The Gaeltacht

  Background: In September 2013 the Derry Journal published a photo taken at Ros Guill  in 1960 (https://www.derryjournal.com/news/remembering-seamus-1- 5534865). It featured ‘Seamus Heaney … pictured with friends on a trip to the Donegal Gaeltacht at Easter 1960’. Some of them were still traceable 40 years on, at least one of them has died, others were off radar. According to the Journal ‘Those featured include Vera Rafferty, Paddy Simon Gallagher, Peter Gallagher, Margaret Conway, Patricia Bradley, Aoibheann Marren, and Noel Hamilton. Alongside Seamus Heaney in the foreground are Gerry Downey and Patsy Quigg’. The otherwise elusive reference to ‘Chips’ in the poem was clarified by the following contact: ‘Chips Rafferty refers to Michael Rafferty of Armagh City . I was a friend […]