Descendant of kings

I had a great idea in my early days at The Institute, which finished up creating a Dr Kavanagh, PhD, while generating some quite noisy [ie useless] data about Lithium in the groundwater. There are so many Kavanaghs hereabouts [like Powers down the Déise, and Burkes in Galway] that nicknames are given [Butt Kavanaghs; Bonesetter Kavanaghs] which adhere to descendants long after the actual short-arse or healer is dead. 

I forget the inducement, but, in September, I reserved a bunch of books at the Library by poet, journalist and novelist PJ Kavanagh. The first to arrive was Finding Connections (1990). The conceit is that this Kavanagh was born, lived  and worked (1931 - 2015) in England, wore tweed jackets and spoke with a middle-class southern English accent but had a distinctively Irish surname. He goes on a road trip to try making a connexion with his Irish Catholic ancestors starting in Co Carlow and then shipping off after their trail through Tasmania = van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. Along the way he meets several genealogists (amateur and professional) but enough vaguely interesting people to fill out the book to 200 pages. I was stuck off-site for the weekend with no internet and the one book, so I plugged away through a blizzard of dead Kavanaghs, Cullens and Pauls. 

Turns out two of my collateral relatives, brothers, left King's County [with a pot of gold] for New Zealand in the same decade (1860s) as Patrick Kavanagh. One went on to the USA, one stayed and started a family from which eventually popped my Cousin Trevor. Lookit: the three biggest islands of the archipelago were named New Ulster, New Munster and New Leinster.

PJK's memoir only came together in the last couple of chapters, so I'm glad I didn't fling it aside [borrrrring] somewhere between Auckland and Wellington. In this wrap up he mentions a line by Henry Mayhew (1812 - 1887), from his mighty research tome  London Labour and the London Poor (1851): "The Irish are unusually clear about their origins". But PJK is quite skeptical about whether any evidence or actual history sticks to this clarity. As illustration, he quotes from correspondence between his Uncle Paul and his father Eddie = Ted. Paul writes that, ~100 years previously, Cardinal Cullen, a collateral relation, funded the elopement of PJK's Gt.Grandmother and even married the besotted couple in Dublin before they upstakes for the Antipodes. But documentary records show that the youngsters were a) really married in Carlow b) while Father Cullen was for sure in Rome that year. Which was yonks before he returned to be Archbishop, Cardinal and Primate-of-all-Ireland. "How did he, barrister, editor, student of racing form, pass on this hearsay as truth when a glance at a reference book would have shown him it was impossible?".

We do this all the time. We bumble through life and shit happens. Our brains work overtime to make sense of these buffets and come up with a compelling narrative which is internally consistent. The idea that life is series of uncontrollable random assaults is too hard to bear. And we also chop and dice the memories so that we come out kinder, cleverer and more in control than we actually were at the time. "The present can be looked at and interpreted with more confidence than the past, it is under your nose" (PJK, Finding Connections Ch.19). Massaging the story?? see also recent Word of Mouth podcast in which Michael Rosen and Jamie Tehrani talk about how Fairy Tales evolve and diversify over space and time. Tehrani Bloboprev on the phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood.

Another nice object lesson is that Paul and Ted were supported in the education by their at-last-affluent Kiwi father. One was destined for the Law, the other Medicine. But in their youth both boys booted their respective careers through heedlessness and lack of commitment. Nevertheless they went on to be stellar in other professions [Paul: legal journalist & editor; Ted: comedy writer]. This is why my advice to young people about going to college is: don't sweat it. At 17 you are such a n00b that you don't know what 'Medicine' or 'Law' actually entails. Your capacity for happiness is an internal matter, not predicated on what course you choose and/or finish.