MICHAEL: Welcome to Ireland with Michael.

I'm Michael Londra and in this show, I get to tell you everything I love about my home country, the best way I know how, through music.

We're on Achill Island, the North West Frontier in the wilds of county Mayo.

This is the county where my family, the Londras hail from and the part of Ireland, still left largely untouched by the rest of the world, as such, the land, its traditions and legends are entirely unique to itself.

♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Ireland with Michael is made possible by... ♪ ANNOUNCER: Whether traveling to Ireland for the first time or just longing to return, there's plenty more information available at Ireland.com.

♪ ANNOUNCER: CIE Tours, sharing the magic of Ireland for nearly 90 years.

♪ ANNOUNCER: Aer Lingus has been bringing people home since 1936.

If you are thinking about Ireland, Aer Lingus is ready when you are to take you home.

♪ MICHAEL: This is Achill Island, the largest of these myriad isles which dot the coastline along the wild Atlantic way.

Continuously inhabited since 4000 BC, those Neolithic people who first carved and cultivated the once forested land here, would be known to the Celts as the semi-mystical Tuatha De Danann.

♪ Ruins of promontory forts along the shore would have once helped these people to repel the Viking raiders who ravaged the rest of Ireland.

Then centuries later, clans like O'Flaherty and O'Malley fought to maintain autonomous rule free from England, long after the Crown had taken control of the mainland.

In the history of the Achill struggle for independence is the history of Ireland itself.

(sheep bleats) ♪ True to their history, the Achill people have stubbornly held on to one iconic, if not somewhat infamous practice, that is peat.

Dense layers of accumulated vegetation unique to boglands can burn the night long.

For centuries, this made it the most important fuel for Irish fires.

Cutting turf and leaving it out to dry for the hearth is still practiced across the country, although its prevalence is lessening, but in Achill, where more than 80% of the island is peat bog, the tradition is very much alive.

Ah, the smell of a peat fire.

♪ If you're venturing to Achill, however, there's one story you won't want to miss, and it all begins at this 15th century tower house, once the keep of Achill's most famous and most feared resident.

Grace O'Malley described by her English enemies as a woman who hath imprudently passed the part of womanhood is today most popularly known as the Pirate Queen.

The legend of Gráinne Mhaol is epic in scope, but it was here at her family castle that her career in piracy began in earnest.

Upon her first husband's death, Gráinne was stripped of all that was his property, starting over here in this tower with her own family's somewhat more meager holdings.

With three galleys at her command, she began an epic pirate enterprise, raiding coastal towns and plundering or taxing passing vessels.

If it sounds unsophisticated, well, O'Malley explained it herself in a letter to Queen Elizabeth the 1st, no less, writing, "Every chieftain here takes by strong hand "to make heads against the neighbors, "in like manner to how your highness by force maintain herself and her people."

Bold words indeed fitting for the Pirate Queen who is confirmed to have operated from Donegal all the way down to Waterford.

Grace O'Malley spent her life fighting not only rival clans and the Crown, but also expectations of what it means to be a woman in the world.

Although Grace broke the gender barrier to become a pirate captain and clan chieftain in the mid-1500s, my own world of traditional Irish music remained largely something of a boy's club up until the 20th century.

So I paid a visit to National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Award winner, Joanie Madden, whose legendary band, Cherish the Ladies, did a great deal to change all that.

♪ ♪ ♪ So, Joanie, I know you're a great composer of new pieces of Irish music, but can you tell me where you learned, like how you learn the traditional tunes from hundreds of years ago?

JOANIE: Well, both Mary and I, and it's funny, in the history of Cherish the Ladies, and in the story of Cherish the Ladies, we're all daughters of musicians, and in the tradition of Irish music, for hundreds of years, it was from fathers to sons where the music was passed down.

And in our cases, it was the music passed from the fathers down to their daughters, and all of our dads were great musicians.

And it was very important to our families that the music be passed down, and, with my father, it was the most important thing he had to give.

You know, more than, it was like the golden chalice passing that down to us.

And we had to make sure we played the music right and that we respected it, and then in Cherish the Ladies, our stories, we've always gone back to the old tunes.

But we're writing music and always trying to move the music and the tradition forward, but while always paying respect to the music that we came from because this music has been around for hundreds of years.

It's the backbone of so many of America's folk traditions, from bluegrass to old-timey to country music, you know, so we've a lot on our shoulders, which is a great, you know, this little country of Ireland has gone a long way with spreading the music around the world.

MICHAEL: Would you play us one of those tunes that you've written.

JOANIE: Sure.

MICHAEL: That carries the music forward for us?

JOANIE: Yeah, well maybe I'll play a little old tune that I wrote, and it's called "The Waves of Kilkee."

And it came to me after we hit a storm at five o'clock in the morning, on the way to record with The Clancy Brothers, myself and our producer and we hit this.

We had the worst flight ever, but we got to Kilkee in County Clare.

And the waves were crashing and the Sun was just rising and the sky was the most beautiful colors, and we called it, "The Waves of Kilkee."

So hope you see what we saw.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Now.

MICHAEL: You know, you're breaking my heart.

(Joanie giggles) JOANIE: Oh, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," huh?

MICHAEL: Ah, that was so beautiful.

JOANIE: Well, you know what?

Coming from a man who knows how to sing with heart, I take that as a high compliment, thank you.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

JOANIE: And thank you Mary Coogan on the guitar.

♪ MICHAEL: Leaving Joanie with a full heart, I make it to one of the most charming towns in all of Ireland.

(duck quacks) ♪ Arched stone bridges, tree-lined promenades and a 30-room manor house.

It's one of the few planned cities in the country, and very near to the place where the Pirate Queen was born.

You didn't think you'd heard the whole story, did you?

Although you've met Grace O'Malley the pirate, we're here at the site of her castle in Westport, to meet Grace O'Malley chief of her people.

Leader at a time when the English had decided to more aggressively lay claim to their distant Irish holdings.

In Connacht, that meant the appointment of Sir Richard Bingham as representative of the Crown.

Legend tells that Grace's first-born son was an affable sort, and welcomed Bingham into the family castle only to be betrayed and murdered.

Gráinne had had enough, she sailed all the way across the Irish sea and up the river Thames to demand an appointment with Queen Elizabeth the 1st.

The guards found a hidden dagger on the Irish chief in the English court but Elizabeth permitted it, and their hours long meeting went ahead.

Carried out in Latin the only language the two women shared.

The result, Bingham was removed from his post and O'Malley returned to her life of sailing and plundering, but we've heard plenty about that, I think I want to see what the inside of that glamorous manor looks like.

♪ Catherine, we are sitting here in the very delicate ladies' posh morning room of Westport house, a world away from Gráinne Mhaol's Tower out on Achill Island, which we just left.

You, Catherine Connelly, are the historian for the house, the keeper of the house, I guess.

Could you tell me about the surroundings?

CATHERINE: Part of the house was built in 1730 by the Browne family.

And it continued on being built over the next kind of 50-60 years and they've added the two wings onto the house as well, it is an incredible house to come into, when people come to the house, we like them to feel at home, so they get to wander around at their own leisure.

MICHAEL: Now, I notice where the house is situated on these very lush forested lawns.

CATHERINE: Yes.

MICHAEL: But we're right on the edge of the water looking out onto a fairly barren landscape, why was the house built here in the first place?

CATHERINE: The house as built here exactly for the reason you said, the beautiful landscape.

And when the Brownes came as far as Westport, they picked this spot to build the house.

MICHAEL: Now, as pastoral and as green as the surroundings are right here on these very manicured lawns, underneath the house is something very, very different.

CATHERINE: We're actually built on the ruins of one of Grace O'Malley Castles.

So we have dungeons downstairs, so now, not every house can proclaim that, but we can, and actually the Brownes that built this house are direct descendants of Grace O'Malley.

MICHAEL: Ah!

CATHERINE: So the first Browne that came here married her great-great granddaughter, Maude Bourke and so the Brownes, even today, the four, uh, the five ah, children of the 11th Marquess are the 14th great granddaughters of Grace O'Malleys, so it's a very proud heritage to have a pirate in the family and why not?

You know?

So the dungeons are downstairs, and they always mesmerize people to think that this is under all this grandeur, and you'll get to see for yourself just how wonderful they are.

MICHAEL: So you're going to take me down there?

CATHERINE: I will of course.

Yeah, no problem.

MICHAEL: Does that mean you have a lock and key.

CATHERINE: I control everything around here.

MICHAEL: I want to take that lock and key.

(Catherine giggles) Before we go down there 'cause I'm not planning on staying the night here.

CATHERINE: I wouldn't recommend it, no.

(Catherine giggles) ♪ MICHAEL: Although Grace O'Malley had very different intentions for these dungeons, the Browne family used them when they moved into their grand home as storage with a hatch from the fields around the house down below.

So Catherine, it seems like the lower we go under the house, the further back in time we're going.

CATHERINE: Yes, so these dungeons, although we're unsure of when they were dated, we do think probably the 15th-16th century.

What would have been here would've been a tower house, very similar to Achill and to Clare Island.

And so a tower house, you know, would have been four or five stories high, and the family would have lived on the top two stories.

MICHAEL: A house of contradictions, we make our way back up out of the dank dungeons to a grand staircase of pristine marble.

CATHERINE: So this is our beautiful Sicilian marble staircase, and at the top of this staircase is our amazing Angel of Welcome.

MICHAEL: I love her.

CATHERINE: Isn't she just gorgeous?

It was tradition for the family when they came home from school or from holidays, that they would shake the outstretched hand of the angel.

It is supposed to bring good luck and prosperity to whoever does it.

MICHAEL: Oh, can I?

CATHERINE: Absolutely.

MICHAEL: I'm all in.

Nice to meet you young lady.

I may need all the luck I can get from that angel, ♪ as I prepare to explore the shadowy branches of my own family tree, heading just about due north from Westport to the farming town of Enniscoe.

Today, I find out who I am.

My grandfather, Michael Londra, left County Mayo in the early 1930s.

Prior to his departure, the Londras had been here for at least 100 years and beyond that, well, it's a mystery.

The North Mayo Heritage Center in Enniscoe may be able to help introduce me to the people that I come from.

I'm just hoping there's no serial killers in the mix.

Brendan.

BRENDAN: Michael, you're very welcome to the North Mayo Heritage Centre.

MICHAEL: It's nice to finally meet you.

BRENDAN: Absolutely.

MICHAEL: I hear you're going to tell me about the Londra family.

BRENDAN: Yeah, absolutely and definitely.

Let's come this way and see what we can find.

MICHAEL: Let's do it.

BRENDAN: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Brendan Walsh, we are here at the North Mayo Genealogy Centre, and I am here to learn about my family, the Londras, and you are the expert that I've heard all about.

BRENDAN: Okay.

MICHAEL: So if you could tell me a little bit about the process, like, where do you start?

BRENDAN: Usually what we start with, particularly in terms of clients who come to us from the United States, is we usually ask them, do they know when the ancestor who emigrated from Ireland, when did that person die, or when did they get married?

If they can find that certificate or we can find that certificate, it usually has parental information on it.

And that then gives us the opening to get the research going, and research their ancestry, back through the generations, as far back as the available records will allow us to go.

And a lot of clients as well ask us to continue the research in the United States, and sometimes to bring that up as close as we can to the modern era if possible.

MICHAEL: I mean, I think it's all very well, to be able, you can do this online.

BRENDAN: Mm-hmm.

MICHAEL: Right?

BRENDAN: Yeah.

MICHAEL: However, I love what you do here because searching your family history is a very personal thing, and I love that you put it all here in a bound book, and it is so personal and moving.

Would you do me a favor?

Would you help me find my family?

BRENDAN: Absolutely.

MICHAEL: As it turns out, we're the only Londras in all of Ireland.

By the 1840s, my great-great-grandfather, Luke Londra, who was given the more English-sounding surname Lowder by census takers, was well established in Cloonaghduff which means the "Black Meadow."

This town-land was held in commonage by the 10 tenants living there, and Luke's share was valued at five pounds and 10 shillings.

Apparently, it was enough to keep the family rooted until my grandfather left nearly 100 years later.

But before that, our family history is still rather obscure.

Our only clue is the peculiar surname Londra.

It means London in Italian and in Spanish, but the West Coast of Ireland is a long way for an immigrant from southern Europe.

Well, I took a DNA test and surprise, surprise, I'm 97% Irish, but the runner-up was 2.5% Meso Andean.

♪ The explanation, well, here's one possibility.

The Spanish Armada retreating from England after its naval defeat, took the long way home through the North Atlantic.

Storms in the rocky coastland wrecked 24 ships from Antrim to Kerry.

Of the few survivors, many fled to Scotland while others were executed.

But some settled down near where they had landed, becoming as Irish as any.

It may be one of these men, who's the first Londra in Ireland.

As I dove into the people I come from, those who gave me my name Londra, I thought of my grandfather, who traveled across the whole of the country, no small feat in his day, to begin a new life in Kilkenny.

There's a song that was popular back then about the pull of the people we leave in our past, but maybe not forever.

♪ I hear you calling me ♪ ♪ And, oh, the ringing gladness of your voice ♪ ♪ The one that made my longing heart rejoice ♪ ♪ You spoke, do you remember ♪ ♪ And my heart ♪ ♪ Still hears the distant music of your voice ♪ ♪ While we are on a nostalgia trip, why don't we head down south to a little village you may have seen on the silver screen.

♪ If you don't recognize the pub behind me, it might have helped if our show was shot in technicolor.

This bar and the street outside are the last stop of the epic fistfight in John Ford's 1952 picture, The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.

This, the Village of Cong on the border of County Mayo and County Galway became the Village of the Innisfree for the sweeping romance and the film's impact lingers on all around the town.

To this day, Cong is all about The Quiet Man.

The Ireland of Innisfree may be idealized, but the scenery is all very real.

All the film's exteriors were shot in and around Cong, and little has changed around here since.

The residents may love the film, because it brought a bit of glamor to this quiet place, or maybe because it was made with such care.

It remains one of the only Hollywood pictures in which the Irish language can be heard, and then, of course, there's the leading lady.

Although John Wayne may be the icon of a golden age in Hollywood in America, here in Ireland, Maureen O'Hara is the home-grown star.

When she returned to this country to play the romantic lead in a fictionalized version of the island of her youth, she was met with the sort of homecoming that only Ireland can deliver.

Still today it's heard that the natives come to pay homage.

Throughout County Mayo, the people have held on to their heritage, but still, they find ways to push it forward, evolving their traditions.

There's one last stop on our tour, Belleek Castle, a place at once old and new.

♪ In the 1950s, the manor was operated by County Mayo as a hospital and military barracks, but in 1970, it was restored by hand and opened as a hotel by Marshall Doran, Merchant Navy officer, smuggler, and avid collector of medieval artifacts.

So if you stay here, be sure to check out the collection of arms and the armors, one of the largest in all of Ireland.

No time for me to dally in the hall however, I'm due down in the cellar to meet Billow Wood, a cracking Irish folk band bringing out the country in traditional Irish music.

♪ ♪ I wish I was on yonder hill ♪ ♪ 'Tis there I'd sit and cry my fill ♪ ♪ And never a tear would turn a mill ♪ ♪ Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán ♪ ♪ Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún ♪ ♪ Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin ♪ ♪ Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom ♪ ♪ Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán ♪ ♪ MICHAEL: Guys, I'm delighted to be here in the wilds of Mayo with one of my favorite young bands, Billow Wood.

How does it feel to be one of Ireland's hottest young Irish bands, but come from way up north in the northwest of the country?

MARK: Oh, yeah, we love being from Mayo.

CIARA: Yeah, we're very proud Mayo people.

MARK: We are.

CIARA: And, so we try and we include Mayo in all the scenes of our videos as well.

Most of our videos show nature of Mayo of in some kind.

♪ I'd sell my rock, and I'd sell my reel ♪ ♪ I'd even sell my spinning wheel ♪ ♪ And buy my lover a sword of steel ♪ ♪ Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán ♪ ♪ Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún ♪ MICHAEL: Is country music important to you because I can hear that in your sound, certainly in your singing.

MARK: Yeah, we've got that before.

CIARA; Yeah, I suppose when I was growing up, and the songs I used to listen to were like Mary Black and I used to listen to American music, like Dixie Chicks and Johnny Cash and stuff like that.

And so I was always listening to that growing up.

And those harmonies and stuff that we used to bring in with the band are linked in there, so just kind of sneaks itself in, I think.

MICHAEL: It does.

Well, I look forward, sitting here in the basement of Belleek Castle, I look forward to hearing you in some festival somewhere in North America.

CIARA: Oh, please, God.

MICHAEL: Sometime very soon.

MARK: Michael, thanks for having us.

CIARA: Thank you so much.

♪ ♪ Siúil, siúil, siúil, siúil ♪ ♪ Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún ♪ ♪ Siúil, siúil, siúil, siúil ♪ ♪ Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún ♪ ♪ Siúil ♪ MICHAEL: Thanks for joining me on my travels around County Mayo.

I'm Michael Londra, and I hope to see you next time on Ireland with Michael.

But for now, sláinte.

Cheers.

ANNOUNCER: Want to continue your travels to Ireland?

A deluxe Ireland with Michael DVD featuring all episodes of Season one and two, plus bonus concert footage is available for $30.

A copy of the Ireland with Michael companion travel guide featuring places to visit as seen in Seasons one and two is also available for $30.

A set of both is available for $55.

MICHAEL: To learn more about everything you've seen in this episode, go to IrelandWithMichael.com.

ANNOUNCER: Ireland with Michael was made possible by... ♪ ANNOUNCER: Whether traveling to Ireland for the first time or just longing to return, there's plenty more information available at Ireland.com.

♪ ANNOUNCER: CIE Tours, sharing the magic of Ireland for nearly 90 years.

♪ ANNOUNCER: Aer Lingus has been bringing people home since 1936.

If you're thinking about Ireland, Aer Lingus is ready when you are to take you home.

♪ MICHAEL: OK, put your hands up in the air!

Come on, let's get a-waving.

♪ In my heart its rightful queen ♪ ♪ Ever loving, ever tender ♪ MICHAEL: That's it.

♪ Ever true ♪ ♪ Like the Sun your smile has shone ♪ MICHAEL: Go on, Wexford.

♪ Gladdening all it glowed upon ♪ ♪