![\"Grasshopper\"](\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Grasshopper-e1363622323651.jpg\")
I had two Irish grandfathers, Walsh and O\u2019Brien, who both died before I was born.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been strong presences in my life, nonetheless, since their songs and stories, colored by longing, have come down to me through my parents.<\/p>\n
Legend has it that \u201cThe Rose of Tralee\u201d was a song my grandfather Walsh sang by campfire light in the evenings when he worked for the railroad.\u00a0 Other workers would throw him a few coins, which he saved up and sent back to his mother, asking her to keep them for him.\u00a0 Instead, his mother used the money to send his brother to college, and when my grandfather returned, he had nothing.\u00a0 Even so, he put himself through law school and passed the bar.\u00a0 He served in the Great War, where he suffered from mustard gas poisoning, and later, when my mother was ten, he died of heart trouble, leaving my Nonna with six children.<\/p>\n
That summer, at camp, my mother stood up in the talent show to sing \u201cThe Rose of Tralee,\u201d in honor of her father who had just died, and if you can picture an angelic, soulful girl singing bravely to a lodge full of other girls, you can glimpse her sorrow, and how special the song was to her when she eventually taught it to her own seven children.<\/p>\n
We sang it often growing up, along with other songs on car rides and around the fire at the cabin, and I\u2019ve since taught it to my own kids.\u00a0 A more plaintive and romantic melody would be hard to find, and it feels especially rich because it has come to me via generations.\u00a0 My favorite line, by far, is \u201cIt was not her beauty alone that won me,\u201d and in case you\u2019re not familiar with the tune, here it is<\/a>.<\/p>\n Others march in parades, drink green beer, and wave shamrocks for St. Patrick\u2019s Day.\u00a0 We made stew and grasshopper ice cream pie here, and as I was cleaning up afterwards and puttering around the kitchen, I sang my hand-me-down versions of \u201cDanny Boy,\u201d \u201cWhen Irish Eyes Are Smiling,\u201d and my favorite, \u201cThe Rose of Tralee.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had two Irish grandfathers, Walsh and O\u2019Brien, who both died before I was born.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been strong presences in my life, nonetheless, since their songs and stories, colored by longing, have come down to me through my parents. Legend has it that \u201cThe Rose of Tralee\u201d was a song my grandfather Walsh sang by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[256],"class_list":["post-2702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-childhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2702"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2712,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions\/2712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}