Irish Emigrant Book Review, No. 35 (June 1998)

The Silk Weaver by Gabrielle Warnock
- The Silk Weaver, is set in the Dublin of the late 1790s, but the political unrest of the period takes second place to the characters drawn by the author. The eponymous Anton Paradis, a weaver first and foremost who has the cloak of heroism forced upon him; his employer and friend Danno McKenna; the opportunist Malachi Delaney and the wretched Marvin Sweetman; move in and out of the labyrinth of intrigue and betrayal that permeates the capital. However it is in their relationships with a train of forceful women that the real interest lies. Marvin’s wife Letitia’s passionate affair with Danno, Anton and the ever-faithful Caitlin, and the calculating Charlotte Paradis who marries Anton to secure the family weaving business, are beautifully drawn and have a profound influence on the story’s development. Conversely Marvin Sweetman’s unhappy daughter, Caroline, and Pansy, Danno’s fiancee, become the victims of their own weakness and dependence on others, but all play their part in the dance of physical and emotional suffering.
The Silk Weaver is a fascinating mixture of fiction and historical fact which brings vividly to life the uncertainties of existence in 18th century Dublin. The authenticity of the book is enhanced by the inclusion of letters from a government spy to his master at Dublin Castle, based on those of the notorious Francis Higgins discovered by the author in the National Archive. The servile, selfseeking but anonymous writer provides the opposing view of events as they take place, and the final letter neatly ties up at least one strand of the story.

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The ’98 Reader - An Anthology of Song, Prose and Poetry by Padraic O’Farrell
- In “The ’98 Reader - An Anthology of Song, Prose and Poetry” Padraic O’Farrell, with a foreword by Benedict Kiely, has brought together a variety of literary items, all linked by the common thread of the year 1798. “The ’98 Reader” provides us with an opportunity to re-read old favourites such as “The Man from God Knows Where” by Florence Wilson and Thomas Moore’s “Forget Not the Field”, while also including a number of lesser-known and particularly local celebrations, many of them anonymous. “The Song of Prosperous” recalls the rebel attacks on Clane, Ballymore Eustace and Naas after the battle of Prosperous, while “The Boys of Croughan” records the fate of four Offaly men who were deported to Australia after being betrayed by an informer. A number of well-known songs also feature in the anthology, among them “Kelly the Boy from Killane”, “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” and “Boolavogue”.
Many of the prose passages are particularly illuminating for those of us whose knowledge of the period is a bit hazy. These include Proclamations and Oaths, as well as first-hand descriptions of some of the engagements. A striking example is the tale of the Battle of Ballinamuck in Longford taken down from Patrick Gill in 1933, when he was in his nineties. He had listened to tales from his grandmother, who had been in the town on the day the battle took place, and this gives an immediacy to the narrative not always found in accounts of military history. A number of characters are also dealt with, including the Sham Squire, Francis Higgins, a noted government spy. Perhaps the two most disturbing entries are of Edward Hepenstal, the man known as the Walking Gallows for his brutal methods of execution, and loyalist S.L. Corrigan’s account of the massacre of more than 200 Protestant prisoners at Scullabogue in Co. Wexford.
With a mixture of writings from the political and military leaders of the day, and the anonymous offerings of the rank and file participants, “The ’98 Reader”, augmented by a useful chronological table, provides an unusual view of this pivotal year in Irish history.

Dances with Waves by Brian Wilson
- Brian Wilson takes us on a 10-week journey around the coast of Ireland by kayak which began and finished at the port of Larne in the summer of 1990. The narrative is an absorbing mixture of history, geography, geology and folklore, with the highs and lows of propelling such a small craft around such a rocky coastline forming the major thread. Wilson has a gift for vivid description as well as a finely-tuned sense of humour, and he has the ability to see how his pink-suited figure in a green and yellow kayak might stand out rather incongruously among the fishing boats and currachs of the east and west coasts. His head-on meeting with a funeral party in a small Donegal village, and the “salvaging” of his beached canoe by an enterprising lobster fisherman on the Galway coast are particularly memorable events.
The author goes off at a tangent at the slightest opportunity, giving us details of the man who proclaimed himself King of the Saltees, expressing admiration for the harmony of man and vessel inherent in the currachs off Clare and Galway, and delighting in the communion between man and dolphin in his experiences with Fungi in Dingle Harbour. The book is filled with the characters Wilson encountered on his 1,200-mile journey, but the dominant character is the sea itself, and Wilson shows us that, what to the uninitiated is just one vast expanse of water, is, in fact, made up of regions, currents, Atlantic waves and whirlpools, each to be approached differently but all with respect. Altogether, “Dances with Waves” will keep you both entertained and enthralled.

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On A Greek Island by Fionnuala Brennan
- If you are expecting “On A Greek Island” to be full of idyllic pictures of life on a Greek island, where the sun always shines, the natives are always friendly and life is one long holiday, then this book will be something of a disappointment. Refreshingly, Fionnuala Brennan presents the realities of uprooting from Dublin with a husband and two small daughters in the 1970s to find a more peaceful home somewhere among the islands of Greece. Even the search for a home took three months or more of travelling by ferry from island to island, with the children becoming increasingly unhappy and insecure, and when they do finally find a home on the island of Paros, the privations and, in particular, the bone-chilling cold of a Greek winter make life a further struggle.
However the book does also have a positive side, the eventual arrival of spring, the cautious welcome and final acceptance by their island neighbours, the joys of self-sufficiency and the time and opportunity to follow creative pursuits. Rory and Fionnuala buy a derelict house and make it habitable, the grannies arrive over from Ireland for an extended visit and Orla, their older daughter, eventually settles into school and becomes fluent in Greek. At this point the Brennan children seem set to spend their childhood on Paros. But a chance remark from Orla, that she’d like to live somewhere where they speak her language, prompts the couple to question the wisdom of removing their daughters totally from the Irish education system and from the attentions of their grannies. Their solution is to have the best of both worlds, seven months in Ireland each year and five months in the summer on Paros.
This is a balanced and well-written account of an experiment in living which might indeed prompt other people to follow the same dream, but it also gives a realistic view of what such a dream entails. Twenty years on from their first visit, the Brennans found Paros to be a changed place, having become a mecca for young Europeans, and its once quiet villages are now full of bars and nightclubs, its rough tracks over the hills are tarred roads and the island is no longer the deserted paradise it once was.

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The Four Seasons of Mary Lavin by Leah Levenson
- Leah Levenson examines the life and literary development of the noted short story writer from her early childhood in Massachusetts to her death in Dublin 83 years later. In a remarkable life Mary Lavin reared her three young daughters singlehandedly after the death of her husband, William Walsh, and at the same time managed to sustain a career as a writer and the position of patron to those aspiring to the literary world in Dublin.
Mary Josephine Lavin was born in the US to a doting father and a more distant mother, both Irish-born, and was brought back to Ireland at the age of nine by her mother. Tom Lavin followed them home and subsequently became estate manager of Bective House in Co Meath, bought by a member of the family for whom he had worked in Massachusetts. Mary Lavin attended school in Dublin and went on to study in UCD. Her literary career grew out of a dissatisfaction with her PhD thesis on Virginia Woolf, which led her to pen her first short story, “Miss Holland”, later accepted by The Dublin Magazine.
While developing her career Mary was also trying to choose between two men in her life, William Walsh and the Jesuit novice Michael McDonald Scott, with whom she had formed a very close friendship. Her marriage to Walsh, her early widowhood and the way in which she met and overcame her difficulties, and her eventual marriage to Michael Scott in 1969 when he had left the priesthood, reveal the strength of character and determination which were Mary Lavin’s hallmarks. No less revealing are the many short stories, autobiographical to a considerable extent, details from which Ms Levenson uses to take a closer look at her subject. The book is written in four sections, the seasons of the title, and so we see Ms Lavin in her prime, at the centre of literary life in Dublin, we see her travelling on the Continent with her children on the strength of grants she had received for her work, and we see her gradual decline and the slide into depression after the death of Michael Scott.
In this biography Leah Levenson has not only introduced the reader to a major Irish short story writer, she has also introduced us to that writer’s literary output by highlighting the parallels between Ms Lavin’s works of fiction and her life experiences.

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A Tourist’s Guide to Ireland by Liam O’Flaherty
- In “A Tourist’s Guide to Ireland”, O’Flaherty maintains that the visitor to our country must acquaint himself with “the four Ps” - the priest, the politician, the publican and the peasant, if he is to make the most of his stay in Ireland. The parish priest, to whom he ascribes “the great and only power” in country districts, must be studied and exploited. O’Flaherty warns against the mysticism of politicians, who see their country as, variously, Kathleen ni Houlihan and the Old Hag of Beara, and continues the theme of exploitation in asserting that “no politician in this country considers the state in any other light than as an institution to be exploited”. (Perhaps at this stage I should point out that the guide was first published in 1929.) Publicans come in for more of this condemnation, though the author begins by claiming that the publican has made the greatest contribution to civilization. For Irish publicans, however, he has little but contempt, believing that they rob tourists “in every way that it is conceivable to rob a tourist”. O’Flaherty saves his admiration for the peasant, the only natural type of human being in the country, though he finally admits that the pivot of Irish life is the gombeen man, who is the master of exploitation.
The Return of the Brute by Liam O’Flaherty - The Return of the Brute, is an examination of the effects of the brutality of warfare on a disparate group of soldiers in World War I. The nine soldiers meet their deaths one by one in a variety of ways, each grimmer than the last, until Private Reilly is the only one left alive. The horrors of trench warfare, both physical and mental, are vividly portrayed as we see the gradual loss of sensitivity and the piecemeal disintegration of the group. Much of the action centres upon Private William Gunn, who paradoxically saves the life of the corporal he ultimately murders.

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Irish Rebellions 1798-1916 by Helen Litton
- “Irish Rebellions 1798-1916” is a useful accompaniment to this bicentenary year in that it demonstrates the link between each successive rebellion, irrespective of their degrees of success. Ms Litton maintains for example that, while Robert Emmet’s 1803 rebellion was deemed a failure, the seeds were sown for the attempts of the Young Irelanders in 1848. She demonstrates how the accumulated legacy of each uprising led irrevocably to the rebellion of 1916, and in an epilogue points out that the one common thread was that the leaders were often unaware of the feelings of the vast majority of their fellow countrymen. With its abundance of drawings, photographs and reproductions of recruiting posters, this illustrated history gives a sense of continuity to the struggle for independence in Ireland.

The Secret of Drumshee Castle & The Secret of 1798 by Cora Harrison
- Two children’s books in the Drumshee Timeline Series by Cora Harrison are “The Secret of Drumshee Castle”, set in Co. Clare in the time of Elizabeth I, and “The Secret of 1798”, which has the same setting but incorporates the arrival of a French soldier into the area. The stories lead children easily into the different historical periods and introduce them to the idea of historical progression with the use of the one location, though the action is by no means confined to the banks of the Fergus. In “The Secret of Drumcree” Grace visits the court of Queen Elizabeth in London, while in “The Secret of 1798” we leave Caitriona as she is about to travel to France to follow a singing career.

An Irish Legacy by Ian Wishart
- New Zealand journalist Ian Wishart has chronicled the saga of the deportation from his country of Belfastman Danny Butler in “An Irish Legacy”. Danny fled Belfast with his family when his life was threatened by the IPLO, and so began a seven-year battle to gain refugee status in New Zealand in order to be allowed permanent residency. Alleging that New Zealand soldiers have worked with the SAS in the North of Ireland, the author suggests that the Butler family never had a chance of being allowed to stay due to the New Zealand Government’s strong links with the British establishment, though a case is cited of a loyalist with a firearms conviction being granted residency. Danny Butler and his family are now living in the South of Ireland, awaiting permission to emigrate, possibly to Australia.

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John Hamilton of Donegal by Dermot James
- the story of a benevolent landlord who spent much of his own personal fortune in helping his tenants during the famine years of the early 1800s, and is based largely on Hamilton’s own family journals. His estates centred on Donegal Town and in 1830 he took the unusual step of giving up one meal a week for a period of five months, giving the food saved to the local poor. In this scheme he was also joined by many local families, small farmers as well as gentry. Much of the middle section of the book is taken up with a protracted journey through Europe undertaken by the Hamilton family, during which their daughter Isabella died. Hamilton used his observations of the different farming methods in Europe to improve his estate and the conditions in which his tenants lived, and undertook many schemes to relieve suffering after the potato failure of 1845. In this book Dermot James celebrates the life of a good landlord, as an antidote to the likes of Lord Leitrim or George Adair, whose reputations have become legendary.

Ulster Loyalism and the British Media by Alan F. Parkinson
Alan F. Parkinson has updated his doctoral thesis which set out to demonstrate that the British media has consistently misrepresented loyalism since the first civil rights marches of 1968, and in doing so has unduly influenced British attitudes to the part played by unionists in the Northern conflict. Parkinson devotes the first section of the book to an examination of the nature of loyalism itself, and uses the example of the Enniskillen bombing to underline his claim that the condemnation of the republican element in the conflict does not result in positive coverage for the unionists. The second section examines in more detail examples of British press coverage of events in the North and attempts to discover the reason for the apparent bias against the unionists, which the author partly attributes to the predominance of factual rather than analytical reporting.

The Dingle Way Companion by Tony O’Callaghan
- “The Dingle Way Companion” is a well-illustrated guide to the designated Kerry walk known as the Dingle Way. Following a general introduction to the geology, flora and fauna of the area, the author takes us stage by stage on the 112-mile route which begins and ends in Tralee, giving careful instructions on signs to follow and noting interesting and unusual features which the walker may meet on his or her way.

Pilgrims by John Evans
- John Evans, a Wexford man who himself lives in Frankfurt, has produced a fascinating study of a man trying to escape from his past in “Pilgrims”. Michael Dwyer has moved to Germany where he lives with his partner, Maria, and we are introduced to him as he learns by telephone of his father’s death. The author then allows us to eavesdrop on Michael’s attempts to avoid all responsibility, first for his mother, then for his unfaithfulness to his partner and his eventual abandonment of her and their unborn child. In his path through life he leaves a trail of unhappiness and disappointment and eventually comes to realise that he is a coward who has always taken the path of least resistance. This is a beautifully written and compelling book which I read at one sitting.

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