The Gallaghers of Ballinrobe

Aunt Delia and Uncle Mike O'Brien join Uncle Jim and
Aunt Catherine at their 1958 wedding.
Delia had targeted. Big mistake. It was hard to cheat one
Gallagher, let alone two of them. They knew of
Shakespeare’s advice to beware of entrance to a quarrel.
But they also knew that “being in, bear it that the opposed
may beware of thee.” Aunt Delia jumped up and started
yelling and pointing at the culprits. As Aunt Ann egged her
on, Delia’s daughter may have been a little mortified, but a
little proud, too.
There are some other colorful stories of Uncle Jim
and other Gallaghers turning the tables on people trying to
take advantage of them. The trait may be traced to the
family having so little in the way of possessions growing
up along the boreen in Cornaroya. Patsy said her mother,
indeed, had a very strong idea of property, which she had to
get from Ballinrobe. “I think they all had it,” she said.
“They were all infused with an idea of ownership and ‘what
belongs to me’ that we don’t have today.”
The Gallaghers were also infused with their own
ideas on the best way to say goodbye. In a 1984 letter from
Aunt Ann to Patsy, she ends with a memory of Uncle
Johnny, our grandmother's brother. She fondly recalls her
uncle’s parting “God bless” “… while his hand was still on
the door latch and he not quite visible making one of his
old-fashioned visits.” The best kind, Aunt Ann adds.
A common understanding of the phrase “an Irish
goodbye” involves leaving a party or other gathering
without telling the host. In theory, it eliminates a potentially
awkward exchange halfway out the door. The Gallaghers
had slightly different takes. Many times Uncle Jim would
send off those heading home after a visit with the simple
expression “Safe home.” It is a common phrase of farewell
Uncle Mike holds his nephew Pat Gallagher in this
photo from 1959. With him are Aunt Delia and Pat's
mother, Aunt Catherine.
in Ireland – slán abhaile in the Irish. Aunt Delia, however,
had a different custom, perhaps born of a heart that wanted
to delay as long as possible the parting from someone close
to her. When a visitor would leave Aunt Delia’s home, she
would refrain from saying goodbye until the person was out
of sight. It is a practice her daughter has adopted.
NOT AN ENDING
When Aunt Delia passed away suddenly from a
heart attack in her home on June 19, 1975, she was the first
person on the Gallagher side of her immediate family to die
since her parents in 1942. It was a sad day for her brothers
and sisters with her in America and for those back in
Ireland and England. But Aunt Delia had lived a full life.
She had seen the first four of her grandchildren born after
her daughter’s July 10, 1965, marriage to Galileo Leon
DeAscanis: Mary Juliana, Michael, Galileo and Colmcille.
The DeAscanises would see two more children, Delia and
Antonio, grow up in the years to come. John O’Brien
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