Ghosts

link to my BWL page

Taking a cue from the season of All Hallow's Eve, and my fellow author Eileen O'Finlan's great post about visiting the graveyards of her mom's youth, here's a ghost story from where I was raised...

Deep in the Northern Catskills in New York State is a tiny chapel and graveyard dating from the 1830s.... Regular services are no longer available in the chapel, however the door is left unlocked for visitors.  

 My dad and I used to visit there and it's from him I learned the story of the Irish Colleens.  It seems 13 nameless and faceless immigrant Irish women who worked the local cotton mills as weavers died in a fire and were buried in the church graveyard...

...but without markers or remembrance for generations, until their story reached the ears of Robert W. Boughter (1896-1983) who was so bothered by the ghosts of these women that he left this granite marker...

and this poem...

The Irish Colleens

In the lovely Catskill Mountains

And high upon a hill

There stands a little church-yard

Lies a story now quite old

For it tells of Irish Colleens

And their story should be told

They came from far old Ireland

And with them brought their skills

They worked as expert weavers

In the local cotton mills

But the bitter winters took their toll

And long before their time

They died penniless and friendless

In that land of mountain pine

Within that little church-yard

Stands granite great and tall

To plainly mark the resting place

Of those who had it all

And nearby those who had no wealth

And for which they must atone

For their lack of worldly treasure

With a chip of native stone

But when they stand there proudly

Up high before the throne

I am sure they will be welcomed

And no longer be alone

I think that in that church-yard

A marker should be placed

To honor those courageous girls

In their final resting place

We have statues by the millions

And they need not atone

I think we can do better

Than a chip of native stone