‘Going back through the fields’: Cork's Alice Taylor talks about Christmas and returning home 

Spying a bronze hare in a small shop in Macroom en route to her homeplace was the catalyst for Alice Taylor’s 32nd book, A Place Called Home.

For the Innishannon woman, the hare has always been something very special, even “mystical”, she says.

As soon as she saw it she knew she had to bring it home.

The hare brought memories of childhood flooding back to Alice.

“It got into my psyche,” she said. “I found myself going back through the fields.”

Taylor grew up in rural Ireland and says her father was an environmentalist without even knowing it, always teaching Alice and her siblings about the importance of respecting nature.

The sounds of the dawn chorus signaled the beginning of each day with the hours of daylight filled with the sounds of the farmyard.

“We went to sleep to the sound of the corn crake,” Alice recalls before forlornly adding: “These are the sounds of Ireland that are gone.”

The book brought Alice back to the places of her childhood including the infamous primary school she travelled to through the fields.

While now a ruin, Alice said that it is now somewhat alive with the sounds of birdsong.

The journey also brought her back to her old secondary school — now a cultural centre.

The feeling Alice experienced was one of coming home, which brought her to think of how emigrants felt when they came back to Ireland.

Alice moved to Innishannon in 1961 and said that at that time there were three men in the village, the blacksmith, a post office worker, and a carpenter, who were known for helping returning emigrants to trace their roots.

“During my childhood, I had often watched with huge interest the eagerness and curiosity of returning emigrants.

“I witnessed their deep desire to see their home place and walk the fields where their ancestors had walked many generations earlier.

“I remember wondering what was in their minds. Where did this deep longing come from?

“Their desire to link up with the past has stayed with me, and also the memory of my parents’ and our neighbours’ understanding of and respect for their feelings.

“Later I saw the same response from the old people of Innishannon who, with endless patience and kindness, gave time and commitment in helping returning emigrants trace their roots. It was as if those who had remained felt an honourable commitment to the descendants of those who had had to go.”

Alice sees her books as a way of helping to record the stories of ordinary people and to document history for future generations, including those coming home.

“Growing up in the farmhouse, I listened to the stories around the fire and I had an awareness of how important that was,” she says.

It was this that led Alice to set up the Innishannon Candlelight some 40 years ago to document the stories and oral history of the place.

Last Christmas, after four long decades, Alice announced that the group behind the publication was stepping back from the commitment.

They hope someone will take up the mantle in the future.

The return home, of course, also stirred up memories of Christmas and all its traditions.

While the snowstorm of goose feathers in the kitchen on Christmas Eve, which the Cork woman experienced as a child, is no longer par for the course, many other aspects remain the same.

As a child, Alice’s father would take the branch off a tree and put it on the kitchen table —he’d never cut a full tree as he was mindful of that, says Alice.

The Christmas candle was wedged in a turnip at the window. Alice still lights the Christmas candle.

“The smallies love it,” she says, explaining how her grandchildren are learning to play the tin whistle and concertina and are only too happy to perform when the candle is being lit.

“It’s up to the Nana generation to keep up the tradition,” she says.

Alice loves to see the reaction of schoolchildren when the crib is erected outside the church, which is neighbouring the local school.

She will also be placing a crib in the front window (for the passing children).

She admits the crib inside the house has shepherds and kings with missing arms and legs.

Alice visits the graves each Christmas Eve and will attend midnight mass where each year, she says, a gifted local singer performs O Holy Night.

“I love when the people gather outside the church after Mass,” she says.

“There is something in the air on Christmas Eve. Like the hare, you can’t describe it, it’s mystical.”

She intends to spend Christmas day with family at home in Innishannon where they can make new memories, while keeping old traditions alive, which hopefully too will be passed down to the next generation.

This article appeared in this year's Holly Bough.

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