Posted on by Vincent Hanley · 2 Comments

Life’s Simple Pleasures

My wildflower COVID garden.

I like to spend my lazy days in the garden. When Kate and I set up home in Knockaderry in 1979, we inherited a garden and a red setter called Kelly. Then there was the recently acquired three-quarters of an acre, which was a very overgrown, forbidding blank canvas.  The previous owners had made some effort and had put in a new bed of floribunda roses – the variety was Peace. There were other older roses there also, from previous owners, right back to Miss Airey, the original owner of the house. Miss Airey was a teacher in the old national school in Ahalin, and she built the house in 1935 and lived there with her companion, Mrs Sheehy. There were two or three Queen Elizabeth roses holding pride of place, which had been planted in 1952 to commemorate  Queen Elizabeth’s coronation that year. They were still hale and hearty when we arrived in September 1979, and they are still going strong today!

Kelly helped us settle in.  He was a beautiful Red Setter who had come all the way from Scarborough with the previous owners, the O’ Rourkes.  He slept in the back bedroom, and he ruled the roost.  Each afternoon, he escorted the school kids to the bend in the road on their way home from school, at a time when school kids still walked to school.  One evening, Frank Moore called to fix our phone, and he rang the doorbell to discover that both Kate and I were still at work.  Kelly soon discovered the intruder, and he came and sat in his sitting position, strategically blocking Frank’s escape.  He emitted the odd low growl until we arrived home at five o’clock, and Frank was glad to be released from his captivity.  Until recently, and especially when Mary and Don were young and still at home, we always had a dog.  We had numerous red setters, Susie the Old English Sheepdog, a Lassie-type collie, a Cocker Spaniel named Robbie (Fowler), and a Golden Retriever from hell called Oatie!

However, to be brutally honest, when we took up residence, the garden, like the house, was somewhat of a shambles! I remember distinctly going into the Bank of Ireland branch in Newcastle West in April 1979 to cash my monthly pay cheque, which you had to do in those days. The assistant manager of the bank, Eamonn Mellett, called me over for a chat, and during the conversation, he casually asked me if I was still interested in buying ‘that house out in Knockaderry’! I told him that I was, and he said that if that was the case, the bank would be willing to provide a mortgage for the property. Believe me, that’s how business was done in those days!

Huge amounts of time, effort and study went into planning and developing our garden. I knew that I needed to study up on shrubs, especially roses, or they would surely die! Fair to say I researched the topic to Master’s degree level! I had many favourite textbooks, but my favourites were: The Wisely Book of Gardening published by The Royal Horticultural Society, Be Your Own Rose Expert by Dr D.G. Hessayon, The Gardener’s Book of Hardy Herbaceous Plants by Wendy Carlile, and A Garden for All Seasons published by The Reader’s Digest. Having done all this research, however, long before Google took hold, I finally realised that, unlike many other less finicky shrubs and plants, it’s almost impossible to kill a rose!

There are two great advantages of having gardening as a hobby – it is great therapy and a very humbling experience. Despite the optimistic messages in the glossy magazines, not everything grows, and one always has to take into account that fourth dimension, the fact that some shrubs and trees grow too big, too fast. Today, I look back in wonder at the improvements made over the years and the huge changes that have occurred on our once overgrown and neglected piece of land over the past forty-five years. I have a photo somewhere of a tiny birch sapling that my daughter Mary brought home from school when she was in First Class, and today that birch proudly dominates our driveway in Kiltanna. This is one of the advantages of gardening: we plant seeds and shrubs and trees knowing that another generation will shelter under their magnificent branches in years to come.

Mary’s sapling birch has grown to dominate the driveway in Kiltanna

The second therapeutic value of gardening is especially useful for those who like to be in control of things. Work and relationships may seem at times to be hopelessly beyond our control, but our garden can give us a semblance of control over this small patch of the universe. We can mow and clip and prune and spray and fertilise to our heart’s content and imagine that we are at least the masters of all we survey if we so wish. All is right with the world within the neat borders of our own Eden. This thought has largely been responsible for me maintaining my sanity over the years!

During the COVID pandemic in 2020, I undertook a fairly big project, and between the 9th of May and the 9th of August that year, I constructed a fire pit in the already existing scree garden up the back. I had great help because Don was working from home at the time.

May is my favourite month in the garden. For others, May is a month spoiled by exams and the crippling anxieties associated with school and college, but for me, retired like Charles Lamb of old, I stroll leisurely about – not to and from – admiring my newly budded beech trees, the grasses, the weeds, the purple Aubretia, and marvel, as Thomas Hardy does in his poem, Afterwards:

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

     And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

     “He was a man who used to notice such things”?

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who wisely said that ‘the best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there’. Indeed, working in a garden brings us close to creation itself – it is an instrument of grace. Earlier, I mentioned that a man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit. I consider myself blessed to have sat in the shade of many such trees, including the few surviving Knockaderry oaks on Quilty’s Hill, because someone planted those trees a long, long time ago.

Finally, time spent in the garden is never wasted. Wisdom is given to those who meditate in the garden; the wisdom to realise that no two gardens are the same, and thankfully, no two days are the same in any garden. Like Robert Louis Stevenson, we quickly realise that we shouldn’t judge each day by the harvest we reap but by the seeds that we sow.

The house and garden in Kiltanna, resplendent with the red Dublin Bay climbers. ‘You can’t kill a rose’!
Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Philosophical Thoughts on Glenroe and Knockaderry

This is a detail from the 1840 historic map showing the sculpted and structured gardens surrounding Knockaderry House, the birthplace of Sophie Peirce, and the nearby Chesterfield House. It was unusual that two ‘Great Houses’ like these would be in such close proximity to each other.

Glenroe, my native place, sits on the border between Limerick and Cork and hurling and athletics were always very strong in the area. In Canon Sheehan’s famous novel, Glenanaar, there is a fabulous account of a hurling match between neighbouring border rivals which took place in or around 1840. The game, which attracted a huge crowd, was played between the Cork side, known as The Shandons, and the Limerick side, known as The Skirmishers. The game is being fiercely contested until the captain of The Skirmishers is taken ill, and he can play no further part in the battle. There is a famous intervention by a local, known as The Yank, who has recently returned to his native place after spending many years in the USA. The Yank agrees to replace the injured captain of The Skirmishers, and he saves the day and a hard-fought victory is won. After the heroics of The Yank, an onlooker is heard to say that ‘there was nothing seen like that since Terence Casey single-handedly bate the parishes of Ardpatrick and Glenroe’.

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Knockaderry, too, has flirted with fiction.  Séan Ó Faoláin was one of the most influential figures in 20th-century Irish culture. A short-story writer of international repute, he was also a leading commentator, critic and novelist. He was the son of Bridget Murphy from Loughill East and Denis Whelan, an RIC constable who had been stationed in the RIC barracks in the village of Knockaderry in the 1890s. Every summer until he was 17, the young Ó Faoláin came to Rathkeale, to Knockaderry and to Loughill East on his holidays. He wrote with great passion about these local places in his autobiography, Vive Moi – and his first novel, in 1933, A Nest of Simple Folk, was based on that disputed territory over the hill betweenà Knockaderry village and Rathkeale, encompassing the landmarks and characters of Loughill East, Balliallinan Kilcolman, Duxtown and as far as Wilton Hill.  Ó Faoláin called his home in Killiney, Co. Dublin, Knockaderry. 

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Glenroe and Knockaderry have long been central to my life. When I left Glenroe to go to boarding school in 1965, I really didn’t intend ever to return there unless I had a very good reason. Yet, fate played a hand, and my daughter Mary met and married Mike O’Brien, and they set up a home which nestles halfway between the parish church and the school. So, in recent years, I have come to cherish the second chance that I have been given. Likewise, I quickly fell in love with Knockaderry when I arrived there in 1977 to take up my first real teaching job in nearby Newcastle West. Both places hold a special place in my heart. Both places would be perfect settings for a good novel!

I love reading, and as a teacher of English literature, I have been doubly blessed in having the honour of introducing my students to some of the great fictional works written. Being a Harper Lee fan, I remember waiting for the much-anticipated publication of Go Set a Watchman in 2015. Written before her only other published novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Go Set a Watchman was initially promoted as a sequel by its publishers. It is now accepted that it was a first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, with many passages in that book being used again. The title alludes to Jean Louise Finch’s view of her father, Atticus Finch, as the moral compass (“watchman”) of Maycomb, Alabama, and has a theme of disillusionment, as she discovers the extent of the bigotry in her home community. Go Set a Watchman tackles the racial tensions brewing in the South in the 1950s and delves into the complex relationship between father and daughter. It includes treatments of many of the characters who appear in To Kill a Mockingbird.

I had already formed a mustard seed theory in my brain that the real-life Monroeville, Alabama, of her youth became the fictional Maycomb, Alabama, of her novels. To me, Maycomb didn’t seem too different to my own special places. Lee had set her novels here for a reason: she deliberately selected her setting, and in effect, the fictional Maycomb becomes another Narnia or Middle Earth – a microcosm of all that is good and bad in 1930s America. She tells us that one went to Maycomb, ‘to have his teeth pulled, his wagon fixed, his heart listened to, his money deposited, his soul saved, his mules vetted’. She describes it as an isolated place; in effect, it is an Everyplace – the place, ‘had remained the same for a hundred years, an island in a patchwork sea of cotton fields and timber land’. It is, in effect, a remote backwater bypassed by progress, the perfect playground of her youth, the perfect setting for a novel and the perfect cauldron for change.

In Go Set a Watchman, she says that Maycomb County is ‘a wilderness dotted with tiny settlements’; it is, ‘so cut off from the rest of the nation that some of its citizens, unaware of the South’s political predilection over the past ninety years, still voted Republican.’ It is so remote, ‘no trains went there’. In actual fact, Maycomb Junction, ‘a courtesy title’, was located in Abbott County, twenty miles away! However, she tells us that the ‘bus service was erratic and seemed to go nowhere, but the Federal Government had forced a highway or two through the swamps, thus giving the citizens an opportunity for free egress.’ However, Lee tells us that few took advantage of this opportunity! Then, in one of those Harper Lee epiphany moments, one of those lightning bolts she releases now and then, she perceptively describes her hometown, and, indeed, my own home place, whether it be Glenroe or Knockaderry, as a place where, ‘If you did not want much, there was plenty.’

In To Kill a Mockingbird, she continues in the same rich vein. Maycomb is a ‘tired old town’. People moved slowly, ‘they ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything’. She tells us that, ‘There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County’, a scenario somewhat reminiscent of modern-day Knockaderry or Glenroe!

Similar to Maycomb, the setting of George Eliot’s novel, Silas Marner, has many similar echoes. The Raveloe described by Eliot is reminiscent of my beloved Knockaderry! She tells us that it ‘was a village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices.’ She further describes it as being, ‘Not …. one of those barren parishes lying on the outskirts of civilisation —inhabited by meagre sheep and thinly-scattered shepherds: on the contrary, it lay in the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call Merry England’. However, like Maycomb and Knockaderry and Glenroe, it was off the beaten track, ‘it was nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an hour’s journey on horseback from any turnpike, where it was never reached by the vibrations of the coach-horn, or of public opinion’. In Chapter One, Eliot declared it to be a place where bad farmers are rewarded for bad farming!

This description of Raveloe also holds great echoes with The Village as depicted in Jim Crace’s (supposedly last?!) novel, Harvest. The narrator, Walter Thirsk, tells us that, ‘these fields are far from anywhere, two days by post-horse, three days by chariot before you find a market square.’ Harvest dramatises one of the great under-told narratives of English history: the forced enclosure of open fields and common land from the late medieval era on, whereby subsistence agriculture was replaced by profitable wool production, and the peasant farmers were gradually dispossessed and displaced. ‘The sheaf is giving way to sheep’, as Crace puts it here, and an immemorial connection between people and their local environment is being broken – their world is crumbling around them. Great changes are coming and, as everyone knows by now, the only people who welcome change are babies with wet nappies!

Brian Friel’s use of Ballybeg (small town) as the setting for many of his plays and short stories is also similar in vein to these others. In ‘Philadelphia Here I Come!’, Gar Public tells us that Ballybeg is, ‘a bloody quagmire, a backwater, a dead-end’. Friel, like Lee, Eliot, and Crace, is deceptive because he is dealing with familiar things and familiar characters – shopkeepers, housekeepers, and parish priests – a very familiar rural Ireland fixed in its own time. Friel’s use of Public Gar’s alter ego – Private Gar – allows us the opportunity to see behind the superficiality of so much of this world of small-town life.

In many ways, Friel’s major theme is the failure of people to communicate with each other on an intimate level. In his play, ‘Philadelphia, Here I Come!’, we are introduced to the typically Irish practice of verbal non-communication! He, like Harper Lee, George Eliot, and Jim Crace, forces us to examine the nature of society. In Ireland, our society in the 40’s and 50’s was dominated by the church, the politician, and the schoolmaster. Ultimately, the world that Gar is leaving has failed him and his generation. But Friel is too subtle to allow us to imagine that the world Gar is about to enter in Philadelphia will be any better.

These meandering rambles are an attempt to place myself at the beginning of a work of fiction, to stand for a moment in the author’s shoes, so to speak, and see the world from their point of view. From my limited reading, it seems to me that many authors deliberately choose a world untrodden, less travelled as the setting for their novels and plays. I have mentioned some here in this piece, but I’m sure this is just the tip of the iceberg, and you will be able to reference many examples from your own reading.

Ideally, the setting for all these classics is always remote, secluded, off the map, and cut off from change and advancement. This microcosm is then filled with characters and fictional dilemmas, action and inaction. I have always been truly fascinated and awed by each author’s unique ability and ingenuity in creating and imagining these hidden worlds in their heads, and thus allowing us to enter the world of their texts. Knockaderry and Glenroe, apart from their initial flirtations with Séan Ó Faoláin and Canon Sheehan in past centuries, patiently await their twenty-first-century novelist to arrive!

Believe me, the characters are there!

… and it seems that a twenty-first-century novelist has arrived to put Knockaderry on the map! June O Sullivan’s second novel tells the amazing tale of Knockaderry woman, Sophie Peirce, the first true female trailblazer in aviation. The novel, soon to be published, recounts Sophie’s epic solo flight from Cape Town to London in 1928.
Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Semple Stadium Glory Days

One of the greatest GAA photos of all time. Goalmouth ‘shemozzle’ from that Munster semi-final in Thurles in 1962. Waterford’s Ned Power saves despite the close attention of Christy Ring. Also in the picture are Tom Cunningham (W), Austin Flynn (W), and Liam Dowling (C). The scene is brilliantly captured by photographer Louis MacMonagle. Photo courtesy of the Irish Examiner archive.

Some like Anfield, some prefer Wembley or the Camp Nou or Santiago Bernabéu; some prefer Thomond Park or Cardiff Arms, but my favourite ‘field of dreams’ is Semple Stadium in Thurles, County Tipperary, where the GAA was founded over 140 years ago.  It has been at the heart of hurling since its opening in 1910.  Tipperary people, harking back to long-gone glory days in the 60s, refer to it as the Field of Legends, but I’d say Limerick people would have something to say about that after our recent run of success since 2018!

Close your eyes …. Think of summer. What do you see? I see midges swooping and dancing through a languid sunset. I see heat-drenched Limerick jerseys shuffling through the streets of Thurles, where bellows of banter waft along with the whiff of cider that floats from the open doors of packed pubs in Liberty Square. Inside D D Corbett’s, a bitter alcoholic draws tears from the crowd with a soft, sweet rendition of ‘Slievenamon’.

 Anyway, I have been travelling to this Mecca since I was ten years of age. My first visit was on a beautiful Sunday, the 8th of July in 1962. My mother and father, along with most of my brothers and sisters at the time, were walking home from second Mass in Glenroe when Tom and Mick Howard stopped in their black Morris Minor and asked Dad and me if we’d like to go to Thurles with them to see Ringy and the Rebels take on the might of Tom Cheasty, Ned Power and Frankie Walsh’s Waterford.  It was Ring’s last hurrah, and it was appropriate that his last Championship game in the ‘blood and bandages’ of his native Cork should have been in Thurles.  It was here that, for two decades previously, he had adorned the ancient game with his unique and exceptional talent.  I count myself lucky that I was able to sit there with my Dad, a loyal Cork man,  and my hurling mad neighbours, the Howard brothers, on the recently creosoted railway sleepers on the embankment that is now the Old Stand.  However, it was Waterford’s day, and they won by 4 – 10 to 1 – 16.

On a street corner, a humming chip van mumbles its invitation to giddy children as the June sun beats down. The Pecker Dunne sits, perched on a flat stone wall, plucking and strumming, twanging banjo chords as he winks at those who pass. A smile broadens his foggy beard as coins glint and twinkle from the bottom of his banjo case.

I have witnessed other great games there down the years, and I have seen great hurlers adorn the venue. Let’s be blunt – Thurles is the best place to go to see a hurling match, and hurling people also know that if you can’t hurl in Thurles, you won’t hurl anywhere.  I remember listening to Michéal O’Hehir commentate on the 1960 Munster Final in Thurles between an ageing Cork team and Tipperary, who were emerging as a force to be reckoned with.  There’s a story told by John Harrington about the speech Christy Ring gave in the dressing room before the game that day.  He delivered a rousing speech that brought the blood of his teammates to boiling point. However, his words did not find favour with Fr Carthach McCarthy, who was also in the dressing room at the time. “You didn’t find those words in the Bible, Christy”, said Fr. McCarthy, in as disapproving a tone as he could muster.  Ring cast a jaundiced eye at the man of the cloth and replied, “No, Father.  But the men who wrote the Bible never had to play Tipperary.”  Despite his exhortations, Cork lost on the day, 4 -13 to 4 -11.

Hoarse tinkers flog melted chocolate and paper hats on the brow of a humpbacked bridge as we move closer to the field of legends. The drone of kettledrums and bagpipes rises from the Sean Treacy Pipe Band as they parade sweat-soaked warriors around the green, hallowed sod.

John D Hickey, one of the great sports writers of the 50s and 60s, coined the phrase ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ to describe the general vicinity of the Tipperary goalmouth, which Michéal O Hehir, the greatest GAA commentator of all time, referred to as ‘the parallelogram’, or what we today refer to as ‘the square’! This area of the pitch was patrolled in the mid-60s by the Tipperary full-back line at the time, Michael Maher at full-back, flanked by John Doyle and Kieran Carey – probably the greatest full-back line in the history of the game.  As the name suggests, they usually generated the sort of heat that suffocated most full-forward lines, who generally struggled to cope with their unique blend of physicality, hurling skill and a generous helping of the dark arts.  Their dominance continued until the emergence of the youthful Eamonn ‘Blondy’ Cregan and Eamonn Grimes and company, who in 1966 destroyed that Tipp team that were All-Ireland winners in ’61, ’62, ’64, and ‘65. Suffice it to say that Limerick put a stop to Tipperary’s gallop that sunny Sunday, and the young ‘Blondy’ Cregan scored 3 goals and 5 points in a 4 – 12 to 2 – 9 defeat of Tipperary. That day still stands as one of my all-time treasured sporting memories.

A whistle rings on high, ash smacks on ash and the sliothar arrows between the uprights. A crash of thunder and colour erupts from the terraces at the Killinan End and the Town End (the Limerick end!)…… I see the Munster Championship!!

I’ve been in Thurles as a Limerick supporter, as an uninvolved spectator, and I’ve also been there with skin in the game as Don played Minor, Under 21, and Intermediate hurling for Limerick. Limerick have been lucky in this place. A few Munster Senior titles, including 1973, five Under 21 titles in this Millennium alone, and a Centenary Minor title after a replay at the same venue against Kilkenny.  Paddy Downey, writing in The Irish Times, said of the replayed minor final that, ‘it is probably true to say that there never has been a better minor All-Ireland final’.

The 1973 Munster Final was special, and of course, it ended in controversy.  As the final seconds ticked down and the teams were level, Eamonn Grimes won a disputed seventy for Limerick.  The referee, Mick Slattery from Clare, told Richie Bennis that he had to score direct, as the time was up.  Richie held his nerve, the sliothar headed goalwards, the umpire raised the white flag, and the rest is history. Every Tipperary man there that day swears that the ball was wide, but it mattered little; the game was up.  In my view, it was Ned Rea who broke Tipperary hearts that day with his three goals and not Ritchie Bennis with his last gasp point.  Sadly, it was the final swansong for that great Tipperary team.  They stole an All-Ireland in ’71 when they beat Limerick in the rain in Killarney, but they didn’t emerge again as a hurling force until 1989. That day also marked the legendary Jimmy Doyle’s last appearance in a Tipperary jersey.

The Championship is more precious than life for many. I’ve seen grey-haired men gazing into half-empty pints, reeling off the names of the great ones, like prayers. I’m afraid I too follow suit. Ask me who the Minister for Finance is, and your question will be greeted with indifference. I simply couldn’t care less. But ask me where Carlow senior hurlers play and instantly I say, ‘Dr. Cullen Park … to the left at Church Street, up Clarke Street and half a mile out on Tower Road’. Monaghan? ‘Pairc Ui Tieghernan .. on the slope of George’s Hill, overlooking the County town’. Where do Sligo play? ‘Markievicz Park in the heart of Sligo town’. ‘Bless me, father, for I’m a fanatic!’

The major hurling powers took a bit of a break in the mid-90s and allowed the minnows, like Limerick, Clare and Offaly and Wexford, to have their fling.  Don and I were in the New Stand – Árdán Ó Riain – for the ’95 Munster Final on the 9th of July.  It was one of those glorious Thurles days – despite the outcome.    In the end, Clare claimed their first Munster championship since 1932, and only their fourth ever.  I remember Davy Fitz scoring a penalty before half-time, crashing the sliothar high into the town net, before sprinting back to his own goal line.  Despite our disappointment, especially after the humiliating defeat in the All-Ireland Final the previous year to Wexford, you had to give credit to this Clare team.  One could sense the ghosts of 63 years and the curse of Biddy Early evaporating before our eyes.  The release of emotion when Anthony Daly received the cup had to be seen to be believed.  I remember the ‘Shout’ ringing out from the Killinan End and then Tony Considine taking the microphone for his rendition of ‘My Lovely Rose of Clare’.

What else draws the likes of Mike Quilty and Mike Wall, setting them down among roaring, red-faced lunatics in the shadow of the crowded Old Stand? What else exists that plucks the cranky farmer from the milking parlour and flings him into a concrete cauldron eighty miles across the province? Some swear the Apocalypse would not have the same effect….

We waited nearly a full year to gain our revenge – on June 16th, in Limerick this time.  We had been away for a holiday in Carnac in Brittany and came back the day before the game.  All of Limerick had been convulsed by the recent killing of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe, who had been shot and killed in the village of Adare by members of the Provisional IRA on June 7th, during an attempted robbery of a post office van. His colleague, Ben O’Sullivan, had also been seriously injured in the incident.  Being away when tragedy strikes so close is unnerving and surreal.  I spent most of that Saturday hunting for tickets for the fanatics in my household and eventually secured terrace tickets at the City End of Pairc na nGael from Charley Hanley in Croagh, who was Liaison Officer with the Limerick team at the time. The following day, in glorious sunshine, we took our sunburnt revenge.  Hurling legend Ciarán Carey of Patrickswell scored one of the greatest ever winning points in the history of Gaelic Games, in front of an attendance of 43,534. Result: Limerick 1-13, Clare 0-15.

 May and the chirp of the sparrow, you can be guaranteed we’d be stuck in that long snake of traffic, as it slithered its way to Cork, Limerick, Thurles and other far-flung fields.

 The modern Munster championship has changed many an inherited dynamic. The regularity with which Limerick now go to Semple Stadium to play Tipperary is a very modern phenomenon.  There was a time when if you played two Munster rivals, you would be through to an All-Ireland semi-final – not anymore.  Now you must beat all the Munster counties at least once in the Munster Round Robin Pool of Death.  Limerick have won five All-Irelands in this way since 2018.  Two Munster counties in an All-Ireland Final is no longer a rarity.

.… But oh to be a hurler…  If the truth be known, I couldn’t hurl spuds to ducks. The boss of my hurley has seen the arse of a Friesian cow more often than it has the crisp leather stitching of an O’Neill’s sliothar! Okay, I’ve had my own All-Irelands up against the gable end and in and around the mother’s flower beds, but that’s as far as it went for me.

What is most amazing about Thurles is that no matter who is playing, they all seem to troop back into the town and mingle in the Square in the shade of Hayes’s Hotel for hours afterwards.  As Kevin Cashman, that Prince of Sportswriters from my generation, remarked, ‘the pubs of Thurles on a big match day have something that no other pubs can give.  It has been called ‘atmosphere’, ‘bond’, ‘fraternity’, and much more – it’s magic in the air’.  The ghosts of Mackey, Clohessy, the Doyles, John Keane, Jimmy Smyth, and Ring become as real as what you have just witnessed. And now we have new heroes like Nickie Quaid, Declan Hannon, Cian Lynch, Barry Nash, Kyle Hayes, Patrick Horgan, Tony Kelly, Shane O’Donnell, the Mahers, and Austin Gleeson to keep the flame alight for future generations.  As Kevin Cashman puts it, ‘This is their Elysian field and the turf, and the grass and even the steel and the concrete of this place are the keepers of their youth and the youth of all of us, who shaped them’.

The terrace is where the real nectar of hurling comes to a head – when every Joe Soap in the country stands together on the same patch of cement with their eyes fixed on the same lush, green carpet…..

References

Harrington, John, Doyle: The Greatest Hurling Story Ever Told (2011).

Highly Recommended

 O’Donnchú, Liam. Semple Stadium: Field of Legends, Dublin: O’Brien Press,  2021

Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Some Glendarragh Poems of Michael Hartnett: Poems from the Hearth

A pensive Hartnett ‘among (his) nameless weeds’. Photographer unknown.

As I have mentioned already in another post here, the decade from 1975 to 1985 in Glendarragh, Templeglantine, was arguably the most productive of Hartnett’s career.  Indeed, the output from that little cottage in the shade of ‘Tom White’s green hill’ in Glendarragh was prodigious.  The first poems to be published were his collection A Farewell to English, which was published in 1975, and thus began his long-lasting association with Peter Fallon and The Gallery Press.  The same year saw the publication of The Retreat of Ita Cagney / Cúlú Íde.  Adharca Broic was published in 1978, followed by An Phurgóid in 1983, Do Nuala: Foighne Crainn in 1984 and his fourth collection in Irish, An Lia Nocht, appeared in 1985.  During this period, he also undertook the translation of Daibhí Ó Brudair’s poems, which were published in 1985.  Many of his better Glendarragh poems are contained in the 1987 collection, A Necklace of Wrens.  This collection, following his return to Dublin, contains all poems in Irish with their English translation that Hartnett wanted preserved for posterity, and it was edited by Peter Fallon.

During this decade, 1975 to 1985, in parallel to this ‘serious’ output, he was writing and entertaining the locals with ballads, some serious or semi-serious like ‘A Ballad on the State of the Nation’, which was distributed as a one-page pamphlet like the ballads of old and even included original linocuttings by local artist Cliodhna Cussen. Other ballads were more contentious and even semi-libellous (or fully slanderous!), such as ‘The Balad (sic) of Salad Sunday’ and ‘The Duck Lovers Dance’.  These latter creations were written under the very appropriate nom de plume, ‘The Wasp’!  His most memorable local work was, of course, ‘Maiden Street Ballad’, a poem he composed for his father as a Christmas present in 1980.

These three intimate family poems were written in Glendarragh, Templeglantine and first appeared in his collection, Adharca Broic, in 1978.  Two of the poems are written for his children: Lara, who was born in 1968 and Niall, who was born in 1971.  These two poems with English translations also appear in his 1987 collection A Necklace of Wrens.   The third poem, Dán do Rosemary, was not included in this collection, and the reason for its exclusion is obvious.  As early as 1978, the tensions and stresses which eventually led to their separation in 1985 were beginning to show.   They were both navigating the inevitable separation, which eventually led to his departure for Dublin and Inchicore that year.  His gift for love poetry is again in evidence, as it had been back in 1968 with the publication of Anatomy of a Cliché.  Unfortunately, the clock had come full circle, and his final poem to Rosemary is one of abject apology and regret and wistful hopes for their post-separation lives.

The poem reads as a sad indictment of the way artists were treated in this country in the 70s and 80s.  They lead a ‘miserable life’, ‘for our lack of money / scrimping and scraping’.    He apologises profusely and admits that their marriage is ‘pitiless, loveless’, which has affected ‘your soft fragile (English) heart’.  Their small rural cottage is ‘run-down’, with ‘walls of clay, tear-stained’, ‘the place is falling apart’.  He takes full responsibility for their sorry plight and admits that he is ‘blundering, tactless, clueless’.  I have said elsewhere that at this time, Newcastle West was booming during the construction phase of the Aughenish Alumina Plant near Askeaton in County Limerick.  Newcastle’s twenty-six pubs were doing a roaring trade, and he apologises to his wife because he is ‘always acting the yob in the pub’. If anything, this poem in the original Irish is far more confessional and personal than most of his poetry up to this time.

The poem concludes on a far more positive and hopeful note.  He tells Rosemary that he has ‘abandoned English, but I never turned my back on you’.  This is a time for reappraisal, and he hopes to ‘relearn my craft from fresh woodland’ – he was living at the time in a townland called Glendarragh – the glen of the oak.  He ends on a hopeful note: he hopes that the future will bring Rosemary happiness and that her ‘worth will be appreciated’.  The final line is so sad and poignant – he hopes that ‘we both reach our America’.  The sadness of this final line arises from the fact that some seven years later, they both parted and went their separate ways.

Cliodhna Cussen, a fellow native of Newcastle West, has an interesting point to make about this poem:

‘Nuair a dhirigh Michéal ar an nGaeilge níor cuireadh aon rófháilte roimhe.  Bhí ceisteanna á n-ardú i dtaobh chaighdeán a chuid Gaeilge, ceisteanna a árdaíodh i dtaobh an Riordánaigh 30 bliain níos túisce. Ach léiríonn Michéal a anam, a chuspóir, agus a ghrá sa tseoid sin de dhán, ‘Dán do Rosemary’, ina bhfuil a chumas agus a chroí nochtaithe aige’.

 When Michael began writing in Irish, he didn’t receive great encouragement from Gaelgóirí.  There were questions about the standard of his Irish, just as there had been about Sean Ó Riordán some thirty years earlier.  But in this gem of a poem, ‘Poem for Rosemary’, Hartnett reveals his soul, his motive, his love – indeed, his supreme craft and heart are laid bare.’ (My own translation).

His poem for his son Niall, Dán do Niall, 7 (‘Poem for Niall, 7’), again shows his honesty and courage, although it does tend to descend into cliché at times.  Like King Canute and his futile attempts to hold back the tide, he wishes that his son wouldn’t have to leave this safe place in ‘Bird Nest country’, their home in Glendarragh.  He tries to warn his son about the many dangers that exist in the outside world and does so by making reference to nature.  This advice is somewhat reminiscent of the advice spoken by Polonius to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man’.  This suggests that integrity begins with honesty to oneself, and Hartnett gives us a modern take on this when he advises, ‘Be happy but be tough. ’

There is great poignancy in the final stanza when he states that he will be there for his son ‘in spite of death’.  Niall was 28 when his father died in 1999 at the age of 58, and the second line of this stanza adorns the poet’s headstone in Calvary Cemetery in Newcastle West: ‘mar labhraíonn dúch is labhraíonn pár’, ‘for ink speaks and paper speaks’.  The poet is saying that he will be present and live on in his body of work even after his death.  The reality is that he wasn’t there for many of the landmark celebrations in his son’s life, his graduations, his wedding, the birth of his grandchildren and so the promise he makes, ‘and some day I’ll buy you porter!’ sounds very hollow indeed to a young man who must now take on the onerous mantle of preserving and promoting his father’s rich and varied legacy at such a young age.

Hartnett’s grave in Calvary Cemetery, Churchtown, Newcastle West. The inscription reads: ‘Beadsa ann d’anneoin an bháis, mar labhraíonn dúch is labhraíonn pár’, (‘I will be there in spite of death, for ink speaks and paper speaks.’

His Dán do Lara, 10, (‘Poem for Lara, 10’), is a masterpiece.  The sunshine and nature in this poem are at odds with the penury and hardship of the poet’s existence in 1978, nestling below ‘Tom White’s green hill’ in Glendarragh, Templeglantine.  Flame-haired Lara is compared to a rowan tree in autumn, her voice disturbing the larks, ‘in the green grass’.  She is surrounded by nature in all its glory, ‘a crowd of daisies playing with you, a crowd of rabbits dancing with you’.  The blackbird and the goldfinch are there for her amusement and playtime.  Then the master of metaphor compares his daughter: ‘You are perfume, you are honey, a wild strawberry.’    The poem ends with the poet’s wish for his young daughter:

Little queen of the land of books            

may you be always thus                           

may you ever be free                                             

from sorrow-chains.

Interestingly, the poet compares his daughter to a queen in ‘the land of books’; this seems to set the seal on Lara’s perfection. Obviously, a poet would value literature and reading, and his choice of this image is significant as it tells us that Lara has another, deeper side to her – she is not just interested in the outdoors and a lover of nature.

His final wish for Lara is that she will grow up to be as beautiful and graceful as her mother, Rosemary.  He hopes that she will inherit her mother’s beautiful soul as well as ‘the beauty of her face.’

It is fitting that these three poems, written in that little rural cottage in Glendarragh, feature family and the travails of being a husband and a parent.  I have examined many of his papers in the National Library of Ireland on Kildare Street, and it is undeniable that hand-in-hand with arranging his poems and latest projects, there is ample evidence of the presence of young people, Lara and Niall, in the many doodles and scribbles on the margins of those frayed notebooks.

A detail from the beautiful sculpture in the Square, Newcastle West, by the sculptor, Rory Breslin, showing Hartnett clasping a copy of the 1987 collection, A Necklace of Wrens.

                                     

 

 

 

Posted on by Vincent Hanley

The Yoplait Experiment and other Adventures

In or around 1973, I participated in one of the great social engineering experiments ever conducted by the emerging Sociology Department in UCC.  This experiment had its epicentre in that den of iniquity known as the Kampus Kitchen.  The aim of the experiment was to discover if a whole cohort of Munster’s finest could survive on nothing other than copious quantities of Yoplait yoghurt with added orange peel during the course of an academic year.

The Kampus Kitchen was a student restaurant and multi-purpose venue at University College Cork (UCC), located in what is now known as the Kane Building. It was a popular space for students, serving as a restaurant, exam hall, study area, and even a live music venue in the 1970s. Construction of the building was finished in 1971, and the Kampus Kitchen was a beloved student spot for many years after.   All student life was present and, if my memory serves me right, it was always full.  There, would-be student politicians faced the wrath of a rebellious student body, while eager Third Eng and Second Year Commerce made hasty battle plans before taking to the ‘field’ for their Quarry Cup game.

The Quarry Cup at University College Cork (UCC) was an historic inter-class soccer competition that was named after an actual hollowed out limestone quarry and a natural amphitheatre at the heart of the college. The Quarry was to UCC what the Colosseum was to the ancient Romans, a place for heroics and for heroes to display their skill, their bravery and their greatness. This oval-shaped field, with elevated banks, attracted large crowds on game days. The competition began in 1952, making it UCC’s oldest and most successful inter-class soccer competition. To call it a soccer competition was a great disservice to the Beautiful Game because, depending on how the game was going, various elements of Gaelic Football, Rugby Union, and even American Football were often called into play.  Most Quarry Cup games were fiercely contested, with up to 40 faculty teams taking part in the nine-a-side knockout competition.  Games invariably ended in mud-bath conditions.  Alas, the Quarry and its associated cup are now a piece of UCC’s history, with the new imposing Boole Library built right on top of that ‘field of dreams’. For the record, the last team to win the Quarry Cup was a Med. team captained by John Lynch.

Yoplait was the new culinary delight in those halcyon days.  It had begun in France in 1965 when six dairy co-ops merged to market their yoghurt products under one brand. The brand launched with the six-petaled flower logo, each petal representing an original co-op.

Yoplait’s first international expansion was through a franchising agreement with Switzerland in 1969.  The brand reached the United States and Canada in 1971.  In 1973, Yoplait began to be marketed in Ireland under a franchise agreement.

Yoplait initially produced plain-flavoured yoghurt and cream but released its first fruit-flavoured yoghurts in 1967. By 1973, the marketing gurus had decided to give their product away as a kind of first-ever loss-leader to hungry hordes of University students, knowing that when they graduated and got jobs in 1980s Ireland, Yoplait would be on everyone’s shopping list.  Sure enough, today they have become the leading kids brand, as Petits Filous fly off the supermarket shelves as Mum’s and kids’ favourite fromage frais.

Sure enough, by 1978, yoghurt had rightfully taken its place as one of our staple dairy products.  For my sins, after my first full year teaching in Newcastle West, I applied for and was allowed to correct Intermediate  Certificate Geography.  Now, where exam scripts are concerned, it never failed to amaze me the chances chancers will take when rote learning hits the cold reality of the North face of The Eiger! That fateful summer, I learnt that the name of the shipyard in Belfast was Harland and Wolff Tone and that, along with cheese and butter and Yoplait yoghurt, Milk of Magnesia was from now on also to be considered a dairy product!

However, my stint as an examiner that year ended in total disaster! I had learnt the ropes of being an Examiner during those hazy six weeks in June and July, and despite what would be considered today as abysmal postal and telephone communication, I managed to keep my Advising Examiner happy. When I had finished my work, I was meant to take my bag of scripts to the nearest train station for dispatch back to Athlone. I duly delivered my heavy bag of scripts in my trusty Ford Capri to Limerick Junction train station, and I brought my young impressionable brother, Thomas, and one or two of my sisters along for the drive.

Now, car aficionados will know that my top-of-the-range Ford Capri with its 1.6 overhead cam petrol engine, which had languished at the very back of Murphy’s garage in Cahirciveen until it had been recently rescued by my brother Mike, had four pedals instead of the usual three. The fourth pedal, a wonder of Ford ingenuity and engineering, was used to work the intermittent wipers.

Anyway, as we were nearing the Milk Woman’s Cross on our return journey, I began to mess with the pedals and lo and behold, to Thomas’s amazement, the wipers came on by some magic, even though it wasn’t even raining at the time. I repeated this trick a few times and then turned in the gate to our home. Not only had I totally confused Thomas, but unfortunately, I had also confused myself, and instead of pressing on the brakes, I foolishly pressed the accelerator and drove my lovely Capri into the cast-iron stanchion at the butt of our haybarn, doing untold damage to my pride and joy in the process. I earned a grand total of £178 for my correcting efforts that Summer, and Mike McCoy, our local panel beater in Knockaderry, charged me £250 to fix my wounded pride!

The Yoplait Experiment may not have been the only one to thrive in that magical place.  I’m not a great conspiracy theorist, but it strikes me now as too much of a coincidence that there were a number of payphones on campus – in those days of no communications – that could be tampered with so that all calls home were free of charge.  My home number was Kilfinane 126.  Don’t ask me how the scam worked – or was allowed to work – or how I managed to get through to home – but on one occasion, I remember getting my sister, Eileen, who was busy studying for her Leaving Cert, to transcribe a full English essay over that phone line without interruption.  I stood there on a glorious exam swotting May evening, reading my hastily cobbled together essay.  If I remember correctly, the title of that essay was: ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’!

I’m tempted to indulge in just one final conspiracy theory here! I’m convinced that that essay was surreptitiously’harvested’ by that fledgling Sociology Department in UCC, and when the time was ripe, years later, now working from the dungeon-like basement in the new Boole Library, built over that Quarry where once the famous Quarry Cup was played out, they used it as a blueprint for their first global experiment.  It wasn’t the Russians who interfered with those elections in that faraway land of free and brave men, it was nerdy boffins from the Sociology Department in UCC!  They even added a very ingenious subplot: not only was this newly elected King one-eyed, but he had no clothes!

                               Typical Quarry Cup conditions – not for the faint-hearted!

Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Random Epiphanies….

An epiphany is that moment when the penny drops, when the scales fall away from your eyes; that ‘light bulb moment’ when the mystery is solved; when the poem gives up its secret; that Eureka Moment when you realise you’ve been conned for most of your life.

The Bible has many such moments, from Eve and the apple in Genesis to Paul’s conversion on his way to Damascus in the New Testament.  As Christians, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany each year on January 6th, which focuses on the moment Christ is revealed to the non-Jewish world; when the Magi, guided by a star, come from the East to visit their Redeemer.

Epiphanies are mental moments when we are given instant clarity, which can turn into motivation to change and charge forward. But not all epiphanies are created equally. Some demand a deep inward search, while others fly in and out of our lives swiftly, silently, almost unnoticed.

It’s great to have an epiphany, but what you do with that new clarity is what matters most. Most of our habits are so ingrained in our lives that changing behaviour is very difficult. Most epiphanies force us to see situations and ourselves in a new light. The next step takes great courage; taking that step to live out your epiphany is when real transformation happens. In my own life, I have had some powerful moments. So, here are a few examples of some of my totally random light bulb moments…..

  • I normally don’t do conspiracy theories, BUT I firmly believe the young Viet Cong soldier who tortured American Vietnam hero and veteran, John McCain, for seven years, when made redundant, went back to the fledgling Hoi ChiMinh University and did a doctoral thesis on the benefits of manually induced electro muscle therapy – this was then picked up in Austria or Switzerland and sanitised. Today, it’s known as DRY NEEDLING. IMHO, the overuse of dry needling by overzealous, sadistic physiotherapists will be the rock that modern physiotherapy will perish on.
  • Donald Trump has never, ever put America first. Indeed, most politicians of all nationalities and all political hues invariably put themselves first.  However, a stopped clock is right at least twice a day, and Donald Trump was spot-on when he coined the phrase, Fake News.
  • In a related epiphany, have you ever noticed that all the major News Corporations are now owned by billionaire oligarchs and moguls?  I wonder why.  I have come to realise that much of what passes for news in today’s world is fake – atrocity after atrocity goes unreported, and not just because all the journalists have been killed by sniper fire – those who sit at home back in the studio have their hands tied behind their backs for fear they might incur the wrath of the current government.
  • On a slightly lighter note, did you ever notice that shampoo bottles are designed so that you will always use more than you need? You only realise this when the bottle is nearly empty.
  • The Catholic Church in Ireland provided an education and health system for Irish people a century before the fledgling state was formed – they deserve to be cut some slack by the newly canonised neo-liberals. That Church, to which I belong, has been under persistent attack for most of this century.
  • There are 756 steps between Oscar’s Restaurant and Servitar Puerto Azul Apartments in Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria!
  • Last year, for the first time since we settled in Knockaderry back in 1979, we had no swallows nesting in our garage by the road. In years past, we’ve had multiple pairs, but last year, 2024, was the first year we had no nest. It struck me then that swallows are the modern version of the canary down the mine. Thankfully, this year, after a very nervous wait, a lone pair arrived on May 20th – five weeks behind schedule. They built their nest and hatched four beautiful chicks for us to admire and cherish. The world is very fragile but not yet fully broken!
  • Global Warming never came to Knockaderry – but Climate Change is a real problem!
  • I’ve always contended that common sense wasn’t that common, but now I’m convinced that logic is irreparably damaged, and Warmongers now see themselves as Peacekeepers.   There’s one who has financed and supplied most of the munitions for an ongoing genocide who claims to have brokered peace in nine global conflicts this year alone.  Give that man the Nobel Peace Prize now, or else!!
  • Your role as a parent is never done. There is never a time, in good times and in bad, when you have full peace of mind, when you no longer need to worry. In reality, as a parent, you are only ever as happy as your saddest child.
  • Your career as a politician or as the manager of your local hurling team always ends in failure! No matter how successful you’ve been at winning championships or leagues or simply avoiding dreaded relegation, the time will come when you lose the dressing room. The people have spoken, and you must inevitably bow to the tyranny of the ballot box or your local GAA AGM!
  • Modern democracy is as fragile as a wasp’s nest, papery and brittle, and in my lifetime, it has been emasculated by billionaires and Russian oligarchs for their own ends.
  • Your health is your wealth. It is a universal truth that we take too much for granted, like being able to put on your socks or pull up your pants or get out of bed in the morning.
  • Cork GAA and its supporters are so well-served by the quality of their sports journalists.  No other county can claim to have writers who, week in week out, report the club scene and the intercounty scene in hurling and football to such a high standard.  Names like Tony Leen, John Fogarty, Maurice Brosnan, Michael Moynihan, Eoghan Cormican, Paul Rouse, Kieran Shannon and Cathal Dennehy are among my favourites.  And all of those stand on the shoulders of the giants who went before them in the old Cork Examiner: Jim O’Sullivan, Michael Ellard, the great P.D. Mehigan, better known as Carbery, and my own favourite word wizard,  Kevin Cashman.  In my book, he was one of hurling’s finest ever writers who prized exactitude and calm knowledge, in the same way he esteemed seeing a hurler’s correct technique create lethal elegance.

Finally, to put some order on this randomness, here are eight epiphanies that have certainly changed my life for the better, and maybe they can help you in your own journey.

  1. You aren’t what people say you are.

What matters most is what you say and feel about yourself. You get to choose. You can let others define you and tell you who you are, or you can show them who you are. Be you. The world needs you as you are.

  1. Plan B is often better than Plan A.

The most freeing moment in your life is when you let go of what you think is best for you. Stop holding on to what is no longer working: that job, that relationship, that dream. If it feels like hard work and is causing you more pain than gain, it is time to let go.

  1. You are not the number on the scale.

At the end of your life, after all those weight struggles, food wars, the obsession with new diets, and trying to look a certain way, it will have no relevance. You are more than a set of grades. The only thing that matters is what is in your heart. How you make people feel and how you make YOU feel is more important than how you look.

  1. The journey is more important than the goal.

Setting and reaching goals is important, but the actual process of becoming, growing, learning, and morphing into who we need to become is the real sweet stuff that makes for a wonderful life. Enjoy the journey as much as the reward.

  1. Being alone doesn’t mean you will be lonely.

The fear of being alone strikes the heart and makes many people panic. But when you learn to love your own company, you will see that you are never really lonely.

  1. It will never be all done.

The to-do lists, the chores, and the things we race around to get done will never be done. It is called life. Situations, chores, and to-do lists will always unfold. Instead of focusing on the end result, be in the process and celebrate what you have accomplished, as our wonderful Limerick Hurling team does.

  1. Emotional pain, indeed, all pain, shows up to point out to us what we need to change.

Sadness, depression, and heartache are gentle reminders to probe deeper into our lives. In the Summer of 2024, I had six weeks of agony inflicted on me by an inflamed bursa in my left hip from climbing ladders and clipping hedges. So, look at what is not working and be open to living your life in new ways. No more climbing ladders for me!

  1. Finally, if you’re lucky, you don’t have to find your purpose; it will find you.

The transition period between who you are and where you are going can be painful, but on your journey of finding purpose, recognise that there is purpose in the pain. Each step you take is helping you carve out more of who you really are.

Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Dán do Lara, 10, le Michéal Ó hAirtnéide

Dán do Lara, 10

Fuinseog trí thine

gruaig do chinn

ag mealladh fuiseoige

le do ghlór binn

i bhféar glas,

is scata nóiníní

ag súgradh leat

is scata coiníní

ag damhsa leat

an lon dubh

is a órghob

mar sheoid leat

lasair choille

is a binneas

mar cheol leat.

Is cumhracht tusa,

is mil, is sú talún:

ceapann na beacha féin

gur bláth sa pháirc thú.

A bhanríon óg thír na leabhair

go raibh tú mar seo go deo

go raibh tú saor i gconaí

ó slabhra an bhróin.

 

Seo mo bheannacht ort, a chailín

is is tábhachtach mar bheannú é –

go raibh áilleacht anama do mháthar leat

is áilleacht a ghné.

 

Poem for Lara, 10                     

An ashtree on fire                                                          

the hair of your head                         

coaxing larks                                    

with your sweet voice                        

in the green grass,                            

a crowd of daisies                              

playing with you                               

a crowd of rabbits                              

dancing with you                              

the blackbird                                    

with its gold bill                                

is a jewel for you                               

the goldfinch                                     

with its sweetness                             

is your music.                                   

You are perfume,                               

you are honey,                                  

a wild strawberry:                             

even the bees think you                     

a flower in the field.                          

Little queen of the land of books                  

may you be always thus                    

may you ever be free                                   

from sorrow-chains.

 

Here’s my blessing for you, girl,                  

and it is no pretty grace –                                     

may you have the beauty of your mother’s soul      

and the beauty of her face.       

Note:  This poem, along with Dán do Niall, 7, and Dán do Rosemary, Lara’s mother,  first appeared in Michael Hartnett’s first collection in Irish, Adharca Broic, in 1978.  The poem, along with Dán do Niall, 7, later appeared in A Necklace of Wrens in 1987, with both poems given an English translation by the poet himself.      Both collections, Adharca Broic and A Necklace of Wrens (edited by Peter Fallon), were published by The Gallery Press.

 

Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Dán do Niall, 7, le Michéal Ó hAirtnéide

Dán do Niall, 7

Mo thrua nach mairfidh tú go deo

i dtír na nead, Tír na nÓg,

tír mhíorúiltí faoi chlocha

tír sheangán:

tír na dtaibhsí dearga, tír fholláin.

Mas, tá an saol ag feitheamh leat

le foighne sionnaigh ag faire cearc:

cearca bana d’aigne úire –

scata fiáin

ag scríobadh go sonasach i bpáirc.

Más é an grá captain do chroí

bíse teann ach fós bí caoin:

ainmhí álainn é an sionnach rua

ach tá fiacla aige atá gan trua.

Seachain é, ach ná goin:

bí sonasach ach bí righin.

Beadsa ann d’ainneoin an bháis,

mar labhraíonn dúch is labrraíonn pár:

Beidh me ann in am an bhróin,

in am an phósta, am an cheoil:

Beidh mé ann is tú i d’fhear óg –

ólfad pórtar leatsa fós.

Poem for Niall, 7                                          

 A pity you’ll not always be

In Bird-Nest country, Tír na nÓg,

land of miracles under stones,

red-phantom land, a safe place.

For world waits for you,

patient fox watching hens:

white chicks of your fresh mind –

a white flock

scratching in a happy field.

If love commands your heart

Temper strength with gentleness:

A lovely dog the red fox is

but his teeth are pitiless.

Avoid him, do not harm him:

be happy but be tough.

I will be there in spite of death

for ink speaks and paper speaks:

I will be there in the sorrowful times

When music plays at wedding feast.

I will be there as you grow older –

And some day I’ll buy you porter!

 Note: This poem to his son, Niall, first appeared in Michael Hartnett’s first collection in Irish, Adharca Broic, which was published in 1978 by Peter Fallon’s Gallery Press.     It was published again in the 1987 collection, A Necklace of Wrens, this time with an English translation.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Dán do Rosemary   le Michéal Ó hAirtnéide

Dán do Rosemary                                               

 

As an saol lofa seo                                                               

gabhaim leat leithscéal:                                         

as an easpa airgid atá                                             

ár siorsheilg thar pháirc                                                     

ár bpósta mar Fhionn                                             

gan trua gan chion                                                  

ag bagairt ar do shacs-chroí bog ceannúil.          

Gabhaim leat leithscéal                                         

as an teach cloch-chlaonta                                     

as fallaí de chré is de dheora déanta –                 

do dheora boga:                                                       

an chlog leat ag cogarnach                                     

ag insint bréag,                                                        

an teallach ag titim as a chéile.                             

Téim chugat ar mo leithscéal féin:                       

m’anam tuathalach, m’aigne i gcéin,                    

an aois i ngar dom, le dán i ngleic,                       

i mo gheocach sa tabhairne ag ól is ag reic.        

Thréig mé an Béarla                                               

ach leatsa níor thug me cúl:                                   

caithfidh mé mo cheird                                          

a ghearradh as coill úr:                                          

mar tá mo gharrán Béarla                                     

cran-nochta seasc:                                                                                      

ach tá súil agam go bhfuil                                      

lá do shonais ag teacht.                                          

Cuirfidh mé síoda do mhianta ort lá.                   

Aimseoimid beirt ár Meiriceá.                              

Poem for Rosemary

For this miserable life

I apologise:

for our lack of money

scrimping and scraping,

our marriage like Fionn’s

pitiless, loveless,

affecting your soft fragile heart.

I apologise

for our run-down house,

its clay walls, tear stained –

with your soft tears:

the clock is ticking

telling you lies,

the place is falling apart.

I go to you with my apology:

blundering, tactless, clueless,

with a poem in my fist,

and I always acting the yob in the pub.

I abandoned English

but I never turned my back on you:

I now must relearn my craft

from fresh woodland:

because my English copse

is leafless and bare:

but I remain hopeful

that your days of happiness are near.

Your worth will be appreciated yet.

I hope we both reach our America.

Note: This poem is taken from Michael Hartnett’s first collection in Irish, Adharca Broic, which was published in 1978 by Peter Fallon’s Gallery Press. 

Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Brandon Creek Epiphany – and a Rant!

‘Brandon Creek, West of Dingle’ by Liam O’Neill/Morgan O’Driscoll.

The title of this blog is ‘Reviews, Rants and Rambles’ and since 2015, there have been many reviews and rambles but very few rants – so here’s one:  We are living through the craziest of times.  Like Macbeth after his confrontation with the witches, ‘ Nothing is but what is not, ’ and global leaders have taken their chainsaws to the truth.  Irony is everywhere: billionaires and huge multinational corporations try with all their ingenuity to destroy all borders so that their profits are maximised, while at the same time their political buddies stoke nationalistic fervour and division and demonise immigrants and those who cross borders to a better life.  Globalism is the buzzword, but global efforts to combat impending Doomsday scenarios and pandemics have been seen to be pathetic attempts at cooperation. Rant over.

The summer of 2024 was yet another Climate Change paradox in Ireland.   The Jetstream seemed to be stuck in some Groundhog Day cycle during June, July and most of August. There were no two days the same; no long sunny spells, rain was never far away, although rainfall amounts were below normal levels.  Towards the end of August, a temporary high moved in over Ireland and Kate and I decided to take full advantage. On Friday, August 30th, Don’s birthday, we decamped to Dingle.

On Saturday morning, we decided to head out west towards Baile na nGall, and on the way, we stopped off at Brandon Creek to explore this unheralded and largely forgotten gem on the Wild Atlantic Way. On that morning, it was indeed sensational, and a revelation and my words are inadequate to describe the beauty and tranquillity of the place. We parked our car in an unofficial grassy layby near the top of the narrow roadway leading to the Creek and the neglected pier. The narrow single-lane path descended to a very rustic bridge over the creek. The solitude was magical and eerie. I couldn’t help but think that in another era, this narrow roadway would have been used to collect guns and other contraband smuggled into this isolated cove in the dead of night.

Maybe this scenario from bygone days was prompted by the many rebel songs and ballads and stirring sea shanties we had listened to the night before from the marvellous local group, Tintéan, in Murphy’s pub in Dingle. They had entertained a very diverse and varied audience with a two-and-a-half-hour session of rousing rebel songs, some of which even the Wolf Tones wouldn’t include on their concert playlist for fear of offending someone! The Irish diaspora was there in force from Ohio, Connecticut, and Washington; I even had trouble distinguishing between the Canadian and South Florida accents! Then there were couples from Spain, Germany, and Sweden and holidaymakers from Derry, Tipperary, Limerick and Kerry.

As we walked down the steep incline to the pier, there was much evidence of neglect and some evidence that, at one time, the now rusty winch had been used to haul the local currachs with their catches up onto the pier. I walked to the end of the pier and could hear the quiet, rhythmic gurgling of seawater in the hollow caverns at its base. I imagined what it would be like in the throes of an Atlantic storm. It was hard to believe that it was from this very location around 600 AD that Saint Brendan the Navigator was reputed to have set out and discovered America.

There is much talk today, especially across the water, about the problems caused by small boats precariously being used to bring immigrants to Britain’s shores. St. Brendan and his hardy crew of monks not only made it to Iceland and probably Newfoundland and Labrador, but they also made it home again! There is some anecdotal evidence and much more scientific evidence that the people living today in those far-off regions carry West Kerry genes, so the monastic concept of celibacy must have been an optional requirement in those early days!

I also remembered that in the 1970s, the explorer, writer and filmmaker, Tim Severin, tried to recreate St. Brendan’s voyage in an effort to prove that the 6th-century Irish saint could have reached the Americas 900 years before Columbus.

On May 17th, 1976, Severin and his three fellow crewmen rowed out of this same Brandon Creek to begin what would prove to be a 7,200km epic journey. I remember avidly following their progress as Severin and his crew first sailed to the Aran Islands and from there to Iona, the Hebrides, and the Faroe Islands, before sailing on to Iceland and Greenland and from Greenland to Newfoundland.

On June 26th, 1977, some 13 months after leaving Brandon Creek, Severin and his crew sailed into Musgrave Harbour on Peckford Island, Newfoundland and were welcomed as heroes by the locals who fully appreciated the navigational feat.  Amazingly, there is nothing on the pier in Brandon Creek today to remember those heroic feats of yesteryear.

Kate and I made our return journey up the steep, narrow incline with visions of the stormy gunrunning scene from Ryan’s Daughter playing in my head. As we reached our car after the slow climb, I noticed what seemed like a half-hidden art installation surrounded by low walls of local stonework. At first, I took it to be yet another of the numerous shrines and grottos that lie scattered all over this Gaeltacht region, but this was different. While I was exploring this very unobtrusive, unflagged surprise, Kate had struck up a conversation with a woman whose car was also parked nearby. I continued on my way and came upon a copper-green sculpture depicting a lone sailor navigating between two standing stones, which, I presume, were meant to represent the perils encountered on an ocean voyage. The sailor seemed to be sailing blind as his view forward was blocked by the fragile sail on his lowly currach. I presume the sculpture was meant to depict the voyage of St. Brendan in his frail craft all those centuries ago. There was an inscription in Irish on a red sandstone flag nearby, which read ‘Ná ligamís ár maidí le sruth’.  I wanted to remember this, so I took a note of it on my phone.

I returned to the car where Kate was waiting, and she told me of her conversation with the woman she had met. The woman had set out that morning at 6 a.m. on her own and had climbed the nearby Mount Brandon. It had taken her three hours to climb to the summit and three hours to make her descent. Because she was muddy and splattered from the climb, she had decided to go for a swim down in Brandon Creek before heading home.  Needless to say, we were both in awe of this woman’s achievements. This hardy soul epitomised for us the strength and resilience of the locals in this almost-forgotten outpost of our country. I then told Kate what I had got up to and the marvellous discovery I had come across, something not mentioned in any of the Bord Fáilte brochures in nearby cosmopolitan Dingle. I told her about the inscription I had come across and translated the hopeful message as best I could.

Sometimes when we begin to doubt our ability to solve personal or global issues like climate change, the inscription from that beautiful, wild and neglected place has, for me, the feel of a powerful call to arms:

‘Ná ligamís ár maidí le sruth’

‘We must never rest on our oars’