Irish Literature - House of Mourning and Other Stories

whose house was nearby, had been at school, the teacher, Rev. Clarke, would bring his pupils into the courtyard to see the departure of the swallows.
Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill your baskets high
With fennel green . . .
Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme.

    Lady Eleanor Butler—of one of the steadfast Catholic families of Ireland, whose cousin’s house, Cill Chais in County Tipperary, was the subject of a poem learnt at National School, a lament for the great Catholic house by a young priest—had been devoted to a herb garden near the river Dee in Wales, which reminded her of the Nore in County Kilkenny, its wild privet banks, its yellow water-lily-covered water, its poppy-bordered river paths.
    The tragic measure; Shakespeare was performed in the Kilkenny of Lady Eleanor Butler’s girlhood.
    My arm would go around Lady Tamar’s shoulder for the affair we never had.
    As autumn became late autumn an Amaracus in old-fashioned black bib swimming togs would walk out on the pier in the Men’s pond to swim—just as boys do late in the year at the weir in Bishop’s Meadows in Kilkenny with their distant view of St Canice’s Cathedral—often against a late-afternoon sun that was as red-orange as Californian poppy.

The Hare’s Purse

    The old alchemists considered mercury the spirit, sulphur the soul, salt the body.
    Sulphur united with mercury and salt for Seán South on the evening of January 1st 1957—when County Monaghan country people say there’s a cock step more light—with the burst of a Bren gun.
    Fergal O’Hanlon—Fergal Máire (Mary) Ó hAnnluain—aged twenty, from Park Street, Monaghan town; Seán South—Seán Sabhat—aged twenty-nine, from Henry Street, Limerick: killed in a raid on Brookeborough police station, County Fermanagh, five miles over the Northern Ireland border, with twelve other men, four of them injured, one critically.
    A Christian Brother with embonpoint, who taught at the Abbey CBS in Tipperary town, had once told Seán South, in the Royal Hotel by the willowherb-choked Ara River, Tipperary town, the story written in Greek by Lucian of Samosata about a group of adventurers who, as they sail through the Strait of Gibraltar, are lifted by a giant waterspout and deposited on the moon.
    There they witness the war between the king of the moon and the king of the sun over the colonization rights of Jupiter, involving armies of stalk-and-mushroom men, acorn-dogs, cloud-centaurs, with the moon men, hit in combat, dissolving into smoke.
    The Slieve Beagh mountain march by the twelve survivors through the hilly, boggy countryside between Brookeborough and the border took five hours.
    Lights and flares of search parties lit up the countryside.
    The County Donegal golden eagle was an occasional visitor to this mountain.
    Doing a roller-coaster on sighting a hare, soaring upward to a point, then tucking its wings to descend at a speed of up to two hundred miles per hour.
    Golden to blonde feathers at the neck; thus the name.
    Chrysos being the Greek word for golden, the Tipperary-town Christian Brother once having informed Seán South.
    Atropos being the Greek goddess who determined life or death, he added the same evening.
    Atropos had determined death for Seán South and Fergal O’Hanlon that night.
    But for the survivors, with the lights and flares it was like the battle on the moon frequently related in Irish by Seán South.
    The Cortolvin Bridge over the old Ulster Canal was lined with people in Monaghan town awaiting Fergal O’Hanlon’s hearse.
    Woodland blue, bluebell— cloigín gorm —eyes, cheeks red as the little cup of the yew tree, lips like Joe Louis, teeth that lost a gold crown, chased tweed jackets with shamrock, primrose or fáinne —ring-shaped badge of the Irish Language Association—in lapel.
    A draughtsman in Monaghan courthouse.
    Played for Senior Monaghan Harps in their white and blue. In the shower had a body like a bunch of the garden plant, lamb’s cars.
    Coached Minor Monaghan Harps.
    Remembered sitting on the edge of Gavan Duffy Park, instructing young players.
    Gavan Duffy, from Dublin Street, Monaghan town, the only Irish rebel knighted by Queen Victoria.
    Chiefly remembered in Monaghan town for having had four children in his seventies.
    Hearse passed Magnet Cinema on Glaslough Street—four-penny, eight-penny, shilling seats—where Rebel Without a Cause had very recently been shown.
    James Dean in wine-coloured zip-up jacket and