My dear friends,
As the long evenings stretch across Ireland and high travel season fills roads, ferries, and village streets, we at RELATED☘️ are thinking of all of you who feel that unmistakable pull toward the island and its stories. Whether you are following your family lines from America, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, or farther afield, summer brings a special kind of invitation: Visit Ireland!
And many of you have; we have seen your proud posts and special photos. Some of you have even had the pleasure of riding alongside our Destination Expert Jonathan Beaumont, and no finer a time can be had.
But barring that, we take you along with us through Ireland by way of our features here, so you can understand Ireland, her culture, her people, more deeply.
This summer has been a season of great abundance.
☘️ Up Mayo! County Mayo broke its 75-year curse, winning the Gaelic Football All-Ireland Championship at Dublin’s Croke Park, freeing a generation to feel the elation of victory and finally hoisting the Sam Maguire Trophy.
☘️ A recent heatwave has turned familiar green places golden at the edges, our landscape always alive and changing.
☘️ Along the coasts, there is renewed fascination with the sea, with reports of huge basking sharks moving through Atlantic waters and whales appearing in thrilling, unforgettable glimpses.
Being part of these moments stir something ancient in us. They connect the living landscape to the old imagination of Ireland, where ocean, weather, and wonder have always shaped us.
Across the country, festival energy is rising. Music, storytelling, craft, and local gatherings are bringing towns and parishes into full voice. Outdoor heritage sites feel especially vivid at this time of year: ring forts in warm dusk light, ruined abbeys under wide skies, old graveyards, holy wells, field patterns, and boreens still carry memory in their stones.
This is the Ireland of the approaching harvest, the Ireland many of us love even before we fully know it. It is textured, weathered, and deeply rooted. For those tracing ancestry, this is the world your people knew, worked, prayed in, and crossed from.
May this season encourage your curiosity, and a fuller understanding of the culture that continues to call us home.
In this issue, you’ll find a tale from the Navan Fort Wickerman Gathering; a member’s recollection of a sailing race that literally spit him onto Ireland’s welcoming shore, news on the Kilrush Genealogy Conference, and more.
As always, we welcome your input and are grateful for all the hours you put into searching for the past. It helps us all understand our shared roots and links us to a future Ireland where we all belong.
Wear sunscreen—even in Ireland!
Le gach dea-ghuí, (with every good wish)
Shelagh
SHELAGH BRALEY STARR
Editor, RELATED ☘️
RELATED ☘️ 