The Green Hills of North Leitrim

Jane Gilgun

“Grandpa used to dream of the green hills of North Leitrim.”  Father Bernard Gilgun

My great grandparents, Bridge and Thomas Gilgunn, left the farm in Ballyboy, North Leitrim, Ireland, in 1884.  They never returned.  They lived into their 90s in Woburn, Massachusetts, where they had a dairy farm and ran the Gilgun Milk Company.  Their eight children, ages 28 to six, made the passage with them.

Thomas was a farmer and a teacher in Ireland. Bridget managed the family, the vegetable garden, and the butter business. Their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and beyond are teachers, professors, politicians, nurses, house painters, caddies, attorneys, judges, accountants, shopkeepers, factory workers, writers, artists, musicians, athletes, dancers, and war heroes.

No one knows why the family left Ireland.  That they had the money for passage to the United States and for the purchase of a home, land, and cattle suggest they were well off. Their landlord, Lord Tottenham, went bankrupt in 1884, which may have had something to do with their leaving. Why all the children would leave, especially the adult children, is a family mystery. 

This story provides a reason why they left. Grandpa hinted at another. He used to say he was a trader in Ireland. Trader can mean smuggler, and smuggling was against the law, though common at the time. Maybe the revenue agents caught up with him. Grandma would go, “Hurumph” and puff on her clay pipe as she sat in her rocking chair in front of the pot-bellied stove in the house on Main Street in Woburn.

The Green Hills of North Leitrim

Tom scraped the sheep manure off his boots on the wall of the stone bridge that spanned the dry stream below.  What would today’s lesson be?  Euclid and geometry? Caesar and the Gallic Wars?  The tale of Cuhullian?  Anything to keep the bairns awake.  With the long day, mas and pas couldn’t get the children to sleep at night.

He waited until his brother Brian had driven the sheep down to the lower field and then crossed the road and walked the few feet to the walled Castlemile National School in Ballyboy, County Leitrim, Ireland.  

Between teaching, farming, and trading cattle, Tom had enough money for passage to America for himself, his wife Bridget, and five of their eight children.  The grown boys had earned their own way and had a few pounds left over to help buy land and cattle in America.

He heard Brian had robbed the post office in Glenfarne a few months before but no one knew for sure.  Coincidence or not, Brian had the money to buy the farmstead.

Bridget had about 10 pounds from the butter she sold at the market.  Between them all, they had enough to buy a place for themselves in a new world.

Ach, he was old, too old at 54 to be leaving all of this.  The valley spread out before him, shades of green and amber, the mountains in the background and the sky bright with puffy clouds that moved slowly west. He could fold himself into them and fall asleep.

Bridget’s brother Cathal knew of a dairy farm for sale northwest of Boston, with rolling green fields and stone walls already laid.  No ring forts but Cathal said there was a fairy tree.  That will have to do. 

Once Philip is out of goal, we’ll be off, walking down the trail to Sligo town port for the long crossing.

Euclid.  What would he say about the shortest distance between two points?  With what Philip had done, no one in the family was safe.  They’ll be after us, they will.  Tom wondered if he could go back to point A once he got to point B.  Will he ever come back to these green hills?

While Tom made his way to the school, Bridget put in the last of the rhododendrons that she had dug from the back field.  Almost thirty years before when she came up Saddle Hill to Tom’s holding, she had brought one rhododendron from her ma’s garden.  Now there were more than twenty in the yard and fields, spots of color to tell her spring was here. 

They had the same red flowers, all related, like Cathal and me, Cathal, my brother with the big ears that stuck out and long arms, his mouth like an O, waiting for us to come over, when we don’t want to.  Too late.  Too late.  We have to leave.