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Erin's Exiled Daughters1997 BetaSP 40min Funded with a grant from Creative New Zealand The songs were composed by a young emigrant from County Donegal, Mick McGinley, on board the ship Invercargill during the long journey to New Zealand. They seem to have been written for a fellow passenger, 20 year old Hessie Moore. Two years after landing in Dunedin, the homesick Mick McGinley returned
to his village of Letterkenny where he became locally famous as a ballad
singer. “Glenswilly”, one of the songs he wrote on board ship,
is till well known and often sung in the Donegal area today. This song, a lament for the conditions which forced the Irish to leave their homes, was entirely unknown in Ireland. Shirley Grace’s film shows her journey to return the two ballads to McGinley’s two surviving children, and to learn of her own Irish ancestry. The film is set in Pakiri, the small, mainly Maori, coastal community where Shirley lived, and in Count Donegal. Interwoven with the story of the ballads is an old Irish legend of a seal-woman’s quest for her skin, which was stolen from her. The film is a metaphor for this story of loss and re-discovery. As one of Shirley’s Irish informants tells her ‘A tree can blossom wherever it’s planted, but you mustn’t forget where the sapling came from’. Erin’s Exiled Daughters is a personal story of an individual quest for identity. Yet it reflects the experiences of much of New Zealand’s Pakeha population, whose forebears left their homes in Britain for the other side of the world, often losing or abandoning their traditions. This is an account of a successful attempt to close the circle of history. Shirley Grace (1949-2000) was an actor, painter and photographer who made five short films. She was also the central figure in Gaylene Preston’s Titless Wonders about women with breast cancer. Her other films are Rangitoto (1989) 8mm B & W 4 mins see also |
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