The Swampoodle Trilogy

Introduction

The most important thing we learn from those who raise us is
‘right’ from ‘wrong’, the good from the bad, that, that’s the
most important thing.

Mary Riley, 91, whose life spans the three books of the Swampoodle Trilogy, speaks these words to her son John in the morning quiet of an empty church. Born in Ireland in 1902 and landed here in ’08, she has lived her ninety-one years across near a full century. And such a century! Ever driven by the dreams and principles of those who created it, and that sustain it still, America has truly become the land of opportunity.

For the Irish Catholic in America, though, the journey begins afar, in desperation and chaos…and an unspeakable calamity.  Escaping the Great Famine of the mid-1800s, they found work where they could here and shelter where they were allowed. And it was from such places as these they were allowed that they were to build their own America in America, learning and driving the core values of the place - individual worth and personal responsibility.

It was a way and a life found largely from within, from the parishes and schools they built. It was here that their children learned to read and to write, to do their numbers. Yes, in schools and on play grounds, and their parish halls, too, wherein were instilled the imperatives of merit, discipline, fairness and the eleventh commandment, to love one another. Sure, it was faith and family first, and devil take the hind-most!

In all this, the forging and shouldering amongst those earlier here and those later to come, it is hard to see any one grouping more impactful than the Irish who are now, in fact, no longer Irish at all. They are American, and the America they claim is what it is because of their experience here, their infusion, their trekking in, through and up. The Irish experience is more than analogous to the story of America, parallel to it. It is, in fact, integral to the current reality of the place, to its genetic makeup.

But to understand what happened, to truly feel it, we need more than to read of it as fact, paging the ledgers of the dead, studying still photographs of the homeless, tempest-tossed beside the golden door. Yes, we need turn to the stories of it all. It is from stories that we can best sense and appreciate the push and pull of the human heart, discover within what makes us tick, the where and why of our lives, each one of us.

Indeed, we boast of standing on the shoulders of giants, of greatest generations. But we must more than speak or talk. It is on us to understand what made them such if we ourselves are to have shoulders worthy of a good stand. And for those wishing a truer sense and feel of the Irish in our now common American heritage, the Swampoodle Trilogy is offered.

“From a place of oppression and want, we came to a land of freedom and plenty…and we made it better.”

Best read in the chronological order of their times, the books of the Trilogy evolve through the trials and victories of those who people it. Outcasts landing a foreign shore, they trusted to mercy and Providence that a better place was to be built and, by their faith and courage, they helped build it. A place called America.

Swampoodle, page one -

The dead were everywhere

Lying in fields and ditches
Clustered in mud huts and caves
Kneeled and crumpled in churches
Eyes blackened, lungs caved

There were to the eye more dead
Than ever seemed to have been alive
And for the living who could
It was time to leave…