I also thank the following: John and Monica Casey; Denise Clack; Dr John de Courcy Ireland; Philomena Connolly at the Irish National Archives; Ciara Considine; Dr Mike Cronin of De Montfort Univ.; Joe and Jillian Cunningham; Isobel Dixon; Adrienne Fleming and Anthony Glavin; Seamus Hosey; Beth Humphries; Professor Declan Kiberd; Grainne Killeen; Noel Kissane (Keeper of Manuscripts at the Nat. Library of Ireland) and his colleague Justin Furlong; Michael McLoughlin; Ann McVeigh at PRONI; Kim Miley; Eimear O’Connor; Viola O’Connor; Faith O’Grady; Jonathan Owens (Oxford Univ. Press, New York) and Shelagh Phillips (OUP, London); Prof. Robert Patten at Rice Univ. Houston; Deirdre Shanahan; Stuart Williams at Secker, and Barbara Walker. Kay McEvilly of Cashel House Hotel, Connemara, discussed local surnames with me, and I thank the McEvilly family for their hospitality over a number of years. I thank the Arts Council of Ireland for awarding me the Macaulay Fellowship in 1995, which allowed me to do initial research for this novel in New York. I thank Dr Philip Smyly of the National Maritime Museum at Dun Laoghaire, who gave me access to the museum’s extensive collection despite the building being closed for renovation. Landlubber’s mistakes, and all other ones, are my own.
HISTORY: Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell was indeed published by Cautley Newby in December 1847 (not very well and rather unscrupulously). V.S. Pritchett, in a 1946 essay, was among the first critics to discuss the connection between Emily Brontë’s masterpiece and Ireland. It has been further explored by Terry Eagleton (Heathcliff and the Great Hunger, Verso 1995), John Cannon (History of the Brontë Family from Ireland to Wuthering Heights, Sutton 2000) and Christopher Heywood (Appendices to his 2001 edition of WH, Broadview Press). I have dared to allow Pius Mulvey to suffer the ‘separation’ system at Newgate in the late 1830s, but in fact it was not introduced until 1842, and at Pentonville. No organisation called the Else-Be-Liables or Liable Men existed, but many others of cryptic names and violent activities did, and had done so in Ireland for at least eighty years.3 The sending of anonymous or pseudonymous threatening letters to landlords was frequent. Litton’s Irish Famine quotes several. Often their authors were new to written English, thus their texts had mis-spellings or phonetic renderings of the kind appearing in the letter to Merridith. Its diagram of the coffin is borrowed from a note sent to a Kildare landlord in January, 1848.4
MUSIC: Captain Francis O’Neill did not contribute to any work called A Miscellany of the Ancient Songs of Ireland. A Chicago policeman and native of Cork, his Dance Music of Ireland (1907) and endearingly titled Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody (1909) did much rescue a beautiful repertoire from a fatal diminishment. Admirers of Irish singing will know that the paradigm of Mulvey’s Recruiting Sergeant ballad is ‘Arthur McBride’, a 19th century song restored to the canon by Paul Brady and later recorded by Bob Dylan. (Brady’s version is on Andy Irvine and Paul Brady, Mulligan, 1976; Dylan’s on Good as I Been to You, Columbia, 1992). The ballad Mulvey sings on page 95 is ‘In the Month of January’. A version is included on Paddy Tunney’s The Irish Edge (Ossian Recordings, 1991). Tunney’s version is not ‘a macaronic’ (which Mulvey’s is), though many such songs exist in the Connemara Sean-Nós or ‘Old Style’ tradition. Several were recorded by Seosamh Ó hÉanai (like Mary Duane, a native of Carna). Examples may be found on Joe Heaney: Irish Traditional Songs in Gaelic and English (Topic, London, 1988). ‘Revenge for Skibbereen’ (or ‘Skibereen’) (Chapter XXXIX) is often given in live performance by that Caruso of the genre, Seán Keane of Galway. It features on his acclaimed album Seánsongs (Circín Rua Teo, 2002). Ciaran Carson’s Last Night’s Fun (Cape, 1996) is a brilliant work about traditional Irish music. It mentions a Loyalist drummer, Right McKnight, who borrowed his drum from a Nationalist band and forgot to give it back. I borrowed his name for Mulvey’s Glaswegian sidekick. I hereby give it back.
1 Extracts at www.people.virginia.edu/~eas5e/Irish
2 Quoted frequently in Litton’s Irish Famine.
3 Miller’s Emigrants and Exiles and Foster’s Modern Ireland list many.
4 See Litton, pp. 42 and 101. Phrases similar to those quoted here appear in the note to Merridith.
Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea
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