The Irish Family Roots: Part I
Some 25 years ago now, my parents took a trip to Ireland. It was the first time that Tallons from our clutch returned across the pond since arriving by boat in New York Harbor sometime in the mid-1800s. In that way, it was a homecoming for us all.
They were there for a holiday, but as with countless Diaspora Paddies before them, the trip carried the stirrings of a genealogical quest. At the time we didn’t know much beyond the basics about the ancestors. After immigrating to the United States in the 19th century, the family settled in various neighborhoods and tenement hells around New York City for a few generations. Exactly how many, we did not know. The narrative ties of uncle to nipper and mother to wain were severed by the unknown blades of time. Much was already lost when my father’s parents moved the family from Brooklyn to Binghamton, NY in the early 1940s. What was left of our understanding of the family tree disappeared shortly thereafter, as my dad rarely visited with his downstate kin.
By the time my brothers and I were born, we had lost all but faintest of contacts with the Ebbets-Field-adjacent part of the clan, not to mention our forebears across the sea. But somewhere along the way — perhaps when he looked at his three boys and sensed that he was just a link in this long chain of history — my dad decided that the family should know something of our roots.
Thus, his exploratory trip to Ireland with my mom.
A year before their holiday, Da read a story in the Travel Section of the Times about The Wicklow Way, a hiking trail that runs from Dublin to the village of Clonegal in County Carlow. In days past, the Way was the post road connecting the rich agricultural lands of the southeast to the nation’s capital. And according to family lore, it was County Carlow from whence my family hailed. That piqued my dad’s interest. What set the hook firmly, was a mention in the story that along the Wicklow Way, there sits a farmhouse-bar known in the legal registers as Tallon’s Pub. Though everyone in the community calls the place The Dying Cow.
This story demanded more investigation.
First, was it possible that this bar was an ancestral family home? And perhaps even more intriguing: Why in the world did it have such a strange nickname? These were puzzles my parents deemed worth solving, so while they were in Dublin, they hired a car and drove south in to the wild Wicklow Mountains.
Growing up in Binghamton, NY, I knew a million Micks and Paddies. It seemed at times that my whole world was filled with Irish Americans. I knew the McFates, the McCormacks, and the McGirks. I knew the Kellys, the Kilpatricks, and the Kellehers. I knew the Rogans, the Russells, and the Roots. And that was all just on the West Side of town! But there were no other Tallons in the phone book. Nor many, it turns out, the far wider world. With the exception of a few blessed places on Earth — like the town of Tinahely in County Carlow — we Tallons are a rare and lonely breed. But there? You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of my relations.
When my parents pulled into Tinahely, they didn’t have much of a plan beyond stopping in a local shop to ask about for directions to the pub. And that’s all they needed. At a tourist shop, they met a young woman named Ellen Tallon. She directed them to a cousin named Kathleen Tallon, who called her cousin Thomas Tallon, who knew the local scene. And it was Thomas who gave the directions to the pub.
According to a retelling of the story by my father, Thomas said in the soft music of the Celt, “When yer heading out’a town, ya see, you go up the hill. Den ya go up the bigger hill. It’s dere at the crossroads, glorious and welcoming. The Dying Cow! Ya can’t miss it. Unless ya do. And if ya do, then turn back around again.”
They followed the directions easily. There was a hill just outside of town that led to a bigger hill. Atop the bigger hill, in a place known as Shillelagh, there is a crossroads with only one building at the intersection: Tallon’s Pub, The Dying Cow. It is a stone structure, surely improved over the years, that was originally built in 1780. The north half of the building is a family home. The southern half is the pub. There’s a barn across the way and just a bit down the hill.
When my parents entered, they were greeted by a kindly woman who came in from her kitchen through a passage behind the service area. She said they were the first — and perhaps only — customers of the day.
My father asked is she were a Tallon. She said she was, but had taken her husband’s name, Dolan, at marriage. And, yes, the place had been owned by the same family for over two-hundred years. My father introduced himself, and when she realized he was a far-away cousin, she welcomed both him and my mother back home. From that moment, we knew a bit more of whence we came.
Over a few pints, Mrs. Dolan, nee Tallon was kind enough to pull the leather-bound record book out from underneath its hiding spot below the cashbox in the till. In it she kept the pub’s original charters, written on parchment from the 18th century. They established Tallon’s Pub as a lawful public house, licensed under the authority of the British Crown. Though she noted that that crown weighed sorely upon the proud Fenians of County Carlow. Pouring three short whiskeys, she then told the tale of how — by legend, at least — the plans for the 1798 Rising of the Moon were said to have been discussed in this very room. And she noted with glee that there were surely Tallons and Dolans on both sides of the bar.
My father and mother, delighted by the stories, asked Mrs. Dolan to answer a question they’d had since first reading about the pub in the Times. It was surely a question she’d been asked before: If the place was called Tallon’s Pub, as the signage above the front door and the old parchment indicated, then why was it known as The Dying Cow?
Having warmed to them both, she told the tale.
Both before and after the Rising of the Moon — glorious, but unsuccessful, like so many other rebellions — the British occupiers ruled over a restless land. The Irish were not happy, contented subjects. And they let that be known in a thousand ways. They had their own culture, their own language, their own manner of being. And a dangerously catalytic part of that manner of being was a penchant to gather together around the bar and raise a bit of delightful hell. Hell that included the singing of rebel songs under the influence of moonshine, and the telling of tales which highlighted the naturally rebellious and revolutionary character of the people.
And that was clearly dangerous.
Yet, the Brits knew that they could not fully outlaw drink in Ireland. That would bring about the End of Days, for sure. But fearing the potential of whiskey- and romance-fueled rebellion, they did their best to regulate the pubs. To that end, they established a number of blue laws as regarded the consumption of alcohol across the whole of Ireland. One of those laws was a provision that declared it illegal for any Irishman to drink on a Sunday within three miles of his own home. And since most Irishmen at the time had no means of conveyance but their own two feet, that meant no whiskey on Sunday at all. The justification was that sobriety was the maxim on the Day of the Lord. But the truth is that the British rightly feared some Papist Priest riling up the lads with a revolutionary sermon, and then sending them off to the roadhouse with their heads already filled with notions of liberation. Whatever the reason, the law shut down places like Tallon’s Pub for one full day of the week.
But one Sunday afternoon in the early 19th century, while the great powers of Earth were fretting over the fate of Napoleon’s Army and Wellington’s fleet, a member of the king’s constabulary rode his horse up the big hill from Tinahely. Then he turned up the bigger hill to the Shillelagh crossroads, where roared a commotion through the windows of a supposedly shuttered Tallon’s Pub in clear violation of the law.
“The craic was overly good for the Lord’s Day,” Mrs. Dolan told my parents sweetly.
The officer of the crown burst through the doorway, weapon in hand, and found the place jammed to the rafters. He raised both his voice and blade to subdue the crowd in the name of the king, and the band stopped short their song. They all knew they were in blatant violation of an order from the crown. Tensions mounted.
Fortunately, according to Mrs. Dolan, the Tallon clan has long been blessed with a silvery tongue. She said that the publican in those years was her great-great-great grandfather, John Tallon, and he was known to be able to talk a bee off a rose.
John approached the officer with his arms extended, showing he carried no weapon at all. He spoke in a soothing voice, but loud enough to be heard by the now silent crowd. He explained to the officer that earlier in the morning, just past dawn, he heard the wailing cry of his prize heifer in the barn. She was with calf, ya see, and had begun the birthing in the middle of the night. But don’t you know it? The calf was breech! And by the time he arrived with lantern in hand, it was threatening to tear the mother apart. Without help, both heifer and calf would surely die.
Mrs. Dolan told the story as if she were there herself, speaking in her ancestor’s voice, my ancestor’s voice, as he pleaded with the officer.
“Sweet Jesus, man! You should’a heard her wail! Oh! The gathering storm! Oh! The troubles it would’a caused come the winter had she died!”
He then told the officer that he’d sent his boys running through the fields to fetch help from near and far.
And God bless the neighbors! These fine men gathered together in song here now! They were the finest neighbors in the world, don’t’cha know? When they heard that it was the Tallons in need, well they came on the fly and were able — through strong rope, joint action — to pull that calf safely into the world. And God Bless it! The cow lived too!
Mrs. Dolan told my father, who told me, as I now tell you, that Old John Tallon looked pleadingly at the officer and said:
“Wouldn’t it have been both a shame and an indecency to turn these men away after such excitement and neighborly grace? And did not the Lord Jesus Himself once turn water to wine? Sure, He did! And when did he do that, officer? It was fer a wedding, it was! And you know that! It was the Wedding at Canna! And when do you think was the Wedding of Canna, if not on a Sunday, fer sure? So if Jesus Christ Himself can have a touch of wine on a Sunday, than sure can we all have a bit of whiskey now, too. If not for these men, I’d have nothing but a Dying Cow!”
According to Mrs. Dolan, as he finished this mix between a sermon and a plea, a bottle found its way into John Tallon’s firm hand. As soon as it did, he held it out to the officer to drink.
There was a moment when it all could have gone wrong. There was a moment when the future that is, might have become a future never to be. But then the officer grabbed the bottle and took a slug.
As he did, the fiddle and drum struck up again the song, and a legendary session erupted at the Shillelagh crossroads of the Wicklow Way. Had he done a different thing, had he struck down the man in front of him and closed up Tallon’s Pub, then I might not be here at all to tell the tale. And so here’s to my ancestral home. Here’s to Ireland. Here’s to the soothing power of both words and whiskey.
And here’s to the Dying Cow.
This story is entirely true, though it has been distilled and filtered through tradition for a smoother draw.
Slàinte.
