County Donegal

I've written and spoke about smuggling a lot.

You'd have, say Donegal, the Irish Times went to Donegal in 1930 and said, did a report on the hard border, basically, on the customs barriers.

And he was talking to this woman and, first of all, loads of women used to wear this, what were called ulster coats.

Right.

So wrapping

bacon around them and things.

Whatever was adjudicable that, you know, you get good deals in Derry, you couldn't get in Donegal and they'd wrap them around it in.

And it was often women doing it as well because there were very few women searchers.

My mother left here and went to England to give birth to me around that time because of the aftermath of even though that wasn't necessarily happening then.

So I was I feel my mother and her know the shame that was directed towards her for just being with the child without being married was immense even then you know and that's not that long ago you know so just to i suppose contextualize how you know a lot of these we mightn't know consciously as much but like until it's unearthed and brought to the surface we don't fully maybe see how weakness like that's really impacted how you know my relationship is with life and how my mother was met and how all of these things you know how this trickles through the consciousness of our inner waters but coming back to driving through the land like I was on my way to Clare and then I was thinking of like the different places that I've been to and places in Clare like particularly up around the Burren down in Kerry, up in Donegal, you know, and you have these pockets of places that like have a really stronghold of these characters that are just they just carry something that is so strong in them and one of my reflections around that is that that those places were the kind of strongholds that really fiercely stuck their heels in the ground and said no we actually we won't stop speaking our language and we won't stop singing our songs or dancing and we you know and they really continued that tread and it's you know they continue to drink the waters from the wells and they They just knew that this is so precious here and I'm going to protect it and I'm going to do everything that I can.

And, you know, and this isn't to say that everybody else didn't, but there was something in those places.

And these are the places that a lot of people, when they come here, they go to.

See return.ie slash awards.

Live from Donegal.

Good morning, Liam.

How

It was bad here on Saturday, yeah.

Whereabouts in Donegal are you, Laura? We just live outside Newton Cunningham.

Oh, okay.

Lovely.

Near Leather

Kenny.

I sent a message to a friend of mine in Donegal over the weekend.

It took him a day to come back to me because the wind was blowing the message away from him.

With the Return Awards, we have AirPods in Una's drawers for grabs alongside all the other bits and pieces like the goodies, the iRadio goodies, purple snacks and whatnot.

Playing this morning, let's go live to Donegal.

Good morning, Laura.

Hi, Laura.

No, did you just get hit hard over the weekend?

It was bad here on Saturday, yeah.

Whereabouts in Donegal are you, Laura? We just live outside Newton Cunningham.

Oh, OK.

I mean, when I was a child, my mother used to tell me the stories of that she grew up on.

And she grew up in Donegal.

And so it really started there.

I think I felt like the history of Ireland for me was actually in those stories.

And I believed them all to be true.

And then when I started writing, that was where I began, really.

And you mentioned your mother's upbringing in Donegal.

What about your upbringing?