Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette Bundoran at sunset.

By Peter McKay

As quests for roots go, it was a fairly pathetic effort. My wife and I were traveling to Ireland for a little more than four days, visiting our son during his study abroad in Galway. I wanted to see castles and pastures, but I also wanted to dig up some of my Irish roots.

Peter McKay's grandmother Mary Ellen Kerrigan.

I grew up in a pretty serious Irish-American family. The only one of my Irish ancestors I knew, however, was Mary Ellen (Nellie) Kerrigan, born in the resort town of Bundoran, on the northwestern coast of Ireland, in 1892.

Granny arrived at Ellis Island on Sept. 29, 1908, and never went back. Other than a few choice words in Gaelic, the only other thing I remembered of Granny was that the Kerrigans owned some properties in Bundoran, and she spoke often of a cousin who lived with them named "Josie Logue."

Bundoran would be a three-hour drive out of the way of our planned itinerary, but it seemed almost criminal to travel across the Atlantic Ocean and not see the place I'd grown up hearing about.

On the flight over, I read up on Bundoran in the guide books and found that in 2002, the town had been described in a newspaper -- quite nastily -- as "like the back streets of Las Vegas, only with cheaper hookers." Once we set foot on the Emerald Isle, it was more of the same. I told one woman in a pub that we were making the trip up to Bundoran, and she looked as if she'd just bitten into a lemon peel. Once I told her it was my ancestral home, she quickly changed her tune, assuring us it was beautiful.

We arrived in Bundoran about 6 p.m. on a Saturday and, despite the negative reviews, found ourselves in a seaside village not all that different from Ocean City, N.J., where I'd gone as a child. It would be too late to check any official records, and almost all the stores were closing up as we passed. I doubted seriously that anyone would remember a 16-year-old girl who skipped town 100 years ago.

We wandered down the street, and I tried to content myself with the idea that at least I was walking the same sidewalks Granny might have walked in her youth. We stopped at the traditional-looking Brennan's Criterion Bar, and decided to follow the Irish tradition of drowning our sorrows in Guinness.

The bar was almost deserted, but behind the counter we found Nan and Pat Brennan, sisters who owned and ran the bar. I mentioned I was looking for any trace of the Kerrigan family. They shook their heads sympathetically, and I realized they probably dealt with Americans like me 20 times a day.

The Criterion Bar, they explained, had been in their family for three generations. They'd been working behind the counter since the 1940s, and there were no Kerrigans they knew of in Bundoran.

"The only other name I know," I offered out of desperation, "is a 'Josie Logue.' " Their eyes went wide and they repeated the name softly.

"Josie Logue ran the library!" one said, using the Irish term for a bookstore. They'd frequented the long-closed bookstore many times as young girls. There was indeed a Kerrigan woman, they remembered, who lived with Josie.

They gave us precise directions: Cross the bridge out of town, then look for the third house on the left after the Four Provinces Pub.

It took just a few minutes to get there: two small (tiny by U.S. standards) salmon-colored stucco homes, one of which had clearly once been a shop. Were these the homes the Kerrigans left behind when they went to New York?

The windows had been covered with plywood years before. Above the door was a bracket where the shop sign once hung. A notice by the side of the door announced that the building was up for renovation. The notice, like the building (and like my family history, for that matter), was weathered with age and hard to make out.

I reached out and touched the weathered brass door handle, the same one Granny must have used when she last left the "library" a century ago.

We saw some impressive castles in Ireland, and quaint cottages by the score. But for me, the most memorable part of the trip was a visit to a tiny, dilapidated bookstore, long closed.