#ladya is a perpetual student and always learning new things about whatever catches her interest

[theoriginalladya]

Hello! Your Caleb Shepard has inspired me to make the last push to get in touch with my Irish heritage, but I don’t know where to start. I definitely want to learn Gaelic.

Hello! Oh, what a lovely compliment and wow, how exciting!!!! Thank you!! I will admit, Caleb has become very dear to my heart and I have used him to learn a lot of things Irish that I never would have otherwise!

I'll be honest up front: I do not know Gaelic myself. That's one of those things on my 'to do' list that I probably should bump up to the top. Most of what I use in my stories come from a lot of searching around the internet. I have some experience learning a foreign language (French) as well as researching documents in others (the joys of being a history major lol) so I understand enough about phrasing and structure once I've found a few examples and can get a feel for it, but I also tend to do an over abundance of research to make sure I get a word or phrase as accurate as possible. I also follow some Irish blogs that help, too.

As for actually learning of the language, I have a couple of friends who have suggested I look into starting with Babbel. (I honestly know nothing about Babbel, but I have seen advertisements for it as well) I'm sure there must be other options out there, but I haven't started checking into them yet.

As for the other aspects of his Irish background - history, folktales, places, etc. - that is something that comes far more naturally to me! I was a history major in college ages ago and eventually ended up getting my MA in Medieval History. One benefit to that was learning how to research and how to discern reliable sources. It's a skill that has come in handy over the years (and as a result, when the research bug hits, I tend to go deeeeeeep into a subject just to satisfy my curiosity! lol).

Now, as for deciding where to make Caleb come from, I won't say I threw a dart at the map to choose (I'm not nearly so good at darts as he is!), but my parents visited Ireland about a decade ago and shared a bunch of photos and stories of their adventure. That fed into my love of geography, all things Celtic and history, and so I sat down at the computer, did a quick, general Google search on Irish history to get me started, and ended up chasing after bits and pieces that caught my interest. My Master's thesis was on the history of an abbey in England (of which I hope to one day publish an original fic with that as a large part of it's story) and in doing my research for that, I occasionally came across references to events in history that tied back to Ireland that piqued my interest as well. It's a research adventure that is still ongoing today - some thirty years after my MA Thesis and three and a half years after creating Caleb, but there's still more to learn about!

But like I said, I honestly cannot say what made me decide to plant Caleb in Shannon. He has the character background of an Earthborn Shepard, so I knew he'd be from a city. The foundation of his character, though, stems from a different game where I play Brigit, his mother, who is most definitely from rural Ireland. He was a natural fit for Mass Effect, and once I plonked him into Shannon, I started to explore the surrounding areas on maps, in folklore, in history, etc. It all kind of snowballed from there. I've scrounged up some 2nd hand travel guides for Ireland at used bookstores, read numerous books of Irish folktales I've collected over the years, and continue to search the Web for new and interesting tidbits to feed my fancy. My latest fixation has been on discovering more of the fae/fairy stories and folklore so I can adapt it to a Mass Effect/Fairy AU idea I have. Now to be fair, some of my fae knowledge is influenced by an RPG game I play as well as the information I've gathered, so please don't take it as 100% accurate, especially once I've added in the Mass Effect side of things!

So, all of my rambling aside - sorry about that, get me going on my characters and you might have to tell me to stop! lol - I would suggest a Google search to get you started or, alternatively, to help you narrow things down a bit to a starting point. Do you have a place you are really interested in? A story or bit of folklore? An ancestor from over there you'd like to learn more about? (trust me, tracing genealogy is just as dangerous for me - still happens to me whenever I pull mine out to update!) Could be something as simple as wondering about the history of Guinness beer or what Irish wool/yarn is native to the country or a W.B. Yeats poem you want to track down the meaning behind.

Come to think of it, a friend did pass along some W.B. Yeats back when I created Caleb. And my mom did give me some 'real Irish wool' yarn when she came back from that trip that I really need to dig out and make something with. Hmm....

(and feel free to drop other asks if you have specific questions! I'm sorry I've rambled on so long, but what a delight to find your comments in my inbox! thank you so much!!!)

#ladya replies #ladya's OCs #Caleb Shepard #Irish Shepard #ladya is a perpetual student and always learning new things about whatever catches her interest #Caleb has been an excellent vehicle for that on the Irish side of things!