Form 3 of 5 Forms

Form 3 of 5 Forms

“My name is Fidelma Clebach.  I came to America from Ireland, alone, in 1935, when I was an infant.  I came as a package to be delivered to a charity, somewhere, by the people who delivered me.  I think – I cannot be sure – that my parents paid a couple to pretend that I was their child – or to keep me hidden - until they cleared the authorities, and then deposit me wherever they could.  This they did, and so I have never known my parents, if I have other siblings here or in Ireland.  All I knew was my last was my name.  I have a birth certificate but none of the information is correct.

“The orphanage that accepted me did nothing except feed and clothe me. I do not recall a single moment of kindness extended toward me.  There were girls – girls only – of many religions, so I knew it was not at a religious orphanage.  It was known as a settlement house, on the lower east side of Manhattan.  We were not sent to school or tutored at all.

“In my early teens, after more than 10 years there, about 1948, one girl, whose name I shall never forget, Shuma Lubomyl, befriended me.  She was new there. Her interest was in my name – she had a hobby of tracking down relations, she said, because she was searching for any of her own family who had not perished in the Holocaust.   She thought my name was meaningful.  Remember, young man, that I have not attended a single day of education in my life.  Not any kind of school, religious or otherwise –

“Shuma, God Bless Her Soul, discovered on her trips to the public library, that Fidelma MacNeill was the sister of Ethne MacNeill of County Roscommon, Ireland, the ancient residence of the Kings of Connaught, she said.  She asked if I had a sister, which of course I did not know.  She asked who my parents were, of course I did not know.  She asked my religion - I had none.  She asked a thousand questions that I could not answer, and then one day, when she returned from a visit to the library, she said, “If you ever meet a man named Sidney or Crew or Ross, marry him.  He is the pot and you are the cover.  Every pot has a cover.”

Patrick Cruchan spat into his uncovered bucket.

“When I was 18, I was forced by its rules to leave the orphanage.  No relatives, no skills, no education and no money.  Shuma gave me stuffed cabbage wrapped in a ‘kerchief and with and this only I set out from the orphanage on the lower east side of Manhattan toward the piers. I found a boat about to go up the Hudson River.     I told the captain I could cook – I showed him the stuffed cabbage - in return for passage.  He accepted me and we were under way before he discovered I had no idea about cooking.  He taught me to cook a bit and I served as cook to the crew until we reached a small landing below Albany.

“There he deposited me onshore, told me my cooking would starve his crew, and that my employment was over.  A young, handsome man named Patrick Cruchan (the captain informed me) was at the dock, waiting for a delivery of goods from the boat.  I thought ‘Cruchan’ was close enough to “Crew”, so I went up to Mr. Crushan and said on bended knee “Sir, I am sent here to be your wife.”  T'was that, or starve that night.

“I expected to be ignored and scorned and ridiculed for offering myself to a strange man in a strange place - maybe arrested as a whore and thrown in jail.    Instead, Patrick look stunned and asked my name.  When I told him, he fell to his knees and accepted my proposal on the spot.  We were married in a fortnight and it is to him I gave my virginity and he is only man I have ever known.”

“Exactly as she says” said Patrick Cruchan.  “Except she forgot to mention, the goods I was there to receive was tobacco from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I was a tobacco merchant to the locals here in Albany County.  And she forgot to mention that our marriage ceremony was conducted by a traveling preacher in town at the time, and there is no record of it whatsoever.  We can’t prove we ever got married.”

As she spoke, and as Patrick listened, both continued to suck on their brands.  The air that was heavy with toxins when I entered, was now so dense that I could not inhale without feeling that I was myself a Lucky man.  Every five or six minutes the small flash of a match, the sound of the burning tip-end paper and another was underway - many times before the previous butt was dead in the ashtray.

“Please -- open a window or something.  I can’t breathe in here!” I begged.

“Why don’t we walk to the well?” said Ms. Clebach.  She stood and turned off the flame under the bacon. The act of becoming erect caused a spell of heaves and contributions to the bucket.

PC: “I’ll stay here.”

Ms. Clebach had not an ounce of meat hanging from her skeleton.  She used two hands on the table and then placed one vertebra on top of another until her head rested on top of her spine.  She took three steps to the door and rested.

“Of course, that could take a while”, she turned to me and chuckled and smiled a smile that was radiant and behind it I could see there had once been a woman of vibrant red hair, deep blue eyes and purity, now poisoned.

She made it to the door.  I followed.  She made it outside. I followed, eager to inhale the fresh air drifting up from the Hudson River.  She began walking on a footpath with tiny, tentative steps.

“Been too dry” she said to me, “Ember could set the place ablaze.  Can’t have that now, can we?”

I followed Fidelma for about 100 yards on a twisting footpath on a gentle upslope. Dense vegetation encroached us from both sides of the path.  Blades of grass reached my chest.  It took 20 minutes to go 100 yards.

There ahead was a well, just as everyone pictures an old-fashioned well: a bucket on a string, over a hole in the ground, controlled by a rope and pulley system and covered by an inverted v-shaped roof.  Two small stools were nearby, covered in spider webs. On the structure above the well was the ornate inscription, wood-burned, “Clebach”. 

Fidelma looked at me with a smile of yellow teeth and black stained lips.  “Did you hear about the three holes in the ground?”  I shook my head.

“Well, well, well” she laughed as best she could. I couldn’t help myself and laughed too.

Big deal, so what, who cares?  Two old folks, smoking themselves to death, name a well after themselves that no one will ever see.  I’ve got other cases to resolve; I’m going to get reprimanded for spending so much time on this case.

“Ms. Clebach – I fail to see - ”.

“You fail to see, but Shuma Lubomyl saw it all.  Sit on this stool and I will tell you why you must find have the child we describe.”

So as not to minimize the need for further QF-905s, I delete from the following notes the numerous pauses while the respondent coughed, hacked and otherwise upchucked into the tall grass.  These pauses and the effort for her to regain her composure took several minutes each.

“In county Roscommon in ancient Ireland, near the village of Cruchan, there was a well called ‘Clebach’ on the east side of a hill.  One day, two sisters named Ethne and Fidelma, daughters of the Irish king, went to the well to bathe and wash their linen. 

“To their surprise, a group of men, strangers to the sisters and to the area, sat around the well in deep discourse.  They supposed the men to be ‘Duine Sidhe’ or leprechauns, except the strangers were of human height.  The sisters asked the men to identify themselves and, alas – they discovered they had come upon St. Patrick and a group of priests devoted to him.

“So now, young man, do I have to sprinkle the water on you?   Hundreds of years later, a young virgin named Fidelma Clebach meets a young man named Patrick Crushan not one mile from this well.  The well is on the east side of the small rise we just climbed.  Can you blame us for seeking Ethne?”

“If you take my hand, which you did not walking out here, I will recite a poem for you.”

I blushed at my rudeness and offered my elbow for her to grasp as we walked downhill and she recited, without a single cough or pause -

Sure I’ve roamed this wide world over

But of all the lands I’ve seen

There’s no spot I’d rather dwell in

Than my little isle of Green.

Only last night I was dreamin’

Of a sight that thrilled me through

But what I saw I’ll see no more

‘twas too good to be true.

Sure the shamrocks were growing on Broadway

Every girl was an Irish colleen

The town of New York was the county of Cork

All the buildings were painted green.

Sure the Hudson looked just like the Shannon

Oh, how good and real it did seem

I could hear me mother singin’
Sweet Shannon bells ringin’

Twas only an Irishman’s dream.*

“That is the most I’ve spoken without draggin’ on a cigarette in years.  Do you think you can help us?”

Shuma Lubomyl’s knack for genealogical research may have sent Fidelma in the right direction for finding a husband, but I doubted our agency could help complete the re-enactment of the legend of St. Patrick at the Clebach Well in County Roscommon. It was intriguing to think there might be a living separated-at-birth sister named Ethne MacNeill (or Clebach or King), but it would not be an adoption opportunity, as the subject would be nearly 80 years old.  An adoptable child would have to be the grand-daughter of Ethne – highly unlikely such a person would be named Ethne, if she existed at all.  Nor was Fidelma sure that she ever had a sister named Ethne.

On the other hand, it is our mission to assist in the adoption of hard-to-place orphans and there can’t be many women named Ethne.  And, I did have a geographic starting point, and a general timeframe, and…

I recognized myself personalizing rather than observing and reporting.  With a true colleen smile Fidelma said, “Thanks for the lift!” when we arrived at the house, her peasant dress dragging dry grass inside behind her, where candles burned on the table, stove and counter.