with Brian Mac Cinneide (Kennedy) known to history as Brian Boru. Thus she was claiming kinship with yours truly.

 

 It took another 69 years for me to hear of another connection.

 

It was when Sinn Fein President Mary Lou MacDonald congratulated a British Queen on her Platinum Jubilee. As it happens my paternal Grandmother’s maiden name was Mary Ellen MURPHY.

 

And British Queens are SPUDS/TUBERS/MURPHIES

 

So, via the Tuber Line I have a hitherto second tie with the House of Windsor.

 

 The media recently reported in apparent astonishment. that a woman in her nineties could remember hearing of the death of her father some seventy years ago and of her own accession to the throne of England.

 

Though unaware of any family connection at the time (I was ten years old) I can clearly  remember the occasion and the sinking of the Freighter “Flying Enterprise” without loss of life on January 10 1952, and the fatal crash of an Air Lingus Dakota in the Welsh Mountains on the same day. I can remember also my 10th Birthday on 28  December 1951 when a couple of youths in Dublin, armed with a starting pistol, robbed a Dublin bank. I had never before known of such an incident in Ireland. The next such incident, with lethal weapons, was not reported until 1970 in the region misruled by her Majesty’s agents.

 

I remember the British Coronation being reported in 1953 and was interested to hear that Her Majesty claimed kinship with Brian Mac Cinneide (Kennedy) known to history as Brian Boru. Thus she was claiming kinship with yours truly.

 

 It took another 69 years for me to hear of another connection.

 

It was when Sinn Fein President Mary Lou MacDonald congratulated a British Queen on her Platinum Jubilee. As it happens my paternal Grandmother’s maiden name was Mary Ellen MURPHY.

 

And British Queens are SPUDS/TUBERS/MURPHIES

 

So, via the Tuber Line I have a hitherto second tie with the House of Windsor.

 

 

How can I undo such a Double Knot? 

 

 

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