Remembering My Grandmother On St. Patrick’s Day

Patrick may be Ireland’s patron saint but for this Irish witch, I’ve never been impressed by anyone who reportedly battled not only Druids but also the witches of his day. And then there was the supposed driving snakes out of Ireland. True, he was kept as a slave for a while, so he gets some props for that, but the snakes are a metaphor for something else entirely.

Still, as my husband and I sit here battling the flu, I find myself reflecting on the various clans in my ancestry, the most immediate one, the Murphy clan. Given my Merovingian ancestry, from Bran the Blessed to the Blessed Virgin, you never know who’s going to show up. But it was my maternal grandmother who was a Murphy and it was she who arrived here in the early 1900’s with some of her family to begin a new life in America. She would marry twice, her first husband died while her first three children, one boy and two girls, were small. She married her second husband, my grandfather, and they would go on to have two daughters, my mother, and her younger sister.

My grandmother’s name was Bridget but my grandfather called her Birdie. My mother thought it was his version of the Irish name, Bridey, as in the legend of Bridey Murphy having to do with an American woman claiming to channel Ms. Murphy. She was born on 15 February 1893 and died on 25 May 1978, shortly after I graduated from college. She lived in California while we moved to both Alaska and Oregon and had it not been for the summer she and my grandfather spent in Alaska with us, I wouldn’t have heard her stories or her Irish brogue that was still evident in her voice.

I knew I was a witch early on, so when my grandparents arrived for the summer I wondered about this mysterious woman who I remembered from my early childhood in California. She had lemon trees in her yard and would cut one in half every day to rub on each elbow. To keep them soft, she’d say. But I remember the story about the butter churning on its own after a relative died along with other superstitions she believed in and I just knew I would find witches in her family. Years later, when I began researching my ancestry, I only got as far as her parents. The witches, I would discover, were on my paternal, Merovingian side.

I’m not giving up, though. The last time I saw my grandmother was on a vacation with my mother and brother. My fear of anyone finding out I was a witch prevented me from asking any more questions while I was there which I regret. Witches haven’t always been accepted in families, you see, even now.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who observe it because it’s better than battling the flu. However, thinking of green beer leaves me feeling a bit green myself.

Blessings!