My Gift Of A Story: My Trip To Ireland

The Gift of a Story

In Ireland, stories do more than entertain. They connect us to the land, the unseen world, and something within ourselves we may have forgotten.

Driving across the Sheepscot River Bridge in Wiscasset, Maine, a few days before leaving for my second journey to Ireland, I noticed a vintage shop I had been meaning to visit. There was no long line at Red’s Eats, I had a little time, and I thought perhaps I might find something to add to my travel wardrobe.

The shop was called The Peaceful Pagan.

That should have been my first clue that I was crossing a threshold.

Inside, I met the proprietor, Jen Fox—slender, lovely, and stylishly vintage herself. Within minutes, we were talking like old friends. I told her I was looking for something to take with me to Ireland. She told me she was of Irish heritage, asked about my journey, and then began telling me a story about her father.

You Know How The Irish Love A Story

Jen explained that the story began with her grandfather in Ireland. When her father, John McGinn, was a teenager, the family heard three loud knocks at the door. When they opened it, no one was there. Soon afterward, they discovered that John’s father, who had been upstairs, had died.

John later told his children stories of the Banshee—the old woman with eyes red from weeping who, in Irish tradition, heralds a death in the family. In their family, the three loud knocks came to mean that the Banshee was bringing news of a death.

“It was something we always talked about,” Jen told me. The story was passed down through the family until it became part of their shared understanding.

Years later, Jen and her siblings told their father that when his own time came, he must send the Banshee to let them know.

And he did.

It was Thanksgiving during the pandemic, when the family could not all be together. Jen was home in Maine, while her father was in Texas with her sister. Just as Jen sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, she heard three loud knocks at her door.

She opened it, but no one was there.

She knew immediately what the knocks meant.

Her father died that evening.

Jen’s eyes filled as she told me the story. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I know it.”

To her, the three knocks were not a coincidence. They were the fulfillment of a promise—a message carried across the distance, just as her father had said it would be.

As I listened, I realized that my Ireland sojourn had already begun. Before I had packed my suitcase or boarded the plane, I had been given its first gift: a story.

And what did I buy?

A twenty-five-year-old L.L.Bean Irish-knit sweater.

Jen packed it up for me and gave me a hug before I left. I know I will visit her again.

Arriving In Ireland

Again and again in Ireland, I encountered people for whom the unseen world did not seem entirely separate from this one. Fairies, goddesses, ancient heroes, sacred wells, hawthorn trees—these were not merely remnants of old stories. They were still woven into the landscape.

Perhaps that is what I had come looking for without knowing it.

When I was a child, I was certain there were fairies living beneath the hydrangea bush in our backyard. I left notes for them there. Somewhere along the way, I lost that easy intimacy with mystery.

Ireland seemed to be inviting me to find it again—not by abandoning reason, but by allowing room for wonder.

The land itself seems to hold the stories. Hills, lakes, wells, stone circles, and ancient ruins are connected to goddesses, heroes, heroines, saints, and encounters with the Otherworld. The stories do not sit apart from the landscape. They rise from it.

There is also a deep caution about disturbing places believed to belong to the fairies. Hawthorn trees, fairy forts, and fairy rings are treated with respect. Our wonderful guide, Edel, warned us never to remove anything from a fairy tree. People leave bracelets, ribbons, buttons, coins, and other small gifts hanging from the branches. (I left a bracelet.)

The trees become gathering places for prayers, wishes, grief, and gratitude.

Sometimes They Protect The Land

The Irish storyteller and folklorist Eddie Lenihan famously worked to protect a hawthorn tree believed to be a fairy tree when it stood in the path of a planned roadway. He is one of Ireland’s best-known seanchaí—keepers and tellers of traditional stories—and has spent years gathering accounts from people who say they have encountered the fairy world.

His work reminded me that stories are not merely entertainment. Sometimes they protect the land. Sometimes they preserve knowledge. Sometimes they teach us where not to tread carelessly.

The Story of Áine

One of the most memorable moments of our journey came at Lough Gur in County Limerick, where we traveled with the extraordinary Irish singer and spiritual teacher Nóirín Ní Riain.

There, beside the lake, she told us the story of Áine.

Áine is associated with summer, beauty, abundance, fertility, sovereignty, and the land itself. She is sometimes called the Queen of the Fairies of Munster. In the old stories, she could bestow sovereignty upon a rightful king—or withdraw it from one who failed to honor the land and its people.

Nóirín told us that Áine would rise from the lake and sit upon the shore, combing her long hair with a beautiful golden comb. One day, a local herdsboy saw her sleeping and stole it. Áine retreated beneath the water, and misfortune came upon the boy and his family. Only when the comb was returned to the lake were their fortunes restored.

The story carries a warning: what belongs to the sacred must not be taken for personal gain.

The swan is one of Áine’s symbols, and we had hoped we might see one at Lough Gur.

There were none.

We listened to the stories, stood beside the water, and eventually began to leave.

Then someone looked back.

Across the lake, on the far shore, five swans had appeared.

Coincidence? A sign? A gift from the realm of story?

Once, I might have felt I needed to decide.

Now, I am learning simply to receive the moment.

Ireland reminded me that wonder does not require certainty. It asks only that we pay attention—to the land beneath our feet, to the stories carried by the people we meet, and to those brief openings when the visible world seems to shimmer with something more.

Waiting For Me To Remember

Perhaps the sacred feminine became real to me in Ireland because it was not presented only as an idea. It was there in the lakes, the hills, the stones, the wells, and the stories. It was embodied in the land itself.

And perhaps what I was seeking was not a new belief, but the return of something I had once known.

Perhaps the fairies beneath the hydrangea bush were not waiting for me to believe in them again.

Perhaps they were waiting for me to remember.