By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I love all the portraits of my two daughters, but one rises above the rest as my favorite. I took the photo a decade ago at the Cliffs of Moher, atop an Irish stone tower that bears our O’Brien family name.
I grew up far from Ireland, in the arid deserts and mountains of Northern Utah. The cultural distance was even greater, for we had no family nearby to tell us stories about our Celtic forebears.
And spiritually, an Irish Catholic living in Latter-day Saint Utah was not unheard of, but was unusual enough to draw notice and comment.
As a result, when my family and I finally visited Ireland and Northern Ireland during my fiftieth year of life, it was more pilgrimage than vacation. We paid due homage to the sacred sights of the auld sod.
We walked the streets of Dublin and posed by the statue of sweet Molly Malone, which the Irish affectionately call “the tart with the cart.” We saw the Book of Kells at Trinity College, and drank Guinness at the Hairy Lemon pub.
We strolled through the rocky ruins of St. Kevin’s monastery in Glendalough, watched the manufacture of delicate crystal at the Waterford factory, kissed the Blarney Stone, and stayed a night in our ancestral O’Brien castle.
We stood on the dock in Cobh where the Titanic boarded its final passengers before its doomed 1912 Atlantic crossing. We forded the Shannon River, rode a horse-drawn jaunty cart through a deep green forest near Killarney, and drove around the spectacular Ring of Kerry.
In the North, we spent time with good friends in Omagh, toured the historic sectarian city of Belfast, sampled Old Bushmill whiskey at the famous original distillery, hiked the Giant’s Causeway on the Antrim Coast, and looked for glimpses of Scotland across the North Channel.
In our spare time, I even won a limerick writing contest.
Although this was an ambitious and magnificent itinerary, Ireland also is the only place in the entire world where we can climb a stone tower that bears our family name and snap a photo in front of spectacular sea cliffs. So, we did that too.
The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare were formed over 300 million years ago. The sandstone cliffs run for about nine miles along Ireland’s southwestern Atlantic coast and reach sheer heights of over 700 feet.
We scaled those heights too, thanks to the old stone edifice standing there. A man named Cornelius O’Brien constructed what now is called O’Briens Tower almost 200 hundred years ago in 1835.
O’Brien (1782–1857) was a local landowner and a member of the British Parliament. Our trip tour guide suggested he built the tower to seduce local women. My own research, however, indicates that O’Brien had redeeming qualities.
During a time when the word “landlord” was a slur in certain circles, O’Brien was respected as a benevolent and fair businessman. He was a lawyer and an early enthusiastic supporter of Daniel O’Connell—called the great Liberator for his advocacy of Catholic rights within the English and Protestant ruled Irish homeland.
In Ulysses, James Joyce wrote how an entire people were “sheltered within” O’Connell’s great voice. O’Brien, on the other hand, was not admired for his parliamentary speechmaking at Westminster.
In fact, Victorian era Prime Minister Lord Palmerston pronounced him “the best Irish M.P. we ever had” because he “didn’t open his mouth in twenty years.” O’Brien made his mark, however, in other ways.
He built a local school and advocated for tenant rights at home. During the great Potato Famine in the middle 1800s, he waived rent payments and brought in food and wool to help his farmers. O’Brien urged his fellow landlords to be compassionate too, and to tell their tenants to spend money on bread instead of rent.
The locals admired O’Brien enough to erect a monument to him after he died. It stands near St. Brigid’s well, an ancient grotto said to be flowing with healing waters. The tall limestone column monument honors O’Brien’s humanitarian work, but also his vision of the cliffs as a boon to the local economy.
To attract visitors to the spectacular site, and to make the cliffs safe and more accessible, O’Brien built stables, retaining walls, pathways, and an iron picnic table. He even hired a piper to entertain the tourists. Unfortunately, those pipes stopped calling one night when the poor fellow got drunk and tumbled off the cliffs.
In 1833, London publisher and mapmaker Samuel Lewis reported that O’Brien also was erecting “an ornamental building in the castellated style…for the accommodation of visiters [sic] to this bold and iron-bound coast, from which is obtained a magnificent view embracing nearly the whole line of coast from Loop Head to the northern extremity of the bay of Galway, together with the Arran Isles [sic] and a vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean…”
We can confirm this venerable opinion about the view from that tower. On a sunny day during our Ireland excursion, we climbed it and took in the stunning vistas. Afterwards, my wife Vicki took our preteen son Danny back down the stairs. I was about to join them when inspiration hit.
There was not much room on the circular tower top, but there was some, so I jumped on a small step I saw on one side. I asked my daughters—Erin Kathleen and Megan Mary—to pose for the camera from the other side, with the cliffs behind them. It was a brilliant photographic decision.
After I took the picture, but before climbing back on our tour bus, I walked over to the visitors center gift shop and shopped for some Irish music. Our tour guide had recommended a CD by the Fureys—an Irish folk band featuring four brothers who grew up in Dublin. I bought it, serendipitously adding a soundtrack to the picture perfect moment on the tower.
The photo is wonderful. I like it mainly because of the people depicted. They were (and remain) lovely both within and without.
At the time, Megan was sixteen, and Erin just past that magical age of transformation. Their smiles, along with their sparkling eyes and distinct shades of long auburn hair, illustrate two beautiful Irish American women standing on the precipice of adult life.
The photo also is metaphorical. My daughters—like the cliffs themselves—would see both bright sunshine and dense fog, soothing calm and fierce storms, rough seas and placid waters. They would feel the euphoria of the tower top and the melancholy of the descent that follows.
It is the cruelest sort of mixed destiny from which no one escapes. Knowing this is a blessing and a curse for any parent, but especially for an Irish father. Irish American scholar and United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once wrote, “To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.”
Having listened to the Fureys for several years now, however, I think their music might better reflect the Irish existential destiny. The Furey songs depict a recurring pattern of hope and despair, of love and heartbreak, repeated over and again. Their music suggests, however, that love and hope are tonic for heartbreak and despair.
I keep the photo of my two daughters—atop O’Briens tower at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland—on my desk at work. When I glance at the portrait, my fatherly heart quickens with joy even as it breaks just a wee bit.
I yearn to live forever in that one tender moment. But so much time has passed, and so very much has happened while it passed.
The music of the Fureys helps soothe this subtle twinge of pain. I softly sing their song that first came to me at the same iconic Irish place where my favorite photo was born: “I love you as I loved you, when you were sweet, when you were sweet sixteen.”
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
Felt like I was back visiting in Ireland. Such grand descriptions. And the photo of your daughters is priceless.