Today began as all St. Patrick’s Day do in our house, waking up to the shenanigans of mischievous leprechauns, who once again foiled our leprechaun traps and left-behind not their pot of gold, but some good-hearted pranks and consolation prizes of green candy and St. Patrick’s Day swag.
Every year…my 6-year-old son hasn’t given up hope that one day that pot of gold will be ours. To be honest, neither have I….
And the morning continued, as it always does, with me sharing with my kids how their great-great-grandfather, Timothy Cronin, saw a leprechaun when he was a wee lad growing up in Ireland. I never met my great-grandfather - he died before my mother was even born. But I always felt a special connection to him, as we were both late August babies born almost exactly 100 years apart. He was born in County Cork, the youngest of 11 kids, 9 of whom grew to adulthood. He left Ireland when he was 9 years old, which is how old my daughter is right now. According to his daughter, my dearly-departed grandmother, his older sister had saved up money for new clothes in the New World but her mother made her buy a ticket for and bring her baby brother to New York instead. According to my grandmother, young Tim was quite the handful and his sisters actually sent him back to Ireland rather than deal with his shenanigans, and he returned to New York for good a few years later, along with most of his brothers and sisters and his mother, but I have yet to be able to confirm or disprove this story.
The most important part of this story, though, is that while he was still young and living in Ireland, he actually saw one of the elusive leprechauns, this living embodiment of the old magic of the Emerald Isle, though he wasn’t able to catch it. As a grown man in New York, he shared this story with his daughter, my grandmother, when she was young, and many years later, she shared it with her daughter, my mother, who later shared it with me, when I was young, and I in turn, shared it with my entire third grade class as proof that leprechauns were in fact real when my teacher tried to use them as an example of something that was imaginary. I never spoke up in class, but even then, I felt it was important to set the record straight. And every St. Patrick’s Day, I now share that story with my children, a story that has been passed down for 100 years from the old country.
For the most part, my family came to America so long ago that most of the traditions, culture, and stories from the old country, whether it be England, Germany, Ireland, wherever, have been lost. They didn’t get passed down long enough to make it to my generation and so I often feel very disconnected from any kind of cultural roots. But Tim Cronin was my most recent, generationally, immigrant ancestor and I knew very well someone (my grandmother) who knew him very well (her father) and this story is a tangible connection to my mother, to my grandmother, to my great-grandfather, and to Ireland.
Timothy Cronin, on the left, in his bar in Freeport, New York, on his 39th birthday.
And so this is a tradition that I continue, in the hopes that my children will bring it forward another generation. We may never get rich off of a pot of gold, we may never catch a leprechaun, but we will be rich in this family tradition. As a child, you still believe there is magic in the world. As an adult, that magic slowly fades. But I will believe in this magic forever because it connects me to my family, who are all gone, and it connects me to my roots. One day I will go to Ireland and catch a leprechaun, who I know are real, because my grandmother told me so, and she would never lie to me. :)
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! - if you’re lucky enough to be Irish, you are lucky enough (and we’re all Irish today!)
(I will also leave you with one of my favorite songs as a child from Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers, an Irish group my parents were huge fans of and which we used to listen to on our record player (yes, I am that old!))