As I Rode by Granard Moat (11 page)
Read As I Rode by Granard Moat Online
Authors: Benedict Kiely
Dear John, dear ghost, my suffering fellow Irishman, we know that you had your worries about women. They did not suit you, and I’m not blaming you for that. But thirty thousand drunken women between my garden gate and the bridge, three hundred yards away, over the River Dodder, dear John, I fear that you grossly exaggerate.
You were also, I grieve to note, a bit of a snob. All those ladies and gentlemen who came to study the drive-in movie from the safety of their horse-mobiles. May we hope that they enjoyed themselves and were proud of Donnybrook and the neighbouring town of Dublin: as was my dear friend Donagh MacDonagh, the son of Thomas MacDonagh:
Dublin made me and no little town
With the country closing in on its streets,
The cattle walking proudly on its pavements,
The jobbers, the gombeenmen and the cheats
Devouring the fair day between them,
A public-house to half a hundred men,
And the teacher, the solicitor and the bank-clerk
In the hotel bar, drinking for ten.
Dublin made me, not the secret poteen still,
The raw and hungry hills of the West,
The lean road flung over profitless bog
Where only a snipe could nest,
Where the sea takes its tithe of every boat.
Bawneen and curragh have no allegiance of mine,
Nor the cute, self-deceiving talkers of the South
Who look to the East for a sign.
The soft and dreary midlands with their tame canals
Wallow between sea and sea, remote from adventure,
And Northward a far and fortified province
Crouches under the lash of arid censure.
I disclaim all fertile meadows, all tilled land,
The evil that grows from it and the good,
But the Dublin of old statutes, this arrogant city,
Stirs proudly and secretly in my blood.
One of my most treasured possessions is a typescript copy of a comic verse-play, ‘Down by the Liffey Side’ by Donagh MacDonagh, presented to me by the author. Written as a send-up of Dion Boucicault and set in the Marshalsea prison for debtors, it has wonderful moments. Here you have, in the first verse, the high-class roisterer, the eternally hopeful gambler, the sad amorist, and then the Fourth Man: a hapless and ordinary citizen like yourself or myself; and all around them, the bustling life of the ancient prison. This scene closely resembles St Luke’s Hospital as illustrated in Ackroyd’s ‘Microcosm of London’. William, without his wig, his lace soiled and torn, is sitting dejectedly on a bench while, around him, the other debtors drink, smoke and sing.
First Debtor
Behold the pauper’s prison, the hell of bankrupt debtors,
Where sadly we’re repenting for our spendthrift, happy days,
Remembering the bottles that emptied down our gullets,
The wigs, the lace, the satins and the ruinous displays.
Oh, once I lived contentedly and friends I loved surrounded me;
Care nor grief ne’er troubled me nor made my heart feel sore,
But now those days are over and here I rot in misery,
Reflecting on the abstinence that fifty times I swore.
Debtors
Ochone, och ochone.
Second Debtor
’Twas dice that proved my downfall, the cards and little horses
Whose speed was far inferior to every other horse;
The fly I had my cash on alighted last invariably;
My raindrop on the window panes dried up, nor stayed the course;
But were I rich and young again and could I all I’d lost regain,
I’d live the same life out again, and luck would turn my way;
With dice and cards and claret the night would vanish rapidly
And I would rise triumphant at the closing of the play.
Debtors
Ochone, och ochone.
Third Debtor
A dark eye or a grey eye, an eye that’s soft and tender,
A form that’s tall and slender, a breast that stands at bay,
An ankle trim and shapely, a hand that’s slim and playful,
A mouth that’s shaped for kissing and breath that’s a bouquet,
These are the charms that ruined me, yet I pursued them foolishly,
Certain that each new schooling would give me my degree;
But all a lifetime brought me the first girl could have taught me,
For all I ever learned of them was what they thought of me.
Debtors
Ochone, och ochone.
Fourth Debtor
I’ve never squandered money for I never had a penny,
I’ve never gambled madly, I was never drunk on wine,
The girls I had cost nothing except a bit of flattery,
Yet here I am in company that once was rich and fine.
I’ve hunted for prosperity, but still she has eluded me,
For bleak misfortune follows me no matter where I roam;
If I had had your fortunes I might be great and proud today,
Instead of sitting in the straw singing och, och ochone.
Debtors
Ochone, och ochone.
The TURNKEY enters and pushes the DEBTORS roughly out of his way.
Turnkey
Out of the way and be silent, you scum.
There are ladies approaching this villainous slum.
[to a DEBTOR] You owe me a crown for your bed and your board,
Bread and water, me boyo, is all you can afford.
[to the others] Jump to it and tidy this pigsty of yours,
And bow when you answer, you caricatures.
You bankrupt incompetents, I’ll teach you to work …
Ten strokes on the back for the first man to shirk.
But let us move on rapidly to a happier Dublin and one much closer to our own time. This would have been the Stillorgan Road, say, in the early 1940s, as the poet Roibeard Ó Faracháin saw it, before automobiles had completely taken over; anyway, the Second World War was on and petrol was not plentiful.
To think that a thing
as thoughtless as grass
could bring like a sting
the thought that there was
on ruggedy acorn,
horny nut,
on bead-bright berry,
fleshly fruit,
on pine-cone, gourd
– and grass of course –
a gloss!
On every other thing was there
a twinkle or a copper glare.
Trout would leap and crouch and linger.
O King Nuada’s silver finger!
(Lost a hand. With the metal thing
ducked the law and stayed a king.)
The weeshy Dodder-water’s top
was satinwood, and the butcher’s shop
a glimmering glass that shone and shone
and steel too hot to look upon:
you had to screw your eyes to look
where Something blazed upon a hook.
And on the smooth Stillorgan road,
where half the wheels in Ireland glowed,
the streamlined steel and vulcanite
were slithery with glinting light.
Riding their bicycles aflash
ladies were ladyly abashed
when frocks bob-bobbed
and, ducking the breeze,
went rippling back
from their glossy knees.
The polished legs of ladies glint
like guineas from an ancient mint
when knees arch up: they sleek like seals
when silk is straight from hams to heels:
ballet put on in crystal air
by switches of blackthorn sleekly bare.
Who would have thought a bike was bright
and sharp as a sculptured stalactite?
Or dreamed that the underwater green
of a beechleaf could turn tangerine?
Haws, coming crimson out, could flush
whitethorn into a burning bush?
Who was prepared for this (so soon)
enchanting Autumn afternoon?
Round about 1935 I was, very briefly, an actor. Hollywood didn’t hear about me so the matter never went further. But I was in two stage plays in Omagh Town Hall, as a small part of the Omagh Players. One of these was Padraic Gregory’s
The Coming of the Magi,
and I was one of the Magi, very wise for my years. Padraic came to see us and advise us, and
even travelled with us when we went on tour all the thirty-four miles to Derry. He was a small man with delicate features and silver-white hair, and a dark coat with a Chestertonian cape. I find him here happy among the dancing children on the streets of Dublin:
’
S CHILDREN
You’ve niver seen in all your lives the crowds o’ little childher
Ye’ll see the while ye bustle thro’ the streets o’ Dublin Town;
To count them all, ’tis my belief, it sorely would bewilder
The grandest scholar ye cud find in Ireland, up or down.
On Days o’ Obligation or on Sundays from the Masses
Ye’ll see them rompin’ out in hundreds, chatterin’ gay an’ free,
On week-days, see the bigger ones go trudgin’ to their classes,
Wi’ fresh-washed faces, boots well-polished, staid as staid can be.
You’ll see some wealthy childher (wi’ their Da an’ Ma go’n shoppin’)
A-drivin’ in to Dame Street from self-satisfied Rathgar,
An’ chubby back-street urchins o’er the pavements come a-hoppin’
To gaze at them that loll like lords inside a glistenin’ car.
You’ll see some ragged youngster – hardly more than fit to toddle –
A-carryin’ the baby o’ the family in a shawl
(Her mother’s out at work so she’s to larn to nurse an’ coddle)
Before she knows jist what it’s like to be a child at all.
There’s nurse-attended babies that are wheeled in spotless pramcars,
There’s sturdy-legged two-year-olds that use their own wee feet,
An’ laughin’ crowin’ infants in their mothers’ arms in tramcars,
An’ whiles, odd whiles, ye’ll see a lost child cryin’ in the street.
There’s rosy-cheeked, an’ pallid cheeked, an’ bunty, fat an’ slim ones,
Some that’s grimy, some half-clean, an’ some as white as snow,
There’s healthy, weakly, surly, happy, sober-faced an’ prim ones;
All sorts an’ shapes o’ boys and girls, no matter where ye go.
There’s handsome, ugly, roguish ones, an’ dark-haired, red an’ fair ones,
Deep-blue-eyed lasses, impish lads wi’ eyes as black as sloes,
There’s fly, an’ sly, an’ rough an’ tough, an’ ‘divil-a-hair-I-care’ ones,
Where all those different childher come from – Heaven only knows.
There’s quiet ones, an’ boisterous ones wi’ joy o’ life jist bubblin’,
Sedate, well-bred, or cheeky ones that pull each other’s hair,
Throughout the whole o’ Dublin, the pulsin’ heart o’ Dublin,
The great glad heart o’ Dublin, shure there’s childher everywhere.
Dublin, like many another city and town, has grown, for good or ill, over the years. Twenty years ago a friend of mine, an historical man and an authority on Old Dublin, came walking with me on the Hill of Killenarden. We walked up and up from Jobstown and over the Hill of Killenarden, looking from there on into Glenasmole, the Glen of the Thrushes, well praised by Patrick Pearse. And we recalled the verses written faraway beyond the ocean by Charles G. Halpine, a Kilkennyman, who got into some difficulties around about 1848. The hill Halpine wrote about, and the flat land all below it, is now part of the new suburbia. But Halpine, the Young Irelander, would be happy to see fine homes on good ground for the people of Ireland.
Though time effaces memory, and griefs the bosom harden,
I’ll ne’er forget, where’er I be, that day at Killenarden;
For there, while fancy revelled wide, the summer’s day flew o’er me;
The friends I loved were at my side, and Irish fields before me.
The road was steep; the pelting showers had cooled the sod beneath us;
And there were lots of mountain flowers, a garland to enwreath us.
Far, far below the landscape shone with wheat, and new-mown meadows,
And as o’erhead the clouds flew on, beneath swept on their shadows.
O friends, beyond the Atlantic’s foam there may be noble mountains,
And in our new far western home green fields and brighter fountains;
But as for me, let time destroy all dreams, but this one pardon,
And barren memory long enjoy that day on Killenarden.
Round about fifty years ago I settled in Dublin city, and by virtue of being what used to be called a ‘working journalist’,
had the right of entering the circle based in the Palace Bar, and later in the Pearl, around the renowned editor of
The
Irish Times,
R.M. Smyllie. His weekly book-page, under the guidance of Bruce Williamson, carried every Saturday a new poem, and in 1944 Donagh MacDonagh made a selection of these under the simple title:
Poems from Ireland
.
It is a book I will always treasure. To me, no matter where or what those poems are about, the book smells and tastes and sings to me of my early and happy days as a Dubliner. But here, tucked inside the strong brown paper with which I have rebound the book, I find two yellowed newspaper clippings, both of book reviews. One, from 1958, has the poet Austin Clarke reviewing the poet Patrick MacDonogh; but let Patrick speak for himself out of the collection made by his fellow poet and namesake:
O, she walked unaware of her own increasing beauty
That was holding men’s thoughts from market or plough,
As she passed by intent on her womanly duties
And she without leisure to be wayward or proud;
Or if she had pride then it was not in her thinking
But thoughtless in her body like a flower of good breeding.
The first time I saw her spreading coloured linen
Beyond the green willow she gave me gentle greeting
With no more intention than the leaning willow tree.
Though she smiled without intention yet from that day forward
Her beauty filled like water the four corners of my being,
And she rested in my heart like a hare in the form
That is shaped to herself. And I that would be singing
Or whistling at all times went silently then;
Till I drew her aside among straight stems of beeches
When the blackbird was sleeping and she promised that never
The fields would be ripe but I’d gather all sweetness,
A red moon of August would rise on our wedding.
October is spreading bright flame among stripped willows,
Low fires of the dogwood burn down to grey water, –
God pity me now and all desolate sinners
Demented with beauty! I have blackened my thought
In drouths of bad longing, and all brightness goes shrouded
Since he came with his rapture of wild words that mirrored
Her beauty and made her ungentle and proud.
To-night she will spread her brown hair on his pillow,
But I shall be hearing the harsh cries of wild fowl.