Every day has its own journeys. 
Today brought a walk around Ramelton and a visit to the regular Saturday morning country market. Quieter than usual, mostly because of the roads but there's also that post-Christmas lull. 
There's a little antique shop on Castle Street that opens on a Saturday. It's a front room cabinet of curiosities, complete with a homely fire in the fireplace. It's perfect for magpies, who can pick up things here and there. There are books in piles, knick-knacks, CDs, DVDs, glass, plates, rings, pictures, a wooden music stand, a giant teddy bear, lots of stuff. 
Today's purchase was a hardback copy of 'Stepping Stones', a Faber and Faber first edition from 2008. A snip at €12, considering the price on the back was €30.45. The book's made up of interviews of Seamus Heaney by Dennis O'Driscoll, another poet, as well being a critic and a long-time official of the Revenue Commissioners. It's a great read, whatever misgivings you might have about the format and how it allows Heaney to shape the result. 
Just thinking now that the shortcomings of this format might well have guided O'Driscoll's question on the last page of the book, about whether Heaney shared the poet Milosz's concern 'not to be taken as other than I am'. Heaney replied: 

I don't believe I'm a self-concealing person: admittedly, I incline to discretion, which I think is different from a desire to appear 'other than I am'. But what goes on in self-presentation, even in the case of Milosz, is no simple matter and one's analysis of one's own case can never be the whole story. That said, however, Milosz's statement is one I could make without anxiety.

 This in turn reminds me of the Johari window, which I think I first read about in a Charles Handy book -

The Johari window - we look at ourselves through the left hand side 'window', and see the parts marked 'Open' and 'Hidden'. We can't see through to the areas in red or grey. Others look at us from the top, and see the parts 'Open' and 'Blind'. 'Stepping Stones' mostly comes from the left hand side perspective, Heaney's understanding and portrayal of himself. Does O'Driscoll also illuminate Heaney's 'Blind' spots? Although this diagram is a square, maybe as you become more self-aware (or just older), the red box gets smaller . . The grey box is an interesting one.

Sad to think that both men died within four years of the book appearing in 2008. Of course, Heaney had got a forceful reminder of his own mortality two years earlier in Donegal, when he had a serious stroke. An elegiac mood pervades his last collection 'Human Chain' (2010) and now the final poem 'A Kite for Aibhín' seems like the perfect valediction. Heaney re-visits the idea of the kite explored in 'A Kite for Michael and Christopher' in the collection 'Station Island'. Then it was about handing over to a new generation; now the 'string breaks and - separate, elate -/ The kite takes off, itself alone, a windfall'. 

The book that started this all off. Seamus Heaney used to joke that he had signed so many books that an unsigned one might be more sought after. However a hardback first edition of this book signed by both Heaney and O'Driscoll is on sale on abebooks for 500 euro. An unsigned one is on sale for around 40 euro.

Heaney was 74 when he died. Dennis O'Driscoll was just 58. Born on New Year's Day in 1954, Dennis became ill on Christmas Eve 2012 and died shortly afterwards in hospital.

The first poem of O'Driscoll's you'll come across online is a brilliant one, if rather sobering - 

Someone

someone is dressing up for death today, a change of skirt or tie

eating a final feast of buttered sliced pan, tea

scarcely having noticed the erection that was his last

shaving his face to marble for the icy laying out

spraying with deodorant her coarse armpit grass

someone today is leaving home on business

saluting, terminally, the neighbours who will join in the cortege

someone is paring his nails for the last time, a precious moment

someone’s waist will not be marked with elastic in the future

someone is putting out milkbottles for a day that will not come

someone’s fresh breath is about to be taken clean away

someone is writing a cheque that will be rejected as ‘drawer deceased’

someone is circling posthumous dates on a calendar

someone is listening to an irrelevant weather forecast

someone is making rash promises to friends

someone’s coffin is being sanded, laminated, shined

who feels this morning quite as well as ever

someone if asked would find nothing remarkable in today’s date

perfume and goodbyes her final will and testament

someone today is seeing the world for the last time

as innocently as he had seen it first

Dennis O'Driscoll

Dennis was from Thurles, a town I visited a few days ago for the first time in years (if not an entire lifetime). He was unusual for a poet in that he made his way in the 9 - 5 world of the civil servant for most of his life, working for the Revenue Commissioners. His worlds collided eventually when he was commissioned to write a poem for the opening of the Revenue Museum in Dublin. I looked for that poem online, and discovered it had been posted on Twitter by fiddler and Derryman Dermot McLaughlin - 

https://twitter.com/dermotmcl1/status/277933009892675584

The obituary of Dennis O'Driscoll in the Irish Independent said: "Friends of the poet [ . . .] said he appeared to have been sick for some time, but that the nature of his illness wasn’t known”. 

 http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/generous-witty-gentleman-poet-odriscoll-dies-at-58-28951671.html

Dennis's parents were both dead by the time he was twenty. His last book of poems was called 'Dear Life'.

Two Men in a Museum

David Kirby was looking at the edits of his poetry collection 'The Biscuit Joint' when he heard of the death of Dennis O'Driscoll. One of the poems in that collection is about a chance encounter with Dennis and Seamus Heaney in the National Gallery - http://genius.com/1407389/David-kirby-backwards-man/Dennis-odriscoll

The Quiet Man

If there's one thing you usually see among books in an antique shop or charity shop, it's a book by Maurice Walsh. Like Dennis O'Driscoll, Maurice worked for Revenue. He's best known for the short story 'The Quiet Man', based on a man who worked on the farm for his father.

Another civil servant who comes to mind is Strabane man Brian O'Nuallain. 

(Just to add to this chain, just heard that a Strabane man is playing in the Bridge Bar in Ramelton tonight, Pete O'Hanlon, a maestro on guitar. Don't miss it!)

The Big Sur

Moving on, ever notice how the light and the atmosphere somehow changes when you get near the Atlantic coast in Ireland? You may be interested in listening to a striking piece of music, The Dharma at Big Sur, by John Adams.

From Wikipedia, I think - John Adams described the process of composing the piece: "I wanted to express the moment, the so-called “shock of recognition”, when one reaches the edge of the continental land mass. On the Atlantic coast, the air seems to announce it with its salty taste and briney scents."

Here's the first part of the piece (the second is also there on YouTube) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htqhGgBWxyI

More Power to her - but what's she doing in Cashel?

It was in a second-hand bookshop in Cashel, County Tipperary, that I invested €2 in the purchase of '"A Problem from Hell", America and the Age of Genocide' by Samantha Power. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003.
It was only after I got back to the cafe that I saw that the book was actually signed by the author. Strange one.
And it's only now on lifting up the book that it dawns. Of course, that's the Samantha Power. Originally from Ireland. Was connected with Obama somehow and fell from grace because of some controversy.
And so the trawl begins.
That was 2008, when she called Hillary Clinton 'a monster' and had to step down as Obama's foreign policy adviser. Five years later, at 43, she became the youngest-ever US ambassador to the UN.

Would you lose your accent to fit in? To succeed?
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/samantha-power-recalls-her-irish-brogue-when-appointed-as-us-ambassador-to-un-210297361-237594511.html#

A Vanity Fair article suggests a trace of her Irish accent remains. And she can still tell a story -

She’s based in New York City with her husband and their two young children at the ambassador’s official residence in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, which provoked an amusing story from her:
After she’d been ambassador for several months, her husband—a Harvard law professor with the uncommon name Cass Sunstein—grew a bit tired of the concierge calling him “Mr. Power.” “It happens, you know, when women are in jobs like this,” she said. “So my husband comes down one morning, and he finally says to him, ‘My name is Cass, but if you want to call me Mr. Sunstein, that’s also O.K.’ And the concierge shakes his head in amazement and says, ‘That’s incredible! You look exactly like Mr. Power.’ ”

Cass Sunstein is internationally-known in his own right, as someone comments after the Vanity Fair article -
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2014/08/samantha-power-un-ambassador-profile

The sad tale of Samantha's brilliant dad, and the question of emigration -
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/samantha-power-the-triumph-and-sadness-of-emigration-26448778.html

More on her dad, who died in his forties, and a decent tv news piece in which it's hard to detect that trace of Irish brogue -
http://www.evoke.ie/evoke/irish-american-samantha-power-talks-about-father/

Kate O'Brien makes the odd appearance in this blog, and she pops up again here -
http://irishmedia.blogspot.ie/2011/08/samantha-power-and-sacred-heart-nuns.html

Having killed off one of writer Brian Moore's relations in an article, there's some sympathy for the author of one piece about Samantha - http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/apology-as-forbes-withdraws-homosexual-claim-about-president-michael-d-higgins-29443643.html

Turns out Samantha Power was in Dublin the day before she made that calamitous remark about Hillary http://www.ucd.ie/news/2008/03MAR08/120308_samantha_powe.html  Think she was on a book tour when she gave that interview to the Scotsman. Some scoop (although it seems she thought the remark was off the record).

See SP (yes, getting more familiar now) was born in Dungarvan, Waterford, in 1970. Got that from the movie site IMDb site.
Weird, see now she actually refers to herself as SP on her blog (which stopped in 2008) - http://samanthapower.blogspot.ie 
There's lots more. She got married in Kerry in 2008 and the wedding car was driven by her uncle from Cork.

But finally I just search for Samantha Power Cashel Tipperary bookshop.

I still don't know.

8th January, Elvis, Allingham and the rest

We're approaching 8th January 2015, Elvis's 80th birthday. The 8th January is also the date William Allingham wrote 'The Fairies' during a visit to Killybegs in 1849 (we'll say that anyhow).

On 8th January around the late 1990s we used to run Allingham Night, an extravaganza of poetry and music, in the Sail Inn in Killybegs. Part of the entertainment would be the American fiddle tune and song called 8th January or The Battle of New Orleans, performed by our own Laghey-based frailing banjo player, songsmith and singer Alec Somerville. The song, commemorating the Battle of New Orleans on 8th January 1815, comes in at 33 in the Billboard list of the 100 biggest hits ever -

http://www.billboard.com/articles/list/2155531/the-hot-100-all-time-top-songs?list_page=6

(The words, for those tremendously interested - http://www.rockremembers.com/2009/02/battle-of-new-orleans-8th-of-january.html)

The British commander who died in that engagement was an Irishman, Edward Pakenham, whose sister was the wife of the Duke of Wellington, another Irishman. Edward's death probably didn't occasion a lot of wailing in Ireland, as he'd helped put down the 1798 insurrection.


*************

Back to oor Wullie - http://www.donegaldiaspora.ie/people/william-allingham

m


For starters, in case there are people who haven't actually heard or seen the poem (was taught in school many moons ago), here it is from http://www.bartleby.com/101/769.html -

						Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Allingham. 1824–1889
769. The Fairies

UP the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,	5
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,	10
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,	15
All night awake.
High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He 's nigh lost his wits.	20
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music	25
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;	30
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,	35
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wakes.	40
By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring	45
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,	50
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,	55
And white owl's feather!

*******************

There's an interesting blog and comments on the poem 'The Fairies' here -

http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.ie/2001/10/fairies-william-allingham.html?showComment=1420559356925#c266696937947729999,

Here's one of the comments -

Back in the early 1970s in Dublin, a Mr. Ward - retired publican from Ballybofey, Donegal, Ireland - told me that the 'little Bridget' of this poem was, in fact, his aunt. Said she had been stolen for several years and then allowed to return home for a visit. Her family was determined to keep her even tho she begged to be allowed to return 'to the music and the dancing.' In the end, according to Mr. Ward, she was sent to America to prevent her from returning to her life under the mountains. I'd love to know if anyone else ever heard this?

I've just added my tuppence-ha'penny to the blog comments -

Lots of interesting stuff in the blog and the comments, thanks! When we had the Sail Inn pub in Killybegs, County Donegal, in the 90s we used to run a poetry and music night on 8th January - the date Allingham wrote 'The Fairies' while staying in an aunt's house opposite the pub. I was told by an old man who lived outside Carrick in the shadow of Sliabh League that parts of the poem refer to this mountain, often described as having the highest sea cliffs in Europe. The old man's story was that Allingham had a romantic entanglement with a woman in the area. Columbkille would refer to Glencolumbkille, the glen of Saint Colmcille, a little further along the coast in this beautiful south-west Donegal. Fairies and people being taken away by them are very much part of the mythology and stories of this part of the world. The great Dungloe fiddler Neilidh Boyle reckoned he was taken off to a fairies' wedding and learned the tricks of two outstanding fairy fiddlers there. The renowned piper from Gweedore, also in Donegal, Turlough McSweeney, also claimed to have got the enchanted music of the fairies from an encounter at a fairy rath, or circle. Fairies gave tunes to Biddy from Muckross, near Kilcar. [All in all, fairies in Donegal] were quite busy!

The 'table and chair' at the viewing point on Sliabh League


People from the Carrick area will know the old man I'm talking about, although his name escapes me at the moment. He used to work for Gael Linn, became practically blind I think, and lived in a fine two-storey house on the right on the way to Glencolumbkille. Sadly the house, looking out on the slopes of Sliabh League, is in poor shape these days.

The bottom book in the pic below is the 1967 edition of William Allingham's Diary, which features the entry - 

January 8. - At Killybegs. Read Tennyson and Wittick's Norway.  Fairy Song : 'Wee folk, good folk,' etc.  Violin

I think I found out that Allingham's aunt lived in the house across from the Sail Inn.
The top book is a rather battered first edition of the 1855 book in which 'The Fairies' appeared, 'The Music Master, a love story, and Two Series of Day and Night Songs'. I bought the book for £5 in a second-hand bookshop in the Waterside in Derry in 1987. It's missing two woodcuts, hence the price, as the woodcuts are a big selling point - they're by the Pre-Raphaelities Arthur Hughes (7), D. G. Rossetti (1) and John E. Millais (1). It's said that this was the first book illustration by Rossetti, to go with Allingham's poem The Maids of Elfin-Mere. The illustration has been widely praised, with Burne-Jones describing it as ‘the most beautiful drawing for an illustration I have ever seen'. However Rossetti himself was apparently far from happy with it, and tore it out of his copy of the book. Perhaps it was Arthur Hughes who tore two of his woodcuts from my book, although it bears the name Mc Cullough. Its poor condition is a reminder never to pass a fragile old book around at Allingham Nights. I see two copies in decent shape with all the illustrations - but without this red cover - both priced at over £800 on abebooks. Need to have the luck Johnny Depp had in The Ninth Gate on tv last night . . the illustration he was missing from a rare book happened to fall off the top of a bookcase.

Rossetti's illustration to illustrate the poem -

The Maids of Elfin-Mere by William Allingham

When the spinning-room was here
Came Three Damsels, clothed in white,
With their spindles every night;
One and Two and three fair Maidens,
Spinning to a pulsing cadence,
Singing songs of Elfin-Mere;
Till the eleventh hour was toll’d,
Then departed through the wold.
Years ago, and years ago;
And the tall reeds sigh as the wind doth blow [ . . .] 

Some see the features of the beautiful Elizabeth Siddal in the faces of the three women. She, like these three, came to a tragic end - 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Siddal

http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s67.raw.html

http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/the-maids-of-elfin-mere/

A comment from this last site - 

Tori Amos was inspired by this poem and the illustration. The song Maids of Elfen-Mere is on her latest album Unrependant Geraldines. You can listen to it here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC41gJINkJ4.

As Allingham was a fiddler and also wrote ballads, here's another contemporary song, this one seemingly inspired by the poem The Fairies. It's performed by Caprice, a Russian neo-classical band no less - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ8UqWMT_zo

Winter solstice at Beltony with the High Kings

Out today to the stone circle at Beltony, a couple of miles from Raphoe. It is, of course, the winter solstice. We got there just after half eight. We arrived just behind a teller of tales and just ahead of Kathryn Daily and Stephen. Kathryn has put pics up on Facebook.

On the path up, we passed the remains of a circular structure among the trees on the right. As a child I'd always imagined this to be a round tower. I was disappointed to see it marked on a map as a windmill. But then lo and behold! in the Donegal Annual Volume 1 (1947-1953) there's a note about it being a round tower after all. Still looking for that note - I think it said the tower was used as a scriptorium, a place for copying manuscripts. The tower might also have been useful for keeping an eye on the stone circle and who might be going there.

This little hill is where I grew up, in a house beside where you park your car now before taking the short but steep-ish lane to the circle. This townland is called The Tops. It's a good description of it as a place to spend your early years, but again I was a little disappointed that the townland name wasn't an ancient Irish one linked with the circle. Then a while back I opened the Irish Times and found The Tops mentioned in the 'Words We Use' column from Diarmuid Ó Muirthile. It seems the name comes from 'Tap tineadh', the place where the torches were lit before the procession to the circle. Perfect! Coincidentally, I see that Diarmuid's death in Vienna was reported in the Irish Times exactly a year ago today.

There are many fascinating aspects to the circle and indeed the landscape around it. For instance, what monastery is linked with the round tower? An obvious candidate is the monastery at Raphoe - the town name comes from 'Rath Bhoth', the fortification around the (monk's) huts, as we were taught at school. It's thought these huts were made by monks. But I remembered today that not far from the stone circle there is a townland called Ballymonaster, the land of the monastery. I see that in the same area, known locally as Cloughfin, there's also Kilmonaster Lower, Kilmonaster Middle and Churchminister. Jim Lynch, who taught me at Raphoe NS, is a former principal of St Colmcille NS Cloughfin and writes that the Cistercians had a monastery there with Cearnach as abbot.

Christian settlements were often established close to pagan ones, I suppose for the same reasons that Christian festivals were established to supplant pagan ones. The winter solstice rituals gave way to Christmas. This concentration of Christian settlement around Beltony stone circle suggests it was an important place. We all search for significance in our lives. Patrick Kavanagh poked fun at our fond imaginings in his poem 'Epic' -

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided : who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims

However the Tops and Beltony just keep delivering the goods. In his book published in 2006, 'Cenél Conaill and the Donegal Kingdoms AD 500 - 800', Brian Lacey persuasively argues that this part of East Donegal was the homeland of a powerful clan, the Cenél Conaill. This clan began to make a 'national' impact from their "small but economically rich territory in Mag nItha" in the sixth century. According to this analysis, the clan supplied at least five high kings of Tara. Two, and possibly three, of these Cenél Conaill kings of Tara "were the first to be described in the ancient sources with the rare title of 'King of Ireland', however exaggerated that was" (p322).

There was no sun to be seen at sunrise this morning. But when you were looking across in vain towards Croaghan Hill you were surveying the home ground of the Cenél Conaill and your feet were  firmly planted in historic Irish landscape.


*******************

By coincidence last night I found myself at a 'Celtic Banquet' at the Grianan of Aileach Hotel in Burt. Brian Lacey reckons that the great hillfort Grianan of Aileach symbolises the transfer of power away from Cenél Conaill to the Cenél nÉogain after the battle of Clóiteach in 789. Brian suggests that Cenél nÉogain chief Áed may have celebrated his victory over Cenél Conaill by building the Grianan of Aileach - "as a visible reminder of who ruled, the monument could be seen from a great many parts of that kingdom". The Cenél nÉogain, who gave their name to Inishowen, then became big cheeses in Ireland. The Cenél Conaill was practically written out of the annals in what Brian likens to"a sort of Stalinization". History is written by the victors. But as recent resident of Fahan, that historic Inishowen spot, I also claim Cenél nÉogain connections!

********************

Eyewitness account of the fire at Raphoe Castle 1838

Came across a curious little book in the library in Letterkenny, 'Reminiscences of a Long Life', by W. D. Killen, D.D., LL.D., President of Belfast Presbyterian College. It's a little A6 size one (the pages a quarter of an A4 page) and it's number 145 of an edition of just 200 copies produced by Braid Books and Moyola Books in 1995.
The great treat for a Raphoe man in this book is the eyewitness description of the fire which destroyed Raphoe Castle in 1838. William Doole lived through almost all of the 19th century, and he was serving as Presbyterian Minister in Raphoe at the time of the fire. And there's much more of interest in the book, including more about life in Raphoe during his ministry there, a description of Belfast in 1820, when it was still a relatively small place of 30,000 people, and the entertainment of W.D.'s often forthright opinions.
William Doole Killen was born in Ballymena on Easter Saturday, 5th April, 1806, and died on 19th January, 1902, the year after these reminiscences first appeared in print.
As time is short this morning, we'll focus on the fire for the moment.
W. D. had good time for the last Church of Ireland Bishop to live in the castle, the Right Rev. Dr. Bissett, "a most respectable country gentleman". The Bishop was well off, a Scottish man with an estate in Aberdeenshire, and the income from the diocese of Raphoe seems to have been substantial - W.D. says "from his see he had an income of upwards of five thousand a year", maybe around £400k in today's money.

W. D. continues:

About this time Parliament passed an Act for the suppression of the see. I had occasion to call on the Bishop shortly afterwards, and found him walking along in his demesne. He was somewhat dejected. "I have now, Mr. Killen," he said to me mournfully, "no great pleasure in going through these grounds. I care not to plant a tree here, for I know not who is to sit under the shadow of it. It may be a Romish bishop." [ . . ]

He did not long survive the passing of the Act for the suppression of the bishopric. In accordance with it the see was extinguished on his demise, and the castle became vacant. It had been built 200 years before by Bishop Leslie. It was a beautiful and spacious edifice, surrounded by an extensive park, and no cost had been spared on its construction. It was now offered for sale; but as no purchaser willing to give the required price was forthcoming, it remained untenanted. Fires had been kept up in some of the apartments, but no fenders had been provided to surround the fireplaces ; and it was said that a live coal, falling out of the grate in one of the rooms, had ignited the flooring ; and as the caretaker happened to be absent, the fire spread unnoticed until it was found impossible to arrest its progress. I well remember the night of the burning. I was sitting in my house at the other extremity of the village when the deep-toned bell of the cathedral began to ring violently, and immediately afterwards I received intelligence that the castle was on fire. In company with some others, I set out for the scene of the disaster. I found a crowd already assembled there in front of the main building, watching the progress of the devouring element. The fire roared and glared as it burst through the edifice. The inner partitions of the castle were composed of dry peat or turf, overspread with mortar, and had apparently been chosen to diminish the weight of the pressure on the ceilings of the apartments underneath. As these partitions, one after another, tumbled into the mass of fire, the flame was prodigious. The conflagration increased, and the whole country was illuminated."

W. D. adds -

At this time the Established Church of Ireland at Raphoe was overtaken by a whole series of calamities. The cathedral took fire ; the bishop died ; the dean, overwhelmed in debt, fled from the country ; the see was suppressed ; the castle was reduced to a mass of ruins ; and one of the curates, who became insane, for a time created a great sensation by his strange utterances in the pulpit and elsewhere.

At the death of the bishop the little town contained 1,500 inhabitants. The population has since much declined, and is now somewhere between 900 and 1,000.

It seems that Lord George Hill could have been Raphoe Castle's saviour, as I heard Sophia Hillen, author of Mary, Lou and Cass: Jane Austen's nieces in Ireland  say he was thinking of buying it before opting instead for Ballyarr House in Ramelton in 1842.

Dylan Thomas at Glenlough

I resumed my interest in Glenlough in recent days after playing the James Byrne waltz, 'The Road to Glenlough', on a Sunday Miscellany programme. I was actually surfing the zeitgeist, though I didn't know it - this week has seen the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas, who stayed at Glenlough.

This place, the 'glen of the ducks', is over a couple of hills from Glencolumbkille in south-west Donegal, a remote spot usually accessed from the road down to the beautiful little place that is Port.

As it turns out, one of the books on my desk is 'Caitlin: A Warring Absence', written by Dylan's wife with George Tremlett. It's described by the Times as 'brutally frank and often painfully revealing', which seems about right from what I've read so far. I picked up last month in Foyle Books in Derry for £3. 

Unfortunately she doesn't seem to add anything about Dylan's Donegal experiences. He was in Glenlough in the summer of 1935, and she met 'this bright young spark' in 1936. 

Here's one account of Dylan's trip to Donegal from Jean Rice at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/IrelandGenWeb/2002-12/1040855999

Fame came early in the short life of brilliant Welsh poet Dylan THOMAS from Swansea. When he was 20, he played his part in London's literary scene of the day. He lead a rather Bohemian life-style, including heavy drinking. A friend of the poet, Geoffrey GRIGSON, at last urged Dylan to leave London for awhile and made arrangements for a place of retreat. As a result, Dylan THOMAS spent the summer of 1935 in Ireland, in a small cottage in Co. Donegal. There may seen to be a certain irony in the fact that GRIGSON chose Ireland in his attempts to withdraw alcoholic beverages from THOMAS.

THOMAS wrote of rugged and breath-taking Co. Donegal -- "Here in Ireland, I'm further away than ever from the permanent world. I'm writing by candle-light all alone in a cottage facing the Atlantic --- Soon I'm going out for a walk in the dark by myself; that'll make happy as hell."  

To another friend he wrote, "I am ten miles from the nearest human being , with the exception of the deaf farmer who gives me food," referring to Dan WARD and his Irish-speaking wife Rose, who provided meals and sometimes a bit of poitin (illicit whiskey). There was fishing up in the mountain lakes or walks down at the seashore, and late at night Thomas often joined the WARDs for a chat in front of the peatfire listening to local lore. Only once a week THOMAS would bring himself to walk the ten miles to the next pub, more often than not in tough weather. "It rains and it rains. All the damned seagulls are fallen angels."  

Originally, this place at the end of the world had been discovered by American artist Rockwell KENT in the 1920s. Kent had converted an old donkey-stable into a makeshift studio, but finally abandoned it again when he got weary of too much solitude. This former studio is the cottage that Dylan THOMAS rented in 1935. The Glencolumbkille district where Dylan Thomas spent his holidays is just one of at least three parts of beautiful and wild Donegal that are suitable for hill-walking.

There's an article in today's 'Donegal News' - 'When Dylan Thomas took to the poitín in Donegal'. It draws on the expertise of Termon schoolteacher Christy Gillespie, who's working on a book on Glenlough. He was interviewed by BBC Wales about Thomas this week. 

Christy says Grigson, Thomas's literary agent, came with him by train to Killybegs, and then they continued to Glencolumbkille, staying at what's now Roarty's Bar. Then they went on to Glenlough. 

Christy adds: "Grigson's intention was to get Thomas away from the bright lights of London for a recuperation holiday, but little did he know that he had brought him to the poitín-making capital of Donegal."

Whatever about the drinking, it seems Thomas composed six poems while at Glenlough. One was 'I, In My Intricate Image', which ends -

This was the god of beginning in the intricate seawhirl,

And my images roared and rose on heaven's hill. 

Another was 'Altarwise by Owl Light'. Here it is (or at least a close approximation) from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/altarwise-by-owl-light/

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Poems by Dylan Thomas : 11 / 100

• « All That I Owe the Fellows of 
• Among Those Killed in the Dawn »

Altarwise by Owl-Light

Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrows scream.
Then, penny-eyed, that gentlemen of wounds,
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven's egg,
With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
Scraped at my cradle in a walking word
That night of time under the Christward shelter:
I am the long world's gentlemen, he said,
And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.

Death is all metaphors, shape in one history;
The child that sucketh long is shooting up,
The planet-ducted pelican of circles
Weans on an artery the genders strip;
Child of the short spark in a shapeless country
Soon sets alight a long stick from the cradle;
The horizontal cross-bones of Abaddon,
You by the cavern over the black stairs,
Rung bone and blade, the verticals of Adam,
And, manned by midnight, Jacob to the stars.
Hairs of your head, then said the hollow agent,
Are but the roots of nettles and feathers
Over the groundworks thrusting through a pavement
And hemlock-headed in the wood of weathers.

First there was the lamb on knocking knees
And three dead seasons on a climbing grave
That Adam's wether in the flock of horns,
Butt of the tree-tailed worm that mounted Eve,
Horned down with skullfoot and the skull of toes
On thunderous pavements in the garden of time;
Rip of the vaults, I took my marrow-ladle
Out of the wrinkled undertaker's van,
And, Rip Van Winkle from a timeless cradle,
Dipped me breast-deep in the descending bone;
The black ram, shuffling of the year, old winter,
Alone alive among his mutton fold,
We rung our weathering changes on the ladder,
Said the antipodes, and twice spring chimed.

What is the metre of the dictionary?
The size of genesis? the short spark's gender?
Shade without shape? the shape of the Pharaohs echo?
(My shape of age nagging the wounded whisper.)
Which sixth of wind blew out the burning gentry?
(Questions are hunchbacks to the poker marrow.)
What of a bamboo man among your acres?
Corset the boneyards for a crooked boy?
Button your bodice on a hump of splinters,
My camel's eyes will needle through the shroud.
Loves reflection of the mushroom features,
Still snapped by night in the bread-sided field,
Once close-up smiling in the wall of pictures,
Arc-lamped thrown back upon the cutting flood. 

-----------------------

It's seems critics are divided on the merits of this poem - a masterwork, or the wilfully obscure product of the mind of an schizoid alcoholic? For some thoughts on what it's all about see http://www.enotes.com/topics/altarwise-by-owl-light and more usefully https://www.scribd.com/doc/85229220/What-are-we-to-make-of-Dylan-Thomas-s-Altarwise-by-Owl-Light

I wasn't aware before now that there's a website offering guided walks to Dylan's pad in Glenlough - http://www.dylanthomasdonegal.com

It begins with a quote from Grigson (who Caitlin says Dylan didn't like) -

“My nicest recollections of Dylan are in Ireland. He loved footling about there, by the lakes above the farm. Or on the edge of the sea looking at the gannets.” – Geoffrey Grigson, poet and agent.

Although a ruin, the cottage where Thomas once lived still exists. Accessible only on foot, the journey takes 1-2 hours, traversing some of the most spectacular wild and rugged scenery, the west coast of Ireland has to offer.

The site features a link to a documentary about Dylan Thomas's time in Donegal, which I'd forgotten about. It opens with Donegal poet Francis Harvey reading his poem 'Dylan in Glenlough'.

From the film -

"I'm living in a funny dimension here," Dylan wrote to a friend, talking how he spent his days. It seems he built a stone bridge over the stream at the front door. Once a week he headed the ten miles to O'Donnell's bar in Meenaneary. 

But he became lonely, as "lonely as Christ sometimes". And he was afraid of the dark. He tired of Glenlough's charms - "I can't see a landscape, scenery is just scenery to me." 

Looks like you can do the Glenlough walk in a morning with Peter Alexander as your guide. This again from http://www.dylanthomasdonegal.com

ALL GUIDED TOURS MUST BE BOOKED IN ADVANCE. MIN FOUR PERSONS, MAX EIGHT. (BOOKINGS ARE SUBJECT TO WEATHER CONDITIONS)

THE WALK

Overall length: Approx 5km
Time: 3.5 hours
Level: Moderate

8.30am: Leave from outside the Ulster Bank in Ardara.
9.00am: Arrive at beginning of walk.
10.30am: Dylan Thomas cottage. Break for tea.
11.00am: Leave for Port
12.30am: Arrive Port. Transport RV.
1pm: Lunch in Nancy’s.

Here are a couple of links from Peter's site -

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/I’m+10+miles+from+the+nearest+human+and+I’m+lonely+as+Christ.-a0130957967

http://donegalnews.com/2012/05/20/ardara-features-in-new-book-on-dylan-thomas

SIve at the Forum

Mike Glavin (Barry Barnes)finds himself between a rock and a hard place, aka his wife and his mother, in Sive. 

Abbey’s ‘Sive’ opens with standing ovation at Forum

The Abbey Theatre made a triumphant start to their Irish tour of the John B. Keane classic ‘Sive’ when they earned a standing ovation at the Millennium Forum in Derry on Wednesday night.

And it was well deserved. Keane’s play may cast a jaundiced eye at Irish society in the 1950s, but it’s shot through with humour and this excellent cast were each given a chance to shine. 

Overall it’s a production to be proud of from Ireland’s national theatre company, from the direction by Conall Morrison through to everything happening on stage. And the good news for those who haven’t seen it is that ‘Sive’ continues in the Forum tonight (Fri)* and tomorrow night before it heads off to what’s sure to be a hero’s welcome in Keane’s own Kerry. 

On the face of it, a story based on matchmaking in the rural Ireland of yesteryear seems an unlikely entertainment in 2014. But Keane’s play wears the years well. Its concerns will always be current - it’s a love story, a tale of lives twisted out of shape by circumstance and society, a caustic look at the dynamics of Irish family life. Keane, a publican by trade, had a wonderful way with language and a rare insight into character.

Deirdre Molloy gives a powerful performance in the central role of Mena Glackin, a woman whose own burden of poverty and bitterness   leads her to abandon all scruple when an old man seeks the hand of her niece, the orphan Sive (Roisin O’Neill). The matchmaker Thomasheen Seán Rua, devious and funny and played to considerable effect by Simon O’Gorman, holds out the prospect of a big payday if the elderly farmer Seán Dota (Derry Power) gets Sive to the altar.

Mena’s husband Mike (Barry Barnes), good natured but spineless, colludes with the enterprise despite the entreaties of his mother, the  elderly Nanna Glavin (Brid Ní Neachtain). Nanna, sharp but well meaning, sees the romance in the love between Sive and local boy Liam Scuab (Gavin Drea).  

Two travelling men (Frank O’Sullivan, Muiris Crowley) add noise, variety, song, commentary and fun during the play, an Irish version of the Greek chorus. They’re a reminder from the earliest days of theatre that when people anger the gods by acting in a selfish way, the gods will have their revenge.

The Abbey enjoyed stunning success with ‘Sive’ in Dublin earlier this year, when it was seen by around 30,000 people. Now it’s the privilege of the Forum to host the opening nights of what promises to be an equally successful tour, taking in nine venues, including Letterkenny, Belfast and the Abbey once again, right through until mid December. 

To book tickets or get more information, check out www.millenniumforum.co.uk or phone the box office on 02871 264455.

*written for publication on Friday 9th October 2014