Of course all of them are not true nor adequate.  But who can say the truth of Ireland if any?
 
 

for Michael Longley

      As a child, they could not keep me from wells
      And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
      I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
      Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

      One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
      I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
      Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
      So deep you saw no reflection in it.

      A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
      Fructified like any aquarium.
      When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
      A white face hovered over the bottom.

      Others had echoes, gave back your own call
      With a clean new music in it. And one
      Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
      Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

      Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
      To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
      Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
      To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

I thought no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?

Though I have many words,
What woman's satisfied,
I am no longer faint
Because at her side?
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
 

I have not lost desire
But the heart that I had,
I thought 'twould burn my body
Laid on the death-bed.
But who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?

The gods have taken alien shapes upon them
Wild peasants driving swine
In a strange country.  Through the swarthy faces
The starry faces shine.

Under grey tattered skies they strain and reel there:
Yet cannot all disguise
The majesty of fallen gods, the beauty,
The fire beneath their eyes.

They huddle at night within low clay-built cabins;
And, to themselves unknown,
They carry with them diadem and sceptre
And move from throne to throne.

When the herds of the rain were grazing
In the gap of the pure cold wind
And the watery hazes of the hazel
Brought her into my mind,
I thought of the last honey by the water
That no hive can find.

Brightness was drenching through the branches
When she wandered again,
Turning the silver out of dark grasses
Where the skylark had lain,
And her voice coming softly over the meadow
Was the mist becoming rain.

The Planter's Daughter

When night stirred at sea
And the fire brought a crowd in,
They say that her beauty
Was music in mouth
And few in the candlelight
Thought her too proud,
For the house of the planter
Is known by the trees.

Men that had seen her
Drank deep and were silent,
The women were speaking
Wherever she went -
As a bell that is rung
Or a wonder told shyly,
And O she was the Sunday
In every week.

Penal Law

Burn Ovid with the rest. Lovers will find
A hedge-school for themselves and learn by heart
All that the clergy banish from the mind,
When hands are joined and head bows in the dark.

          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.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother.  Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
 
 

          Shancoduff

My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh.
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.

My hills hoard the bright shillings of March
While the sun searches in every pocket.
They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn
With a sheaf of hay for three perishing calves
In the field under the Big Forth of Rocksavage.

The sleety winds fondle the rushy beards of Shancoduff
While the cattle-drovers sheltering in the Featherna Bush
Look up and say: "Who owns them hungry hills
That the water-hen and snipe must have forsaken?
A poet?  Then by heavens he must be poor."
I hear and is my heart not badly shaken?
Stony Grey Soil

O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.
You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick-tongued mumble.
You told me the plough was immortal!
O green-life-conquering plough!
Your mandril strained, your coulter blunted
In the smooth lea-field of my brow.
You sang on steaming dunghills
A song of coward's brood,
You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
You fed me on swinish food.
You flung a ditch on my vision
Of beauty, love and truth.
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
You burgled my bank of youth!
Lost the long hours of pleasure
All the women that love young men.
O can I still stroke the monster's back
Or write with unpoisened pen
His name in these lonely verses
Or mention the dark fields where
The first gay flight of my lyric
Got caught in a peasant's prayer.
Mullahinsha, Drummeril, Black Shanco -
Wherever I turn I see
In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
Dead loves that were born for me.
 
 
 

        Wet Evening in April
 

The birds sang in the wet trees
And I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad I had recorded for him
        The melancholy.
 

                     The Hedge School

                     William Carleton

                       (Part One)
 

THERE NEVER was a more unfounded calumny, than that which would impute to the Irish peasantry an indifference to education.  I may, on the contrary, fearlessly assert, that the lower orders of no country ever manifested such a positive inclination for literary acquirements, and that, too, under circumstances strongly calculated to produce carelessness and apathy on this particular subject.  Nay, I do maintain, that he who is intimately acquainted with the character of our countrymen, must acknowledge, that their zeal for book learning, not only is strong and ardent, when opportunities of scholastic education occur, but that it increases in proportion as these opportunities are rare and unattainable.   The very name and nature of Hedge Schools are proof of this: for what stronger point could be made out, in illustration of my position, than the fact, that, despite of obstacles, whose very idea would crush ordinary enterprize then not even a shed could be obtained in which to assemble the children of an Irish village, the worthy pedagogue selected the first green spot on the sunny side of a quickset-thorn hedge, which he conceived adapted for his purpose, and there, under the scorching rays of a summer sun, and in defiance of spies and statutes, carried on the work of instruction.   From this circumstance the name of Hedge School originated, and, however it may
be associated with the ludicrous, I maintain, that it is highly honourable to the character of the people, and an encouragement to those who wish to see them receive pure and correct educational knowledge.  A Hedge School, however, in its original sense, was but a temporary establishment, being only adopted until such a school-house could be erected, as was in those days deemed sufficient to hold as many children as were expected, at all hazards, to attend it.

The opinion, I know, which has been long entertained of Hedge Schoolmasters, was, and still is, unfavourable; but the character of these worthy and eccentric persons has been misunderstood, for the stigma attached to their want of knowledge should have rather been applied to their want of morals, because, on this latter point only were they indefensible.  The fact is, that Hedge Schoolrnasters were a class of men, from whom morality was not expected by the peasantry; for, strange to say, one of their strongest recommendations to the good opinion of the people, as far as their literary talents and qualifications were concerned, was an inordinate love of whiskey, and if to this could be added a slight touch of derangement, the character was complete.

On once asking an Irish peasant, why he sent his children to a schoolmaster who was notoriously addicted to spiritous liquors, rather than to a man of sober habits who taught in the same neighbourhood, "Why do I sind them to Mat Meegan, is it?" he replied and do you think, Sir," said he, "that I'd sind them to that dry-headed dunce, Mr. Frazher, wid his black coat upon him and his caroline hat, and him wouldn't taste a glass of poteen wanst in seven years.  Mat, Sir, likes it, and teaches the boys ten times betther whin he's dhrunk nor whin he's sober; and you'll never find a good tacher, Sir, but's fond of it.  As for Mat, when he's half gone, I'd turn him agin the county for deepness in larnin; for it's thin he rhimes it out of him, that it would do one good to hear him."

"So," said I, "you think that a love of drinking poteen is a sign of talent in a schoolmaster."

"Ay, or in any man else, Sir," he replied.  "Look at tradesmen, and 'tis always the cleverest that you'll find fondiv the dhrink!  If you had hard Mat and Frazher, the other evening, at it--what a hare Mat mad iv 'im; but he was jist in proper tune for it, being, at the time, purty well I thank you, and did not lave him a leg to stand upon.  He took him in Euclid's Ailments and Logicals, and proved, in Frazher's teeth, that the candlestick before them wasthe church- steeple, and Frazher himself the parson; and so sign was on it, the other couldn't disprove it, but had to give in."

"Mat, then," I observed, "is the most learned man on this walk."

"Why, thin, I doubt that same, Sir," replied he, "for all he's so great in the books; for, you see, while they were ding dust at it, who comes in but mad Delany, and he attacked Mat, and, in less than no time, rubbed the consate out of him, as clane as he did out of Frazher."

"Who is Delany?" I enquired.

"He was the makins of a priest, Sir, and was in Maynooth a couple of years, but he took in the knowledge so fast, that, bedad, he got cracked wid larnin'--for a dunce, you see, never cracks wid it; no doubt but he's too many for Mat, and can go far beyant him in the books, but then, like that, he's still brightest whin he has a sup in his head."

These are prejudices which the Irish peasantry have long entertained concerning the character of hedge schoolmasters; but, granting them to be unfounded, as they generally are, yet it is an indisputable fact, that hedge schoolmasters were as superior in literary knowledge and acquirements to the class of men who are now engaged in the general education of the people, as they were beneath them in moral and religious character.  The former part of this assertion will, I am aware, appear rather startling to many: but it is true; and one great cause why the character of the Society Teachers is undervalued, in many instances, by the people, proceeds from a conviction on their parts, that they are, and must be, incapable, from the slender portion of learning they have received, of giving their children a sound and practical education.

But that we may put this subject in a clearer light, we will give a sketch of the course of instruction which was deemed necessary for a hedge schoolmaster, and, let it be contrasted with that which falls to the lot of those engaged in the conducting of schools patronized by the Education Societies of the present day.  When a poor man, about twenty or thirty years ago, understood from the schoolmaster who educated his sons, that any of them was particularly "cute at his larnin'," the ambition of the parent usually directed itself to one of three objects--he would either make him a priest, a clerk, or a schoolmaster.  The determination once fixed, the boy was set apart from every kind of labour, that he might be at liberty to bestow his undivided time and talents to the object set before him.  His parents strained every nerve to furnish him with the necessary books, and always took care that his appearance and dress should be more decent than those of any other member of the family.  If the Church was in prospect, he was distinguished, after he had been two or three years at his Latin, by the appellation of "the young priest ," an epithet to him of the greatest pride and honour; but if destined only to wield the ferula, his importance in the family, and the narrow circle of his friends, was by no means so great.  But if the goal of his ambition was shorter, that of his literary career was considerably extended.  He usually remained at the next school in the vicinity until he supposed that he had completely drained the master of all his knowledge.  This circumstance was generally discovered in the following manner:--As soon as he judged himself a match for his teacher, and possessed sufficient confidence in his own powers, he penned him a formal challenge to meet him in literary contest, either in his own school, before competent witnesses, or at the chapel green, on the Sabbath day, before the arrival of the priest, or probably after it, for the priest himself was generally the moderator and judge upon these occasions.  This challenge was usually couched in rhyme, and either sent by the hands of a common friend, or posted
upon the chapel door.

These contests, as the reader perceives, were always public, and were witnessed by the peasantry with intense interest.  If the master sustained a defeat, it was not so much attributed to his want of learning, as to the overwhelming talent of his opponent; nor was the success of the pupil generally followed by the expulsion of the master; for this was but the first of a series of challenges which the former proposed to undertake, ere he eventually settled himself in the exercise of his profession.  I remember being present at one of them, and a ludicrous exhibition it was.  The parish priest, a red faced, jocular little man, was president; and his curate, a scholar of six feet two inches in height, and a schoolmaster from the next parish, were judges.  I will only touch upon two circumstances in their conduct, which evinced a close instinctive knowledge of human nature in the combatants.  The master would not condescend to argue off his throne--a piece of policy to which, in my opinion, he owed his victory (for he won); whereas the pupil insisted that he should meet him on equal ground, face to face, in the lower end of the room.  It was evident that the latter could not divest himself of his boyish terrors as long as the other sat, as it were, in the plenitude of his former authority, contracting his brows with habitual sternness, thundering out his arguments, with a most menacing and Stentorian voice; while he thumped his desk with his shut fist, or struck it with his great rule at the close of each argument, in a manner that made the youngster put his hands behind him several times, to be certain that that portion of his dress, which is unmentionable to "ears polite," was tight upon him.

If in these encounters the young candidate for the honours of the literary sceptre was not victorious, he again resumed his studies, under his old preceptor, with renewed vigour and becoming humility; but if he put the schoolmaster down, his next object was to seek out some other teacher, whose celebrity was unclouded within his own range.  With him he had a fresh encounter, and its result was similar to what I have already related. If victorious, he sought out another and more learned opponent; and if defeated, he became the pupil of his conqueror--going night about, during his sojourn at the school, with the neighbouring farmers' sons, whom he assisted in their studies, as a compensation for his support.   He was called, during these peregrinations, the Poor Scholar, a character which secured him the esteem and hospitable attention of the peasantry, who never fail in respect to any one characterised by a zeal for learning and knowledge.

In this manner he proceeded, a literary knight-errant, filled with a chivalrous love of letters, which would have done honour to the most learned peripatetic of them all; enlarging his own powers, and making fresh acquisitions of knowledge as he went along.   His contests, his defeats, and his triumphs, of course, were frequent; and his habits of thinking and reasoning must have been considerably improved, his acquaintance with classical and mathematical authors rendered more intimate, and his powers of illustration and comparison more clear and happy.  After three or four years spent in this manner, he usually returned to his native place, sent another challenge to the schoolmaster, in the capacity of a candidate for his situation, and, if successful, drove him out of the district,
and established himself in his situation.  The vanquished master sought a new district, sent a new challenge, in his turn, to some other teacher, and usually put him to flight in the same manner. The terms of defeat or victory, according to their application, were called sacking and bogging.

"There was a great argument entirely, Sir," said a peasant once, when speaking of these contests," "twas at the chapel on Sunday week, betune young Tom Brady, that was a poor scholar in Munsther, and Mr. Hartigan, the school-masther."

"And who was victorious?" I enquired.

"Why, Sir, and may be 'twas young Brady that didn't sack him clane, before the priest an' all; and went nigh to bog the priest himself in Greek.  His Reverence was only two words beyant him; but he sacked the masther, any how, an' showed him in the grammatical and the dixonary where he was wrong."

"And what is Brady's object in life?" I asked. "What does he intend to do?"

"Intend to do, is it?  I'm tould nothin' less nor goin' into Thrinity College in Dublin, an' expects to bate them all there, out an' out: he's first to make something they call a seizure [Sizar.] ; and afther makin' that good, he's to be a Counsellor. So, Sir, you see what it is to resave good schoolin', and to have the larnin'; but, indeed, 'tis Brady that's the great headpiece entirely."

Unquestionably, many who received instruction in this manner have distinguished themselves in the Dublin University; and I have no hesitation in saying, that young men educated in Irish hedge schools, as they were called, have proved themselves to be better classical scholars and mathematicians, generally speaking, than any proportionate number of those educated in our first-rate academies.   The Munster masters have long been, and still are, particularly
celebrated for making excellent classical and mathematical scholars.

That a great deal of ludicrous pedantry generally accompanied this knowledge is not at all surprising, when we consider the rank these worthy teachers held in life, and the stretch of inflation at which their pride was kept by the profound reverence excited by their learning among the people.  'Tis equally true, that each of them had a stock of crambos ready for accidental encounter, which would have puzzled Euclid or Sir Isaac Newton himself; but even these trained their minds to habits of acuteness and investigation.  When a schoolmaster of this class had established himself as a good mathematician, the predominant enjoyment of his heart and life was to write the epithet Philomath after his name; and this, whatever document he subscribed, was never omitted.   If he witnessed a will, it was Timothy Fagan, Philomath; if he put his name to a promissory note, it was Tim. Fagan, Philomath; if be addressed a love-letter to his sweetheart, it was still Timothy Fagan--or whatever the name might be--Philomath; and this was always written in legible and distinct copy-hand, sufficiently large to attract the observation of the reader.

It was also usual for a man who had been a preeminent and extraordinary scholar, to have the epithet Great prefixed to his name.  I remember one of this description, who was called the Great O'Brien, par excellence. In the latter years of his life he gave up teaching, and led a circulating life, going round from school to school, and remaining a week or a month alternately among his brethren.   His visits were considered an honour, and raised considerably the literary character of those with whom he resided; for he spoke of dunces with the most dignified contempt, and the general impression was, that he would scorn even to avail himself of their hospitality. Like most of his brethren, he could not live without the poteen; and his custom was, to drink a pint of it in its native purity before he entered into any literary contest, or made any display of his learning at wakes or other Irish festivities; and most certainly, however blameable the practice, and injurious to health and morals, it threw out his talents and his powers in a most surprising manner.

It was highly amusing to observe the peculiarity which the consciousness of superior knowledge impressed upon the conversation and personal appearance of this decaying race.  Whatever might have been the original conformation of their physical structure, it was sure, by the force of acquired habit, to transform itself into a stiff, erect, consequential, and unbending manner, ludicrously characteristic of an inflated sense of their extraordinary knowledge, and a proud and commiserating contempt of the dark ignorance by which, in despite of their own light, they were surrounded.  Their conversation, like their own crambos, was dark and difficult to be understood; their words, truly sesquipedalian; their voice, loud and commanding in its tones; their deportment, grave and dictatorial, but completely indescribable, and certainly original to the last degree, in those instances where the ready, blundering, but genuine humour of their country maintained an unyielding rivalry in the disposition, against the habitual solemnity which was considered necessary to keep up the due dignity of their character. In many of these persons, where the original humour and gaiety of the disposition were known, all efforts at the grave and dignified were complete failures, and these were enjoyed by the peasantry and their own pupils, nearly with the sensations which the enactment of Hamlet by Liston would necessarily produce.   At all events, their education, allowing for the usual exceptions, was by no means superficial; and the reader has already received a sketch of the trials which they had to undergo, before they considered themselves qualified to enter upon the duties of their calling.  Their life was, in fact, a state of literary warfare; and they felt that a mere elementary knowledge of their business would have been insufficient to carry them, with suitable credit, through the attacks to which they were exposed from travelling teachers, whose mode of establishing themselves in schools, was, as I have said, by driving away the less qualified, and usurping their places.  This, according to the law of opinion, and the custom which prevailed, was very easily effected, for the peasantry uniformly encouraged those whom they supposed to be the most competent; as to moral or religious instruction, neither was expected from them, so that the indifference of the moral character was no bar to their success.

The village of Findramore was situated at the foot of a long green hill, the outline of which formed a low arch, as it rose to the eye against the horizon.  This hill was studded with clumps of beeches, and sometimes enclosed as a meadow.  In the month of July, when the grass on it was long, many an hour have I spent in solitary enjoyment, watching the wavy motion produced upon its pliant surface by the sunny winds, or the flight of the cloud-shadows, like phantom ships, as they swept rapidly over it, whilst the murmur of the rocking trees and the glancing of their bright leaves in the sun, produced a heartfelt pleasure, the very memory of which rises in my imagination, like some fading recollection of a brighter world.

At the foot of this hill ran a clear deep-banked river, bounded on one side by a slip of rich level meadow, and on the other by a kind of common for the village geese, whose white feathers, during the summer season, lay scattered over its green surface.  It was also the play-ground for the boys of the village school; for there ran that part of the river, which, with very correct judgment, the urchins had selected as their bathing-place.  A little slope, or watering- ground in the bank, brought them to the edge of the stream, where the bottom fell away into the fearful depths of the whirlpool, under the hanging oak on the other bank.  Well do I remember the first time I ventured to swim across it, and even yet do I see, in imagination, the two bunches of water flaggons on which the inexperienced swimmers trusted themselves in the water.

About two hundred yards above this, the boreen, which led from the village to the main road, crossed the river, by one of those old narrow bridges, whose arches rise like round ditches across the road, presenting a high mound, long, uneven, and often dangerous--an almost impassable barrier to horse and car.  On passing the bridge, in a northern direction, you found a range of low thatched houses on each side of the road; and if one o'clock, the hour of dinner, drew near, you might observe columns of blue smoke curling up from a row of chimnies, some made of wicker creels plastered over with a rich coat of mud; some of old, narrow bottomless tubs; and others, with a greater appearance of taste, ornamented with thick, circular ropes of straw, sewed together like bees' skeps, with the peel of a briar; and many having nothing but the open vent above.  But the smoke did not alone escape by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it bursting out of the doors and windows; the panes of the latter, being mostly stopped at other times with old hats and rags, were now left entirely open for the purpose of giving it a free escape.  Before the doors, on right and left, was a series of dunghills, each with its concomitant sink of green, stagnant water; and if it happened that a stout-looking woman, with watery eyes, and a yellow cap hung loosely upon her matted locks, came, with a chubby urchin on one arm, and a pot of dirty water in her hand, its unceremonious ejection in the aforesaid sink would be apt to send you up the village with your finger and thumb (for what purpose you would yourself perfectly understand) closely, but not knowingly, applied to your nostrils. But, independently of this, you would be apt to have other reasons for giving your horse, whose heels are by this time surrounded by a dozen of barking curs, and the same number of shouting urchins, a pretty sharp touch of the spurs, as well as for complaining bitterly of the odour of the atmosphere.  It is no landscape without figures; and you might notice, if you are, as I must suppose you to be, a man of observation, in every sink as you pass along, a "slip of a pig" stretched in the middle of the mud, the very beau ideal of luxury, giving, occasionally, a long, luxurious grunt, highly expressive of his enjoyment; or, perhaps, an old farrower, lying in indolent repose, with half a dozen young ones justling each other for their draught, and pouncing her belly with their little snouts, reckless of the fumes they are creating; whilst the loud crow of the cock, as he confidently flaps his wings on his own dunghill, gives the warning note for the hour of dinner.  As you advance, you will also perceive several faces thrust out of the doors, and, rather than miss a sight of you, a grotesque visage peeping by a short cut through the painless [sic] windows--or, a tattered female flying to whip in her urchin that has been tumbling itself, heels up, in the dust of the road, lest "the jintleman's horse might ride over it;" and if you happen to look behind, you may notice a shaggy-headed youth, in tattered frize, with one hand thrust indolently in his breast, standing at the door in conversation with the inmates, a broad grin of sarcastic ridicule on his face, in the act of breaking a joke or two upon yourself or your horse; or, perhaps, your jaw may be saluted with a lump of clay, just hard enough not to fall asunder as it flies, cast by some raggid gorsoon from behind a hedge, who squats himself in a ridge of corn to avoid detection.

Seated upon a hob at the door, you may observe a toil-worn man, without coat or waistcoat; his red, muscular, sun-burnt shoulder peering through the remnant of a shirt, mending his shoes with a piece of twisted flax, called a lingel, or, perhaps, sewing two footless stockings (or martyeens) to his coat, as a substitute for sleeves.  In the gardens, which are usually fringed with nettles, you will see a solitary labourer, working with that carelessness and apathy that characterize an Irishman when he labours for himself--leaning upon his spade to look after you, and glad of any excuse to be idle.  The houses, however, are not all such as I have described; far from it.  You see, here and there, between the more humble cabins, a stout, comfortable-looking farm-house, with ornamental thatching, and well glazed windows--adjoining to which is a hagyard, with five or six large stacks of corn, well trimmed and roped, and a fine, yellow, weather-beaten old hay-rick, half cut; not taking into account twelve or thirteen circular strata of stones, that mark out the foundations on which others had been raised.  Neither is the rich smell of oaten or wheaten bread, which the good wife is baking on the griddle, unpleasant to your nostrils; nor would the bubbling of a large pot, in which you might see, should you chance to enter, a prodigious square of fat, yellow, and almost transparent bacon tumbling about, be an unpleasant object; truly, as it hangs over a large fire, with well swept hearth-stone, it is in good keeping with the white settle and chairs, and the dresser with noggins, wooden trenchers, and pewter dishes perfectly clean, and as well polished as a French courtier.

As you leave the village, you have, to the left, a view of the hill which I have already described, and, to the right, a level expanse of fertile country, bounded by a good view of respectable mountains, peering decently into the sky; and in a line that forms an acute angle from the point of the road where you ride, is a delightful valley, in the bottom of which shines a pretty lake; and a little beyond, on the slope of a green hill, rises a splendid house, surrounded by a park, well wooded and stocked with deer. You have now topped the little hill above the village, and a straight line of level road, a mile long, goes forward to a little country town which lies immediately behind that white church, with its spire cutting into the sky, before you.   You now descend on the other side, and, having advanced a few perches, look to the left, where you see a long, thatched chapel, only distinguished from a dwelling-house by its want of chimneys, and a small stone cross that stands on the top of the eastern gable; behind it is a grave-yard, and, beside it, a snug public-house, well white-washed; then, to the right, you observe a door apparently in the side of a clay bank which rises considerably above the pavement of the road.  What!  you ask yourself, can this be a human habitation?--but ere you have time to answer the question, a confused buzz of voices from within reaches your ear, and the appearance of a little "gorsoon," with a red, close-cropped head and Milesian face, having in his hand a short, white stick, which you at once recognize as "the pass" of a village-school, gives you the full information.  He has an ink-horn, covered with leather, dangling at the button-hole (for he has long since played away the buttons) of his frize jacket--his mouth is circumscribed with a streak of ink--his pen is stuck knowingly behind his ear--his shins dotted over with blisters, black, red, and blue--on each heel a kibe--his "leather crackers," videlicet--breeches, shrunk up upon him, and only reaching as far down as the caps of his knee; having spied you, he places his hand over his brows to throw back the dazzling light of the sun, and peers at you from under it, till he breaks out into a laugh, exclaiming, half to himself, and half to you, "You a jintlemen! no, nor wan of your breed never was, you procthorin' thief you!"  You are now immediately opposite the door of the seminary, when half a dozen of those seated next it notice you.

Oh, Sir, here's a jintlemen on a horse! masther, Sir, here's a jintleman on a horse that's lookin' in at us, wid boots and spurs on him!"

"Silence!" exclaims the master; "back from the door, boys rehearse ; every one of you rehearse, I say, you Boeotians, till the gentleman goes past!"

"I want to go out if you plase, Sir."

"No, you don't, Phelim."

"I do, indeed, Sir."

"What ! is it afther contradicting me you'd be? don't you see the "porter's" out, and you can't go."

"Well, 'tis Mat Meehan has it, Sir, and he's out this half hour, Sir.  I can't stay in, Sir--iphfff--iphifff! " and, with a face of apparent distress, he makes his legs change places, throwing them across each other by way of giving an illustration of his motive.

In the mean time the master puts his head out of the door, his body stooped to "half bend,"--a phrase the exact curve which it forms, I leave for the present, to your own sagacity--and surveys you until you pass.  That is an Irish hedge school, and the personage who follows you with his eye, a hedge' schoolmaster.  His name is Matthew Kavanagh; and as you seem to consider his literary establishment rather a curiosity in its kind, I will, if you be disposed to hear it, give you the history of him and his establishment, beginning, in the first place, with?
 

                                           THE ABDUCTION OF MAT KAVANAGH,
                                               THE HEDGE SCHOOLMASTER
 

MONDAY MORNING [See GLOSSARY 1].

Having, out of friendship for the family, upon whose estate,
praised be Heaven!  I and mine have lived rent-free time out of
mind, voluntarily undertaken to publish the MEMOIRS OF THE
RACKRENT FAMILY, I think it my duty to say a few words, in the
first place, concerning myself.  My real name is Thady Quirk,
though in the family I have always been known by no other than
'Honest Thady,' afterward, in the time of Sir Murtagh, deceased,
I remember to hear them calling me 'Old. Thady,' and now I've
come to 'Poor Thady'; for I wear a long greatcoat winter and
summer, which is very handy, as I never put my arms into the
sleeves; they are as good as new, though come Holantide next I've
had it these seven years:  it holds on by a single button round
my neck, cloak fashion.

[The cloak, or mantle, as described by Thady, is of high
antiquity.  Spenser, in his VIEW OF THE STATE OF IRELAND, proves
that it is not, as some have imagined, peculiarly derived from
the Scythians, but that 'most nations of the world anciently used
the mantle; for the Jews used it, as you may read of Elias's
mantle, etc.; the Chaldees also used it, as you may read in
Diodorus; the Egyptians likewise used it, as you may read in
Herodotus, and may be gathered by the description of Berenice in
the Greek Commentary upon Callimachus; the Greeks also used it
anciently, as appeared by Venus's mantle lined with stars, though
afterward they changed the form thereof into their cloaks, called
Pallai, as some of the Irish also use; and the ancient Latins and
Romans used it, as you may read in Virgil, who was a great
antiquary, that Evander, when Aeneas came to him at his feast,
did entertain and feast him sitting on the ground, and lying on
mantles:  insomuch that he useth the very word mantile for a
mantle--

"Humi mantilia sternunt:"

so that it seemeth that the mantle was a general habit to most
nations, and not proper to the Scythians only.

Spenser knew the convenience of the said mantle, as housing,
bedding, and clothing:
'IREN.  Because the commodity doth not countervail the
discommodity; for the inconveniences which thereby do arise are
much more many; for it is a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed
for a rebel, and an apt cloak for a thief.  First, the outlaw
being, for his many crimes and villanies, banished from the towns
and houses of honest men, and wandering in waste places, far from
danger of law, maketh his mantle his house, and under it covereth
himself from the wrath of Heaven, from the offence of the earth,
and from the sight of men.  When it raineth, it is his penthouse;
when it bloweth, it is his tent; when it freezeth, it is his
tabernacle.  In summer he can wear it loose; in winter he can
wrap it close; at all times he can use it; never heavy, never
cumbersome.  Likewise for a rebel it is as serviceable; for in
this war that he maketh (if at least it deserves the name of
war), when he still flieth from his foe, and lurketh in the THICK
WOODS (this should be BLACK BOGS) and straight passages, waiting
for advantages, it is his bed, yea, and almost his household
stuff.']

To look at me, you would hardly think 'Poor Thady' was the father
of Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and never minds what
poor Thady says, and having better than fifteen hundred a year,
landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady; but I wash my hands
of his doings, and as I have lived so will I die, true and loyal
to the family.  The family of the Rackrents is, I am proud to
say, one of the most ancient in the kingdom.  Everybody knows
this is not the old family name, which was O'Shaughlin, related
to the kings of Ireland--but that was before my time.  My
grandfather was driver to the great Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin, and
I heard him, when I was a boy, telling how the Castle Rackrent
estate came to Sir Patrick; Sir Tallyhoo Rackrent was cousin-
german to him, and had a fine estate of his own, only never a
gate upon it, it being his maxim that a car was the best gate.
Poor gentleman!  he lost a fine hunter and his life, at last, by
it, all in one day's hunt.  But I ought to bless that day, for
the estate came straight into the family, upon one condition,
which Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin at the time took sadly to heart,
they say, but thought better of it afterwards, seeing how large a
stake depended upon it:  that he should, by Act of Parliament,
take and bear the surname and arms of Rackrent.
 
 

[The rest of the text is available on the above link.]

Thomas Kilroy (from his Introduction)

Considered by many to be Le Fanu's finest work and one of James Joyce's favourites,The House by the Churchyard is a complex mixture of pastoral nostalgia with murder, blackmail and supernatural thrills.  Le Fanu sets his story in Chapelizod, on the outskirts of Dublin, in 1767 and vividly evokes the teeking life of this suburban village, drawing on his childhood memories of the Phoenix Park and the Hibernian Military School.  Joyce, when writing Finnegans Wake, had his American friend Frank Budgen make him a precis of Le Fanu's tale and used many of Le Fanu's fictional landmarks as symbols in his own tantalising final work.

"At the book's centre is a criminal deception and the unmasking of a criminal.  Le Fanu had a profound sense of evil and the half-light which best sets it off.  But the prevailing tone of the book never lets us lose our footing in this gloom.  Because of the vitality of the narrative, that is to say, the power of its curiosity, even the monstrous is tamed.  The novel steers us safely home in the end."
 

            Hard is the stone, but harder still
            The delicate preforming will
             That guided by a dream alone,
             Subdues and moulds the hardest stone,
             Making the stubborn jade release
             The emblem of eternal peace.

             If but the will be firmly bent,
             No stuff resists the mind's intent;
             The adamant abets his skill
             And sternly aids the artist's will
             To clothe in perdurable pride
             Beauty his transient eyes descried.
 
 

       O My Dark Rosaleen,
       Do not sigh, do not weep!
       The priests are on the ocean green,
       They march along the deep.
       There's wine from the royal Pope,
       Upon the ocean green;
       And Spanish ale shall give you hope,
       My Dark Rosaleen!
       My own Rosaleen!
       Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,
       Shall give you health, and help, and hope,
       My Dark Rosaleen!

       Over hills, and thro' dales,
       Have I roam'd for your sake;
       All yesterday I sail'd with sails
       On river and on lake.
       The Erne, at its highest flood,
       I dash'd across unseen,
       For there was lightning in my blood,
       My Dark Rosaleen!
       My own Rosaleen!
       O, there was lightning in my blood,
       Red lightning lighten'd thro' my blood.
       My Dark Rosaleen!

       All day long, in unrest,
       To and fro, do I move.
       The very soul within my breast
       Is wasted for you, love!
       The heart in my bosom faints
       To think of you, my Queen,
       My life of life, my saint of saints,
       My Dark Rosaleen!
       My own Rosaleen!
       To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
       My life, my love, my saint of saints,
       My Dark Rosaleen!

       Woe and pain, pain and woe,
       Are my lot, night and noon,
       To see your bright face clouded so,
       Like to the mournful moon.
       But yet will I rear your throne
       Again in golden sheen;
       Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone,
       My Dark Rosaleen!
       My own Rosaleen!
       'Tis you shall have the golden throne,
       'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone,
       My Dark Rosaleen!

       Over dews, over sands,
       Will I fly, for your weal:
       Your holy delicate white hands
       Shall girdle me with steel.
       At home, in your emerald bowers,
       From morning's dawn till e'en,
       You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers,
       My Dark Rosaleen!
       My fond Rosaleen!
       You'll think of me through daylight hours,
       My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
       My Dark Rosaleen!

       I could scale the blue air,
       I could plough the high hills,
       O, I could kneel all night in prayer,
       To heal your many ills!
       And one beamy smile from you
       Would float like light between
       My toils and me, my own, my true,
       My Dark Rosaleen!
       My fond Rosaleen!
       Would give me life and soul anew,
       A second life, a soul anew,
       My Dark Rosaleen!

       O, the Erne shall run red,
       With redundance of blood,
       The earth shall rock beneath our tread,
       And flames wrap hill and wood,
       And gun-peal and slogan-cry
       Wake many a glen serene,
       Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,
       My Dark Rosaleen!
       My own Rosaleen!
       The Judgement Hour must first be nigh,
       Ere you can fade, ere you can die,
       My Dark Rosaleen!
 

                  From the Book Jacket:

Frank McCourt's glorious childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, has been
loved and celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its
profound humanity.  A tale of redemption, in which storytelling itself is the
source of salvation, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los
Angeles Times Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.  Rarely has a book so
swiftly found its place on the literary landscape.

And now we have 'Tis, the story of Frank's American journey from
impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur.  Frank lands in
New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the
boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately
encounters the vivid hierarchies of this "classless country," and then is
drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type
reports.  It is Frank's incomparable voice -- his uncanny humor and his
astonishing ear for dialogue -- that renders these experiences
spellbinding.

When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always
resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed
and toiled for years to get to America should "stick to their own kind"
once they arrive. Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an
education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New
York University.  There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee,
long-legged and blonde, and tries to live his dream. But it is not until he
starts to teach -- and to write -- that Frank finds his place in the world.
The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of
readers in Angela's Ashes comes of age.

As Malcolm Jones said in his Newsweek review of Angela's Ashes, "It is
only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves
them wanting more when he is done...and McCourt proves himself one of
the very best."  Frank McCourt's 'Tis is one of the most eagerly awaited
books of our time, and it is a masterpiece.
 

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms.   These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation.   It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s., which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding,
and partly to the clothing, of many thousands.

There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas!  too frequent among us!  sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders.   I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year.  There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born.   The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed.  For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time, they can however be properly looked upon only as
probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art.

I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck
plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table.  A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him.  Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.

A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter to offer a refinement upon my scheme.  He said that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age nor under twelve; so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service; and these to be disposed of by their parents, if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations.  But with due deference
to so excellent a friend and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my American acquaintance assured me, from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the charge.  Then as to the females, it would, I think, with humble submission be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves; and besides, it is not
improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty; which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any project, however so well intended.

But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Psalmanazar, a native of the island Formosa, who came from thence to London above twenty years ago, and in conversation told my friend, that in his country when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality as a prime dainty; and that in his time the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court, in joints from the gibbet, at four hundred crowns.   Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who without one single groat to their fortunes cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse.

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance.  But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.  And as to the young laborers, they are now in as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.

I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject.   I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.

For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous enemies; and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.

Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord's rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown.

Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a-piece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom who have any refinement in taste.   And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.

Fourthly, The constant breeders, beside the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year.

Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns; where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating: and a skilful cook, who understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please.

Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties.  It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit instead of expense.  We should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market.  Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, their sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.

Many other advantages might be enumerated.  For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef, the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-grown, fat, yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a lord mayor's feast or any other public entertainment.  But this and many others I omit, being studious of brevity.

After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual.  But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points.   First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for an hundred thousand useless mouths and backs.  And secondly, there being a round million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would
leave them in debt two millions of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with their wives and children who are beggars in effect: I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, at a year old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor
clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.  I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

                          Excerpt

                      Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a man coming down a road in Dublin and he gave himself the name of Dedalus the sorcerer, constructor of labyrinths and maker of wings for Icarus who flew so close to the sun that he fell, as the apostolic Dubliner James Joyce would fall deep into a world of words-from the "epiphanies" of youth to the epistomadologies of later years.

James Joyce, poor joist, a funnominal man, supporting a gay house in a slum of despond.  His name derived from the Latin and meant joy but at times he thought himself otherwise-a jejune Jesuit spurning Christ's terrene body, a lecher, a Christian brother in luxuriousness, a Joyce of all trades, a bullock-befriending bard, a peerless mummer, a priestified kinchite, a quill-frocked friar, a timoneer, a pool-beg flasher and a man with the gift of the Irish majuscule script.

A man of profligate tastes and blatant inconsistencies, afraid of dogs and thunder yet able to strike fear and subordination into those he met; a man who at thirty-nine would weep because of not having had a large family of his own yet cursed the society and the Church for whom his mother like so many Irish mothers was a "cracked vessel for childbearing."  In all she bore sixteen children; some died in infancy, others in their early years, leaving her and her husband with a family of ten to provide for.

"Those haunted inkpots" Joyce called his childhood homes, the twelve or thirteen addresses as their financial fates took a tumble.  First there was relative comfort and even traces of semi-grandeur.  His mother, Miss May Murray, daughter of a Dublin wine merchant, versed in singing, dancing, deportment and politeness, was a deeply religious girl and a lifelong member of the Sodality of Our Lady.  She was a singer in the church choir where her future and Rabelaisian husband John, ten years her senior, took a shine to her and set about courting her.  His mother objected, regarding the Murrays as being of a lower order, but he was determined in his suit and even moved to the same street so as to be able to take her for walks.  Courtships in Dublin were just that, through the foggy streets under the yellowed lamps, along the canal or out to the seashore which James Joyce was to immortalize in his prose--"Cold light on sea, on sand on boulders" and the speech of water slipping and slopping in the cups of rock.  His father and mother had walked where he would walk as a young man, drifter and dreamer, who would in his fiction delineate each footstep, each bird call, each oval of sand wet or dry, the seaweed emerald and olive, set them down in a mirage of language that was at once real and transubstantiating and would forever be known as Joyce's Dublin.  His pride in this was such that he said if the Dublin of his time were to be destroyed it could be reconstructed from his works.

James Augustine Joyce was their second son, born February 2, 1882.   An infant, John, had died at birth, causing John Joyce to indulge in a bit of bathos, saying, "My life was buried with him."  May Joyce said nothing; deference to her husband was native to her, that and a fatality about life's vicissitudes.  John Joyce's life was not buried with his first son; he was a lively, lusty man and for many years his spirit and his humor prevailed.   But sixteen pregnancies later, and almost as many house moves, impecunity, disappointments and children's deaths did make for a broken household.   His enmity toward his wife's family and sometimes toward his wife herself was vented at all hours-the name Murray stank in his nostrils whereas the name Joyce imparted "a perfumed tipsy sensation."  Only the Joyce ancestry appeared in photographs and the Joyce coat of arms was on proud display.   He was a gifted man, a great tenor, a great raconteur and one whose wit masked a desperate savagery.

James, when young, was known as "Sunny Jim" and being a favorite he would steal out of the nursery and come down the stairs shouting gleefully, "I'm here, I'm here."  By the time he was five he was singing at their Sunday musical parties and accompanying his parents to recitals in the Bray Boat Club.  By then too he was wearing glasses because of being nearsighted.   That he loved his mother then is abundantly clear, identifying her with the Virgin Mary, steeped as he was in the ritual and precepts of the Catholic Church.  She was such a pious woman that she trusted her confessor more than any member of her own family.  She was possessive of Sunny Jim, warning him not to mix with rough boys and even disapproving of a valentine note which a young girl, Eileen Vance, had sent to him when he was six:
O Jimmie Joyce you are my darling You are my looking glass from night till morning I'd rather have you without one farthing Than Harry Newall and his ass and garden.

His mother with her "nicer smell than his father" was the object of his accumuled tenderness and when he was parting from her he pretended not to see the tears under her veil.
 

It is true today, just most certainly as it was true in the 1930's of Dancing at Lughnasa, that Ireland exists at a wistful - and sometimes mad - crossroads.  One makes a seasonal pilgrimage to pagan festivals after Sunday church services.  Voices are raised in earthy airs, just as they join with others in hymns.  Morning prayers bless homes, sanctified with a light rain of holy water; while during harvest nights in the forest, blazing fires stoke an abandon to Lugh, an ancient god of Light.  It puts the Irish on a unique temporal plane -- neither living purely in the past, nor absolutely in the present -- but in both at the same time.  This poetic alchemy of time occasionally creates a stubborness, but often a selflessness, an art of life and a resilient grace; but mostly a capacity for hope.

In the turbulent times of 1936, the five unmarried Mundy sisters live in a modest croft at the heart of a rugged farm outside Ballybeg, a small town in Donegal. The imperious teacher Kate (Meryl Streep), the irreverent big-hearted keeper of the hearth Maggie (Kathy Burke), the serene familial rudder Agnes (Brid Brennan), the sweetly eccentric and simple-minded Rose (Sophie Thompson), and the lonely romantic Christina (Catherine McCormack), who has creased the family reputation with an illegitimate son; all are heavenly bodies revolving around the 8-year old love child, Michael (Darrell Johnston).

Dancing at Lughnasa is told from his memories, summoning back to the end of that summer, on the eve of celebration to the harvest diety Lugh, god of music and light.  But the celebration of the film . . .   the music and the light of it . . .   really lives within the sisters, a gift they share with each other and the ones they love.  In the Mundy household, they are simultaneously the storm and the buoy, a sharp judgment will always give way to loving forgiveness, a reproach is merely a prelude to a song or a cup of tea or an act of kindness.  They are a family marked by the unfailing courage they possess for each other.  But now it is on the threshold of autumn, where events will conspire to irretrievably change the golden season of the Mundy's.

The croft bustles as the sisters prepare to meet their older brother Jack (Michael Gambon), a priest returning home after 25 years in the dark continent of Africa where he was sent by the Church to convert remote heathen tribes.  But their pride is temporarily deflated as a frail and disoriented Jack totters off the bus, his makeshift luggage hording pagan African artifacts and memorabilia.  Jack's embrace of exotic cultures has alienated the Church, upon which all aspects of local life depend.  But Jack seems to glow with simple grace of human passion, and innocently revels in the creation of Michael, a creature who exists purely from love without obligation.

The male presence is compounded when Michael's father, Gerry Evans (Rhys Ifans) unexpectedly arrives with the disquieting rumble of his motorbike.   Gerry is a searcher/wanderer, a dreamer whose journey
constantly changes destination and brings him into the orbit of his son so sporadically the boy fails to recognize him.  This brief sojourn is merely an interlude on Gerry's path to Spain, where he plans to join International Brigade against Franco.  But it is enough time to forge an awkward bond with his son, to excavate the hidden wisdom of Jack, and to spark an independent abandon in the sisters that has laid dormant under years of duty and service.

Dancing at Lughnasa breathes through the festival of Lughnasa, the brilliant images of African customs that Jack imposes on the misty farm, and the kites that Michael chases, wonderfully decorated by his own hand - an early artistic vision that will later allow him to so eloquently recall a family to whom fate has dealt a severe blow.  They meet their fate bravely.   The memories of that summer in 1936 haunt Michael into manhood. Memories of love and loss.  And of the women dancing, in a final celebration of life before it changed forever.
 

                                              by Fin Keegan

                                                   Dublin, 1922

They had been out in Howth and come home to find him in the kitchen, eating.  Bridie was at her mother's for the weekend.  Daniel was at mass.  Feeling thirsty Thomas Quinn went to the kitchen, a part of the house into which he rarely stepped.  The curtains were drawn.  A man he had never seen before sat at the table. "Get out of my house," said Thomas, shaking and pale. The man--not much more than a boy--looked up.  He had eaten half the shepherd's pie that was to have been dinner.
   "I will not," he said, taking a swig from a bottle of stout and then looking back down at his food.

It was then, when the necessity of holding the stranger's gaze had passed, that Thomas Quinn noticed a revolver lying on the table by the black bottle. Without turning he closed the door behind him. He stood for a while over the boy and then sat down. The boy wiped his mouth with his sleeve.  Thomas noticed there was blood on it.
   "What do you want?"
The boy looked at him--Thomas put him at eighteen, nineteen at the most.
   "I want you to shut up."
He finished his meal and taking a second bottle of stout from the press drank it down, looking at Thomas.  Upstairs the twins moved about.
   "Who's that?" said the boy.
   "My daughters."
   "Any men in the house?"
   "No."
   "You're sure of that?"
   "There's no men in the house."
The boy made a face and picked up his gun.  He smelled of excrement.  His eyes, even in the grey darkness, were bloodshot and weary.  There was a heaviness about his movements that told of a huge tiredness.
   "Are you for the Treaty?" he asked suddenly, pointing the gun at Thomas. Thomas said nothing.
   "Course y'are," scowled the boy.  He spat on the ground.  "Get up."
Thomas got up, keeping his hands above his head.  He turned and felt the gun in his kidneys.  He needed to go to the lavatory.
   "Go on," said the boy, pushing him through the door.  "Go into the parlour."
Thomas took him into the drawing-room.  Grace was sitting by the fire saying her rosary.  She said nothing--her hand went to her mouth at the sight of the intruder.  The fact that he held a gun was almost incidental.  A minute later the twins came down and were told to sit side by side on the settee.

Thomas stood between the boy and his daughters.  He hoped nobody had noticed the trickle of urine that had run down his leg and was collecting in a dark patch by his foot.  There was a smell too but it was swallowed up by the stench of the intruder. The boy finished his stout slowly.
   "They're trying to find me," he said at length.
   "They'll come here.  Youse'll have to hide me somewhere."
   "We can do that," said Thomas.  Nobody spoke.  Grace was murmuring her rosary again.  The boy watched her for a while but said nothing. Then he said to Madeleine, "Go in and make me a cup of tea.  Have you got biscuits?"

She nodded and went over to the door.  Charlotte, left alone on the settee, let out a tiny whimper.  The boy looked at her.
   "Make it for everyone here," he said, his magnanimity cloaked in a tone, if anything, more menacing than before.  "And bring in all the biscuits."

He said nothing while she was gone.  Thomas looked at Charlotte, trying to reassure her with his eyes--she was shaking.  The boy looked at his gun.
   "You're from the country?" said Thomas.
   "Shut up you," said the boy. "English bastard."
There was a sound from outside: rain.  Then Madeleine came back with the tray of tea things.  She poured cups for all of them and they each took a biscuit. The boy looked at her closely as she poured.
   "Have you got a brother?" he said.
She nodded but before she could speak Thomas said, "I told you there's no other man in this house."
The boy got to his feet and hit him on the jaw with the butt of his revolver.
   "Shut your mouth!  Shut your mouth you English bastard!"
Thomas groaned and fell sideways.
Charlotte screamed: Grace's rosary speeded up and the boy stood looking at her, wide eyed.  He swayed, his shoulders, stiff for a moment, slumped with exhaustion.  He fell back onto his chair, his eyes rolling upward.  There were streaks of blood on the napkin Madeleine had given him.
   "Everybody shut up," he whispered, holding the gun on his lap and closing his eyes.
Thomas, rubbing his jaw, pushed Madeleine over to the settee.  Outside the rain fell in spears upon the gravel, a wash of sound about the still life indoors.
   "There's no men in the house," said the boy, as if talking in his sleep.  "You've no sons?"           "No," said Thomas, after a moment of silence, "Only daughters."
He looked at the twins.
   "I'm tired," said the boy.
   "Yes."
His breathing lengthened; his head fell back.  Thomas noticed that the band of black about his midriff was glistening.  He looked back at the twins then gave a start: on the sewing table between them--signed by the Major-General of the Irish Division himself--there was a certificate of gallantry in the name of his son.  Looking at the boy all the time he reached out an arm and tipped the frame over onto its face.  It fell with a crack.  The boy sighed but didn't wake.

He looked at Madeleine.  She pointed over at the secretaire in the corner which nobody but Noel had ever used and on which there lay, undisturbed since the war, virtually all they had left of him: his letters and cards, his cap, the telegrams and obituaries, everything that pointed to his existence.  Madeleine  got up--Thomas went to check her but stopped himself.  He thought he could see thin crescents of life between the eyelids of the gunman.
   "They've got you now, boy," murmured the boy.  "Got you now."  His voice went on, warped into nonsense.  Thomas looked at the gun--the boy's hand was over it entirely.  To retrieve it would mean loosening his fingers one by one.  It was impossible.

A floorboard creaked.  It was a long time since Madeleine had crept about the house.  She took the papers in her hand, clutching them to her chest like life itself.  She came back around the armchair.
Thomas lifted the certificate and then the lid of the sewing table.  She dropped them inside.  The certificate went after it. Thomas closed the lid carefully, as though it were a tabernacle, locked it and dropped the key into his pocket.

For three hours the boy stayed where he was, bleeding to death in their drawing room, regaining consciousness for sufficient intervals to dissuade them from going for help.  When he slipped away at last the gun fell to the ground by his feet.  Then Thomas got up and called the Guards.