The King of All Birds

Ideally I should have posted this on St. Stephen's Day (December 26th according to the Western Christian calendar), but the elements didn't come together until this week.

Back in December my wife and I went to our local music venue for a performance by two Irish-born musicians, John Doyle and Mick McAuley. The concert was billed as "An Irish Christmas" and was accompanied by a CD entitled This Christmas Time. At one point early on in the evening one of the two men (I think it was John Doyle) joked that birds were going to be mentioned in every song that night, and while this didn't turn out to be literally the case there were in fact two notable songs about wrens, specifically, about the Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes), which we don't have here.

The first song, "Gleann na n-Éan," was a Doyle original, although the story it tells dates back at least to Plutarch (who attributed it to Aesop). The birds gather to choose a king, the crown to be awarded to the bird that can fly highest. The boastful eagle outlasts all the other contestants, but just as he proclaims his triumph the wren, who had ridden to the top concealed on his back, proclaims that he in fact is the highest.

The status of the wren (or in some cases the similarly sized goldcrest, which sports a gold "crown") as king of the birds persisted through the Middle Ages, and a peculiar custom developed of ritually killing a wren every year on St. Stephen's Day, parading it through town on a pole, and begging for money to pay for its interment. The second wren song performed that evening was thus a version of the ditty that was traditionally sung as the procession moved from door to door. (The practice of ritually killing a king at the end of each year did not go unnoticed by Frazer in The Golden Bough). The custom still persists in parts of Ireland, although thankfully no actual birds are now harmed.

Those two songs were still in my head when I came to the crossword puzzle in the New York Times for January 18th, where I found this clue:

48 Across: Avian symbol of good fortune in Celtic culture

It didn't take me long to fill in the four letters of the bird's name. And then I remembered another curious appearance of the Eurasian wren, in Elizabeth Hand's story "Pavane for a Prince of the Air" (from Saffron and Brimstone) which is set in Maine. Hand's tale follows the terminal illness and eventual death of a man named Cal, an old friend of the narrator. After Cal dies and is cremated, his grief-stricken wife and the narrator sift through his uncrushed ashes, picking out fragments of bones and the remains of trinkets that had been placed in the coffin. When they're done they go outside and shake out the sheet bearing the fine particles that are left behind. (The story makes explicit reference to "The Juniper Tree," where the bones of a murdered child are gathered up and placed beneath a tree, only to return to life in the form of a brilliant bird.) While the widow travels the world, scattering portions of Cal's ashes and seeking his next incarnation, it is to the narrator that the title "prince" or king seems to reappear, in the form of a bird not found in Maine at all.

Still, the bird is here. I researched it online, and in some books of folklore I have, and learned that the European wren is the bird that was the subject of the annual wren hunt, an ancient pre-Christian ritual of death and resurrection, still practiced in obscure parts of Ireland and the Isle of Man. It is a creature known for its cheer and its valor, its bravery suiting a bird of far greater size; and also for its song, which is piercingly sweet and flutelike, carrying for miles on a clear day.

As the narrator continues to write at her desk, the bird watches her work. The story concludes:

It sings, day after day after day, and sometimes into the night as well. I never cease to marvel at the sound.

Sweet Thames Flow Softly

I've always enjoyed this Ewan MacColl song, which I first heard on Planxty's eponymous debut album, but this gentle version (featuring some additional verses) is special. The lead vocalist is Christy Moore, as on the Planxty LP; he is accompanied here by the late Sinéad O'Connor and by guitarist Neill MacColl, who is Ewan's son. (His mother, still living, is Peggy Seeger, half-sister of Pete.)

Strange Islands

The story of the adventures of the Irish abbot St. Brendan or Brenainn was a popular one in the middle ages, with a substantial number of manuscripts surviving. The most familiar version, the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, was written in Latin and may date to the eighth century, that is, roughly two centuries after Brendan is thought to have died. A translation is found in the Penguin Classics volume entitled The Age of Bede (where it's arguably an odd fit); another, by John J. O'Meara, is available from Colin Smythe Ltd under the title of The Voyage of Saint Brendan, Journey to the Promised Land.

Brendan's travels, like those of Odysseus, involve visits to several wondrous islands, including in his case one that is inhabited entirely by psalm-singing birds and another that turns out to be an enormous sea-creature named Jasconius (from Old Irish íasc, fish). He and his fellow monks come upon what seems to be an iceberg as well as something that sounds very much like a volcano, and these and other passages have led some observers to surmise that Brendan or other early Irish travelers may have visited the North Atlantic and even North America. The notion isn't entirely far-fetched, as Irish monks — the papar — traveled as far as Iceland at a very early date. On the other hand, Brendan's adventures seem to have mythological parallels in pre-Christian Ireland and elsewhere.

But there's another Brendan tradition, one that is preserved in the Irish language in a manuscript known as the Book of Lismore. This version, the Betha Brenainn, seems to be harder to find outside of scholarly works like Whitley Stokes's Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore and Denis O'Donoghue's Brendaniana: St. Brendan the Voyager in Story and Legend, both of which date to the 1890s. The Irish-language version may be less satisfying to the modern reader than the Latin one, but it has its own charm (at least in translation). Here, for example, is Stokes's rendering of a dazzling passage — not unworthy of Homer — that describes the outset of Brendan's voyage:

So Brenainn, son of Finnlug, sailed then over the wave-voice of the strong-maned sea, and over the storm of the green-sided waves, and over the mouths of the marvellous, awful, bitter ocean, where they saw the multitude of the furious red-mouthed monsters, with abundance of great sea-whales. And they found beautiful, marvellous islands, and yet they tarried not therein.

The writer's sheer delight in language receives its richest expression in a lengthy enumeration of the sights of Hell, which are shown to Brendan in consideration of his special sanctity. Stokes again:

It goes on from there, itemizing "cats scratching; hounds rending; dogs hunting; demons yelling; stinking lakes..." and, finally, "tortures vast, various." No torment is left uncatalogued, no linguistic resource left unused. If no one has thought of doing so, it would be fun to see an edition bringing together translations of the Latin Navigatio and the Irish version in one accessible volume.

Below is the first installment of a three-part reading of the O'Meara translation of the Navagatio by the Dean of Canterbury, the Very Reverend Dr. Robert Willis.

Notebook: Seeing Music

Christy Moore:

When I go to West Clare I can see the music in the hills and stony fields. Today I look out upon the Sheep's Head and over Dunmanus Bay to Mount Gabriel and I can see many things: the beauty of it all, the bay, the beacons — as one man tries to quietly fish in it another hungry man seeks to poison it. I can see God's work everywhere but I cannot see the music. In West Clare you can see the fiddle music, you can stand looking over a stone wall into a poor little field and it is there as plain as day. I saw concertina music on the square in Kilrush in 1964 and the vision never left me. Coming up from The White Strand in Milltown Malbay I met chanter music, and on the windswept Hill of Tulla (East Clare) I met the man that wrote Spancilhill. The music scarpered off the big fields of Meath and Kildare — there is no sign of it at all. I have seen it in Ahascragh too, and above in Ardara and you can plainly see the flute music in Fisher Street. You'd always have a better chance of glimpsing it around stony half acres, but seldom if ever on the ranches brimming with sleek shiny bullocks full of antibiotics and growth hormones. Show me a scrawny auld heifer unable for a bull and I'll show you a slow air with a slip jig traipsing after it. The combine harvesters have driven the music out of the John Hinde-coloured pastures where it has been forced to live in exile in libraries and museums. It needs the birdsong and the meadow to breathe, the wind through the furze, the distant corncrake in the meadow, the smell of the fair day.

From One Voice: My Life in Song (Hodder & Stoughton, 2000).

"Spancilhill" (or "Spancil Hill"): a song associated with Robbie McMahon, a version of which appears on Christy Moore's 1970 album Prosperous. John Hinde was a popular photographer and creator of nostalgic colored postcards.

"Humility and Authority"

Ireland's TG4 has broadcast a superb documentary about the master uilleann piper Liam O'Flynn, a beloved figure whose modest manner coexisted with a deep sense of responsibility to the musical tradition that he inherited and expanded. Presented in Irish (with subtitles) and English, and featuring commentary from his wife, band mates, and friends, as well as a generous sampling of his music, it will be available online for the next month or so. Don't miss it.

Update: TG4 now seems to be making this available indefinitely.

Farewell, Liam

The great Irish piper Liam O'Flynn has died, according to RTÉ and other sources.

I owe my interest in Irish music directly to O'Flynn, whose uilleann piping on Planxty's "Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór" from their debut album released in 1973 caught my ear when I heard it on the old Pacifica Radio program Echoes from Tara.

With their long hair, Balkan time signatures, and exotic bouzoukis, Planxty were a fairly radical group within Irish music when they started out, but no matter how far they strayed O'Flynn was always there to give them trad cred. He once said, of his fiendishly difficult instrument:

The old pipers used to say that it takes twenty-one years to make a piper: seven years of learning, seven years of practicing and seven years of playing. I think there's a lot of truth to that because it's a complex instrument and requires a lot of co-ordination to play a tune. You're learning all the time.

Below is another clip of Liam and Planxty, from a reunion concert in 2004, with O'Flynn playing a set of pipes that formerly belonged to another great piper, Willie Clancy, as well a documentary from a few years back (mostly in Irish, with English subtitles).

Update: The New York Times now has a nice obituary of O'Flynn.

Planxty in their prime

Universal Music Ireland has released a modestly-priced CD & DVD package devoted to my favorite Irish trad band, Planxty. Entitled Between the Jigs and the Reels: A Retrospective, it doesn't appear to be officially available in the US thus far, but it can be obtained from Ireland or the UK without much difficulty if you look around. As far as I can tell, all of the tracks on the CD have been released previously (though a couple were new to me), but it's nice to have them together. The DVD is a different story: it's more than two hours and forty minutes of wonderful archival footage of the band during its heyday (the footage spans the years 1972 to 1982), and although some of it has been out there in one form or another much of it I had never seen. (A disclaimer warns that some of the archival material may have imperfections because of the quality of the source material, but I didn't find that to be an issue at all.)

Planxty last reunited for a series of concerts in 2005, and word is that it's unlikely that they will do so again, although all of the original members — Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Dónal Lunny, and Liam O'Flynn — are still around and performing, sometimes in various combinations with each other. If their work together has run its course then this retrospective is a nice summing-up.

Below: Planxty from 1973 performing "Raggle Taggle Gypsy," with the famous transition into "Tabhair dom do lámh." Leagues O'Toole describes this arrangement as "possibly the first ever attempt to play a folk song straight into a traditional tune by an ensemble of Irish musicians."

The Gloaming: 2

The ensemble known as The Gloaming (Thomas Bartlett, Dennis Cahill, Martin Hayes, Iarla Ó Lionáird, and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh) has released its second CD, entitled simply 2. While perhaps not as groundbreaking as the group's first release, it's still a very enjoyable record. My favorite track so far is the concluding one, "The Old Favourite."

A version of one track, "Casadh an tSúgáin," is featured in the movie Brooklyn, where it is sung on camera by Iarla Ó Lionáird. The cover image, as was the case with the first Gloaming CD, is by the artist-photographers Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison; it's called "Flying Lesson."

Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill

This is really splendid: fiddler Martin Hayes and guitarist Dennis Cahill, from NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series. I love the relaxed intimacy of the performance; it's like having them in your living room.

Hayes and Cahill have played together for years, most recently as part of a superb five-man band called The Gloaming.

The Gloaming

The Gloaming — Iarla Ó Lionáird (vocals), Thomas Bartlett (piano), Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (hardanger fiddle), Martin Hayes (violin/fiddle) & Dennis Cahill (guitar) — are a quintet of experienced musicians, three from Ireland, and two from the US, whose self-titled first record (above) was released in January 2014. They play a kind of stripped-down Irish trad, by turns haunting and breathtaking, that manages at once to innovate and to draw forth the music's deepest and most ancient core. It's really quite special. Below is one live performance, featuring nine and one-half dazzling minutes of Martin Hayes.

The Gloaming can be purchased from Real World Records or Brassland Records.

On the memory of stones (Benedict Kiely)

— In Devon, he assures her, lived a man who experimented in dousing and other devilment. He found by means of his dousing pendulum that some seashore stones he tested responded to the vibration tests for anger. He concluded that once upon a time those stones had been used for war and murder.
— Crap a brick, as my father used to say. What rot is that?

Though the two novels were published within a few years of each other and both deal (at least in part) with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Bernard MacLaverty's Cal (see last post) and Benedict Kiely's Nothing Happens in Carmincross could hardly be more different in tone and manner, the former taut and efficient and the latter rambling and verbose — but not necessarily less entertaining for all that. Kiely's novel follows the travels of an Irish academic who has come home from America in order to attend a wedding just across the border in the North. For most of the novel what actually "happens" is next to nothing, mostly drinking, rambling around, talking, a bit of screwing, but the book has the pleasures of listening to a long-winded but gifted storyteller with a seemingly inexhaustible store of events, memories, legends, and lies at his disposal. Scraps of song, newspaper clippings, and references to Irish history and mythology are woven into almost every paragraph, and much of it is bound to fly over the head of the average reader (like me). Yet despite its generally flippant tone, the book never strays far from the theme of violence.

The sanguinary Irish ballad "Follow Me Up to Carlow" is quoted in the book's first pages, and Planxty's rousing version (below) is possibly the one Kiely had in mind. In keeping with the spirit of the novel it should be listened to appreciatively but with a healthy dose of irony as well. The singer is Christy Moore.

The cottage (Bernard MacLaverty)

Cal heated a tin of beans and tasted himself slice after slice of bread at the fire. He fell asleep and when he awoke it was dark. He rubbed the window and looked out. Between the cottage and the lights of the farmhouse he could see the blizzard. It was after eight o'clock and the fire had died down. Shivering, he raked the embers to redness and put on some kindling wood, then blocks on top of that. He pulled his chair nearer to the fire and put his feet up against the tiles of the mantelpiece. After such a long sleep he knew he would spend the night tortured with guilt and insomnia. There was a knock at the door and he leapt to answer it, knowing who it was.

Bernard MacLaverty's Cal is now thirty years old, and it has probably been at least twenty-five years since the last time I read it. I picked it up again earlier this week, prompted by the death of Seamus Heaney, who like MacLaverty was a native of what depending on your point of view is either Northern Ireland or Ulster. Set during the height of the Troubles, the novel follows one not very willing participant, a teenaged boy with no particular prospects who is pretty much trapped from the outset, though his story will take some unexpected turns along the way. Dark as the background is, and as grim as the unfolding of the events, there's nevertheless a gentleness about the book, as MacLaverty is more interested in his characters than he is in indulging in yet another rehearsal of the cycles of violence and retribution that finally seem to have burned out, at least for now, in that much bled-over corner of the world.

Put another way, the book is not an example of noir. Which isn't to say that it holds out much hope, but it does at least have enough compassion for its characters to make us care about their fates, even if their prospects for happiness were never more than remote.

Bernard MacLaverty has written many short stories, some of which I've read and which are very good indeed, and several other novels, which I've never quite caught up with. This one still holds up quite well.

Seamus Heaney 1939-2013

Across that strand of ours the cattle graze
Up to their bellies in an early mist
And now they turn their unbewildered gaze
To where we work our way through squeaking sedge
Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge
Honed bright, Lough Beg half shines under the haze.
I turn because the sweeping of your feet
Has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees
With blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes,
Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass
And gather up cold handfuls of the dew
To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss
Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud.
I lift you under the arms and lay you flat.
With rushes that shoot green again, I plait
Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.

From "The Strand at Lough Beg"

Jacket photo by Virginia Schendler, from Selected Poems 1966-1987

Money home

These receipts from The Williams & Guion steamship company were made out to a young Irish immigrant named Margaret Nagle for sums she sent to her father from New York City in 1866 (or possibly 1868) and 1870. A portion of the correspondence between Margaret and her family also survives, and is the subject of an earlier post.

A contemporary account, John Francis Maguire's The Irish in America (1868), conveys in vivid if occasionally rather florid terms the importance of the widespread practice of sending money home, which served both to maintain emotional ties with distant family and to provide a crucial lifeline for those left behind.

The great ambition of the Irish girl is to send "something" to her people as soon as possible after she has landed in America; and in innumerable instances the first tidings of her arrival in the New World are accompanied with a remittance, the fruits of her first earnings in her first place. Loving a bit of finery dearly, she will resolutely shut her eyes to the attractions of some enticing article of dress, to prove to the loved ones at home that she has not forgotten them; and she will risk the danger of insufficient clothing, or boots not proof against rain or snow, rather than diminish the amount of the little hoard to which she is weekly adding, and which she intends as a delightful surprise to parents who possibly did not altogether approve of her hazardous enterprise. To send money to her people, she will deny herself innocent enjoyments, womanly indulgences, and the gratifications of legitimate vanity; and such is the generous and affectionate nature of these young girls, that they regard the sacrifices they make as the most ordinary matter in the world, for which they merit neither praise nor approval. To assist their relatives, whether parents, or brothers and sisters, is with them a matter of imperative duty, which they do not and cannot think of disobeying, and which, on the contrary, they delight in performing. And the money destined to that purpose is regarded as sacred, and must not be diverted to any object less worthy.

One of the receipts pictured above is dated December 12th (the other date is harder to make out), which corresponds to what Maguire has to say about the seasonal pattern of homeward remittances:

With all banks and offices through which money is sent to Ireland the months of December and March are the busiest portions of the year. The largest amount is then sent; then the offices are full of bustling, eager, indeed clamorous applicants, and then are the clerks hard set in their attempts to satisfy the demands of the impatient senders, who are mostly females, and chiefly "girls in place."

The "girls in place" were domestic servants, the army of Irish "Bridgets" like Margaret Nagle who freed upper- and middle-class women from household duties that conflicted with Victorian ideals of womanhood. At least in urban areas, the daughters were regarded as more reliable remitters:

In populous cities the women send home more money than the men; in small towns and rural districts the men are as constant in their remittances, and perhaps send larger sums. Great cities offer too many temptations to improvidence or to vice, while in small places and rural districts temptations are fewer, and the occasion for spending money recklessly less frequent; hence it is, that the man who, amidst the whirl and excitement of life in a great city, but occasionally sends $10 or $20 to the old people at home, sends frequent and liberal remittances when once he breathes the purer air of the country, and frees himself from the dangerous fascination of the drinking-saloon.

The Williams & Guion steamship company was operated by John S. Williams & Stephen B. Guion. Below are excerpts from the latter's obituary in the New York Times (December 20, 1885), which provides an overview of the company's history.

Stephen Barker Guion was born in New-York June 17, 1820. [...] In 1843, at the age of 23, he entered into partnership with John S. Williams, and founded the firm of Williams & Guion to engage in the ocean-carrying trade. In those days the great bulk of the business of transportation between this country and Europe was done in sailing vessels, and Williams & Guion established a line of fast sailing packets between New-York and Liverpool, known as the "Black Star Line." They carried cabin and steerage passengers as well as freight, and the line soon became popular on account of its speed and the superior accommodations provided for its passengers. The ships were American clippers, and the fleet soon grew to 18 vessels, which did a large and profitable business. The Adelaide, John Bright, Cultivator, Universe, and their sister ships made some remarkably quick passages which old sailors are fond of recalling even in the present day of ocean steamships. In 1858 Mr. Guion went to Liverpool, and while still retaining his connection as junior partner of the New-York house established a new English house under the title of Guion & Co., which acted as agents of the Black Star Line. He had resided there ever since.

In 1868 Williams & Guion determined to abandon sailing-vessels, and the Manhattan was built, the first steamship or the Williams & Guion Line. The old packets were kept running until a sufficient fleet of steamers to accommodate the patrons of the firm was constructed, and then the Black Star Line disappeared from the commercial world. The old flag, with its inky star, was retained, however, and it still floats above the Guion steamers.

Since Margaret Nagle is known to have arrived in New York by August 1866, she may well have taken a Black Star ship on her voyage across the Atlantic and then continued to use the company for her remittances home.

Further reading:

Lynch-Brennan, Margaret The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America, 1840-1930 (Syracuse University Press, 2009)

Miller, Kerby Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (Oxford University Press, 1985)

Stansell, Christine City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (University of Illinois Press, 1987)

Laccabawn to New York

The letter transcribed and reproduced here is part of a small cache of correspondence exchanged between Margaret Nagle or Neagle, a young Irish immigrant in New York City, and her parents, of whom we know only the name of her father, John. The letters cover the period from August 1866 to March 1870.

Margaret, who periodically sent money home, apparently worked as a domestic servant, and reported -- truthfully or not -- that she had no difficulty finding employment. In the other letters there are indications that neither she nor her parents were able to read or write (Margaret does once mention that she is attempting to learn), so the entire correspondence would have been conducted by means of proxies. Although at one point she gives an address on West 20th Street, she generally requested that letters be sent to her care of the general post office in New York City.

At least two of Margaret's siblings remained at home in Ireland: a brother, also named John, and her younger sister Mary. Her father appears to have been a tenant farmer or laborer. There are several places in Ireland called Laccabawn or Lackabane, but this one appears to have been in the parish of Donoughmore in County Cork.

In the transcription below I have divided the text into paragraphs for easier reading, added periods and capitalization, and excised one repeated word. The embossed stationery, clear penmanship, and absence of spelling and grammar errors in this letter suggest that the person who actually wrote it down was reasonably well-educated. Brackets indicate a word that can't be read with complete certainty.

Laccabawn Sept 17th 1867

My Dear Daughter

We received your most welcome letter on the 4th of this month which gave us the greatest pleasure to hear that you were enjoying good health as we are ourselves at present thanks be to god. We do feel very thankful to you for the present you have sent to us which was £2 and was very much wanted. Last winter was so very severe that there was neither hire or wages for man or woman provisions of every description went up to famine prices which robbed the people especially the labouring class.

I do kindly thank you for the nice ribbon you sent me which will bring you to my memory every time I shall look at it during my life time. Your brother Johnny kissed it several times when he saw it. Johnny is in service with his fathers consent at low wages. Our potatoes are blighted this year again. You did well not to trouble yourself by enquiring about friends. Your uncle and family are well but does not care about any one else nor never asked about you since you left home. They consider their own business plenty and no more.

I would send you some presents of [flannel] or stockings if I got any sure person to take them to you. I would like that you would give us your address more correct than usual. Johnny is a fine big boy of his age and Mary feels angry as you did not say anything about herself in your letter. I do feel very proud to hear that you are sensible and attentive as usual. Mind yourself as you always did and you will have your father and mothers blessing. Mary says she hopes to see you yet. She says she is as big as you now. Your aunts two daughters are gone to America. Their passage was paid by their brother.

Write to us at any rate very soon. No more at present from your parents brother and sister.

Direct as usual.




Later letters discuss plans to have Margaret's brother John join her in New York. There are indications that her parents might have been considering emigrating as well.

Of empires and dreams

At first glance, the life of Roger Casement, the British diplomat turned Irish nationalist who was executed for treason in 1916, might not seem an obvious subject for a Peruvian novelist, even one as cosmopolitan as the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. But after narrating, in the first third of what is at times as much a novelized biography as a biographical novel, how Casement's investigations of atrocities in the Congo led to the unraveling of Leopold II of Belgium's empire in Africa, Mario Vargas Llosa begins a new chapter and a likely explanation emerges:

When, on the last day of August 1910, Roger Casement arrived in Iquitos after some seven weeks of exhausting travel...

Iquitos, where Casement, after the conclusion of his mission to the Congo, was dispatched by the Crown to investigate similar abuses and atrocities on the part of a British-incorporated rubber company, is of course familiar territory for Vargas Llosa, who set parts of several of his earlier novels in that hub of the Peruvian Amazon. But though the chapters devoted to Casement's activities in Peru make up the longest section of the book, they don't overshadow the rest. Tying the novel together, and alternating with the narration of Casement's activities, in the Congo, South America, and Europe, are scenes from Casement's last days, as he awaits execution in a cell in a British prison and reflects on the events of his life.

Born to an Irish Protestant family (his mother retained Catholic sympathies and secretly baptized Roger in the faith), Casement shipped out to Africa as a young man and worked for a time alongside the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley. Over the course of the twenty years he spent in the Congo he became increasingly disturbed by the ruthlessness with which Leopold's colonial enterprise was being conducted. Ostensibly in the name of civilization and Christianity -- but in fact almost entirely in the service of greed -- the African inhabitants of the Congo Free State were subjected to a pattern of kidnappings, forced labor, savage whippings, amputations, and outright murder, all to ensure that the flow of rubber continued unabated. The number of victims, directly or indirectly, of Leopold's reign is reckoned in the millions. Casement's report to the British government, published in 1904, was instrumental to the successful international campaign to wrest the Congo from the king's control.

Subsequently posted on routine consular duties to Brazil, Casement was soon sent to Iquitos to verify reports of atrocities committed by the Peruvian Amazon Company. During his mission he traveled to remote areas of the Amazon basin that lay well beyond the reach of the government in Lima. His investigations revealed not only abuses at times more horrific than those in the Congo, but also a pattern of official collusion and of persecution of those few journalists and officials who were brave enough or foolhardy enough to try to document the atrocities. As Casement began to name names his own life began to be at risk, and during his second visit to Peru he was dissuaded from venturing into areas that were effectively under the Company's control.

If Casement had withdrawn from public life after presenting the findings of his Peruvian report to the Crown, he would probably be universally regarded as a hero of the anti-colonialist and human rights movements. But there was one more chapter in his eventful life. Increasingly identifying himself with his heritage, he retired from the British Foreign Office and was drawn into the Irish nationalist movement, becoming a friend and ally of militant leaders like Patrick Pearse and Eoin MacNeill, and when war broke out in 1914 he was dispatched by the nationalists as an emissary to the Kaiser's Germany. After attempting with little success to organize a corps of pro-independence soldiers from among the ranks of Irish POWs, he arranged for the delivery by Germany of a shipload of guns and ammunition intended for use during the Easter Uprising of 1916. Infiltrated into Ireland by a U-boat just before the uprising, Casement was quickly captured by the British and subsequently convicted of treason and hanged. His remains were buried in an unmarked grave within the prison grounds, and only repatriated to Ireland in 1965.

Any novelist or biographer depicting Casement's life must deal with the vexed question of the "Black Diaries," ostensibly in Casement's hand, portions of which were revealed by the British government as he awaited execution. The diaries, which describe a series of furtive sexual encounters with other men, were used to help discredit Casement at a time when a number of British and Irish intellectuals (among them George Bernard Shaw, but not Casement's old friend Joseph Conrad) were urging clemency. The controversy over whether or not the diaries are genuine has never been fully settled; Vargas Llosa takes a compromise position, suggesting in an Epilogue -- and perhaps not entirely convincingly -- that though the diaries are genuine some of the events that they narrate may not be.

My own impression -- that of a novelist, to be sure -- is that Roger Casement wrote the famous diaries but that he didn't live them, at least not entirely, that in them there is much exaggeration and invention, that he wrote certain things because he wanted to but could not live them.

El sueño del celta ("The Dream of the Celt," "the Celt" being a nickname given by some of Casement's friends because of the passion he came to develop for Irish history and culture) has just been published by Alfaguara. As the novel would seem to pose no major obstacles to translation (unlike some of the author's earlier works), an English-language version can probably be expected in a year or so.

A Planxty Page

One

The Humours of Planxty, Leagues O'Toole's collective biography of the Irish trad quartet has finally been released, a year after it was originally promised. Not that you can buy a copy of the book in the US, mind you. For reasons that escape me the US seems to be behind a wall for the group these days; the excellent live CD and DVD of their reunion two years ago have never officially distributed here at all, which really is mystifying given the reverence in which Planxty is held throughout Europe and elsewhere. All this while every kind of insipid pseudo-Celtic treacle is in every gift shop and New Age store — but don't get me started ...

In any case, I ordered my copy from Eason's in Ireland and it arrived with exemplary swiftness. I did so with a bit of trepidation, given that the last book to be published in which Planxty played a major part, Colin Harper's Irish Folk, Trad & Blues: A Secret History, was pretty much of a shapeless mess. I needn't have worried; The Humours of Planxty is a solid job. O'Toole lets the band members and their associates do most of the talking, but he weaves their recollections nicely together into a coherent narrative and makes judicious and largely on-the-mark observations throughout.

The book is admirably thorough, particularly for the early years; it takes more than 125 pages to reach the release of the the “black album,” the group's 1972 debut LP. It's an “official” biography, to be sure. Leagues O'Toole is not just the narrator but a minor character as well, since he was in part responsible for getting the band back together in 2004. He's not afraid, though, to let on when he thinks the lads were having a bit of an off day — usually as a result of too much bending the elbow. My only major quibble (other than the lack of color illustrations) is that the book has relatively little to say about the personal lives and later careers of the four founding members.

There are rumors that the book was delayed because of a legal squabble. Founding member Christy Moore seems to be alluding to this on his website when he says:

Leagues went to great lengths to get it right. Sadly, one key component is missing. One vital cog in the Planxty wheel denied Leagues the use of some brilliant insights and stories. For whatever reason the wonderful interview was quashed. (We still love you).

Not sure what that's all about, but I hope it's nothing that will keep the band from working together again in the future, if the spirit moves them.

Two

Reading O'Toole's book seemed to provide an opportune moment to catch up with one of the later Planxty records I'd never heard in full, so I've lately been enjoying making the acquaintance of After the Break, the record the group released in 1979 during their first reunion. The first cut, “The Good Ship Kangaroo,” I already knew from Planxty Live 2004. Though the studio recording isn't as confident and rousing as the later live version — Christy Moore's signing isn't quite as inspired — it's still a treasure.

According to the liner notes, the song was collected “from the singing of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Cronin of Macroom, Co. Cork.” Whether that implies that she had anything to do with its composition I don't know. One thing's for sure, though, the song is way too clever to be casually filed away as yet another chance relic of “oral tradition.” Somebody wrote these lyrics, from beginning to end, and had a good larf doing it:

(...)

Our ship was homeward bound from many a foreign shore,
Manys the foreign present unto my love I bore.
I brought tortoises from Tenerife and ties from Timbuctoo,
A China rat, a Bengal cat, and a Bombay cockatoo.

Paid off I sought her dwelling in a street above the town,
Where an ancient dame upon a line was hanging out her gown.
“Where is my love?” “She's married, sir, about six months ago,
To a smart young man that drives the van for Chapplin, Son and Co.”

Oh, I never thought she would prove false,
Or either prove untrue,
As we sailed away from Milford Bay,
On board the Kangaroo.

Here's a health to dreams of married life, to soap, to suds, and blue,
Hearts, true lovers, patent starch and washing soda too.
I will go unto some for shore, no longer can I stay,
With some China Hottentot I'll throw myself away.

(...)

Oh, I never thought she would prove false,
Or either prove untrue,
As we sailed away from Milford Bay,
On board the Kangaroo.

There's some disagreement about exactly what “China Hottentot” means. The liner notes say that Hottentot (a name once applied to the Khoikhoi people of South Africa) was a slang term for opium. Leagues O'Toole doesn't buy this explanation and rather pointlessly adds that “the word 'hottentot' is nowadays considered offensive by the Oxford Dictionary of South African English.”

The song's verses and chorus are melodically identical, but Lunny's arrangement disguises that fact so cleverly that, according to Leagues, Christy Moore himself was never aware of it until recently.

Off the top of my head I'd guess the song dates from 1900-1940. Here's a health to its forgotten creator.

Three

Another highlight of After the Break is a song called “The Rambling Siúler.” Sung by Andy Irvine, the song has a good deal in common with “The Jolly Beggar” from the black album. Both are about a man of high station who dresses up as a beggar and gains a night's shelter in a farmhouse, where like every good traveller he naturally takes advantage of the hospitality to win the charms of the farmer's daughter. In this case the beggar is really a colonel, who has donned rags as part of a bet with his commanding officer. The beggar first makes a show of flirting with a servant girl, but everyone just laughs that off. Then the daughter comes downstairs and ends up alone in the room with the beggar. She repulses his first advance, but later that night shows that she's not a bit shy:

When supper it was over
They made his bed in the barn
Between two sacks and a winnow cloth
for fear that he take harm
At twelve o'clock that very night
She came to the barn,
She was dressed in white
The beggar rose in great delight,
"She's mine," says the rambling siúler.

In the Anglo-Irish tradition this kind of thing generally ends with the girl ruined and the “beggar” riding away in triumph, but in this happier instance, after the colonel reveals all (in more ways than one), he and the girl both head for the general's house to collect on the wager and ride off together.

But what is a siúler? Though the word (which is pronounced shooler) wasn't in any of my dictionaries, an appeal to the forums at wordreference.com quickly brought some answers. It apparently derives from the Irish verbs siúil or siubhail with the meaning to go or to travel, the agentive form siúlóir meaning a rambler.

The interplay of Andy Irvine's mandolin and Dónal Lunny's bouzouki is particularly fine on this recording. Lunny's bouzouki (if that's in fact what it is) has a beautifully rich tone; after you've heard the song a few times try ignoring the words and listen for it.

Four

Not a Planxty song, strictly speaking, but one of Andy Irvine's best, “Forgotten Hero” relates the story of Michael Davitt, the 19th-century Irish nationalist and founder of the Irish Land League. It's a highly polemical song, and one that provides an enormous amount of information about Davitt's life and political activities — more than you would think could be accomodated into a six-minute song. Here are the last few verses and the chorus:

(...)

With Parnell as its leader the land war held his course
Hold the rent and hold the harvest they can't evict us all
And Davitt crossed the ocean saying give what you can spare
And the Irish in Amerikay they paid up their full share

But not for the first time and neither for the last
The Dublin Castle bishops nailed their colours to the mast
And the altars rang with warnings, respect the law we say
For these Fenians and these Socialists are leading you astray

With the laws of private property and the army at his back
Buckshot Forster then arrested all the leaders of the pack
In the hallowed House of Commons the Gents did cheer and howl
When they heard that Michael Davitt was safely back in jail

And the treaty of Kilmainham Parnell threw it all away
It was the turning point in his career and he turned the wrong way
And the revolution missed its chance with victory in its sight
And fell down like a house of cards collapsing overnight

Davitt saw the Land War as the first step down the track
And he hoped to see the end of the Queen and the end of Union Jack
And I hope some tremor reached him where he lies in bleak Mayo
When they raised the Harp without the Crown above the GPO

O Forgotten Hero in peace may you rest
Your heart was always with the poor and the oppressed
A prison cell could never quell the courage you possessed
Forgotten hero never vanquished in the struggle

The song piqued my interest in Davitt, so I got a hold of a copy of T. W. Moody's Davitt and Irish Revolution, 1846-82, considered the definitive biography of the man. Andy departs from Moody in his assessment of Parnell, and never mentions the pivotal fact that Davitt as a youth lost an arm in an industrial accident. But he otherwise follows Moody's narrative in its general outline, and here and there even in language. (“His heart was always with [the cause of] the poor and the oppressed” was apparently picked up from Moody (p. 556), and “the turning point of his career” is a phrase Moody uses (p. xvii), though he applies it to Davitt rather than Parnell.)

“Forgotten Hero” can be found both on Andy's excellent solo CD Rain on the Roof and on Irish Times, the 1990 record by one of his other musical projects, Patrick Street. I recommend the former as the better version.