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Evelyn Conlan, My Head is Opening: A Collection of Short Stories (Attic); Leland Bardwell, A Different Kind of Love: A Collection of Short Stories (Attic); both April 1987. Pat Murphy & Nell McCafferty, Women in Focus: Contemporary Women’s lives (March 1987). Anthony Gaughan, Alfred O’Rahilly, 1: Academic (Dublin: Kingdom Books), 352pp. [one of 3 vols.]. T. J. Whitaker remarked that, reviewing his career, ‘one is not tempted into hagiography’; Jesuit ed.; orig. intended for ordination; Cardinal de Brún: ‘Alfie’s Life of Christ would not be as interesting as Christ’s Life of Alfie’; belief in academic freedom, as regards structure, though unashamedly confessional as to content; quotes, ‘Nor, in spite of the liberalistic bias of this foundation [UCC] do we believe in higher education divorced from sound philosophy and religion … we also maintain a specifically Catholic training for our Catholic students’; further. ‘Negative non-denominationalism does not appeal to us in Cork’; wrote of his worm on Electro-magnetism, ‘I have not now the smallest doubt that I have Einstein refuted’; remarked that he had discovered a much stricter orthodoxy [resisting his ideas], in science than theology; sent to Jesuit seminary by mother purportedly for writing too warmly to a cousin whom he eventually married; University lecturer in Math. Physics; Registrar under President Merriman; promoted adult and workers’ extension education; NUI administrator; called bodach diail by Cormac O’Cadhlaigh, his opponent for the presidency; called by Myles na Gopaleen ‘Alf the sacred river’; established Dairy Science in opposition to Tom McElligott, 1931 This Teaching Life, T. J. McElligott (Lilliput); taught in 14 schools; travelled to Canada, 1977; Noel Browne, Against the Tide (Gill & Macmillan) Joseph Robins, Fools and Mad: A History of the Insane in Ireland (IPA), 280pp., 16 pls.. Emelie Fitzgibbon, Review of Thomas Murphy, Bailegangaire (Gallery); Conversations on a Homecoming (Gallery), a reworking of The White House. Dominating the stage, and the lives of her two grand-daughters, Mommo is at once larger than life and pathetic, a bully and a burden, full of nastiness and love. Above all Mommo is a wordsmith creating the sounds and the scenes of a distant past for the imaginary small children at the foot of her bed, sculpting characters and landscape with a hug voice one moment and declining the nest to the whining pleas of decrepit old age. Mommo is the most extraordinary, powerful and complex character which Irish dramatic writing has produced in a generation. Homecoming [T]akes place in the lounge bar of The White House, built with seemingly idealistic aims by J.J. who say himself as a rural John Fitzgerald Kennedy; the homecoming is that of Michael, once an aspiring actor, and the conversations spin round the vortex created by his reappearance among his erstwhile friends. Nothing stands still, expectations cannot be achieved, the past is another place. Conversations on a Homecoming is a humorous play at times but it is not one which allows its audience to be untouched by identification and recognition. Of Frank McGuinness, The Sons of Ulster: a play which explores the mind of Ulster unionism and the sacred trust to preserve it placed in the hands of survivors of the Battle of the Somme, which symbolically took place on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. To my mind, it is a companion play to McGuinness’s theatre-in-education piece Gatherers (unfortunately not yet published) which explores the symbolic significance of Catholicism in the South. Both pieces also use a particular type of canticle writing which is poetic, evocative and theatrically effective. Above all, however, in Observe [&c] McGuinness creates stage symbols - blood red hands, the extraordinary self-destructive and purgative beatings of the Lambeg drum - and character dynamics which embody and convey the imagistic density of the language. As a piece of political theatre it is riveting; as a canticle of human understanding it is deeply and profoundly moving. Tom Kilroy, Double Cross (Gallery): ‘it is a fascinating play - or is it two fascinating plays - but I found myself wondering if the fascination it manages is with the ideas it provokes and if there is some inherently undramatic quality in their realisation. The play examines the nature of national identity, of self-created image, of falsity, and when and if that falsity is, ultimately, treachery. The examination centres on Bracken, Minster of Information to Winston Churchill, in the first play and on William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, in the second. The plays mirror one another with Joyce “appearing” on radio and film in the Bracken play and Bracken doing likewise in the Joyce play, and the confusion of image is accentuated by the doubling [33] of roles, the central actor playing both parts. What did these men become when their Irishness was absorbed into another cultural frame? But for a trick of fate could one have acted the part of the other, two purveyors of illusion, makers of myth for a nation not their own?’ Remarks that Double Cross is a play with ‘unresolved problems … but well worth investigating’. Nollaig O Gadhra, ‘Folk Memorial’, on the plaque at the site of the house where the Joyce Brothers, P. W. and Robert, were born; Irish Music and Song (M. H. Gill & Sons 1887), ed. for Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language by PW Joyce, LLD, MRIA, national school inspector; patrons of the society were Dr. Croke (Archb. Cashel); Right Hon. The O’Connor Don (President, and MP for Roscommon, and close friend of Hyde; quotes Joyce’s Preface, ‘This selection of Irish Songs is the first of its kind ever published. We have had many collections of Irish sons and many of Irish Music; but in no case have the songs been set to the music - the syllables under the notes.’ Sean O Riada set out to convince us that we should treat our musical heritage as seriously as international scholars and musicians did. Cites airs in Joyce collection: Eibhlin a Rúin, An Raibh Tú ag gCarraig?, Seoghan O Dhuibhit an Ghleanne, Ar Eirinn Ní Neosainn Cé hÍ, Báncnoic Eireann Oigh, Druimfhionn Donn Dílis, Eoghan Cóir, Is Trua Gan Peata an Mhaoir Agam, Páistín Fionn, Jimmy mo Mhíle Stór, Fáinne Geal an Lae, Tiagharna Mhaigh Eo, and Móirín Ní Chillionáin. Obit. notice on Ewart Milne, 1903-1987, by Gearoid O’Brien (poet and Athlone librarian); author was recipient of letters form this ‘inveterate letter-writer’; b. Dublin, May 1903; ed. Nunscross Nat. School, Wicklow, and Christchurch Grammar School, Dublin; emig. 1919; Irish mother and English fatter; m. Kathleen Bradner, with sons Charles Siegfried (d. in infancy) and Charles Beresford; divorce; sailor, teacher, book-reviewer, journalist, ambulance driver in Spain; estate manager; m. Thelma Dobson, 1948; two sons, Justin and Kevin; returned to Dublin, early 1960s; Thelma d. 1964; left Ireland on learning that his wife had been unfaithful; Time Stopped, confessional poetry and prose; later ambivalence about innate Irishness and need to live in exile; first collection published by Cecil Salkeld’s Gayfield Press, 1938; 16 books; festschrift Ewart Milne for his 80th Birthday (Prospice 14); friendship with Charlie Donnelly; short stories, Drums Without End (1985); the author invited to make selection of his poetry; The Broken Arcs, a last collection, produced by Jim Greene of Aquila [incls. elegiac verses: ‘Though gone his spirit will remain/Remember him in the sands of Sandymount/and the sparkle of Wicklow granite’] (Books Ireland, p.34.) . Aidan Murphy, three poems, “The way the Money Goes”, “I Got” [I got you, perfect/sex, & perfect talk.//I got doubt/ A view/from a hill on a clear day/that stank of frailty;/my own life cut/like a student’s rabbit/cold on a slab/with its innards tagged.//I got truth on a tree/on a Saturday., the smell/of good earth, smoke-/signals from the junction.//I got you in moonlight/naked. The music I love’; and “Written in Water”. (Books Ireland, p.34.) Sydney Bernard Smith, rev. of McCormack, The Battle of the Books (Lilliput), instances chapters on Atlantis, Terence Brown, Edna Longley, C. C. O’Brien, his own Ascendancy and Tradition reconsidered, and Heaney’s Preoccupations. Also rev. Edna Longley, Poetry in the Wars (Bloodaxe) and Neil Corcoran, Seamus Heaney (Faber). Books Ireland, pp.35. C. George Sandulescu & Clive Hart, eds., Assessing the 1984 Ulysses (Princess Grace Irish Lib., Monaco); Michael J. O’Shea, James Joyce and Heraldry (SUNY Press); Richard Wall, An Anglo-Irish Glossary (Colin Smythe; Syracuse UP). Jeremy Addis, ‘To Learn or Understand’ [review of education series]; also ‘Faith and Commerce’, review of Mercier publications; Seán P. Ó Mathuna, William Bathe, SJ 1564-1614: A Pioneer in Linguistics 1st end. Oifig na. tSol.] (John Amsterdam: Benjamins BV), ‘Poet Maurice Scully has solved the publisher problem by means of that sine qua non of modern office (and no doubt school) life - and faithful friend of copyright thieves - the photocopier [...] limited precisely to demand - they are run off when required” at 50 pence a sheet.’ Coelancth Press (Books Ireland, p.46.) Paul Muldoon, James Simmons and Bernard MacLaverty at Cardiff Literature Fest., 2-9 May. Ireland and Insular Art AD 500-1200 (RIA); History of the Irish in Britain: A Bibliography (Irish in Britain History Centre). Tony Farmar, Chairman of Assoc. of Freelance Editors and Indexers Tracks, Special Thomas Kinsella Issue (March 1987.) Grafton Paladin reiss. Aidan Higgins Langrishe, Go Down [editor notes typo. ‘misrememberance’ in blurb.]. Patrick Ussher, European Intellectual Property Review, 1979; artists tax exemption inscribed in Finance Act 1969, Sect. 2, introduced by Charles J. Haughey. Mr Justice Barrington ruled that ‘original and creative’ should not only apply to fiction. Robert Greacen, rev. of Eilean Ni Chuileannain, The Second Voyage (Gallery/Bloodaxe) [42 poems from previous collections]; Eavan Boland, The Journey and Other Poems (Carcanet/Arlen), 60pp; Anne Hartigan, Return Single (Beaver), 60pp.; Paula Meehan, Reading the Sky (Beaver Row), 47pp.: Quotes Boland, “I Remember”, of her mother’s studio: ‘I remember the way the big windows washed/out the room and the winter darkness tinted/it and how, in the brute quiet and aftermath,/an eyebrow waited helpless to be composed//from the palette with its scarabs of oil/colours gleaming through a dusk leaking from/the iron railings and the ruined evenings of/bombed-out, post-war London […]’ Quotes Paula Meehan, “When My Father was a Young Man”: ‘It was flight itself that was growing./I was bright ribbon to his maypole. My feet/Tangled in the clouds of his shoulders/And all the blue blossoms fell to the grass.’ (Books Ireland, p.49.) Lord Longford, The Bishops (Sidgewick & Jackson), incl. portrait of Cardinal Ó Fiaich. Tony Quinn, review of Trevor West, Horace Plunkett, Co-operation and Politics: An Irish Biography (Colin Smythe/CUA Press); Dana Hearne, ed., Anna Parnell, The Tale of a Great Sham (Arlen House). Plunkett started co-op on family estate in Dunsany, Co. Meath, 1878; realised that ‘better farming, better business and better living’ most follow the land war; Unionist MP, S. Dublin, 1892; later a Dominion Home Ruler; worked with Congested Districts Board; first Head of Dept. of Agriculture and Technical Instruction; fnd. United Irishwomen, forerunner of Irish countrywomen’s Association’ and much concerned with suffrage, having written on the subject based on his experience in America. ‘Ireland in the New Century, Plunkett’s best known book (1904) shows his vision of a better society and also his political naivety. His critical references to Irish Catholicism touched a raw nerve and he was regarded as a kind of enemy of the people.’ (Tony Quinn, Books Ireland, p.52.) Bibl., Pat Bolger, The Irish Co-operative Movement: It is History and Development (1977). Books received
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