An Féar Gorta: A Visit to Ballyvaughan in County Clare

                                  photo by Terence Winch   

An Féar Gorta

If I ever go back home again, we will drive

through the countryside just as it is getting dark.

We will gather together in the town’s only hotel,

eating, and telling jokes at each other’s expense.

My heart beats steady there, my spirit alive

to every gesture, every glance, the fire and spark

we find in those we love. Those to whom we tell

our dark secrets along with our idiotic nonsense.

Whatever route I take, I always seem to get lost.

I have a tendency to choose the wrong road

to the wrong place. I wind up confused and stranded

wondering if I’ll ever make it home.

But I want that ticket back, no matter what the cost.

At An Féar Gorta I want that rhubarb tart a la mode.

I am even willing to stand in the rain, and be reprimanded

for the sorry, soggy state in which I’ve left this poem.

—from That Ship Has Sailed (Pitt Poetry Series, 2023)

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An Féar Gorta is one of my favorite eating establishments in the world. Located in Ballyvaughan, in county Clare, Ireland, where I have many beloved relations, it is a place, as the poem suggests, that I look forward to visiting again. 

I originally thought the term meant "the hungry man," as "fear" is “man” in Irish. But the fada (accent) confused me—instead of "fear," it's "féar," which means “grass.” So, the name translates to "The Hungry Grass," a term going back to the Famine. In Irish folklore, an féar gorta refers to a cursed or enchanted patch of grass. The term is also closely tied to an fear gorta, meaning "the hungry man" or famine spirit. Because the phrases sound nearly identical, the cursed ground and the phantom spirit are deeply linked in Irish tradition. 

[photo above: with two beloved cousins at An Féar Gorta in 2013---Monica (Guthrie) Donovan and the late Mary Guthrie]

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My mother was from the Loughrea area in county Galway, but my grandmother, my father's mother, was born in Ballyvaughan on January 5th, 1881. Her name was Margaret Guthrie, and the house where she was born and raised is still there in town. She came to the States with the rest of my father's family in the 1920s and died in New York of pneumonia at age 52, years before I was born. In spite of that, I have always felt close to her spirit, which finds its way upon occasion into my writing, as in this poem:

 [photo: Margaret Guthrie and her son Patrick Winch, ca. 1907]

Chicken Scratch 

Come meet the grandmother

who took all the questions she could

find and hid them in the kitchen.

She brings true love to the slaves

on the ships and the serfs who

dig the land. She is drinking from

a bottle of hooch hidden under

the bed.  You can apologize to

her or confess. Either way, she

doesn’t care. She is always 

the shape the clouds make.

An elephant, a snake.

She says she is the point of every

story, back to the days when

only accountants could write

and words looked like chicken

scratch.  She can’t explain her

non-existence. It ‘s just the way

it is, she says. She is waiting 

in the old world to be discovered

by the new. She is waiting

in the wings for time to go

back before the 1937

pneumonia that struck her down

and stuck her in the ground 

for good. Oh, you and me, she says, 

we would have such fun 

at the funerals and wakes, 

we would dig up every joke 

in the book and fill the universe 

with our filthy laughter.

—from The Known Universe (Hanging Loose Press, 2018)

©Terence Winch  

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