Irish Emigrant Book Review, No. 29 (Dec 1997)

They Shall Grow Not Old by Myles Dunganu
In the aftermath of the controversy surrounding the wearing of the poppy on Armistice Day, Myles Dungan’s book recalling the part played by the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen in World War I, is particularly apposite. For those of us with family members who enlisted, it is chilling to read of the conditions under which they laboured and the callousness they were forced to adopt in order to survive both mentally and physically. Dungan relates the experiences of the 10th and 16th Irish divisions and the 36th Ulster division and picks out in particular the Irish chaplains who served, some of them risking and losing their lives in the course of their ministrations. He also reveals details of some of the Irishmen executed, often without benefit of a proper defence.
The author devotes a chapter to three literary soldiers, Tom Kettle, Francis Ledwidge and Patrick McGill, only the last-named surviving the war. A further section, and the most moving, recounts the life and death of William O’Reilly of Kingscourt, who was widowed while overseas, was invalided out of the army first to Switzerland and then to London, but died before his two-year-old daughter, whom he had never seen, could be brought to visit him. Other topics which form an important part of the text concern Irish immigrants in Australia who found themselves fighting at Gallipoli, and the fraternisation prevalent between the warring armies at various times. Perhaps the last words on the unrelenting harshness of war should be left to Irish veteran Jack Campbell, who died in 1995 at the age of 97: “I’ve gone through the pain and the misery and the hardship on down through the years and the longer I live the longer I’ll suffer.”

A Love Present and Other Stories by John Montague
The first collection of short stories in eight years, is a book to treasure. His strength both as a storyteller and a poet are evident in this collection of essentially Irish stories, though not all are based in this country or deal with Irish characters. The plight of women who suffer at the hands of selfish and insensitive men is a recurring theme, from the pathos of the title story in which the love of a small girl is rejected for her shabbiness, to the multiple hurts experienced by the American Wandy Lang in “Pilgrim’s Pad”. The loss of innocence, which is also frequently dealt with, follows Johnny’s discovery of a cache of old letters from which he learns the truth about his absent father in “The Letters”, while “A Prizegiving” adds a lighter note with its unlikely group of whiskey-drinking nuns. His description of the Mother Superior’s arrival in the usually stark convent parlour is a gem:
“She was lugging a side of smoked salmon and, between herself and the two younger Sisters riding shotgun with her, the larger part of a crate of wine.”
The final story in the collection, and the most powerful, is “The Three Last Things”. Here the author introduces a foreign couple who have settled in west Cork, he the son of a German pastor and she a Jew who lost family members in the Holocaust. Their declared atheism causes a problem for the people of their village when Martha is dying and her husband Knute refuses to accept the traditions associated with such an event. The compromise reached between the dying woman and the local priest leads to an unusual funeral ceremony which sympathetically reconciles differences of belief.

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The Old Women of Magione by Ciaran O’Driscoll
This book contains a number of poems dealing with his reflections on his time as a Franciscan, and the lack of support offered to those who had exchanged “the bright certainty of an overall purpose” for: “...the haphazard darkness where no purpose exists outside what the individual can shape by putting his own dent on the warring elements.”
The old women of the title the poet sees as being transformed into angels, along with the proprietor of the shop where they all meet, and the poem concludes with the alliterative:
“...until it’s midnight in Magione and there’s a multitudinous rustling of old women’s wings in the sky between the stars and the streetlights.”

In Irish Love Poems edited by A. Norman Jeffares
A collection which spans fourteen centuries, editor A. Norman Jeffares has grouped his selection under fourteen headings ranging from “Flirtation and Courtship” to “Partings and Returnings”. Many of the poems one would expect to find included in this anthology, such as Yeats’ “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”, but we also make new discoveries which enchant the ear. The Earl of Longford’s translation of the 16th century “The Kiss” is appropriately contained in the section entitled “Frustration and Jealousy”, and speaks of the poet’s spurning of all other loves after kissing another man’s wife:
“And never another’s kiss can slake my drought After that kiss, till judgment hour shall come.”
The lamentation “A Cry for Art O’Leary”, translated by Brendan Kennelly, is powerful in the sense of loss expressed by his widow, Eibhlin Dhubh ni Chonaill, while the humour of Thomas Moore, when addressing a past love, is beautifully captured in the final couplet of his undedicated poem, “To ------”:
“To love you is pleasant enough And oh! ’tis delicious to hate you!”
On the same theme, but so much darker, are Sinead O’Connor’s thoughts on the end of a relationship, “The Last Day of our Acquaintance”. With poets ranging from the early Celtic bards to the best poets writing in Ireland today, “Irish Love Poems” will both renew old acquaintances and introduce previously unread works.

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Shells & Bluebells - Women Scientists and Pioneers edited by Mary Mulvihill and Patricia Deevy
- A number of intrepid Irish women, who pursued scientific careers despite being denied a formal education, are featured in a collection of essays by several different experts in their fields under the title Stars, Shells & Bluebells - Women Scientists and Pioneers. Edited by Mary Mulvihill and Patricia Deevy, the book features a group of women, almost all of whom came from a monied Protestant background giving them both the leisure and the means to undertake expeditions in pursuit of specimens, and what began in most cases as a hobby soon became a life’s work. One factor contributing to the anonymity of these women was the practice of publishing their findings under either an assumed name or by having a male relative publish for them, it being deemed improper for their own names to appear in print. Such was the case with a family of Cork botanists, Anne and Mary Ball and their brother Robert. He was a founder member of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland and many of his sisters’ finding were published by him. When we move into the 20th century we find these women of achievement venturing further afield. Cynthia Longfield, who became known for her study of dragonflies, was at one time in a border area of South America and came across the Paraguayan army on its way to invade Bolivia. As reported in her obituary in the Irish Times in 1991, “She surprised the Bolivians by telling them what was in store for them”.

The Living Note - Heartbeat of Irish Music by Peter Woods
The book begins with the thoughts of a young boy growing up in Clare in the 1920s, and his determination to play music, and continues through three generations of the family, ranging from Ireland to America and England. The coming of the gramophone, the clerical disapproval of dancing, emigration and American wakes, the revival of traditional music in the 1960s, the problems attached to living away from home - author Peter Woods has included them all. But his narrative is much more than just the story of the music; the lives of the men and women give flesh to the litany of musicians and airs. The death of Hughie from Monaghan in a trench in Norfolk, the importance of hurling in the life of a small community, the break-up of a band in New York, such stories are complemented by the sepia photographs of Christy McNamara to give a fascinating and beautifully presented volume.

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Rebellion! Ireland in 1798 by Daniel J. Gahan
- The official yearbook of Comoradh, the 1798 National Commemorative Committee, is also the authorised book of the National 1798 Visitor Centre in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. “Rebellion! Ireland in 1798” gives a chronological account of the uprising in which Catholics, Presbyterians and Anglicans fought together, setting it in its historical context. Written by historian Daniel J. Gahan, “Rebellion” concentrates on the part played by prominent Wexford men, while the second half comprises a diary for 1998 which gives details of all the commemorative events for the year which have been organised by Comoradh and Wexford County Council. Finally there is a year planner for 1999 and space for recording addresses and telephone numbers.

Into the Heart of it by John Doorty
- John Doorty’s collection of poetry, “Into the Heart of it”, includes an extended series of poems representing a kind of dialogue between father and son, the Daley Dialogues, though the author is quick to point out that in only two of them does direct communication actually take place. In “Nothing to be Wondered at”, Dan Daley and his father speak more as one voice, though the distance between them is echoed in the spacing of the lines:
His father: With a light
Dan Daley: there is no darkness
His Father: and then there is no fear,
Dan Daley: but the dew falls
His Father: and the light fades.
Dan Daley: Our work is done.
His Father: Stay. It is a full moon,
Dan Daley: a moon-full magic night
His Father: and something to be wondered at.”
The second part, “The Heartland”, takes as its main theme the poet’s own place of Kilshanny and County Clare, and in “Together” he draws a picture of father and son totally opposed to those in the Dialogues, a pair who complement each other in the completion of a task.

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