Hello... had to change my name, because they had trouble with my cookie or something- I was, for a short time, Kytrad (and still am at heart). Viper's the name of my little village, so it's OK. Just wanted to brag that my husband George Pickow and I had very much to do with the Elizabeth Cronin book. We visited in 1952, and she was staying with her sister Mrs. O'Connell in Lisbeemuir, Co. Cork (we were criticized somewhere recently for having "posed" her in a cottage when actually she lived in a fancy manor, but we sat before her sister's lovely old fireplace mainly because we were cold!). I suppose the reference to a manor referred to the family home, "The Plantation," which they have not lived in for many years now. When we met her, she actually "lived" with her son in Macroom. I was on a Fulbright scholarship and my project was to search for the source of my own (Ritchie) family songs in the Old Countries. We stayed for a week in that neighborhood, and the O'Connells were so friendly- we became "family" in no time at all. Started with a cuppa tea round that grand fireplace, and developed into endless singing and music and set-dancing and going-to-the-wedding-in-straw (Dan O'Connell made me a straw suit and I went as "the stranger" of the group. The whole little village turned out, and all became our friends; the descendants gave us a party 40 years later, and it was wonderful to me to see so many of them still here. Bess Cronin of course was gone, but the young'uns knew her songs, and they all sang for me! Don't want to take too much space and time here, but over half the photographs and tape recordings in Bess's book are ours. If you have the book, you know that, but reading this great thread brought it all back... it's one of the irreplaceable memories that sustain us.

---

I e-mailed Jean her password and instructions, and asked her to go back to the "kytrad" name. Please don't try to send personal messages to "viperky." Thanks.
-Joe Offer-