Ireland
Page 57
At last I began to understand that beyond the blood ties, of which I had known nothing, there had always been another, far deeper reason why I had gone searching for him. From that very first story of Newgrange he had, I now realized, given me one of the greatest gifts available in humanity. Like a plowman opening a field, he had carved out the beginnings of my imagination; he had helped me to recognize instinctively the country and the people to whom I belonged.
Remember his list of blessings and curses at Newgrange? They had all appeared in some fashion or form in everything I had since heard, read, or encountered. True to his words, I had been raised, wandered through, and long lived in “a land full of milk and honey.” I had seen in my own studies that the country had produced “men of strength and wisdom, women of beauty and love.” And yes, we had been “conquered again and again,” and our “seed, breed, and generations” were “made subject to others.” Also, our fighting men, from Brian Boru to Hugh O’Neill, had become feared “wherever water flows or birds fly.”
That story had a violently relevant point too—which came back to nag me. Though I had had plenty of opportunity, I had not had the courage to uncover more about the IRA campaign that began in 1956 and ended in 1962; in fact I had fled the area of the Irish border and, like all my family and everyone I knew in the south, had not had the courage to explore the Six Counties of Northern Ireland. And I had been queasy and squeamish when faced with the couple near Banagher whose son was on the run.
No doubt I would have defended myself by arguing that any Irish “Troubles” would very likely “destroy the root of thought, the soul of reason,” as the Silken Elder had warned, and I would have added, as he had, that “men will use the power of the past to give themselves the power of the future.” But the Storyteller had at least given me benchmarks by which I could judge myself—delivered, it has to be said, in a most unusual way.
Most vividly of all came a fusion in my mind of the two strongest exhortations from the Newgrange hillside; since I became a teacher of history, both had echoed through me again and again.
The Chief Elder had said, in his “last and most wonderful blessing,” that we would “spread our breed and our blood” across the world and that everywhere we went, we would be “known to come of this land.” But his enemy had countered with an equal truth: “It shall indeed be the case that your children and their children and their children’s children forever will go to other lands and be among other people. But your descendants will leave because this land will drive them out, drive them away. Will not be able to sustain them. Will not be able to give them enough food and drink.” I mourned again a crucial statistic of my own life; of the fifteen children in my final class of primary school, 1954, I was the only one who had been privileged enough to avoid emigration.
All these reflections had been stimulated, all these seeds of thought had been planted in me, by the man out there on the stage. He might have thought himself absent from my life—but he had grown me up.
When he rose and asked to see their faces, the house lights came up slowly. Now I also could see the audience, row after row, applauding delightedly; I began to recognize them, and my skin felt that shivering excitement. Here were the people I had met as a boy when I visited their houses, inquiring tactfully whether they had ever again heard of the Storyteller; and here too were the people I had called on during my long search up and down the country.
The poet Hanafin looked merry, some lively girl by his side, long hair and very red lipstick. Madge O’Callaghan (Mrs.) sat in the front row, with her excellent typist daughter; next to them sat the Three Furlongs from Home, all in suits and wide smiles, but wearing white kid shoes, and beside them Uncle Toby—he had flown in from Oxford.
And there was Ray Cashman in his suit and red tie, with Mr. Kavanagh, the man we found polishing his shoes at Derrynane. There too sat the tall Dutch family from Two Horse House by the lake, and Eddie Landers, the vet, and Daniel P. Kelly from Cootehill, and Mrs. and Mrs. MacKenna, and Sean O’Sullivan from the Folklore Commission, and Matt Doyle the ferryman, and the man from Mullinavat, and Mrs. Colfer the baker, and Archie Halpin, though mercifully no trace of Morning Star of Slane. There was Mrs. Cantwell from Clonmel, whose great-great-great-great-great-grandmother had helped make an idiot of Oliver Cromwell.
Marian Geraghty and her husband Tom had come from the house called Boyne Water, and Dickie the barman was there, wanting, I expected, to be reimbursed for his coat. And, believe it or not, there also sat Myrtle O’Farrell and Uncle Bob, who seemed stooped and perky as ever; they and many more must have driven over a hundred miles to be in Cork that evening. And behind them—my heart rose a little further, because I had often thought of her—sat Lelia, who had tried to teach me to dance Clare Sets and failed.
Who were these people? Angels? Ghosts? No; they were listeners whose imagination had been fired by my grandfather’s stories of Ireland or my stories from and about him, and I felt my heart turn over when I looked at them.
The applause died slowly, and they settled back in their seats. My grandfather the Storyteller raised his whiskey glass in the manner of a toast to his audience and spoke, it seemed, to each face. I grinned, because I knew one dimension of what was about to happen—he was in a theater; so, like a good old trouper, he would make a dramatic speech.
WHAT I TOLD YOU TONIGHT—IT ISN’T MY story alone. It belongs to every Irish person living and dead. And every Irish person living and dead belongs to it. And to all the story of Ireland; blood and bones, legends, guns, and dreams, Catholics, Protestants, England, horses and poets and lovers.
Conveniently for me, I liken Ireland to whiskey in a glass—a cone of amber, a self-contained passage of time, a place apart, reaching out to the world with sometimes an acrid taste, a definite excess of personality, telling her story to all who will listen, hauling them forward by the lapels of their coats until they hear, whether they want to or not. But always, always—the story is the teller, and the teller is the story.
The one joy that has kept me going through life has been the fact that stories unite us. To see you as you listen to me now, as you have always listened to me, is to know this: what I can believe, you can believe. And the way we all see our story—not just as Irish people but as flesh-and-blood individuals and not the way people tell us to see it—that’s what we own, no matter who we are and where we come from.
That’s why I spent my life as I did—because that was all I have ever owned, stories. Indeed, our story is finally all any of us owns, because, as I once told my grandson, a story has only one master.
Author’s Note
Beneath all the histories of Ireland, from the present day through her long troubled relationship with England and back to the earliest times, there has always been another, less obvious reporter speaking—the oral tradition, Ireland’s vernacular narrative, telling the country’s tale to her people in stories handed down since God was a boy.
This fireside voice took great care to say that imagination and emotion insist on playing their parts in every history, and therefore, to understand the Irish, mere facts can never be enough; this is a country that reprocesses itself through the mills of its imagination.
But we all do that; we merge our myths with our facts according to our feelings, we tell ourselves our own story. And no matter what we are told, we choose what we believe. All “truths” are only our truths, because we bring to the “facts” our feelings, our experiences, our wishes. Thus, storytelling—from wherever it comes—forms a layer in the foundation of the world; and glinting in it we see the trace elements of every tribe on earth.
About the Author
Frank Delaney was born in Tipperary, Ireland, at a time and place where itinerant storytellers still haunted the country. A career in broadcasting, first in Ireland and then in Britain, earned him fame across the United Kingdom. Several of his nonfiction books were bestsellers in the UK, including The Celts (also a renowned BBC documentary series) and Ja
mes Joyce?s Odyssey. In addition, he?s been a judge for the Booker Prize and writes frequently for American and British publications on literary and historical subjects. He now lives with his wife, Diane Meier, in New York and Connecticut. Ireland is his first novel to be published in the United States.
Visit his website at www.frankdelaney.com.
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EXUBERANT PRAISE FOR THE EPIC NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER BY FRANK DELANEY
IRELAND
“With this extraordinary novel Frank Delaney joins the ranks of the greatest of Irish writers.”
Jack Higgins
“Gorgeous…poignant…triumphant…unforgettable…Delaney’s title is perfect: Both the country and his novel are a book of stories…Delaney’s plot structure…erects the perfect stage to acquaint us with his country’s history and, even better, through its myths and legends and through his characters’ intertwining biographies, its soul.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Dramatic, adventurous, heroic, romantic, slyly comic, these historical chronicles, legends, myths, tall tales, and fables, featuring warriors, kings, monks, explorers, and clever common folk, imaginatively tell the history of Ireland…Delaney has described Ireland as ‘an island with an incredible ego, a huge personality.’ With spirit and great affection, Ireland captures much of how the Irish through the ages have seen that personality—and told of it.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Hugely entertaining, truly epic, and quite irresistible.”
Sunday Independent (Ireland)
“[A] grand sweep of a novel…bursting with Irish legend and lore…Ireland is worthy of so grand and comprehensive a title.”
Associated Press
“[A] muscular writer wrestles heroically with Ireland’s enigmatic Celtic soul in [a] book brimming with love, celebration, and criticism. Give Frank Delaney…a couple of pints for [his] noble efforts, filled with flashes of wit, scholarship, and intelligent commentary…An ambitious, rambling epic, Delaney’s Ireland probes the Irish identity through the skillful, amusingly embellished re-telling of great folk tales, the bedrock of the Irish imagination.”
Hartford Courant
“A sprawling, riveting read…The stories utterly captivate…[A] rich and satisfying book.”
Publishers Weekly
“The writing is smooth, seductive…[a] combination of history, myth, and blarney…An undisguised love letter from an expat to his native land.”
London Sunday Telegraph
“A vivid rendering of Irish history, imagined and real…reminiscent of the best of James Michener in scope and sheer crowd-pleasing potential.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Part period saga, part domestic drama…Delaney gracefully collects essential myths—and invents a few, too—in his heartfelt ode to the oral tradition.”
Entertainment Weekly
“Highly recommended…both touching and real…Delaney deftly weaves the story of a people and a country with a poignant coming-of-age tale…Fans of Edward Rutherford’s historical sagas will love it.”
Library Journal (* Starred Review *)
“His familiarity with every aspect—social, cultural, and economic—of Irish society, his emphatic rendering of a varied cast of real and imagined characters, and his ability to convey the intricate beauty of the Irish countryside enrich the narrative at every turn…The troubled history of Ireland makes a particularly memorable story. Delaney tells it very well indeed.”
Washington Post Book World
“One of the most…enjoyable reads I have come across…The central characters are engaging, the plot intriguing and believable, and the book—which is often beautifully written—concludes with a thwack of satisfaction.”
Scotland on Sunday
“Ireland both reinforces and rethinks what it means to be Irish.”
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
“Irish eyes (and others) will be smiling…A master storyteller…has penned a fond tribute to his native land.”
Dayton Daily News
“[A] giant bear hug of a novel. Warm, intelligent, and unapologetically nostalgic…Delaney is as much in love with the art of storytelling as he is the story’s subject.”
Christian Science Monitor
“An engaging story…providing twists and turns and expertly rendered with a touch of foreshadowing in the right places and some surprises just when they’re needed…His characters are very vivid, and their speech is so accurate, you can almost hear their brogue as you read…You’ll enjoy Delaney’s work.”
Baton Rouge Advocate
“Wonderfully engaging.”
San Jose Mercury News
“A sprawling new novel…Glistening writing.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A novel as smoothly digestible as Bushmills’ whiskey.”
Glasgow Sunday Herald (Scotland)
“Extraordinary…[Ireland] mixes history and fiction in an epic narrative that traces the entire history of [the] country. Delaney is such a fabulous storyteller that the…pages fly by.”
Connecticut Post
“Delaney paints a vivid portrait of the country…There’s something for everyone in this book…which recalls the work of James Michener and will appeal to readers of family sagas and popular historical fiction.”
Booklist
“There is no doubting the power of the story to fire the imagination—and no nation tells a story like the Irish. It seems fitting then that the history of Ireland should be related through its stories, the approach taken by the writer Frank Delaney…The book relates the story of Ireland from its geological beginnings, through seven millennia of heroism, cruelty and romance, in the form of a story rather than a dry collection of historical facts.”
Birmingham Post (UK)
“In the end, Ireland is, as the Irish themselves are fond of saying about everything from cabbages to castles, brilliant.”
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright
IRELAND. Copyright © 2005 by Frank Delaney. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MAY 2007 ISBN: 9780061829772
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