Odds of 1 in 100,000?
Angels, ancestors, and the moments that don’t feel like chance
Ireland, The Tuatha Dé Danann, The Pleiades, Angels, Ancestors, And a night where the odds where over 1 in 100,000…
I have always had a love affair with Ireland, it started when I was a child visiting family with my parents. My father was a born and bred Mayo man and like so many second generation Irish we would visit in the school holidays.
First memories were of crowding into our Grandparents house on fold up beds and playing outside in the wind and rain while going to visit the donkeys.
Later trips were different, I remember returning as a teenager, my parents had divorced by then and I remember Dad coming to collect us for our two weeks with him in the summer holidays. As he picked us up and we waved goodbye to our Mum I remember asking, ‘Dad, is someone else coming on holiday with us?’
His enigmatic reply was, ‘What makes you ask that?’
He proceeded to take us to a house we had never been to before, introduce us to a women we had never met before, who was like 8 months pregnant, and we all went on holiday together!
By then it had been a while since we had been to Ireland and it was a long trek.
Dad, who hated flying, drove us all the way from Surrey to County Mayo - which included a very rough sea crossing and a slightly awkward introduction along the lines of: “Hi Dad’s new girlfriend… oh sorry, what?… new wife?… right… well, nice to meet you…!”
Anyway the novelty with this rather unusual family trip eventually gave way to a convivial atmosphere and I remember it being fun.
We stopped off for the night in near Kyemore Abbey (pictured above), which was really memorable for its beautifully rugged location (pictured above)
We arrived the next day into Westport - a really cute, picturesque town, with its colourful shopfronts, the river running right through the centre, and everyone’s go-to, McGreevies, for holiday groceries and last-minute essentials - along with all the childhood staples, like bottles of red lemonade and the inappropriately nicknamed “queer biscuits”… soft, fluffy, marshmallow-like clouds of a biscuit, with no crunch in sight.
Over the following two weeks we visited all the local sights and family members from Westport House and Ballintubber Abbey to Clew Bay to look out over Clare Island which I had been named after and which famously was the birth place for a local legend, Grace O’Malley, a female pirate no less who features in out family history.
Of all my childhood trips to Ireland, this was by far my most memorable.
The wonders of Mayo and the general feeling of the magic of the place stayed with me.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago, a good few decades since this memorable trip and I was struck down with flu - which created a pause and evidently an opening for some intuitive nudges to drop in.
A question just popped into my mind- ‘Who are the Tuatha De Dannan?’. So with nothing better to do I went down the rabbit hole.
The same afternoon another question popped into my mind ‘I wonder what Marguerite Riggolioso is doing now?’ I had met Marguerite a few years previous on one of my trips to California at a talk on ‘The Plieadies’ that she was giving.
The Pleiades - also known as The Seven Sisters - are a small cluster of stars visible in the night sky, often recognised as a tight group of shimmering points. They’ve been spoken about across cultures for thousands of years, usually as a group of sisters or feminine figures.
I searched and an interview with Marguerite popped up.
I started watching and I nearly fell of the settee when Marguerite (an Italian American) started talking about, of all things, Ireland and the Tuatha De Dannan!
What were the chances …..?!
Emboldened by this wild coincidence I spoke to my cousin Regina who lives in Dublin and is a full on Irish speaker and asked her, ‘Can you please tell me about the Tuatha De Dannan?’
First thing I needed direction on apparently was how to pronounce the name correctly, my attempt it seemed, fell way short of the mark - landing like nails on a chalkboard for my poor cousin, who with great kindness and restraint politely pointed out ‘Errr… yes… actually its not the ‘Too-arthur Day Dan’ - in fact you pronounce it ‘TOO-ah-hah Day DAN-an’!
That was me told! But better to get it right straight out of the gate!
The Tuatha Dé Danann (or the children of Danu) are a race of supernatural beings from early Irish mythology. They are often described as a highly skilled and otherworldly people who purportedly arrived in Ireland before the Celts. They are associated with wisdom, magic, healing, and a deep connection to the land.
According to the stories, they came to Ireland “in a mist,” or '“on a cloud,” suggesting something almost otherworldly about their arrival, and were said to possess advanced knowledge - from craftsmanship and healing to what we might now call energetic or psychic abilities.
The parallels to our intergalactic brothers and sisters was not been lost on me!
Anyway, this day marked the beginning of a renewed fascination with all things Irish, before long I noticed, as mentioned in a previous Substack which you can read here that Lorna Byrne, author of ‘Angels in my Hair’ had an upcoming retreat and so I booked onto that and made my way to Ireland.
This initial trip marked the beginning of me returning again and again to Ireland over the next couple of years delving ever deeper into the mystery and magic that Ireland holds.
So last week I found myself back in Ireland again. This time for a family wedding.
I arrived at Dublin airport where I met a couple of my siblings. We hired a car and set off across the country.
This was the first time that we had all been in Ireland together at the same time since the youngest amongst us was a toddler.
On the first night we decided that we couldn’t resist an additional 1.5 hours drive from where we were staying to visit family in Westport.
Turns out if you arrive out of the blue and unannounced at 6pm on a Friday night to your cousins house in Ireland, they have a wonderful pot of food on the stove waiting for you!
Good to know!
We had a great catch up then headed to Matt Malloys for live music and to meet more family.
All in all at the risk of some cultural appropriation, we had the best ‘craic’.
It got to around 11pm and having been up since 3am and being the designated driver I called it - we needed to head back to where we were staying which was near the venue for the wedding the next day.
In the car we put a on a 90s playlist, second only to a mix tape. It never ceases to amaze me that I can remember the words to The Shaman’s Move Any Mountain but can’t remember my PIN numbers!
Pretty much halfway through our journey it happened…
I was indicating left, following the traffic cones, with the GPS telling us to turn - so when the cones tapered out, I took my cue and pulled left onto what I thought was a slip road… only it wasn’t.
It really really wasn’t!
It fact it was a patch of mud.
Evidently the road was so new (open 2 days) that the GPS hadn’t caught up with the new layout.
The wheels spun and spun. I couldn’t move forwards, and I couldn’t move backwards. my siblings got out and gave the car a push - getting covered in mud for their troubles - and still, the wheels spun.
We looked at each other with the dawning realisation that we were stuck in the middle of nowhere at almost midnight, with no one around …
Unable to get hold of the rental company, we were faced with the looming unwelcome prospect that we might be there for the night - in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road being battered by the wind.
I sent up a prayer - ‘Angels we could really do with a miracle right now!’
The only option seemed to be to call the local Garda (police) to see if maybe they knew someone who could help. We got through to them and they said they would come out. So we settled in to wait.
And we waited and we waited…
It got to midnight and I said, ‘I’m surprised someone hasn’t stopped to help us!’
‘Seems unlikely Clare!’ came the resounding response, ‘If someone did see us they’d have driven past us before they even realise we are here!’
At that exact moment….
a tow-truck pulled up and a couple of guys jumped out!
I opened my car window, ‘Oh wow! Hi!’ I said, ‘Did the Garda send you?’
‘No!’, beamed the driver of said tow truck,
‘We were just passing. We saw you and I said to my mate- shall we stop for the craic and give them a hand? My mate here said ‘No!’ So we decided to flip and coin- and lucky for you guys the coin flipped in your favour!’
He proceeded to walk around the car and got to the passengers side and leant in through window and said, ‘Would you mind if I give you a tow?’
We all replied in unison: ‘Not at all - please do!!’
The Garda arrived shortly after, having had a hard time finding us on the new road layout and between them all the car was towed - like a hot knife through butter - out of the mud.
After exchanging a few details it was pointed out that I had the somewhat dubious accolade of being the first person to have an accident on the new road!
Cautiously on our way, my sister explained, ‘They gave me the lucky coin! And guess what? You will never guess what his name was … the driver who wanted to stop for the craic - his name was Paul !!’
Paul was our late father’s name.
We drove home slowly and finally got back to our AirBnB and put the kettle on.
‘I Can not believe that happened!’ said my sister, ‘What are the chances that they were passing AND that they flipped a coin AND that the guy’s name was Paul?!’
What are the chances of a tow-truck, not only driving past at midnight but actually stopping and guy who wants to help us, who flips a coin for us, is called Paul?
I am ‘reliably’ informed by AI that:
The chances of this happening are 1 in tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands
Hmm… with odds like that, perhaps I should try my chances on the Grand National… although it didn’t quite feel like luck.
‘Would you believe me if I told you that earlier this evening I asked Dad for a sign that he was still looking out for us!? Maybe the whole thing happened so that Dad could come to the rescue?’
Reflecting on this, I poured hot water into my mug and ran a knife through a warm, buttered hot cross bun - the ease of which didn’t go unnoticed!
Heading to bed, I felt grateful to the angels for the seeming miracle of Paul and his reluctant mate - for the coin landing in our favour - and increasingly certain that Dad had a hand in the evening’s events, just enough to remind us he might still be looking out for us.
For more about Lorna Byrne you can visit her website here.
For my podcast The Rise of the Reluctant Psychic, head here.
For more about The Pleiades and Marguerite Rigoglioso head here
For more about Irish folklore head to Regina’s Substack:
