Ireland

  As I was walking up Wexford Street

  My own first cousin I did chance to meet

  My own first cousin did me betray

  And for one bare guinea sold my life away.

  And he’s not finished. More than the Croppy Boy’s cousins betrayed him. Come on, Ever-ett.

  As I was mounting the scaffold high,

  My aged father was standing by.

  My aged father did me deny

  And the name he gave me was “The Croppy Boy.”

  And there you have it, boys ’n girls, that etipomizes the sadness of seventeen-ninety-eight—a man given a nickname by his own father. They say give a dog a bad name, and you can hang him—well, they hung the Croppy Boy, haircut an’ all. Ever-ett, tell us the worst.

  ’Twas in Duncannon this young man died

  At Passage East is his body laid.

  All you good people, who may pass by

  Breathe a prayer for the Croppy Boy.

  The rising of seventeen-ninety-eight failed, and people died wholesale. But it lives in our memories as another gallant episode in our history of breaking the English yoke. Join me and Brett and Ever-ett as we bring the house down in the last rousing four bars of our famous Wexford Trilogy.

  Glory-oh, glory-oh to the brave men who died

  In the cause of long downtrodden man.

  Glory-oh to Mount Leinster’s own darling and pride—

  Dauntless Kelly, the boy from Killanne.

  In the deafening applause, Ronan said, “They seem to be very popular.”

  “They deserve every bit of it,” said Catherine. “All that history.”

  “Isn’t the word epitomize—not etipomize?”

  “Ah, things change,” said Catherine. “This is Wexford.”

  Next day, Ronan left New Ross. Mrs. Colfer sent him to a priest in Enniscorthy who, she said, loved the Storyteller and liked to take care of him whenever he came through the town.

  In the priest’s house, he helped with the crossword and stayed for two days—“In case,” said the priest, “our old friend turns up, like he did two months ago.” It transpired that the priest’s memory had certain failings—in fact, the Storyteller had not been there for two years; “But I know for certain he went to Arklow from here.”

  Ronan took this latest setback philosophically and headed up along the east coast. One burst of excitement eased the fruitlessness of his inquiries. Near Arklow he watched a stream flowing into the sea and suddenly recalled, with a shout, a detail from the Storyteller’s account of Newgrange; the Architect had sailed into the hinterland of county Wicklow along such a river.

  A quick inquiry took him inland along a riverbank, and he scrambled over rough country, through smooth fields, and then climbed a hill—there it was! He looked down at an old, overgrown quarry of small white stones; this was surely the place whence the Architect of Newgrange had ferried the stones “like the moon” for the facade of his tomb.

  Ronan lingered, turning over in his hand one stone after another and finally slipping a beautiful specimen into his bag. He brimmed with excitement at this tangible proof from that glorious tale—yet in his elation, he felt a melancholy sense of having gone back to the beginning with nothing to show for his journey.

  So it continued, day after day, week after week, into the tumbling blossoms of late May and June. This tall young man with spectacles and, now, a strengthening beard went from town to town, village to village. A large rucksack on his back, he walked or hitched rides in cars and trucks or sometimes took a bus. He met men and women who cooked him breakfast, some talking all the time, others remaining totally silent, yet others bending him with questions as to who he was and where he came from.

  Of the beds he slept in, a few had concave mattresses, a few convex; some had nylon sheets out of which he gradually slid during the night; some had linen sheets of pure luxury. He stayed in houses that had fancy new bathrooms with elaborate tiles suggesting Egypt or the Incas, often in black and red, usually highly glazed. And he stayed in houses that had no bathrooms at all, where he washed his face in a basin on the landing and, when he asked for a bath, was told of the swimming pool in the next town.

  The food remained more or less constant. Breakfast gave him wide strips of bacon with fried eggs, sausages like thick shiny glands, golden potato cakes, and doorsteps of toasted bread beside a pot of tea brewed so strong a mouse could stand on it. Lunch, when he took it, brought soup (very often unidentifiable), bacon, and cabbage followed by apple pie and cream. Dinner, called “supper” in some counties or “tea” in others, meant steak—succulent, thick steak, so large that the potatoes or cabbage or carrots had to be allotted a second, equally large plate. And, again, apple pie. Despite the fact that he walked many miles a day, he grew heavier, his beanpole frame gone forever.

  Slowly he allowed the journey to gain an importance in itself, rather than continue to be dominated by the desperation of the quest. The weather brought him great fortune. That spring and summer of 1961 had a long-lasting sweetness, and the fields and the hedgerows grew many shades of green and white. He began to savor his surroundings; this seemed the only measure he could take to ease his disappointment. Sightings of the Storyteller grew fewer and farther apart, and he had almost exhausted all associations with the stories he had heard—though as yet he had not seen hares dance nor spent the night in the warm arms of a stone circle.

  But by now, as part of the mental exercises he demanded of himself, he had created in his own mind a hierarchy of all the stories. The one that remained the most magical and the most important was the one told, he felt, especially for him—the roadside tale of Brendan the Navigator. “Look to the west,” that story had said—the west was where Brendan, after many difficult journeys, had found his own destination. And so, with a fresh urgency, he let the journey lead him in that direction.

  Ronan’s map reckoned him a hundred miles from the Kerry coast. He walked for half a day, then increased his pace by catching a bus to Limerick. The bank there told him he still had “good money” left, so he bought a clean shirt and new underwear; too many days of being washed in streams and boardinghouse basins had reduced his existing possessions to lifeless gray.

  He took another bus to Killarney. Sensing that his journey was coming to an end—and fearing too that he might not get what he wanted—he spent more than he had so far done on any one night’s accommodation. It gave him a helpful result.

  The hotel, though small, had high standards; excellent room, deep bath, and the best food since Dublin. He sat alone, as spruce as he could make himself. During dinner, as he jotted down his nightly record of the day, a man at the next table said, “Are you a writer?”

  Ronan, though flattered, laughed. “No, I’m afraid I’m not.”

  “You look the part. The beard, the glasses, all that. And there’s always writers coming to Killarney.”

  “I’m just passing through.”

  “But you’re a writer at the moment; I saw you writing in your notebook. That makes you a writer, doesn’t it?”

  Ronan laughed again. “Just—notes.”

  “That’s not a local accent?”

  “No. I’m studying in Dublin.”

  “Not tonight you’re not.” He seemed about forty or more, suit, white shirt, tie, exceptionally large earlobes.

  “Ray Cashman. Who’re you?” He leaned over with a handshake.

  “Ronan O’Mara.”

  “Will you have something, Ronan?”

  “No, I don’t actually drink.”

  “You’re bad for my business, I’m a traveler in whiskey. Ah, well, I’ll just have to support my own industry,” and Ray Cashman ordered another drink.

  They talked until one in the morning. Ronan found himself telling of his search for the Storyteller, and Ray Cashman proved an excellent audience. He asked for a story or two; Ronan told his best version yet of Newgrange and then of Strongbow’s arrival in Ireland.

  “Wish they taught us l
ike that in school. Jesus, our history teacher was so bad, I can’t remember the date I was born.”

  Three other people in the small bar (to which they had by then moved) listened keenly. One of them, with a white cyst on his forehead and an accent broad as a cliff, said, “There’s a man with stories like that going to be in Derrynane tomorrow. He was invited there, and I know the man who invited him.” The man nodded repeatedly to confirm his own story: “Derrynane House. I know the man who invited him. Derrynane, you know where I mean, O’Connell’s old place.”

  Ray Cashman said to Ronan, “Right, we’ll hit the hay, and tomorrow we’ll hit Derrynane.”

  Over the mountains they went into deep Kerry, through towns with magical names—Killorglin, Glenbeigh, Caherciveen.

  “Notice,” said Ray Cashman, “we’re taking the long way round because the scenery is nicer. And everyone knows the longest way round is the shortest way home.”

  Ronan said, “But this is taking you away from your work. What will your boss say?”

  “I had cancer last year. They go very easy on me.”

  Nobody answered the doorbell at Derrynane House. They looked for a side door but at twelve noon, no life did they find.

  “I need strength for this,” said Ray Cashman, and they found a pub. After an hour in which he drank four whiskies and Ronan two lemonades, they went back. Now a car stood in the mossy forecourt, and the front door had opened.

  Inside, a man sat polishing his shoes.

  “Hallo,” said Ray Cashman.

  “Is it raining yet?” said the man.

  “I don’t know,” said Ray Cashman. “We’re not from around here.”

  “Then you won’t get wet, I suppose.”

  “I’ll tell you—we were hoping to meet a storyteller here. A tall man, isn’t that right?” he confirmed to Ronan.

  “So was I. But none of us’ll be meeting him. Look.”

  The man reached to the floor and picked up an envelope.

  “This was handed in. He was here, and I wasn’t.”

  The envelope contained a note and some papers.

  “Dear Mr. Kavanagh, I had hoped and intended to meet your audience in Derrynane. But my health is not good, and I am trying to find a place that will have me. I don’t like the idea of going into the county home, for whatever name they use, it is still the poorhouse. But it grieves me to let people down, so I wrote out a little of something resembling what I was going to say. Maybe you could read it out to them. I’m sorry I’m not there to give a great deal more, and I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  No signature; Ronan needed none when facing the broad, strong writing, with the tough, yet ornate downward strokes. Ronan began to read.

  “Stop.” Ray Cashman tapped his shoulder. “Shouldn’t you do him the honor of reading it aloud? Who better than yourself?”

  EVERYONE WHO HAS HEARD THE NAME DERRYNANE knows that it is associated indelibly with the name of a very great Irishman, Daniel O’Connell. He was a lawyer, a politician, an orator of remarkable might, a fighter against injustice, and a man who liked ladies very much indeed. Altogether a man to be treasured. He was born here in seventeen-seventy-five, and he died in eighteen-forty-seven, after a life of magnificent achievement.

  It would take me ten nights to list out for you all the man did in his seventy-two years. For the first forty years of the last century, anything to do with Irish politics had to do with Daniel O’Connell. He broke down all sorts of barriers, he got the Penal Laws repealed, he held the biggest political meetings ever seen. Nobody else ever got half a million people in one place at one time; and he became not only Lord Mayor of Dublin but that rare species, a Catholic member of the English Parliament.

  O’Connell stood well over six feet, a burly fellow with curly hair and a great wit about him. Bitterly opposed to the way England treated the Irish, he described the British prime minister, Robert Peel, as having a smile like moonlight glinting on the brass plate of a coffin. If ever a man could have made his way in the world by personality alone, that man was Daniel O’Connell.

  He fathered a large known family, eleven children I believe, and since I am addressing an audience of adults, with no children present, I may tell a story of one of the many other children of Daniel O’Connell, who were born on what we call the wrong side of the blanket.

  O’Connell was a famous courtroom defender; he understood all the niceties of law, the little twisty points on which a case may win or fail. Never blatantly obvious unless he had to be, always canny when he needed to be, he was reckoned to be a man who knew just when too much was too much, and maybe even more important, when to say very little.

  One day he was coming back to Derrynane after winning a long court case; the prisoner had been in the dock for six weeks with the shadow of the noose hanging over him, and O’Connell got him off. Driving in his carriage over the mountains, he came to a house that he thought he had visited about eleven or twelve years before. The lady in question, if he remembered aright, was very good-looking, and her husband was an officer in the English army and away a great deal of the time.

  O’Connell told his coachman to stop, and he walked into the house. It was dark enough inside, and the only person he saw was a boy of about ten or eleven tending a pot on the fire.

  “Is the woman of the house here?”

  The boy said, “She’s out feeding the hens.”

  O’Connell said, “Is she your mother?”

  “She is.” The boy was very cool and composed.

  “Will you please go out and tell her that Mr. Daniel O’Connell is here to see her?”

  The boy replaced the lid on the pot and ran out. While he was gone, O’Connell darted over to the fire, lifted the lid, took out a potato—they hadn’t boiled yet—and put it in his pocket. By the time the boy came back, our man Daniel was standing by the doorway again, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

  “My mother said she’ll be here in a minute”—and the boy went back to his potatoes. He lifted the lid off the pot, looked at the potatoes, looked at O’Connell, and looked at the potatoes again. He sat back on his haunches, leaned forward once more, and looked into the pot.

  “Is there anything wrong?” said O’Connell, nice as pie.

  The boy said, “When I left this kitchen a minute ago, there were twelve potatoes in this pot, and now I have only eleven left.”

  “What are you trying to say?” said O’Connell.

  “I’m not trying to say anything, I’m saying it. When I left this kitchen a minute ago, there were twelve potatoes in this pot, and now I have only eleven left.”

  “I was the only one here.”

  “I know that,” said the boy.

  “So are you accusing me of stealing one of your potatoes?”

  “I’m not accusing anyone of anything. All I’m saying is—when I left this kitchen a minute ago, there were twelve potatoes in this pot, and now I have only eleven left.”

  O’Connell went over to the boy, patted him on the head, handed him back his potato, and said to himself, “Yes, he’s a son of mine all right.”

  Here’s another story about Daniel O’Connell. One of his most controversial statements was that the freedom of Ireland wasn’t worth the spilling of one drop of anyone’s blood. He was very heavily criticized for saying that. But what people don’t know is why he said it and how it is connected with the way he wore gloves.

  His power as a lawyer and a parliamentarian put fear into the hearts of his enemies. They knew he could best them up and down—in talk, in any argument or debate. They tried every way to outsmart him, and they failed. Finally he was challenged to a duel.

  The man who challenged him was called D’Esterre; he was a loyal and strong Orangeman, meaning a staunch Protestant supporter of the English king. D’Esterre and his sort feared and loathed the idea of giving any power to Catholics, and O’Connell stood for nothing else but getting Catholics back their rights. O’Connell had built a great political mov
ement out of something called the Catholic Rent, which meant that every Catholic in Ireland gave a penny a month to O’Connell’s political movement. O’Connell used that money to get Catholics standing for elections in Ireland, and so many of them won that the English had to change all the bad laws they had passed against Catholics.

  One day, in addressing a political meeting, O’Connell said harsh things about Dublin Corporation, the body that governed the city. He said the corporation refused to debate the rights of Catholics, even though Dublin was a predominantly Catholic city. D’Esterre, who was a member of the corporation, said he took this as a personal insult and threatened to horsewhip O’Connell—that was one of the ways you challenged a man to a duel.

  O’Connell ignored the threats and continued to ignore them—until D’Esterre, with a whip in his hand, turned up at the courts where O’Connell was practicing law. Then O’Connell had to fight the duel.

  They met on a winter Thursday, the second of February, eighteen-fifteen. Someone had chosen a hill outside Dublin as the place they should fight with pistols, and you can still see the site—it’s on the road to Naas on the right-hand side going south.

  Duels were fought very differently from what people imagine. There wasn’t much of this lining up back to back, walking ten paces away from each other, and turning and firing; the guns were too uncertain for that. Instead, they tossed a coin, and one got the privilege of first shot. In this case, it was D’Esterre.

  He missed—but O’Connell didn’t. His bullet hit D’Esterre just above the hipbone and went into the soft flesh. They shook hands, and O’Connell was deemed the winner, because D’Esterre didn’t have the strength to continue. They all made their way back to Dublin, where D’Esterre’s people took their man to the hospital.

  The foolish and unfortunate fellow developed blood poisoning, and he died a few days later, leaving a widow and children. But he had enough decency on his deathbed to tell everyone it was all his fault and not to blame Dan O’Connell.