WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Before I was born, my Dad was set on me being called Barry. I was the first, so being who he was, he'd probably decided that I would be a boy. I don't know why he wanted me to be called Barry. But it derives from the Irish Fionnbharr, who was/IS a king of the fairies in the west of Ireland. This was at a time when fairies were big guys, as big as us, or bigger (like the guys who used to follow me round a fairy fort I used to own in Somerset.) They hadn't yet been emasculated by the church. 

Now my Dad would have been the last to have believed in any of this nonsense. But my Mum is Irish, from Cappataggle, near Galway, which is part of the district presided over by Fionnbharr. He lives on Knockma, a hill near Tuam, in County Galway with his Queen Oona (any Oonas out there?) My Mum used to wander off on her own as a kid and go and visit the little people and she once gave me a detailed description of them, then denied it a few months later. But they're not fairies if you can pin them down like I wanted to. 

Anyway, the fairies came and bit my Dad on the arse before I was born: they got him to give me a name that is a blessing, despite himself. And it's because he was married to my Mum. She has Alzheimers, and the nurse was saying to me today how awful that is for her, and I was saying no, she's just having a different experience, and she seems to quite enjoy it when I hang out with her, she even talks. How weird that must be, everyone thinking you're having an awful time, and actually it's only in their terms, and you left their terms behind a long time ago. 

So I've been delighted to find this connection to my name. I'm only too pleased to be a gert Otherworldian, I just need to get on with remembering that. Now here's the thing. The gentry, bless them, did the same thing to me as they did to my Dad. My son is 16 and he's called Finn, after Fionn mac Cumhaill, the legendary Irish warrior. But Finn also derives from Fionnbharr. And this I didn't know, that my son's name derives from the same gert Otherworldling as does my own. How wonderful. We both have the same blessing, we are of the same lineage. And I got the idea to do this from Andrew Steed's book above, which is a great book but unavailable on Amazon, but I know he has copies, he sold me one