Guest Author - Mary Ellen Sweeney

Elvis could have been Irish, yes, he could. With his blue-black hair and bedroom eyes, he could have passed for “Black Irish” any day of the week. He was, and still is well-loved in Ireland, where romance had only gone underground for a few hundred stifled years. In the bad old days of the Magdalene Sisters, resistant bachelors, “wait for me until I come back from America” and all that rot, ye better believe that Elvis left his mark on the yearning hearts to whom he spoke just as much in Ireland as he did in Graceland.
Now it seems that Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie, is looking around Ireland for a place to settle down. According to the gossips, Lisa Marie has been shopping around the prime real estate for which Ireland is so prized. She’s dropped in on some of the available castles, the stud farms, and “formerly owned by Lord So-and-So” listings as one with a pocket full of money would be expected to do. Well, by all accounts she’ll be very welcome in Ireland and perhaps, like so many of the rich and famous, she’ll be happy in the magic place.
Now, with Lisa Marie lurking, and the Irish Elvis Presley Fan Club working hard collecting money for charity, it seems that Elvis sightings in Ireland are up (especially in Connemara) for his 30th Anniversary. Does “The King” still live? It’s hard to say “nay” when it’s not long ago that the Elvis Presley single “A Little Less Conversation” topped the mark on millions of fans worldwide and Colm Meaney trilled Elvis snippets all through The Commitments.

The unchallenged King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis rules in the realm of the heart, where the willing citizens still love him tender and love him true. Elvis made history again and again as rapt fans took his lyrics to heart and carried his sincere expressions of love, longing, and humor into the future where he lives on to this day. And he will live on as long as there are lovers and dreamers who remain positive that they’ve seen him and countless impersonators willing to attempt the impossible: to live up to the legend that is Elvis Presley.

Royal Doulton Jug: Elvis “Jailhouse Rock”"
Royal Doulton “Viva Las Vegas” Elvis.