Maggie in the Wood

This week we covered the Connemara Set.  It's a set with four figures the last of which is danced to the tune "Maggie in the Wood."  See the videos of the four figures at this link: https://danceminder.com/dance/show/connre

The dance is a fun and easy one, but it's the tune that is played in the fourth Figure that was really resonant to me. As I danced, I was brought back to the times my father played the tune, and many others, on his melodeon in our living room on Long Island. Those times are among my happiest childhood memories. Here's a link to a man (much like my father) playing that tune on the instrument:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k2ffeSGiGY

My parents met at an Irish dance held in Long Island City, in Queens New York in the mid 1930's.  Queens continues to be a vibrant area for Irish newcomers, although Woodside as overtaken the now gentrified, Long Island City as the Irish immigrant beacon.  Many of the houses look and feel like terraced houses, so ubiquitous throughout the bigger cities and towns in Ireland.

My father played the melodeon in an Irish band in pubs and house parties throughout Queens. My mother was a dancer and knew all the good dance bands in the area.  They had a lot in common then. My mother told me that they were the 'hottest' couple in Queens at the time. I believe it. She was a good dancer and, even years later when I came on the scene, and their passion for one another was long gone, he could still entertain on the melodeon.

While here in Ireland, I've often been struck with what seems like deja vu, a strong feeling that I've experienced some turn of phrase, food, accommodation, scent or entertainment before. It's because my parents, and their families, particularly the paternal matriarch, Aunt Lilly, kept to their Irish ways throughout our assimilation as Americans. It is in my DNA to be comfortable here as nowhere else I've lived.

I try hard not to be 'more Irish than the Irish' here, a condition that many Americans project when they visit Ireland. It's so embarrassing when I see it, and it's encountered often. My dance teacher told me that he was told by an American at a dance that he was 'doing it wrong,' he wasn't amused.  This is an evolving, modern country that is long passed the stereotyped brogue and leprechaun but the culture of dance and music endures and I will be sorry to leave it when I return to the USA in December.