The History of The Irish...Worldwide
On the Road of an Irish Graveyard
Dean Mulroy is the kind of guy who needs room to roam and access to the stars, which is why he lived way back in the bog behind the house I rented in Inverin. Only a certain kind of guy would want to live as he did. At the time, he was unimpressed with technological conveniences, including a telephone, and the first thing he did when he moved into the lackluster, two-bedroom stucco house he rented beside the bog’s serpentine stream was rig the existing phone to such a pitch that people could call in, but he couldn’t call out. He had what he thought of as a reasonable explanation for this, but I didn’t learn it until much later, after our friendship had taken root and he no longer held me in suspicion.
It had been my habit to walk the endless bog behind my house after I got home from work in Galway. It was summer time, and sunlight hovered well until ten thirty during this halcyon time of the year. I ambled through the bog because it seemed to ground me to the soul of this particular region of Connemara. One foot after the other gave way to a rhythmic cadence that put me in tune with something soulful and unnamed. I did my best thinking on my walks through the bog because it gave my feet purpose and allowed my chattering mind to unleash into an impressionable, free-floating stream of consciousness. This is how I learned to interpret rural Ireland; by dreaming my way through, step after meditative step.
The third time I passed Dean in the bog, he abruptly stopped me. He’d had entirely enough of not knowing who this stranger was in his midst. A slightly built girl with long blonde hair and a pair of Wayfarers in rural Ireland must have been anomaly enough, but to see a face repeatedly in Inverin and not know the whole story was an unpardonable sin. People in Inverin don’t keep to themselves; tacitly, it isn’t allowed. By virtue of the fact that one lives in Inverin, they are automatically a part of a collective consciousness that operates under the assumption that all of its residents are members of the same tribe. And because the Irish are not prone to insinuating themselves upon a stranger, Dean Mulroy chose the colloquial way of introducing himself, which is to say that he cast his eyes skyward and commented on the weather. “Ah, she’s blowin’, all right,” he said standing firmly in my path with his hands on his narrow hips and an even stare. I’d been in Ireland for two months thus far and knew how to respond in the Irish way. I raised my eyes to his dark frame of wavy black hair and met his blue-eyed glare. “She is, yeah,” I said rhetorically.
We next got down to the exchange of names and I learned he already knew where I lived because there is no place to hide in Inverin. A single American female living in a holiday home on the side of the coast road is big news in a town the size of Inverin, but Dean still wanted the unadulterated facts. It took him all of two minutes to invite me to call out the next day for a cup of tea. I knew now that people in Ireland are always “calling out,” which shouldn’t be confused with just showing up, because calling out has a much bigger purpose. I turned his invitation over and jumped to what any American would immediately ask. “I’d love to,” I told him, “what time would you like me to come?” Dean looked at me for a heavy, pregnant pause, with a brow so knotted I thought surely it hurt. “Don’t put a time on it,” he said. “Come when it suits you.”
I had two thoughts as I continued my walk through the bog that day, and the first was about the weather. For a population that revolves around the vagaries of the weather, it’s easy to see why the weather in Ireland is personified as she. It’s because she is pervasive and dictates everything, so when someone in Ireland uses the word “she,” everyone knows what is meant. The second thought on my mind was how authentic and unselfconscious the Irish are as a culture. If I extended an invitation to anyone for the following day, I’d be ready and my house would be perfect, but that is not the way it is with the Irish. Dean’s lack of concern over the timing of my arrival demonstrated the open-armed way the Irish receive anyone: There is always an open door, no matter the time, and they are ever at the ready to put the kettle on and offer a cup of tea.
It was a thirty minute walk from my front door to Dean’s rented house, deep in the bog in Inverin. I took my time the next day sauntering through what came to be a habitual pattern along a quiet gravel path through turf and brittle bracken. When I arrived, it was two o’clock in the afternoon and I found Dean in his kitchen, freshly shaved and waiting. He held a guitar on his lap, looked up when I appeared, and said in a matter of course, “I’ve been singing me heart out all day.” We exchanged personal histories and drank tea until our heads were swimming. Dean told me about the dolmen that lay in the bog behind us and said he’d show me himself, but he wanted it to be my own discovery. He next told me that the ancient graveyard down the dirt road across from my house was haunted. “Tis a brave soul, it would be, who would walk that road at night,” he said fixing me with a challenging stare.
“Have you ever done it? “ I couldn’t help but ask.
“I have,” he returned, “but no woman would want to.”
The sky turned the color of bruised eggplant, releasing a torrent of mercurial pelting rain. Running for dear life to Dean’s tan-colored van, it took my full strength to pull the door closed against the rousing wind before we rattled the bog road to my house. Dean leaned his head through the window in the stinging rain, shouting as I ran to the shelter of my porch. “I’d call you, but I’ve cut meself off; too many late nights on the drink running me phone bill up. Unless it’s planning on bumping into me on one of your bog-trots, you are, you’re going to have to call in to me.” I told Dean surely I would then, ducked safely inside.
Later that night, after the rain let up, I put on a light coat and stepped outside my door. I stood in the darkened stillness until I’d made up my mind once and for all. There are no streetlights that far out in Inverin, but I had the light of a waxing moon. Cautiously, I crossed the coast road. I heard the gravel scratching beneath my steps and put one foot in front of the other in an intonation that sounded like a military march. A slight wind blew like a whisper, then rushed forcefully, just enough to startle me before it ebbed. I thought I felt a chill on the back of my neck and wondered if it was the night air or just my fear. Down the lane I continued, until the graveyard loomed on the hill to my left. Granite tombstones in varying heights crowned with Celtic crosses glowed eerily in the moonlight. It was a graveyard forever marking time, halfway down a lane all but forgotten. I walked steadily, not wanting to hesitate, not daring to stop; only wanting to walk the lane at night because Dean Mulroy had said no woman would want to.
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Comment by Claire Fullerton on November 24, 2015 at 10:06am
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I love it! It speaks to me of how we handle, or mishandle opportunity. And love is the trickiest, which is what my book "Dancing to an Irish Reel" is all about. I call the book an "anti-romance" because in the story, the Irish musician is afraid of love, having never dived in before, because he is a "trad" musician from Connemara, and married to the music. Although it was not my aim to stereotype, many Irish insiders have told me I nailed what typically transpires when an Irishman is confronted with the prospect of love. And as for Dean, and I hope you'll love this: the scene I wrote specifically for The Wild Geese is true, but there is a name change and a variation of this scene in Dancing to an Irish Reel, and I furthered it by making Dean a central character. I'm not the only writer who pulls from real life and embellishes, but my point is that because I used his real name in the piece for TWG, I received an e-mail from Dean's current girlfriend that basically said, "I know this guy!" So Dean Mulroy is out there in the world shaking his head because that American he befriended years ago turned out to be a novelist.
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Comment by The Wild Geese on November 24, 2015 at 10:07am
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enjoying the conversations here immensely
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Thank you, I am, too! My habit of late, as I put the final touches on my 3rd novel, is to go to my desk, coffee in hand, and settle in to address what needs to be done, yet every day, I go to TWG first! Today, it's THIS! And away we go! Love the Geese!
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Comment by michael dunne on November 24, 2015 at 11:38am
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That is one of the reason it was composed! What did you think of the idea and the message of squandered opportunity?
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I don't know if this poem speaks to missed opportunity as much as it speaks to our choices. And because there is the slant of religious influence in this story, it says to me that one's religious/spiritual/moral beliefs can override the basest of human instincts, meaning our longing to connect, which comes to Michael in the form of temptation. And therefore, here we have the myriad elements that go into the defining of a life. But with regard to opportunity, had Michael of chosen the other road, perhaps his life would have played out differently from this singular moment. This poem operates on many levels!
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The reasons for failure to avail of opportunity are legion. The most common is the son being too attached to his mother or perhaps more accurately, the mother too attached to the son. It could be over something romantic like you describe Claire, like the love of music. Ireland had a record it is none too proud of and that is we had the lowest marriage rates in Europe in the 19th Century. And it wasn't because all the good looking geese had fled the country centuries before. Marriage then and to a lesser extent today is a business arrangement. In the 19th Century many Irish women were induced or even forced to emigrate which was down to the effects of the Great Famine followed by the Great Silence. There was little talk of equality in those difficult times. It was the day of the 'Dowry' and women having their teeth pulled prior to marriage. Dental treatment then was comparatively even more expensive than today. The elderly suitor, usually a farmer, expected his dowry and not to have it squandered on expensive dental care.
Instead of blaming the Wild Geese we might be more to the point in focusing on the Cambro Normans who were Roman Catholic and were followed by the large Monastic orders to the Emerald Isle. They abolished slavery as it was against Roman Catholic teaching, introduced 12 man juries and a lot of other advances in Western Civilization. The bummer was they re introduced slavery of women by down grading them to being the property of their men / Husbands. The Catholic Church did not appear to have any difficulty with these measures which were in violation of our Brehon Laws! Queen Maebh mar Shampla ....
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What is the Great Silence? I've never heard of this, and would love to hear more! I hope you write something that expounds upon all you've so brilliantly said here! I, for one, am riveted to what you've said. And I will add this, with regard to "the son being too attached to his mother," I was told a couple of times while I lived in Eire that when one gets into the rural regions of Ireland, such as Connemara, a common family dynamic is that the fathers in the land tend to be off in the pubs at night, while the mothers are home with the children. This makes for an unusually tight relationship between mother and son, which is where the term "Momma's Boy" comes from.
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Those that either perished in the Great Famine or emigrated left their holdings to the grasping snug farmers. For instance a family could not avail of the splendid fare of the Poor house without giving up their holdings down to the last quarter acre. This information under the notorious Gregory Clause was noted by officials controlling those who had to enter the poor house. If and when they survived this ordeal they had no place to go when they came out, except abroad or in to the towns and cities to beg or steal or whatever it took to survive. The Great Silence is the general notion that all land records were burned in the Civil war 80 years later. In reality 1847 is not all that far back and today's land owners would have a fair idea who owned the land if they had a mind to. This extraordinary sequence in Irish History is sometimes referred to as The Bloodless Revolution where land predominantly in Protestant ownership in the 19 C wound up seamlessly in the hands of Catholic ownership by early 20 th C, especially after the Civil War of 1923 and the cronyism that occurred.
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Thank you for this. I had no idea, which is exactly why I like being affiliated with TWG. Love the way you write, Mr. Dunne.
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Comment by David Lawlor on November 24, 2015 at 6:12pm
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Very fine descriptive writing, Claire . . . that 'bruised eggplant' sky and 'mercurial pelting rain' - I love it.
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